Nathan Cullen

[Statistics Act, June 13th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member raised an important point around the premise to which many members in the House have spoken between the guarding and protection of privacy and access to the public.

I would take him back in my speech to the very recent situation we had with the release of information to a private contractor. It was the New Democrats who spoke most vociferously and consistently in the House on the protection of people's privacy. I believe his party is in support of the bill as well but with some reservations going forward.

I think it is safe to say that with the New Democrats' past in seeking to protect the rights and privacy of Canadians, and it is a 92 year release after the census was originally taken, we will continue in our efforts to ensure that the information released will not put anybody in jeopardy nor will it be too embarrassing.

I would suggest that many of the people seeking this information in 92 to 100 years time, one would not suspect that they would be seeking it for malicious intent and purposes but seeking it more along the genealogical society's mandates, the mandates of museums, not necessarily people looking to dig up skeletons out of the closet.

I remain on my original point which is that New Democrats have strongly fought against the government at certain points to change and alter the course in what the government was saying and doing to ensure the privacy of Canadians was protected regardless of whatever information was collected.

[Statistics Act, June 13th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate having the opportunity to speak to this important legislation.

As has been said by a number of members already, that the census has been in existence for a number of years. For many Canadians who have been following it, it is almost as old as the data itself. We have finally come to a point where we can decide on the merits and the integrity of the actual pieces of the bill. While we do have some concerns, the New Democratic Party is supportive of the general intention of the release of information as the government and the House of Commons tries to balance the debate between privacy and the ability of groups across the country to do research.

In some small yet significant way, the support that has been expressed by a number of parties in the House today for the legislation has been built up by activism by ordinary Canadians over a number of years. I am sure many members in the House first realized that this was an important issue as a result of constituents writing and emailing them.

The importance of that activism cannot be expressed strongly enough. Canadians need to feel a connection to their parliamentarians. They need to feel that their voices will be heard on issues that are specific and important to their lives. The number of debacles over the last number of weeks from two parties, which I will not name, has driven a strong rift between Canadians, their parliamentarians and their trust of their representatives in the House.

A number of genealogical societies, museums and individuals have done a lot of work to endorse legislation and its eventual creation. It is a strong sign that activism in Canada can take on a positive role in pushing for progressive change to old laws.

There is one caution that should be brought up with respect to the way the bill has come forward. It is the retroactive changing of history, going back into time to alter things. Canadians were given assurances that would not happen. We must be extraordinarily careful whenever we consider bringing contextual changes forward, which have not been considered by Canadians or legislatures, because of some sort of currency of the day.

I mentioned at the beginning of my speech the strong and important balance that needs to be struck between privacy and public access to information gathered on behalf of Canadians by the federal government or any level of government in Canada. This is an extraordinarily difficult balancing act, which on many occasions the government has been unable to achieve. We saw this recently with the condemnation of the Privacy Act and the Access to Information Act that was directed toward the government for dragging its feet and its unwillingness and sheer stubbornness to make it more transparent and accountable. We hear about this during every election, yet we find it wanting once the government is formed.

A certain guarantee of confidentiality is struck between those conducting the census and those responding to it. It is in this guarantee that people are able to answer the questions forthrightly and give us a good determination of what is happening in our country, whether it is labour statistics, housing statistics or people's income. All those preferences and choices made in life are revealed in a census and it is important for legislators to know this so we conduct ourselves in the House and make sound decisions. The guarantee of confidentiality is extremely important when we debate issues like this.

I must for a moment take the time to applaud the work of our New Democratic Party member for Windsor West. He has been strong on this front by pushing for privacy laws in Canada that would protect information Canadians make available to the government.

After 9/11 the American houses past the so-called patriot act. It allows the American government unprecedented access to previously private information about Americans. That is all well and good for the American legislators to decide.

However, we found a very disturbing trend as Canada continued to outsource many of the services previously done by the government to private firms. Lockheed Martin, an American firm, was given the contract and renegotiated the contract for the 2006 census. That in combination with the patriot act suddenly allowed this scenario. Canadians would answer the Canadian census in good faith. Then they forthrightly would answer the questions asked by an American firm, which is under the patriot act. By doing so, this would allow the U.S. government access to information about the private lives and choices of Canadians. This was clearly unacceptable. It should not be permitted.

It was the work of the New Democrats to force significant changes to the way that would be conducted. Hopefully, as the 2006 census comes out, our information will not be subject to the patriot act and will not be released to U.S. administrators.

This was so serious that the B.C. privacy commissioner got involved and eventually was able to spur the government toward some action. This is another example of New Democrats punching well above our weight in the House and forcing significant change to happen in the direction of our country.

The second balancing piece of this is the public access to important information. In my riding of Skeena—Bulkley Valley in the beautiful northwest of British Columbia, I have spoken to museums, genealogical societies and some family members looking to go back, to conduct research and to understand the movement of their families and their communities over time.

This is critical, particularly for a relatively young part of our country such as British Columbia and its northwest. For immigrants who arrived there, records have been lost. Family members had no longer the connection they needed. This was a pivotal piece for them to connect the dots to find out what had become of individual and entire wings of their family and branches of the tree.

Hopefully, the passing of this bill will allow people to reconnect and re-find one another, something that we desperately all need in this time and day.

The need for research in the country and the need for a strong research component within our museums, societies and genealogical groups cannot be expressed enough. To forget that past and to allow it to erode will be a sad loss for Canadians everywhere.

Recently we have seen a number of our museums suffer through a lack of funding and government support. There has been a call upon the federal government to once again become involved, not just in the museums in the greater Ottawa area, which clearly the federal government for obvious reasons has found its way to support and fund, but also in some of the smaller town museums such as in Smithers, Telkwa, Prince Rupert and Terrace, B.C., places that talk about the frontier mentality they came through, places that connect much of our aboriginal history to the history of the new settlers. The records of these museums have eroded through time. They are falling into disrepair and they need to be supported by our government. Our history is the foundation of who we are today which guides us in our future decisions.

Clearly the review two years prior to the next census will be an important review period. It will allow Canadians the option of opting out of the release of this data at some future point. It will allow us to find out how many Canadians have chosen privacy over public release. It is an important aspect of the bill and it is important aspect to the consideration of our support for the bill.

We further call upon the government to ensure, when making decisions between the balance of public access and the privacy of Canadians, that we err on the side of caution, that we look to maintain the importance of privacy of individual Canadians, whether they are using the Internet, their mailing service or answering a census. As it stands now, New Democrats proudly support the passage of the bill.

[Canada Border Services Agency Act, June 13th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I wish to thank my colleague for his interesting insights into the border issues that we have in the country. There is a lot of rhetoric that is thrown around the House, particularly from the government benches about the importance of trade, the need for increased trade, and the fluidity of trade.

The member spoke about the increased incursion of private interests into our border, particularly around the bridges and the lack of government action with respect to having the proper infrastructure in place so that we can move these goods.

It is one thing for a business to establish itself and set itself up as a successful venture, break into the American or Mexican markets, and then only be stopped at the last minute at the border and have huge delays at the border, thereby preventing the Canadian economy from growing and those workers from having sustainable jobs.

I wonder if the member could comment specifically on why we hear the rhetoric at one end, but when the rubber hits the road, as it were, and it is time to invest in our border services and move goods across the border, the government has been dragging its heels for so long and for so many bad reasons.

[Supply, June 9th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I want to take this debate in a slightly different direction based upon the motion before us today. I did not hear the hon. member mention it in her discourse. Clearly it was an oversight because there is an aspect of globalization to the motion and to what happens to the elderly workers across the country as their economies shift.

As we live in an increasingly global economy and environment, one thing we would expect the Canadian government to do is protect the interests of Canada as companies merge with or acquire other companies.

However, through our research and understanding, over the last near on 15 years now there have been over 11,000 acquisitions of Canadian companies from foreign companies and interests. Some of them, like Minmetals, have been completely hidden from Canadian scrutiny. Through all those acquisitions, there has not been one rejection by the federal government. Not one time was the acquisition not seen in the best interest of Canada. This is an extraordinarily good streak of luck, which is impossible to believe.

Could she comment on her government's lack of will or interest to withhold and uphold Canada's interests as we operate in this global economy?

[Supply, June 9th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I have a brief comment for my colleague and a question.

My riding is primarily a resource dependent riding, fishing, mining and forestry, and we are finding that a number of economies are in transition. Changing the nature of the way the work is being done often lowers the number of people actually required to do the work.

Many people question me as to why it is required that someone is either fired or laid off in some extraordinary measure before some sort of just transition process can take place and the federal funds, to which they have contributed over a number of years of their working lives, is triggered.

They are confused as to why, when sufficient funds are in place, when known transitions are coming and when the industry is shifting, be it mining, forestry or fishing, the government has no procedure in place that would allow workers in those industries to apply for funding so they can transition out of those industries into sunrise industries as opposed to sunset.

[The Environment, June 8th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the government's policy toward the environment seems to remain the same: that the solution to the pollution is dilution.

On April 29 of this year, a NASA booster rocket fell into the Grand Banks with two and a quarter tonnes of some of the most toxic materials known to humankind.

Will the weak-kneed government finally stand up for its sovereign protection of rights of our waters, demand the recovery of this booster rocket and insist upon environmental assessments of any future plans by the Americans?

[Supply, June 7th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I have been looking forward to entering into this debate all day. I watched some of the debate on the parliamentary channel and realized that while the words were there from many of the hon. members gathered here today, the actual actions, if we look back through the records of Parliament, tell a different story.

As the environment critic for the NDP, it is important for me to more succinctly and concretely make the connection for Canadians of the importance between their environment and the health that they enjoy. The environment has become more and more intrinsic in the way we view our health care and the health care costs that seem to be mounting day after day. Unless we take a strong and purposeful move in the direction of environmental protection, such a motion as the one presented today is somewhat irrelevant. It does not speak to the actual sources of some of our health care concerns.

We have the beginning of smog days in the summer. Many Canadians who live in our cities choke on the fumes during smog days and do not have the choices that some people in society have to get away from it. Harmful diseases are being spread by what I would call an inefficient economy. It is an economy that has been allowed to persist because of a lack of will on the part of government to on the one hand make the regulations that are required for cleaner air and on the other hand to actually enforce the few regulations that we have.

The economic numbers are staggering. In Ontario alone the Ontario Medical Association estimates that we will lose $1 billion a year due to the smog. This is just in Ontario. We can multiply those numbers for the cities in the rest of the country. On the economic balance sheet this is costing us an extraordinary amount of money, never mind on the human side.

On the human side Canadians and their families are suffering because of smog. The figures are staggering. In Toronto 822 people died this year due to smog; 818 in Montreal; 368 here in Ottawa; and 258 in Windsor. These are just sample cities that were taken as a test for across the country to understand the social impact on our communities and families due to something like smog; how much it costs us in health care terms and also how much it costs in real family terms, in terms of the pain and suffering caused by this pollution.

There was a previous motion by the member for Windsor West that was narrowly defeated by the members of the alliance, now the Conservative Party. This raises great concerns for me and my party in terms of the rhetoric used today and the importance of health and protecting health care. The motion was very straightforward and succinct and should have achieved success but it did not due to the voting habits of some of the members of the party which now has a different name, but which I would only imagine has the same philosophy. The motion stated that the House call upon the government to take the necessary regulatory measures, including drafting of legislation to prevent medical conditions and illnesses caused by exposure to identifiable environmental contaminants.

For the member for Windsor West this is a crucial issue in his riding. The cancer rates and negative health effects of industries past and present are being felt on the ground day to day.

One of the key and critical roles of government is to set up a structure in which all Canadians can participate in their day to day living in a healthy and safe way. We do not allow people to drive at unsafe speeds in school zones. We do not allow people to drive without wearing their seat belts. Both of those are regulatory in nature and are important for all Canadians to know that they are going to exist in a safe manner.

Yet when it comes to the environment, parties in the House voted against the motion in order to ensure its defeat. Liberals voted against it as well. They refused to realize the important connection between our environment, the pollutants we are allowing into the air and the connection back to the health of Canadians on a day to day basis.

Earlier in this Parliament the Conservative Party voted against a motion we presented on the removal of trans fats from our food system. We have been told by the health associations and the heart associations that in Canada trans fats are a huge cost both economically and socially.

The party bringing forward today's motion found a way to vote against something that all the health proponents found to be beneficial, as too was the case when we brought forward a motion to include mandatory regulations on emissions with respect to the auto sector. We realize there are serious costs attributed to what comes out of the tail pipes of our cars and vehicles. While California and other states within the United States have boldly gone forward and brought the car manufacturers more in line with efficiency standards over the last number of decades, and which they have been able to achieve with greater productivity and greater efficiency for their own markets, Canada simply falls behind in the wake left by the Americans.

Many Canadians would like to maintain the notion that on the environment file Canada is stronger than our U.S. partners, particularly our U.S. partner states. Nothing could be further from the truth, as we go file by file. On this one the Conservatives stood well arm in arm with those most backward thinkers when it comes to the environment and health costs in voting against the NDP motion.

Something very important finally did happen earlier. It is incredible for many Canadians to realize that up until this Parliament, corporations in Canada that committed environmental offences, that were found guilty and fined, were able to write off those fines. Most Canadians intuitively would find that wrong and unbelievable that we would allow that practice to persist for so many years. There are some very notable companies. Canada Steamship Lines was fined $230,000 at one point. It was able to write off that environmental penalty against its taxes as if it had been for business lunches, as if it had actually made some investment in our economy as opposed to polluting our environment.

In Yukon we estimate that the federal government spends about 150 million taxpayer dollars a year on cleaning up old abandoned mine sites that are now polluting the waters, fish bearing waters primarily. That is $150 million at a minimum which Canadians who work hard and pay their taxes are paying for the cleanup of what companies made a profit from previously. There is no longer the need to operate regimes in business or in any other part of the economy that allow this pollution to continue and contribute again and again to the deteriorating health of Canadians.

There is an important and virtuous link that must be identified. A sound regulatory environment with respect to good pollution standards creates a virtuous cycle within business. It encourages businesses to make the investments, to design their businesses in such a way as to contribute not only economically, but also environmentally. The old debate about jobs versus the economy must stop. We have seen from some of the figures I quoted earlier that a poor environment costs us economically.

Operating a business in Canada is not a right. It is a privilege that is sanctioned to the businesses by the government. The role of government is to provide a legislative framework, the rules of the game to allow those businesses to operate and conduct themselves in such a way as to be of benefit to society. We have seen the Liberal government go through the last decade with 11,000 and growing foreign acquisitions of Canadian companies, without one rejection that we are aware of. One of the stipulations of these acquisitions is that it must be to the benefit of Canada. We must have had an extraordinary streak of good luck that so many foreign hands have bought businesses on Canadian soil, some of them moving Canadian jobs to other markets, always at the benefit of Canada.

It is time for the government to assume the role that Canadians have elected us to the House of Commons to do, which is to represent them in a leadership capacity to realize that in the preventing of pollution, in the reduction of pollution, we increase the health and well-being of Canadians. In many cases, as we have seen in studying the climate change file these last number of months, businesses have been saying that when they have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions that go into the air and cause all sorts of detrimental effects to our environment, they have actually achieved better and more efficient businesses. Their bottom lines have improved as they have gone through the pollution reductions.

We can no longer stay in the old paradigm where it is jobs versus the environment. The Europeans are far ahead of us. Thirty-nine states have done more on their Kyoto file than Canada has and are close to achieving their own targets. We should no longer be laggards when we look at the connections between our environment and our health system.

There is another role of government and that is to provide incentives for the investments that we believe are good for our communities and our society. The recent NDP negotiation with the government saw millions of dollars going into an investment in the environment which we saw as principled and right. That is a sound investment. In this day and age we have the capacity and the technology available to us to create things that will help clean our air while providing jobs for Canadians. This is no longer daydreaming. This is reality.

The witnesses who appeared before the environment committee described the advances that have been made in technology, particularly in energy production. We have the capacity if the investments are there. If the government were to set the regulatory framework and give positive signals to businesses to come onside, this would make good sense for the economy and the environment.

Recently, the government saw its way to invest in research and development in the auto sector. That was a noble investment. The auto sector forms the foundation of the Ontario economy and thus the Canadian economy. However, nowhere in the agreement is there any stipulation on technology investments going toward improving our environment. There is no request on behalf of businesses involved to make improvements to the cars we need to decrease smog days. There is no stipulation that would lessen the economic and social costs of families showing up in our already over-crowded hospital wards with something that may be preventable.

I would like to give the House one more example and it succinctly brings together the issues around the economy, the environment and health. I am talking about what has been happening with the wild salmon on the west coast of British Columbia and the intrusion of more farm salmon. The front page of yesterday's Vancouver Sun states:

Farmed salmon in B.C. contain six times the level of cancer-causing PCBs, dioxins and furans as wild salmon, according to government tests obtained by The Vancouver Sun.

The Vancouver Sun and other newspapers have been requesting, through freedom of information, to get this information from Health Canada. They have been trying to find out whether the salmon we are selling in our markets and putting on our tables is safe for us to eat. One would think the reverse would be true. It is difficult to believe that information from Health Canada, with its mandate to protect Canadians, would have to be obtained through freedom of information. However, we saw what happened with Health Canada's mandate to protect Canadians with mad cow disease. That was a failure.

When I asked the Department of Fisheries and Oceans how much money was spent on the simple monitoring and promotion of this potentially dangerous form of farming, the numbers were not available. We simply do not know. We do not account for these things.

On the one hand, we need to drag out of the government what is safe for our families in this country to eat, and on the other hand, the government is subsidizing, sponsoring and monitoring the very same product. This duplicity cannot be allowed to continue.

While we applaud this motion, there is a certain request for consistency that is required when we start to look at the virtuous cycle between smart regulations that effectively promote a positive business cycle and an environment in which we can maintain our quality of life, and where we can provide jobs for our communities and create a profitable and healthy environment.

I would encourage the hon. member who brought the motion forward to apply greater strength from his caucus and colleagues. When we brought forward motions that we saw as strong for the environment and for the health of Canadians and were subsequently defeated, we felt the reason was because there was a lack of cohesion when it comes to these issues.

It was requested earlier that we not play politics with this issue because health care is important. When we brought the trans fat motion forward, the mandatory regulations for the auto sector, and when we pushed to no longer have write-offs with respect to pollution in Canada, the Conservatives found other ways to vote on those issues which was completely duplicitous and confusing to many Canadians.

We need to clean up our environment while allowing a productive and healthy economy to continue. The NDP will continue in this effort. I look forward to my colleagues bringing forward further motions.

[The Environment, June 1st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the minister says they have plans and they have money, but the money has not gone out and the plan is not working. On a day when a national magazine has lauded former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney as the greenest PM, the competition seems to be too fierce for this current administration.

The NDP has a plan that will work and will put Canadians back to work while cleaning up the environment. After so many years of failures, how does the minister expect Canadians to trust that the money promised will actually be spent and that pollution will finally go down?

[The Environment, June 1st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, a recent report shows that greenhouse gas emissions in Canada are growing even faster than the rate of our economy. Little of the money that has been promised has been spent and what has seems to have been wasted.

The government should be ashamed of its record. The so-called green plan demands that ordinary Canadians who are responsible for only one-quarter of these emissions are meant to clean up 75% of them. When will the government demand that the big polluters, the final emitters, do their fair share to clean the air?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2005, May 19th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, as these negotiations were going on for what is being called the NDP budget, which we take a great amount of pride in, one of the important things to small and medium size business owners everywhere was that their competitive advantage be maintained. In the negotiations on this tax cut, which was not talked about in the election, there was no exchange of views and it was a surprise to everybody. The NDP ensured that small and medium size businesses in Canada would not be affected by the reduction. I wonder if the hon. member would comment on the strength and vitality of that community in our sector.