Nathan Cullen

[Livestock Industry, February 13th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am impressed by the energy of the member but not necessarily the details of his solutions. I have one to suggest both to the government and to the official opposition, when it chooses to take that role.

In meeting with farmers from across my region, Fraser Lake, Houston, Burns Lake and beyond, they are struggling to make ends meet. I am talking about the family farms, not the big mega corporation farms but the folks who are trying to make things connect.

The price of getting cows to market, talking about beef for a moment, is out of control. SRM costs are going from $40 to $80 a head and folks cannot bring cows to market and still make ends meet for the feed and cost of production.

I am curious as to the member's and government member's opinions on this. As a solution, we could at least bring in country of origin labelling for all beef brought into the country. We talk about there being too many cows on the market and too much beef on the market, yet we import enormous numbers while Canadian farmers have a hard time getting value for product.

I am wondering if the member would allow that the same regulations being imposed on Canadian farmers for safety reasons should also be imposed on every importer of product to Canada. That is not the case at the moment and I think Canadian consumers, as well as producers, at least deserve solutions that look like this. I would like the member's opinion on these exact and particular solutions to this crisis that we are facing right now.

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, February 13th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, this evening I have the pleasure of being here with you and my colleagues to discuss this bill.

This represents another attempt by this Parliament to change the government's attitude and to have it protect the environment.

For the current government, which we hope will not be in power much longer, the environment is not important and protecting it is not an urgent matter.

We have a completely different view of the situation and we believe we have to do something about it right now. Canadians believe that the environment is currently the most important issue.

Phosphorus is an obvious problem that is just coming to light with recent blooms and because of serious issues, particularly in Quebec and Ontario, but it is not restricted to those particular provinces. There have been other places and other bodies of water where it has caused huge concern. Getting down to the source is what this bill attempts to do.

We had some witness testimony about what these influxes of phosphorus can actually lead to. They start with seemingly harmless sources in dishwasher detergent, laundries and farming fertilizers and end up in our waters, but then, through accumulation, they allow these allow algae blooms to go on. Cyanobacteria are created in these blooms and these can be very harmful to human health.

I will quote Richard Carignan, of the Université de Montréal, who talked about the serious nature of the effects on human health and the ecosystem. Cyanobacteria create:

--toxins that cause skin irritation and symptoms that are like gastroenteritis. Also, they may affect the nervous system. Because of that, health departments are aware of cyanobacteria. In Quebec at least, when they observe toxins in the water, they generally close the body of water to most uses.

That has impacts not just on the environment but on the economy and the quality of life of those who are near that body of water and those impacts can be profound.

There are many solutions to this problem. The government does not have a sense of urgency with regard to putting in place the solutions needed—solutions that citizens want now. The problem has been around for many years. It is nothing new. In last summer's news it may have seemed new but this problem has been around for many years.

We have to figure exactly what the problem is. To focus simply on detergents is not enough, we need to find out what can be done. We have to determine how to manage the land while respecting agriculture and the farmers who live on the land.

I recall that this summer the candidate for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, the current member for Outremont and I announced a comprehensive plan, together with some very important Quebec producers.

This bill is one option and a good start. However, we must address other matters and other aspects of the problem. It is important to do so to find a solution.

As for the NDP plan, the existing buffer zone of three metres—or something like that—is not enough. The need is greater and, in certain cases, three metres are not enough. Our plan proposes a 10-metre buffer. Quebec farmers have expressed considerable enthusiasm about this plan. Thus, it is important for the NDP. The cost of this plan is $50 million for the entire country.

We think it is a good solution. The farming community is making a concerted effort to move this forward, but it is difficult. It is very difficult. Quite frankly, almost all Canadian farmers need help. They need help from this government and all governments in the country.

I would like to read another quotation regarding the issue of chemicals, a very important issue. The same professor from the Université de Montréal also said:

The most recent federal analyses of acid rain progression in Canada indicate that much of the blue green algae that has been flourishing in Quebec over the past three years, including in the Laurentians where there is very little agriculture, is falling, for the most part, literally from the sky.

There is mounting evidence and interest of Canadians from coast to coast to coast on this issue. It is important to realize that we cannot proceed without a federal action plan. The government seems loathe to even consider that as was the case when dealing with our waters.

I can recall this from the very first throne speech. The government talked about having a national water inventory and a national water strategy, an announcement that we hesitantly encouraged and were excited about. I say with some hesitance because the government's promises and commitments and what actually happens is so often misleading.

What happened in this particular instance, and we are now two years away from that time when the government announced its plans, was that we still do not have a national water strategy nor a national inventory.

The reason that this is important for this particular private member's bill is it would deal with not just instances that come up when there is news attention, when the crisis comes, but also to allow Canadians some feeling of certainty that the government has in hand their best interests and a plan that will allow us to go ahead.

Yet, we are still waiting. There is a huge discrepancy, as my dear colleague from Winnipeg pointed out to me earlier, that across the country, when we look at federal and provincial spending patterns, in particular federal in this case, there are enormous discrepancies between bodies of water.

I will take just two for example. There is the very small Lake Simcoe, which has a great deal of real estate interest and tourism interest. It receives almost $16,500 per square kilometre of water in federal funding. Whereas Lake Winnipeg, which I know is near and dear to your heart, Mr. Speaker, receives just $250 per square kilometre.

In this instance, between almost $17,000 and $250, we see the results on the water and in the water quality. That level of stress that is brought to those who depend and survive alongside these bodies of water is justified.

Lake Winnipeg has a $55 million freshwater fishery with obviously enormous economic impacts, probably the largest freshwater fishery in the continent. Yet, the government is without a national strategy and without any kind of national vision. How to deal with water is something that is obviously near and dear to the hearts of many Canadians.

In the absence of that plan, it is a hodge-podge of band-aid solutions trying to make some attempt at actually dealing with the urgency of this serious issue.

A government that actually took this issue seriously, that actually believed that water was at some risk, would bring forward a national strategy to deal with it, at least aquifer inventory, at least an understanding of where the water is, what water is at threat, and what is at risk.

Yet instead, we have a government which even on issues like climate change, when it does conduct the studies which the government has through natural resources, completes the study as to the impacts of climate change on our economies and our communities, and then sits on the study for four months and still has not released it to the Canadian public.

These were taxpayer dollars that the government spent to create this study, to allow us to understand the impacts of our policy choices and our industrial choices, and it refuses to allow this study out into the public realm.

We think this has to stop. If the truth is what the government is afraid of, then clearly its policies are not aligned with a future that Canadians are looking for.

If its policies are aligned and the government is comfortable with the truth, then it should start to release these studies, begin to create a national water strategy that will allow Canadians to deal with phosphorous concentrations in their water and the impacts of climate change.

Canadians will only then feel like the government is actually willing and ready to put ideology aside and put in its place clear thinking based upon science that will allow Canadians to feel that assurance that the peace, order and good governance written into our Constitution is actually being enacted on behalf of the Canadian people by their government.

At this point it is difficult to call this particular representation the Government of Canada because its interests obviously lie not with the interests of Canadians.

[Forestry Industry, February 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the pine beetle crisis is not going away and the Conservatives are not doing nearly enough for the hard-working people of British Columbia.

More than 25,000 families have been affected by this devastation. Eighty per cent of the pine trees in B.C. will be gone by 2013. Seven million hectares of land have been affected and there has been more than $10 billion in lost value.

First nations and isolated British Columbian communities surrounded by standing deadwood are living in fear waiting for that fire that is certain to come.

When communities ask for accountability for the money promised them more than two years ago, they are met with blank stares and delays from the government.

The government needs to step up and improve on its record of negligence. An example of this was the $1 billion that the NDP and communities across the country forced out of the government for communities in need right now.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. The implications are serious and far-reaching. This crisis of national scope requires leadership and courage, and the NDP and its leader will provide this leadership.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, February 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I truly get a sense of sincerity in terms of what my colleague's constituents have been calling for over a number of years. Folks in Skeena are sometimes disgusted by what they see in the other chamber.

I was trying to find two important features in the bill in terms of accountability. One is around the present conduct of senators in terms of ethics and the potential conflict of interest with their work and their public life. As it stands right now senators can engage in business interests as representatives of the government without any apparent conflict of interest, something that we as elected members are not allowed to do. No individual elected to any position in the country is allowed to do that. Is there any proposal in the bill that would close that ethical gap?

As we all know, senators are appointed at the whim of the Prime Minister, and it still appears to be at the whim of the Prime Minister. Maybe this Prime Minister is interested in appointing individuals to the Senate who are elected through this process, but as written in the bill, the power still remains with one single person. Is this rectified in the bill?

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, February 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague was doing quite well for a while, as he went through the history, showing the overwhelming preponderance of promoting partisan interests above the interests of the country. Whether the prime minister had been Conservative or Liberal or some variation in between, they seemed to consistently have a high percentage of appointing their friends and buddies to the Senate.

The problem the NDP has with the bill and its many pages, and there are many, is this. We have a body that has very few ethical guidelines, which the bill does not seek to correct in terms of senators being able to sit both in conflict of interest for business negotiations while also sitting in the Senate. It also has increased its own pay packet by 70% since 1993, and the cost of expenses go up double what that is because of inflation. The fundamentals of this are wrong.

The hon. member did okay until he got to the point where the appointment of Senator Michael Fortier came in, and there was some attempt to justify why this abhorrence of democracy and justice was okay. This has been the history of that place. This has been the history of failed attempts at reform.

For a government to roll out a bill, prior to a series of more confidence motions and delays in real action, shows a certain ineffectiveness and insincerity to get the job done.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, February 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, it is a riveting debate and there is an enormous number of Liberals here. As for the question or the fundamental that my esteemed colleague talked about, I think that what is fundamentally unbecoming is relying upon an ancient tradition and institution that has seen zero reform in its time and has enormous ethical implications on the work that we do here in this place.

I am seeing this with my own bill. It passed unanimously through the House, but the Senate has seen no urgency whatsoever to deal with it. There is no care or concern whatsoever for a bill that would help protect children from harmful chemicals. There is no concern that the bill will die if they do not take it on with urgency. They have put my bill off for some months. That is not becoming. That is unethical.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, February 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Nanaimo—Cowichan is asking essentially two questions. One is around representation and the other is around value for money.

Since 1993, the Senate has received a 70% pay increase. The cost of the Senate on a yearly basis has been double the cost of inflation for this country. These are expensive folks to keep at the trough. This is not an inexpensive adventure. The government is suggesting that we hold more elections. There is some cost attached to that, although I always am cautious about the cost of democracy in that one moment when Canadians become the most powerful people in the country and cast a vote. There are costs incurred with that.

However, there is a tinkering at the edges in the representation. Most people in Skeena—Bulkley Valley in northwest British Columbia could not name a single senator. Maybe they could name two if they were really lucky. Being so far removed from Ottawa, they often wonder how they have been represented. There was actually representation. A senator did in fact visit our riding, to check on a business proposal in which he was an investor. He also sat on the Senate committee that was going to approve legislation that helped the business proposal get forward.

That was the reason for his visit to my region. It was to check up on his business interests, to understand if there were certain tinkerings with the bill that was before his committee, on which he was meant to be representing the views of all the country, one would imagine, that could aid and assist in his financial endeavours in my region. That was an incredible moment.

What was most interesting to me was that when the senator spoke with me, he was absolutely unabashed by this scenario. On the clear and present conflict of interest that was happening in front of us, he saw no problem with it at all. He did not think he had to recuse himself. He felt it was incumbent upon him to make sure the bill helped his business interests and those associated with him. How ridiculous does this get? This is what the people in my region see and then they wonder why this place is defended so assiduously, particularly by the Liberals, and even in this bill by the Conservatives.

Fundamentally, this bill does not get at the heart of the problem. It does not clear up the ethical gap that exists between what Canadians want and what senators on a daily basis feel is their right and privilege, and that is to defend their own interests rather than the interests of this country.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, February 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I enter this debate with great pleasure but also with great remorse because of the intellectual dishonesty that is being perpetrated by the government in bringing forward this bill at this time.

There is a reason that I make such harsh judgment of the government. I know it is not easy and there are certain government members who endeavour to provide honourable discourse and dialogue in this place. Yet when looking through the many pages of Bill C-20, Canadians might be left with the impression that the government is actually serious about Senate reform, somehow serious about democratic reform. This goes back to the days of the Reform Party and then the Canadian Alliance and various incarnations in between in speaking to what I believe was a sincere desire among Canadians to see some sort of accountability in all levels of office.

If the rules that were given to the Senate were applied to any other official body in this country, Canadians would be absolutely disgusted. They would be unable to understand why we would allow such an important function of government to run amok and have so few rules guiding its own merit and conduct. The ethics rules are not adhered to. On simply showing up for work, the attendance is abysmal. Before I entered politics I ran a small business. After looking at the attendance records for some senators, they would not have been hired, or if they had been hired, they certainly would have been let go as soon as possible. They simply do not show up and when they do, their effectiveness is found wanting.

Clearly there is much speculation in the media and by the pundits that we are on the eve of another election. There is potentially a series of confidence votes. The Prime Minister for some delusional reason seems interested in going back to the Canadian people for a mandate.

The government is showing its true colours in desiring an election because it is clearing the decks of all those bills. The Conservatives want to show some small significance of effort back to their base, that oh yes, they are engaged in the issue and here is their evidence and proof.

Lo and behold, like a gopher, Bill C-20 has popped up its head and pretends at some sincere effort. The government lost any momentum for discussion of the bill because it chose to prorogue Parliament. It chose to suspend Parliament which essentially killed all of the bills on the order paper that were in progress, such as its own crime bill and other bills, including this bill as well. All of that time was lost and it is more than two years since the last election.

The government introduced this bill, but allowed it to fall into the black hole of prorogation, a process which few Canadians understand. However, the government understood it well, and the desperate need for another throne speech was its excuse. It set the bill back 12 months or more and lost any kind of serious discussion.

The New Democrats are deeply interested at our core of finding a way to fix the fundamentally flawed institution that is known as the Senate in order to allow Canadians some sense that democracy is functioning and that they are getting value for money. There are 14 vacancies in the Senate and we get no sense of urgency whatsoever from the government to fill those vacancies, because ultimately those positions are filled through patronage appointments. That is the way it is done.

The government seeks credibility on this issue. It seeks to tell Canadians it is sincere about Senate reform and having true representation in the Senate. One of its first acts as a new government, having just run a campaign on accountability, was to appoint Michael Fortier from Montreal to the Senate. That was one of the first things the Prime Minister did after having spent not just weeks but months telling Canadians how sensible and accountable his government would be, how it would clean up the corruption of the Liberals. How many times did we hear it in this place from the Prime Minister and other people in his cabinet that they would not follow the record of the Liberals and not give crony patronage appointments, that they would do it differently?

One of the things the Conservatives were thinking of doing was reforming the Senate. Lo and behold, when given the reins of power, the first thing the Prime Minister decided to do was to force upon the people of Montreal a representative they did not choose. He chose to put someone into the Senate in one of the most important cabinet positions, one which controls billions of taxpayer dollars, someone who cannot be held to account in this place.

When that ministry, under his guidance, runs amok and spends money unaccountably or perhaps wrongly, he cannot be called to account. He simply cannot be given that direction and focus from this place. Canadians cannot see him, at least on the evening news, presenting his opinions in a place that was constructed to do just that. These walls were built and these desks were put in this place for that. Canadians imbued Parliament with the power to be accountable over many things. One is the law and another is the use of taxpayer dollars.

Yet the government has chosen to put an unaccountable, unelected person into the cabinet and stick that person in the Senate in order to get around this little annoyance called democracy, this little discomfort, which is that people in just about every urban centre in this country decided not to elect Conservative members. Rather than actually appeal to those voters in any kind of sensible way and present a platform on urban transit strategy or the serious issues affecting Canadians living in cities, the Conservatives decided that the appointment process was just so much easier. It is just so much easier to appoint someone to the Senate and allow that person to occupy one of the most critical positions in cabinet.

In this bill, despite the many pages and the many clauses and amendments, the government is clearly playing at the margins. It is clearly tinkering at the edges, because at the end of the day, through all the sections on voting, discrepancy and penalties, it still remains the purview and the power of only one person in this country, and that is the Prime Minister, to choose whom he or she will allow to go into the Senate.

When we craft laws in this place, we do not craft them for any particular current representation or any current manifestation of government. We seek to create laws that will last throughout governments, that will stand the test of time and be a good representation of sound thinking.

It is wrong for the government to present a bill with the pretense that perhaps this Prime Minister may choose to honour the wishes of some of the voters who are constructing some electoral options in regard to it being a truly accountable forum and in regard to this bill somehow fixing a fundamental problem. Earlier in the discussion in regard to the functioning of the Senate, I called it an old beat-up jalopy that simply will not start. It simply will not function. The government's solution is a new coat of paint and some air in the tires, perhaps with windshield wipers if they are needed.

Sometimes there were debates and moments in history where, for some miraculous, rare spot in time, the Senate actually performed a function. It actually did something admirable in one of the current policy debates, but those moments are so rare that they remind me of a strange phenomenon I was looking up earlier. I was trying to find the actual taxonomic name of a flower in the Amazon. It buds only once every 25 years. It is quite rare. No one really knows when that is going to happen and it is a news item every time. Everyone rushes to the Amazon, the cameras show up, the flower buds and shows itself, and then quickly disappears again for some unknown period of time.

When I deal with my colleagues in the Senate, as admirable as some of them may be, I find that as an institution there is absolutely no lever to pull on. There is no accountability measure. I can recall before the previous government fell that the House of Commons, in the midst of an energy concern regarding seniors on fixed incomes, sought to pass a piece of legislation that would assist low income seniors with their home heating bills. I am sure all my colleagues who were here at that time remember that debate. We all remember how the parties got together in one of those rare moments in Parliament and decided to pass a bill at all stages and allow the bill to pass on to the Senate.

I met with a senator that day on entirely another issue. He told me to go back to my leadership and tell them that the bill, which we could find all party agreement to, had no guarantee whatsoever of getting through his chamber because the Senate had to be accountable. That senator was a Liberal, and of course he had no determinants of influence or bias whatsoever in terms of what was happening here in this place electorally with his elected colleagues, and he guaranteed me that if we rushed to an election too quickly, he assured me that this bill would not go through, and how dare the NDP bring down his Liberal government.

In fact, it was a bluff, of course. The bill passed and the money was received by needy seniors across the country, but the fact, and the point of this illustration, remains, which is that the accountability of that gentleman to represent this narrow, biased and partisan view, rather than the interests of this country and the people who vote for members in this place, shows what is so fundamentally dysfunctional about what it is the Senate has come to represent, which is a minority representation, protecting minority views, those of the powerful and the elite in this country.

[Senate Appointment Consultations Act, February 12th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask my colleague what will happen if the context of this bill is respected. However, I will speak in English for greater clarity.

The government seems to have this old, broken down jalopy called the Senate which barely functions. There are 14 vacancies which Canadians seem unconcerned about. My constituents in British Columbia are consistently confused as to the Senate's actual role and what value for money Canadians receive for the work done in the Senate.

Rather than change the entire car or fix its engine, the government bill proposes to change the paint or to put more air in the tires, yet the car still will not function. The car still will not function to get the work of the country done.

What would my colleague suggest is a more fundamental approach? The NDP has a very clear and long-standing position on abolition of the Senate, moving toward something a lot more effective. Is his party in support of such a position or does he feel there is another avenue that would more fundamentally address what is wrong with that place? What better way is there to address the democratic deficiencies that we have pointed out from all four corners of the House?

[The Environment, November 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it is a little sad and quite pathetic that after almost a year as minister, he continues to compare himself to a failed Liberal policy to measure up to Canadians.

The National Energy Board has said that his policy will not meet Canada's targets. Big polluters are not investing because the government refuses to regulate them.

How many regulations does the minister have sitting on his desk that he has not signed and why after almost more than a year has he not brought in one single regulation against big polluters?