Nathan Cullen

[Business of Supply, June 1st, 2006]

I am sure my colleague from Sault Ste. Marie would also like to know your thoughts on this, Mr. Speaker, as I know you have spent some time on this file.

The question is around what the market will actually bear. The northern Ontario market of which my colleague speaks with respect to the logging community is very similar to that of northern British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, and right across the country. The market is at the point of breaking in terms of what independent truckers are able to bear. Some of them have walked me through their books and said, “This is how much I am paying. This is what I am getting paid by the companies and this is how much gas costs. I donated $50 yesterday to the companies because my fuel costs exceeded that”. With prices at $1.10 or $1.20 a litre, that market can no longer bear the costs of production.

That is something that the government will be faced with. When economists speculate prices at $1.70 a litre, how many independent small and medium size businesses in this country can bear that price? If they cannot, what are we going to do about it? We need to do something. It would be irresponsible not to.

[Business of Supply, June 1st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, this has been in our party's platform for a number of years now. We are very happy that the Conservatives are borrowing some of those ideas and working with industry, but they got the number wrong. We said 10%.

The actual benefit at the pump has been shown by the government's own documents to be negligible. The actual benefit of 5% entirely depends on where we get the ethanol base. If we encourage the growth of other plants or particular varieties of plants in order to produce that ethanol, it comes out to a zero gain at best.

The United States has provided incentive to its farmers. Probably the most striking incident at the Bonn meetings was to hear from the European farmers, who have been under the same intense pressure as our farmers, singing the praises of the Kyoto protocol. It was enabling them to access more than a billion euros in carbon trading to allow them to fallow fields and to take a break on some of the soil concentrations and still earn money at the same time. They thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread and was working very well for them and for the environment. Then our government said that maybe we should ditch the whole program altogether. Meanwhile, our farmers would absolutely sing its praises.

I met with an industry group just this morning. My colleague would be interested to know that all that group is looking for is certainty. Business thrives and depends upon certainty and knowing what the market will do, particularly for the high and exceptional investments that are required for the shifting of energy uses.

What we have had, and we must lay the blame where it is needed on both sides of the House for the last five years and this year included, is uncertainty, not knowing where we are going when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. That has to change. We have to have certainty. We have to allow businesses to make the needed changes. Government must play a role. They cannot be voluntary measures; they must be mandatory.

[Business of Supply, June 1st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak to my Bloc colleague's motion. This is one of those issues that is a true intersection of government and business. It speaks directly to the interests of many Canadians in their day to day lives. Many times in the House we absorb ourselves in debates about which Canadians may find themselves confused and searching for relevance, but this one clearly speaks directly to the interests of Canadians.

I would like to take the debate in a direction that is slightly different from much of what has gone on here this morning. It feels to me that this is a representation of intent and purpose in what vision the government may or may not have, both for Canadian consumers and the environment in particular.

We see a striking inequity taking place when we look to the oil and gas sector and Canadians hear of record profits. There is a responsibility that governments hold. There is a responsibility that the business community holds. Sometimes they are in alignment, but sometimes they are at cross purposes.

The business community of course is meant to represent the interests of their shareholders and to maximize profits for those who have invested in companies. I do not begrudge them that and I expect them to pursue that effort at all times. The effort might take place over a 20 year period or through the next quarter or the next shareholders' meeting, but the maximization of those profits is what shareholders demand and what they expect of their boards of directors, if the companies are constituted that way.

The responsibility of government at times is in line with this to allow for competitiveness and a strong economy, although I have heard comments about a multiplier effect of the tar sands jobs of one to 300 or more. In my experience in this place and having run businesses before, I have never heard of such a multiplier effect. It seems absolutely astronomical. I would be very much interested in the source of such job creation. It seems incredible.

I speak to Canadians about this issue. We see companies achieving extraordinary profits, by their own terminology. We saw that in the wake of Katrina companies came forward to acknowledge that the profits had been beyond anything they had seen before, setting record after record after record. So be it. In order to achieve that, part of what was created was a regulatory environment, a taxation environment, that in part allowed them to pursue their interests of profit maximization. I say congratulations.

At the same time, we have a government making choices year in and year out to take taxpayer dollars that Canadians earn every day in order to allow the government to follow through on its intentions. Taxpayers' dollars worth $1.5 billion or more are arriving in direct subsidies to the tar sands at a time when those companies seem least in need of such subsidies.

One can understand this if an industry is in great distress or is at the formation stage of a new development and the market needs signals from the government of the day that it will encourage the marketplace and wishes to pursue greater profitability. But to have this continue to go on year in and year out while at the same time companies are making so much money seems, at the very basis, an inequity to Canadians. How can there be any sense of justice or fairness?

I can understand the government's reasons. We heard the Minister of Natural Resources this morning decrying any suggestion of, heaven forbid, having oversight of what happens with prices at the pump in particular. I can understand that from an ideological basis, and the boardrooms in Calgary are singing those praises, but at the same time, the government must always maintain its central principle, which is to defend the rights and interests of those they represent. Those are both social and economic rights.

In this case it is around the competitiveness of our own market, outside, if for a moment we can take a gander beyond the oil sands and the big oil companies in this country. I represent an area that does not have any such production, as do the majority of MPs in this place. The small business operators in my area of northwestern British Columbia, in particular the logging truck drivers, are almost donating their time when they work these days, because the prices they pay have risen so dramatically and the industry has been restructured to such a point that the drivers are themselves picking up any cost overruns.

At this point the government must look at what is happening to what has become an essential commodity for Canadian businesses. It must ask if we are doing right by these small and medium business owners in our country. I would suggest that we are not.

It is incredible, and humorous if it were not so sad, to hear the environment minister day after day in this place talk about the environmental efficiencies and energy efficiencies called for under the Kyoto protocol and climate change protocols around the world. She said that to increase and improve the efficiency of our energy sector and our energy economy would be the equivalent of taking every plane out of the sky and every car off the road. Such hyperbole would be laughable if it were not sad. To suggest that cutting a program that helps Canadians reduce their dependence on oil, gas and electricity like the EnerGuide program did, is somehow intelligent and efficient for the Canadian economy and for taxpayers is irresponsibility at its most fundamental level.

The minister stood in this House and suggested the reason for its cancellation was that half of the program dollars were going to bureaucrats. The next day the deputy minister, who obviously is somewhat familiar with the file, mentioned the figure of 12¢ on the dollar. We still have not heard an apology from the minister for that incorrect assertion.

If the government is going to cut a program such as that one, it seems to be irresponsible not to put forward a vision for its replacement. If the government is not going to follow the Kyoto protocol, then it should put forward a replacement and encourage the competitiveness of this economy on a global scale.

When I drive around my riding in northwestern British Columbia, which admittedly is very large, within 400 kilometres and three to four hours, the price of gas can change by as much as 15¢ a litre. This is somehow held up as a competitive market.

I can recall a very interesting moment just as hurricane Katrina was hitting. In southwestern Ontario one of the marketers made a mistake at the pump and set the price at $1.70 a litre. He had incorrectly interpreted a fax that had come through his office. What was the response of the local market? They immediately drove all their prices up to $1.70 a litre, and when asked, they said that clearly it was because of Katrina.

We have to have an independent arm's length organization in this country that defends not the rights of the boardrooms of Calgary, but the rights of consumers on a day to day basis.

We must look toward the future and what this country must become. George Bush in the United States has said that Americans must break their addiction to oil, which is quite a striking and difficult thing for an oil man from Texas to say. Yet in this country, one of the first acts the Minister of Natural Resources did upon entering cabinet was to suggest that we need to drill for offshore oil and gas in the most environmentally contentious place in this country, off the west coast of British Columbia. He knows full well there is rampant and strong opposition to such an act. His energy vision for the future is to get that offshore oil and gas, which the vast majority of people who live in that area do not want us to do.

In order for this country to truly enter into this millennium, which I do not think it has in terms of the policies of the current government or the previous government when it comes to energy, it will require a fundamental shift. For years we have heard the auditor of this country say, and I will repeat the phrase because it is an important and fundamental one, that ecological fiscal reform allows the use of the taxation system to promote those values and ideas that we actually want to see: energy efficiency and greener energy production.

This makes sense for the very same reasons that we were able to create the tar sands and the oil sands production in the first place. The government lined up the taxation system, its policy regime and its clear intention to the marketplace in order to create what has become a boon for the tax coffers and private industry and that is what enabled the tar sands to exist in the first place. It would not have been created if government had not taken any kind of a lead.

If the government took a green and progressive approach to energy use in this country with the same energy and initiative that was taken into the tar sands, imagine what this country truly could become. We could stand on the international stage with pride rather than embarrassment and address the world as a progressive player on the energy file.

[Business of Supply, June 1st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed the discourse the hon. member has brought to this debate.

The question I have is on a more intuitive level. Many Canadians, as they arrive at the pump every day for what has become almost a basic or essential necessity, whether it be in their work lives or just in their day to day lives, are confused. They do not understand how we can call this market competitive based on a couple of notions.

First, the government and previous governments, if we are fair to this issue, have overrelied on the Competition Bureau.

I have watched the Competition Bureau closely. In our region in northwestern British Columbia it has tried to settle forestry disputes between companies that have been purchased. What is apparent to me is it has gone off the rails. Amendments have been made to the act. Changes in the bureaucracy's direction have been made. The Competition Bureau, which is meant to increase the level of competition and competitiveness overall of the Canadian market, has taken basic things like the actual cumulative impact on a community out of its own mandate. Therefore, that can no longer be a considered fact when the Competition Bureau looks at acquisitions and purchases, which is staggering for most Canadians.

On one hand is an overreliance. Could the member comment on the misplaced trust on this topic, and others, in the Competition Bureau? The government says that the Competition Bureau has looked at this and has it well in hand.

My second question is this. The intuitive experience of Canadians, when they go to the pump, is that companies, market analysts and reports have an absolute myriad of options of reasons/excuses that they relate to the increase in the gas price such there is a disruption in Venezuela, or a fire in Nigeria or a storm in the Gulf. Any of these incidents suddenly create a justification and a legitimacy for oil companies to raise prices. To suggest, as the Minister of Natural Resources did, that we need to allow the free hand of the market, the invisible hand, Adam Smith still speaks to us from his grave, to come in and allow this free hand to operate in a market that is run by a cartel, in which prices are set artificially by a small cobble of exceptional producers, is beyond the pale.

Could the member please comment on those two points?

[May 31st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I was caught off guard by the end of that speech. All I had asked for in my question was the date when Canadians could expect a plan and when the House would begin to debate all the grandiose terms that the parliamentary secretary has put forward.

Now the minister is musing about the use of a carbon trading market but on a voluntary basis, which would not force Canadian companies to participate, thereby creating further economic uncertainty in the largest final emitters, the biggest polluters in this country. I cannot get the parliamentary secretary, the minister or anyone in the government to offer Canadians the certainty of a date, a point in time when we can begin this debate.

There is no argument from this corner of the House of the long and disastrous wait we had when the Liberal Party was in government. Yet, lo and behold, there is a new government and it is dancing much to the same tune.

It worries me somewhat to trust the Prime Minister, when he stood in the House two days ago and seemed to confuse the very basic elements of greenhouse gases. He muddled the list and claimed one item was not a greenhouse gas and one was. The department website and government policy has named some chemicals as not being greenhouse gases. This is confusing Canadians even further still. Our trust may be misplaced.

[May 31st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, it is very fortuitous to join the debate at this particular moment. The very topic we need to discuss in this next moment is around the environment and the somewhat confusing and often contradictory messages we have been from the new government.

Out of the intensity, action and vitriol of question period, the parliamentary secretary will be rising in his place with thoughts and innovative ideas to help clear away the confusion that so many Canadians are left facing after announcements go sideways and meetings have been disturbed. The message to the world has been embarrassing for all Canadians.

The government has potentially signed on to the Asia-Pacific accord, the AP6 as it is called, while this week in the United States even Republican legislators did not find any need to fund the program any more. It has been one of the greatest advocates of this program.

The minister, through the parliamentary secretary, hopefully will have some clarity on what the government intends to do about the most daunting environmental crisis our country and planet have ever faced. Those are words have come from the government itself.

In the face of such an incredible crisis, the government has signed itself up to a non-bonding, voluntary program, which one of its key initiators has backed out of and has abandoned.

I was in Bonn for the initial stages of the new negotiating round for 2012. The Canadian delegation showed up with the most confusing notion of having Canada refuse to sign up to any targets and commitments or push for voluntary mechanisms. The developing world showed up with plans and programs that far exceeded anything Canada could offer. It offered up some vague notions and allocated some money in the budget without any programming, something that the Conservative, Reform and Alliance Parties all spoke out against in this very House: never associate money without a proper plan in place. Then lo and behold in the Conservatives first budget, on one of the most critical issues, we have the money and no idea how to spend it.

The Conservatives have been much vilified in this place for having cancelled such programs like the EnerGuide. More than a year ago I stood in this place and challenged their former environment critic. The NDP had produced its own climate change plan, fully costed and run through economists. I offered it up to the then government of the day and the other parties in this place so we could debate the different initiatives. The Conservative critic of the environment at the time stood in his place and said that the Conservatives had a plan. After many years as a so-called government in waiting, they arrive in this place as the government. Lo and behold we have to wait more because they do not have a plan. They are consulting and looking around to stakeholder groups to somehow put some kind of voluntary initiative together that will not arrive.

I know the parliamentary secretary has an excellent speech that has been prepared for him. However, for our economy to have any sense of economic certainty going forward, his government needs to table a plan for us to debate and add to. His government, which waited so long to form the government, stated that it had a climate change plan. When can the House expect to see this plan and begin to debate its merits?

[Business of Supply, May 30th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the member's speech. He talked about what the fabric of a community is and the role that arts and culture plays in a community.

My riding in northwest British Columbia relies heavily on the CBC for its information from outside. The concentration of media outlets in British Columbia in particular has been staggering over the last decade or decade and a half. Single owners have been able to acquire the two major dailies, most of the major radio media and a significant portion of the television market. Media concentration has been raised time and again in debates in this House, particularly in this corner, as citizens need the ability to have wide and diverse views about the news of the day and what is happening in and outside their communities.

Yet while in government, the member's party refused to make any serious commitments to actually having a diverse and transparent ownership regime in Canada. Now we get the sentiment from the new government that foreign ownership requirements may be dropped, if they have not been dropped in negotiations already, allowing outside ownership of our major marketing and our major media outlets, further distancing Canadians from their ability to have open and transparent reporting on the issues that are important to them.

My question for the member is with respect to the CBC. During his government's reign, the CBC was making drastic cuts in its ability to actually do local reporting. For rural communities in Canada this was significant, because getting news centralized from the city is completely unsatisfactory, yet the government allowed this cutting, and the Radwanskis and others, to go unhindered in the ability to concentrate, to not spread out and report more effectively.

[The Environment, May 18th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, in Tuesday night's vote, this House directed the Conservative government to live up to Canada's climate change commitments. Yesterday the Prime Minister made it clear he has no intention of listening to the will of Parliament.

This arrogance comes on the heels of the minister's embarrassing performance on the international stage in Bonn. Members of the international community are confused. They wonder why Canada is the lone signatory country to the treaty without a plan. They wonder about Canada's rush to join George Bush in this race to the bottom of the environmental heap.

The Prime Minister and the Minister of the Environment have grossly misled Canadians, suggesting that our economy would have to virtually shut down in order for us to achieve our goals. Many countries that started early and have already gone beyond their initial commitments have experienced tremendous economic growth.

There is no doubt that the Liberals made the job more difficult through their inaction over 13 years in power, but true leadership would mean finding a way to clean up their mess, not taking a defeatist attitude toward one of Canada's most urgent issues. Perhaps the minister will think I am meddling, but someone must--

[Budget Implementation Act, 2006, May 18th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, what an excellent choice in this wall of conservatism that we have to jump over in order to enter this debate and talk about the things that people actually care about.

For many years the Conservatives rallied in the House and said that money must not simply be assigned without a plan for that money. They said it was bad fiscal prudence, bad for Canadians, and bad for the economy because it would send unclear signals. Lo and behold, the Conservatives now break tradition with their allocation of $2 billion supposedly for climate change initiatives while at the same time cutting and gutting other programs that actually benefit Canadians such as the home retrofit program.

At the international meeting in Bonn, non-signatories like China and India produced plans to close the gap on their greenhouse gas emissions and increase the amount of green energy and green technology in their economies. Yet Canada, as the chair, was unable to produce a plan. Canada's only statement was that we were not going to meet our targets and to even attempt to meet such targets would absolutely shut down the Canadian economy. We would have to take every car off the road and every plane out of the sky was what was said by our so-called Minister of the Environment. I wonder if he could comment on that.

[Phthalate Control Act, May 17th, 2006]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-307, An Act to prohibit the use of benzyl butyl phthalate (BBP), dibutyl phthalate (DBP) and di(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP) in certain products and to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999.

Mr. Speaker, this bill seeks to ban a collection of chemicals known as phthalates that end up in products, particularly products used by young children. This would be one of the first times in Canadian law that the onus of responsibility would be shifted on to the manufacturer to prove that a product was safe prior to its arrival in the marketplace. This is a bill that addresses the most vulnerable populations in our society, particularly children and pregnant women. There are similar bans in Europe and many of the United States.

Support from the environment groups and health groups across the country has been strong. I look forward to support from members across the aisle and around this House.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)