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Crucial Fact

  • His favourite word was conservatives.

Last in Parliament October 2019, as NDP MP for Skeena—Bulkley Valley (B.C.)

Won his last election, in 2015, with 51% of the vote.

Statements in the House

Criminal Code June 13th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, that was a very popular speech. It was interesting and I would like to ask a brief question.

I had a conversation with my team today on this subject and one member of my team emphasized that a balance is necessary between the new forms of media that exist now—YouTube and the others—and protection of the rights of the companies and artists who produce these artistic materials.

My question deals with the balance in this bill between the older media forms—films, movies, etc—and the new media forms. For people like Erin, especially, there is a lot of concern about the limits on transmission and the limits on copying the new forms. That is necessary because there are a lot of restrictions on artistic expression. That is my question for my colleague.

Petitions June 13th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, in my last set of petitions, consisting of several hundred if not close to several thousand signatures, the petitioners are demanding that the government live up to the Government of Canada's signature as a nation on the Kyoto protocol, and adhere to long and medium term targets that are identified in the protocol, as the government seems wont to do but is incapable of actually performing.

Petitions June 13th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to introduce several petitions signed by several hundred people in my riding in northwestern British Columbia. They have identified that with a $51 billion surplus in the employment insurance fund since 1994, and with only half of the workers in Canada actually being able to qualify for this fund, the government should introduce the 28 recommendations from the standing committee, which were adopted by all parties.

A second set of petitions of several dozen to 100 names also asks the government to in effect partition the employment insurance jurisdiction in northern British Columbia, which seems, by the government's admission, to have inadvertently locked in areas that are doing extremely well economically and have less than 3% unemployment with areas that have in excess of 80% unemployment. It seems only fair.

June 7th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, my colleague seems to have gone through the estimates in a wide range. I will make a small correction. Port Rupert does not exist. The funding for the Port of Prince Rupert was provided by the previous government with much insistence from this corner. I am not sure if the Conservative government is trying to take credit for the money but that is what governments do.

This brings me to my point around the environmental spending my colleague talked about. The government, by its own admission, misunderstood and much underplayed the issue of the environment for Canadians. We were slightly surprised by the vehemence of the reaction from the Canadian public when the government did not come forward with more progressive ideas. The government dragged its feet on greenhouse gases and spent most of its first 12 months blaming the previous regime's performance.

We initially did not have a problem with this because we in the NDP have consistently said that the previous government was not performing well when it came to climate change, but yet offered the Conservative government no excuse. Previous Liberal failures do not condone present Conservative failures when it comes to greenhouse gases.

The member talked about the ecotrust funding. It is just by coincidence that today department officials were in front of committee. We asked them if the money had been spent because the minister had stood in his place and said the money had gone out the door. He said the cheques were not just signed, not just in the mail, but they had been cashed. However, when we checked with the provinces, no one had seen any of the money. There seems to be an enormous discrepancy here. The minister is taking much credit for all these environmental initiatives when the money has not gone out the door.

There is not a single string attached to this money so that it will actually lead to reductions in greenhouse gases, further continuing Canada's deplorable record on greenhouse gas emissions and delaying action from other countries.

Before the government actually takes credit for programs and spending on initiatives, it seems to me that it would be wise that it actually spend the money. When those members were in opposition, I know they were paying attention to the Liberal government's tendency to re-spend and re-announce and re-announce until it was beating a dead horse, but I would resist the temptation if I were that member.

It seems to me that Canadians need to know what has happened. The environmental initiatives and the ecotrust funding have not happened. The money has not been spent. The money has not been delivered. The provinces have not seen it.

I wonder if my colleague could take this opportunity to clarify the record. I know he does not wish to mislead Canadians or those who are watching, but I wonder if he would like to correct the record here in the House to ensure we actually understand what is afoot.

Business of Supply June 7th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, I am sure Canadians are enthralled with this debate between the Conservative and Liberal parties as to who properly should have kicked out members of their caucus and who did not.

It seems to me that there is a longstanding tradition within Canadian Parliament that the actual idea of people casting votes for someone running for office is that this someone would represent them.

We have a very clear example here in the House. A Conservative member obviously wrestled with this issue for some time as to whether he could support this budget, which he saw as doing harm to his constituents and his province, and he was summarily dismissed by his party. The party then blocked computer records and access, which apparently have been restored, but as for even just the intention, I think that a lot of viewers who are watching and a lot of Canadians paying attention to this debate, if they can, do worry about the idea of sending someone to Ottawa and then having them tossed from a party because of a vote against a budget or not.

The Liberals do not have a clean record on this because they did the same thing not so long ago for one of their members. I have a question for my hon. colleague. Does he support what his party and the Conservative Party did? As for attempts to make any reference to what happened to a dear friend of mine in terms of what were her choices and what were not, I would recommend that he does not, because the continuation of these falsities does no service for any of us in this place.

British Columbia Flood Mitigation June 7th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, the people of northern British Columbia are deeply worried as the flood waters rise. States of emergency have been called right across the northwest. As gas stations and grocery stores run out of food, literally thousands of people have been stranded.

All across the region volunteers and emergency workers have been doing their part and helping out neighbours. Will the Minister of Public Safety do his part and commit to doing everything within his power to reassure the people of my region? Will he also commit to joining me in a tour across the northwest to see the disaster at first hand and to properly understand its scope and magnitude?

Fisheries Act, 2007 May 29th, 2007

It is an amazing fact, Mr. Speaker, but when I visit the volunteer based fisheries hatcheries and enhancement programs in my region, over and over again I learn that their funding has been cut. The oceans planning funding has been cut in half when it needed to be doubled. When we start to look at the resources these communities depend upon, we find them wanting. The resources are not to be found.

Fisheries Act, 2007 May 29th, 2007

--and table that in the House. There seems to be public interest in doing this.

The government stands behind its policy of consultation. The government members were commenting as I was making my speech about their extensive consultation and how wonderful it was. If those members are proud of that initiative and that effort, tabling the list of those consulted would be most helpful and germane to the debate.

We are months into this act and we still do not have such a list. If it exists, the government should present it, and with courage, not fear.

Fisheries Act, 2007 May 29th, 2007

That is interesting, Mr. Speaker. I have not had those instructions before, especially when the government is filibustering from its benches, but I will try.

What my hon. colleague from Sackville—Eastern Shore talks about is that consultation has been sought, and it has been demanded a number of times, and we have requested humbly and beseechingly of the government to just tell us who it talks to, to show us the groups that had input--

Fisheries Act, 2007 May 29th, 2007

Oh, Mr. Speaker, where to begin? I have some respect for my colleague from Nanaimo—Alberni, who mentioned paying some attention to my comments. I will ask him to pay a little more to my next piece, because the fearmongering he speaks of presents a notion that there is some imminent doom to be presented to the fishing communities in my region.

I would suggest that he come to visit with me in the regions and communities of mine that have upwards of 85% and 90% unemployment and then talk to me about fearmongering. How dare he talk to me about fearmongering when I have community after community watching the steady and rapid decline of their fish stocks, in part due to the mismanagement not just of this government, but of those that have gone before?

One of the reasons that this mismanagement has been so consistent is that government comes to the point of changing law. Are we for an update? Are we for a revision of the Fisheries Act? Of course we are. Are we for this revision? Absolutely not.

Those communities have greater fear because they see the department act without intelligence, and I mean both the intelligence of the mind and the intelligence in terms of information as to what people are desperately seeking, which is some sense of influence and control over the resource that their livelihoods and communities depend upon.

To suggest that it is fearmongering, when the communities that I represent are consistently shut out of those consultations, is ridiculous. To suggest that, when I implore the government to listen to the communities and then take that listening and that intelligence and place it into the bills, which the government simply has not done in this case, I am reminded deeply of this Conservative government's first and clumsy attempts at getting environmental legislation correct. The Conservatives went internally to their own advisers, with three lines in their party platform about the environment, and thought that they knew enough to actually construct a sound environmental policy.

Lo and behold, they marched it out into the lobby, to the media and the waiting public, and dropped a dud that paid little attention to absolutely no attention to the details required to make sound environmental policy. So from this corner we negotiated to take that bill to committee prior to second reading, prior to agreeing to it in principle, which is the essence of this conversation, the agreeing and chucking this off to committee. When that is done we accept the principle of the bill, but when a bill is so deeply flawed as this one that the principle is wrong, that is not responsible.

It is not responsible for elected members who represent fishing communities to send a bill that they know is wrong in principle to a committee for some tweaking, some additions and some minor adjustments. It is not on. That is not salient. It is not responsible.

Of course there have been talks about fisheries renewal. That talk has gone on for longer than seven years, I would contest, but when it comes to the action, to the delivery, it was 12 hours after the government actually released its first initial new fisheries act that our dear friend Byng Giraud proclaimed a welcome, under the British Columbia mining industry, to the new 200 page-plus act. He was ready to go in 12 hours. I suppose he read the whole thing. Then we found out that he is also a senior consultant in British Columbia in the Earnscliffe Strategy Group and currently sits on the governing national council of the Conservative Party of Canada.

It is fascinating that the validation popped out from a party insider. What an incredible source of validation for a bill that is so important to the communities we all represent and should have been validated by the communities we represent, not by somebody else with different interests.