Nathan Cullen

[Business of Supply, May 11th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie. I will try to ask my question in French, even though it contains a lot of technical terms and this is very difficult for me.

I realized that the current situation in Canada is a disaster in terms of respecting the Kyoto protocol. The Liberals were in power for 13 years, and we are seeing the numbers now. It is a disaster. Now we have a government that wants to go to Europe to hold discussions with our friend that does not believe in the Kyoto protocol.

My question is this: I know that the member strongly believes in the Kyoto protocol and in preventing climate change. At the same time, he supported a budget that is a disaster when it comes to respect for the environment. Many people in Quebec and the rest of Canada saw that the budget eliminated some environmental programs and will eliminate others. We have lost another year.

In return for its support for such a budget, did the Bloc negotiate with the Conservatives and extract a promise that they would improve the part of the budget that pertains to the Kyoto protocol and the environment?

[The Budget, May 9th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, after 13 years of being in government and being unable to do anything, the hon. member stands and challenges the House to consider a Liberal promise, and the two words “Liberal” and “promise” are important to be considered together, and asks students to cash in on that promise. He knows full well that Bill C-48 was done at the behest of the NDP and pushed through the House to actually make something happen, rather than a promise.

If he would still like to fight the last election and cannot get over the notion that Canadians actually voted the Liberals out of office for their many years of poor government, we should have a cup of coffee and I will explain the electoral process to the member if he would like.

[The Budget, May 9th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to pick up on one portion of my colleague's speech where he painted what I would suggest is a picture that is not entirely accurate.

I recall in the last federal Liberal budget there was a clause that forgave the loans of students who were permanently disabled or students who had died. Outside of that, the New Democrats in this corner of the House were shocked not to find any other substantive measure to help students directly with their student debts.

This is obviously something that has been identified in the chamber and in committees year in and year out. Over the 12 or 13 years that the Liberal Party was in government, one would have thought there would have been attention paid to that. Over those 13 years the average debt in this country went up $1,000 per year each and every year.

There is this growing transfer of debt burden from the government and the provinces to the students. It was shown in the numbers. It was not until the NDP pushed the government to find the money that everyone knew it had but which had gone into corporate tax breaks, that it finally showed up.

Now the Conservatives have come to power and are allowing students to take bigger loans. That is the Conservative solution.

Would the member clarify the actual history under the previous government and particularly with the last Liberal budget? In particular Bill C-48 finally put the money in that students, universities and colleges had been requesting for years, but their requests had been falling upon deaf ears.

[The Environment, May 9th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the only thing that needs to be shut down is the rhetoric that we have been hearing from the government day in and day out.

We need a plan that works for Canadians, not a plan that was made in the oil patch. This is no different from the 13 years Canadians witnessed under the Liberal government.

We need something that works for Canadians. The environment minister does not have a plan nor a vision. The only thing green about it is the green light that the government is showing to the oil and gas sector year in and year out.

Again to the minister, when Inuit elders stand and talk about the grave crisis facing their communities, does she think they are wrong, or is she just not willing to listen?

[The Environment, May 9th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, climate change has a direct and growing impact on Canada's economy. This past winter alone, transport trucks with food and fuel for the people in the north were held up because the ice roads had melted, a thing that was inconceivable just 10 years ago but now is a reality. The government yet still finds a way to funnel $1.5 billion into the oil and gas sector every year. What kind of financial support is it offering to the people of the north?

[The Budget, May 9th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the DaVinci code of the Liberals continues. There are conspiracies under every rock. While I know the member does not, to his constituents or to me or to others, present the arrogance of the notion that somehow the Liberal Party is entitled to the seat of power in this country, it is amazing to me how much credit and power the Liberals have allowed the New Democratic Party, with 19 seats in the last government, to be able to tell Canadian voters that the Liberals were in fact inherently corrupt and had mismanaged the files for so long. I thank the member for the accolades, but I think he might be mistaken.

[The Budget, May 9th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I know there are a few regions in the country that are feeling the impact of environmental destruction more than his region. We see the ice roads over the wintertime, we see the effects on the caribou herds and the subsistence living that many people in his region survive on and are a cornerstone, I would suggest even an icon for Canadians living across this country. We are, as the famous Quebec song notes, not a country but a season, a winter.

Yet when we look at the actions of the previous government, the numbers simply do not lie. It will always trump the announcements, the confetti and the pretty documents and dossiers. The numbers, when it comes to pollution under the previous Liberal regime, were absolutely outrageous.

The Conservative response to that was to do little or nothing. There is no prospect in the budget that we see to alleviate the problems or reverse the trend in any significant way what we are seeing in my colleague's riding of Western Arctic, the smog days that are experienced in Ontario, Quebec and across the country, and the absolute dramatic increase in smog that we have seen. There is nothing of significance in the budget to alleviate that.

Canadians are being asked to wait again. So much for the changing of the guard. It is business as usual and perhaps a little accelerated but in the wrong direction.

It is at a time when Europe and Texas, for heaven's sake, come to us and talk about their energy plans and the ability that they have to make more consistent green energy projects come to life. We are embarrassed in this country. We have absolutely failed the Canadian people in this respect. A river of opportunity is flowing by to increase our productivity and our competitiveness has failed us. The budget has utterly failed Canadians in this regard.

[The Budget, May 9th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Victoria.

What a joyful and perplexing scene it is for many Canadians watching the Tweedledum-dumber debate going on day after day in this House where one party accuses the other of playing fast and loose with the memory and the record and the other just accelerating the direction of that record.

It is an extraordinary challenge to address a budget that is faulty in so many different ways, particularly when it comes to the west coast and particularly when it comes to the environment.

It is rather easy for opposition members to get up and simply criticize, as that is our role. I know the government appreciates our being able to have open, honest and frank debate in this House, a crashing together of views so that Canadians are better served by the best views coming forward. When I look at this budget, I have to wonder exactly whom the government was listening to when it made some of its most critical decisions.

Allow me to start on the west coast. Allow me to throw some small credit for the continuance of the Pacific gateway strategy, although for some reason it is being stretched out over a further amount of time with still no concrete items to be spent on. We have deep concerns about what type of committee and process will be used to make the decisions that are critical to the infrastructure of the west coast, particularly in the northwest. The area that I represent is the new Pacific gateway in Prince Rupert. The prospects for that container port are absolutely astounding. Members across the aisle have approached me regarding grabbing on to this project and becoming a part of something that is going to be very significant.

With respect to the aboriginal file, my riding is made up of more than 30% first nations, some of the strongest communities and nations in our land such as the Nisga'a, Haida, Wet'suwet'en, Tsimshian, Haisla and others. These communities represent the absolute cultural and historical backbone of my region. After many months of deliberations and after more than 12 years of stalling and delaying on the part of the previous government, we finally arrived at an accord that lo and behold all the provinces could agree with. I was at the signing of that accord. It was a moment that even the current Minister of Indian Affairs marked as historic and important, only to turn around and have it destroyed within mere months.

It is discouraging because of the astounding poverty and the astounding cultural erosion that we see taking place in our first nations communities, not just in my riding but across the entire country. The sense of urgency on this file can no longer be ignored. With respect to the playing of partisan politics between those two parties, I say a pox on both houses for having so long ignored the plight of aboriginal Canadians who, in my experience, display the greatest sense of generosity and forthrightness. In my region they always deal in good faith when dealing with the government, even though over decades their faith has been misplaced.

Some money has been set aside to deal with the pine beetle epidemic that has raged across British Columbia, and I applaud the government for that. The question now becomes how it will be spent and by whom. Many of the largest forestry companies in my region are turning their most significant profits in their entire histories and they are looking to do replanting and road deconstruction projects, which frankly is outrageous.

The government finds it most significant and important to invest in the regional economic development that our communities need. For Houston, Fort Fraser, Fraser Lake, right across all of British Columbia, we need to plan for the future and actually make some serious investments. I see the budget commitment as a first step, but only a first step.

We went through one of the most tragic years in our province's history two years ago with forest fires. The prospect of more intense forest fires is increasing. Forestry councils came to us here in Ottawa. My colleague from Windsor will know this. I specifically identified climate change as one of the leading economic threats to the forestry industry in Canada, not only with respect to forest fires but also with respect to the pine beetle. Connections have now been made between the economy and the environment.

I can remember addressing the former minister of the environment from the Liberal Party about the outrageous increases in pollution that were going on under that party's watch. At one point in this very chamber he said that our economy has grown and there will just have to be a lot more pollution. What an astounding admission, finally revealing the true intention and the true philosophy of a government that believes that economics and the environment cannot be married, cannot be put together for mutual benefit for each of those categories and for all Canadians.

When it comes to the environment, this is an increasingly important topic that is again gaining interest in the minds of Canadians and in public discourse. I almost want to open a counselling service in my office for the environmental and progressive industry groups that are coming by, absolutely stunned at the destruction and the wanton acts the government has done when it comes to key environmental investments that are needed.

Investments is the word we need to use in this place when understanding the role of government when it comes to the environment. There is a short term political strategy by this party that is going to lose time and cause long term pain and costs, not only to government but to society right across Canada.

I have two last points about my region before I get into the environment. It is an issue that can absolutely absorb me. The west coast and many parts of Canada have been calling for, and I know Quebec has been calling for a long time, a fundamental reform of the EI fund. This slush fund was used by the previous government to shuffle billions of dollars around. Many Conservative members have said that this was deplorable, that the actions were inexcusable and should be stopped immediately. Then they get into government and make absolutely no fundamental reforms when it comes to EI and get support from the Bloc. That is confusing.

When it comes to the west coast fisheries, it is absolutely crying out after one of its most desperate seasons on the water. Prices are down, cost of fuel is up, insurance is through the roof, and DFO plays a role that is counterproductive to the fleet and to private fishers across the province. There is nothing in the budget.

The government found $10 million to support fish farms on the east coast without even much mention or notice. It was a little slip in the budget speech, yet there is absolutely nothing for the west coast, when the fleet has been reduced by 75% in my region over the last five years and is faced with a further crunch of a similar value. We know the value of wild salmon in particular to the people of Canada.

Regarding the budget and the environment, the two shall never meet under the purview of this government. Thankfully, it picked up the $900 million from the NDP budget and put it toward some infrastructure, when it comes to public transit. It is welcome and we expect flowers, maybe chocolate would be nice, but that is fine. We will just take the positive action. That is what the NDP is about, in pushing for strong and significant environmental actions.

Outside of this there was a small investment to help people get on the bus, but it has been absolutely discredited as the best bang for the buck. In the government's own budget documents, it talks about using taxpayers' money wisely and in the most efficient way to achieve the best results, yet when we look at the environment, it has chosen a method that the Suzuki Foundation, the Canadian Urban Transit Association and the Sierra Club have all said is not the best bang for the buck, when it comes to reducing the pollution that we cause. It will not get people out of their cars in the way that the government pretends or imagines.

Once we step outside of the public transit debate, which has some merit but not the consequential effect that we are looking for, what are we left with? The silence is deafening. When it comes to climate change, we have essentially lost yet another year on this most critical issue. It is showing up on the pages of Maclean's, the front pages of The New York Times, and across our communities. People want something done about this.

What did the government of the day do? It cut $1 billion, with little or no analysis and certainly no public disclosure at all, for home retrofit programs, for low income seniors, and for fundamental things that we know work and are cost effective. The government has turned its back. It had some notion of a made in Canada plan. We have had no plan presented and yet more than a year ago in this very place, the then environment critic for the Conservative Party of Canada said that her party had a plan. Her party was just not going to show it to us in case we might steal the ideas. A year later, we are being asked to wait more.

When it comes to the environment, there is no more significant tool than the budget. The message that the Conservative Party of Canada has sent to Canadians is that the environment simply does not matter, that the environment can wait again while the Conservatives go out for short term political gain and cause us long term pain.

[The Environment, May 8th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, members of the Conservative Party must have misled Canadians in the last election because they said they would support initiatives exactly like the NDP retrofit program that spent tax dollars wisely and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. This program did all of these things.

Will the minister tell us why the Conservative Party studied the Liberal program of promising one thing and doing another so hard that it got it so right?

[The Environment, May 8th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, one of the missed opportunities of the Conservative budget is the abolition of the NDP programs for improving energy efficiency. These programs were effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They would have created jobs across the country and made optimal use of taxpayer dollars.

Can the Minister of the Environment explain why a “made in Canada” solution was abolished, but $1.3 billion in gifts to the major oil companies were not?