Pat Martin

[Committees of the House, March 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, it would appear that Canadian farmers need a clarity act the way all Canadians needed a clarity act when it came to obfuscation and deliberate manipulation of questions around the last referendum because this three part option is anything but clear.

When the leader of our party and I met with the board of directors of the Canadian Wheat Board, at that time they predicted, “I bet you ten to one they will come up with a three part system that is based on the premise that a voluntary wheat board is viable”.

It is not viable. A dual desk, voluntary wheat board is doomed before it starts. Those guys know it. It is disingenuous to even imply that that is a viable option for farmers to vote for.

[Committees of the House, March 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I will be brief. Specifically, through the very report in which my colleague from Malpeque has moved concurrence today, the 11th report, which we are debating, I will try to stay exactly on topic.

My question is for the parliamentary secretary. In the event that we do vote concurrence in this report, which is what I expect when the debate concludes following the two week break, the parliamentary secretary and his party will lose the vote on the debate taking place on this report. I expect that the majority of members of Parliament will vote concurrence in this report. If the parliamentary secretary has any respect whatsoever for Parliament, will he honour items one and two of the 11th report of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, which call upon the government to rescind the questions released January 22 to barley producers, and implement the sixth report of the standing committee and the questions therein?

Will he honour the will of Parliament and do that? Or does he have disrespect for Parliament in the way that he is disrespecting prairie producers?

[Committees of the House, March 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday I put on a puppet show to try to illustrate an issue in which I was interested. I did not know the government was trying to put on its own puppet show at the agriculture committee down the hall, which in actual fact seems to have backfired on it. From all accounts, the CEO of the Canadian Wheat Board was not willing to be a puppet for the government. He stood on his own two feet, just like the previous CEO did, and spoke his mind and accurately represented the views of the democratically elected board of directors of the Canadian Wheat Board, instead of parroting and being pushed around and bullied by the government.

I am proud of the fact that the current CEO has clearly planted his feet and will stick to his ground to accurately reflect the wishes of producers and the democratically elected board of directors. This is a setback in the ideological crusade on the part of the Conservative government to undermine and to sabotage this great Canadian institution.

I serve notice today that those members are in for the fight of their lives if they think they can destroy this great Canadian institution without push back from the Canadian people. The Conservatives have tried everything from pure jackboot fascism to doing away with the democratic right to vote. It was the left that smashed—

[Canada Pension Plan, March 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I share the outrage of my colleague from Laval. I appreciate the concern she brings here and the passion with which she portrays it.

If a person owed money to Revenue Canada, Revenue Canada would hound that person to the ends of the earth to get every nickel of that money going back three, four, five, seven years. Yet when the inverse is true and the Government of Canada owes this tiny pittance of money, the guaranteed income supplement, to a senior citizen, it will only pay 11 months in retroactivity. That is some magic figure it has pulled out of the air. After 11 months Canadians are cut off, even if for 20 years they have been shortchanged the money that should be rightfully coming to them. For some reason the government has pulled this convenient figure of 11 months out of the air. It is such a glaring contradiction that it makes my blood boil when I think about it.

I do not understand the logic or the reasoning, other than pure miserly, cheap bitterness on the part of the government that it would deny this money that is rightfully owed to seniors as the guaranteed income supplement. The reasoning the government used--

[Canada Pension Plan, March 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I share many of the concerns raised by my colleague from Laval. I would like to ask her views on one detail, though.

Many of us have just gone through RRSP season. Many Canadians invest some of their hard-earned moneys in one of the few tax breaks that is allowed to us. However, many of us specify, in purchasing RRSPs, that we want them invested in an ethical way. We do not want our RRSPs invested in things in which we ourselves do not believe. Some do not want their investments in tobacco. Some do not want their investments made in military expenditures. There is any number of ethical screens we can apply to our RRSP. Statistically, we do not have to accept a lower rate of return to have an ethical investment plan. We can in fact enjoy a good rate of return and still apply ethical screens that reflect our values.

The Canada pension plan investment fund is specifically barred from taking into consideration any ethical screening whatsoever. Its mandate is strictly to get the highest rate of return at all costs, even if it means investing in a plant in the third world that uses child labour or tobacco farming, to which the Government of Canada is opposed. The government is trying to get everybody to quit smoking, yet money is being invested in tobacco.

Does she agree with me that we should mature as a society and apply the same type of ethical screening of our investments for the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board as many Canadians do to their own investment financial portfolio?

[Canada Pension Plan, March 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's comments regarding patronage and our mutual interest in putting an end to patronage but how does he explain the fact that we do not have a public appointments commission in place and up and running at this point in time after the good work we all did on the Federal Accountability Act which was given royal assent on December 12?

We have now learned, from the budgets that were just circulated, that the Public Appointments Commission Secretariat has been up and running since April 21 of last year with an executive director, salaries, a budget, administration officers and a physical infrastructure. However, it has been doing everything but vetting patronage appointments. In fact, officials have been running off to Europe. They have only written one report. With a budget of $2 million, the Public Appointments Commission Secretariat has only produced one report. It actually gave advice to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to not use merit as the appointment consideration for the IRB but to appoint whoever the government wanted. The leadership of the IRB was so offended that they tendered their resignation.

If we are concerned about the Public Appointments Commission and appointing based on merit, how does he explain that we have no commissioner and no board of commissioners but we do have the Public Appointments Commission Secretariat burning up public money and doing nothing but generating one nuisance report that has caused us all embarrassment?

[Canada Pension Plan, March 2nd, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the parliamentary secretary for outlining Bill C-36. However, he did touch on the issue of Canada pension plan disability. I wonder if he shares the same frustration that we have had as members of Parliament when constituents come to us looking for help with their CPP disability.

Virtually everybody who applies for CPP disability gets turned down on the initial adjudication, no matter what the merits of their case would be. It is only on appeal, and usually on appeal with the help of their member of Parliament, that we ever break through this barrier, this complete wall that has been put up in terms of access to CPP.

I do not say this as a criticism for the current government. This has been the case for a decade or more. Somebody, somewhere within Canada pension plan disability, sent a memo around to the adjudicators saying to deny every claim and that if applicants want to come back and appeal, maybe they will consider the merits of it then. I defy anyone to show me a single Canada pension plan disability claim that has ever been granted on initial application. It does not exist.

I would like to know what specifically the government could do about this or what it even may be doing in Bill C-36. If there is some progress to be announced in association with the eligibility for CPP disability within Bill C-36, I would like to hear about it.

Also, briefly, would he not agree that at this point in regard to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board it is time for beneficiary representation on that board?

An 11-person board now controls investment worth $140 billion on behalf of Canadians and we have no representation on the board. It is made up of patronage appointments, largely, people who have no particular experience with investment banking. In fact, one of those 11 people is the Liberal that I beat in the 1997 election. His soft landing was to get put on this new Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. He was a history teacher.

I wonder if there is not some interest in putting a labour representative, a beneficiary representative, somebody to represent the Canadian public, on this all important investment board that is investing our money.

[Business of Supply, March 1st, 2007]

Economic treason.

[Business of Supply, March 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, there are many authorities in the aerospace field who believe that Manitoba represents the very best of what the aerospace industry has to offer. This gives me an opportunity to remind my colleagues that the province of Manitoba is home to a vibrant, eclectic, diverse aerospace industry of vital importance to the economy of the province of Manitoba. I do not want my colleague from Quebec to misunderstand me. I can say in no uncertain terms that we demand our fair share of any industrial contract associated with the aerospace industry.

Many of us still have a raw memory in our minds of the CF-18 contract, where we were gypped, we were hosed out of our fair share of that vital contract . It upset people in the west to the point where they threw out the government of the day. It spawned a virtual revolution in western Canada, a protest movement. Preston Manning and the Reform Party built a political party around the humiliation and the insult to the people of Manitoba, to the people of the west, because of the government interference that decided to ignore the low bid and ignore the best bid and give that contract to guess where? Quebec. I serve notice here today that we will not tolerate an insult like that again.

This contract awards work based on its merit. It gives the company the choice of where it wants work done. It would be insane to assign work based on ratio and proportion to where the volume of the industry is. How would other jurisdictions ever develop their industry if it automatically had to be allocated as per this insane formula that these guys have concocted?

[Asbestos, March 1st, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, we would need to be crazy to put asbestos in children's toys. We may as well put razor blades in Halloween apples.

However, the new Conservative government thinks it is okay. Its new asbestos regulations say that it is okay to put asbestos in children's toys, drywall mud and spray-on fireproofing. This is stupidity beyond belief. Asbestos is the greatest industrial killer the world has ever known. More people die from asbestos every year than all other industrial causes combined.

The rest of the developed world is actively banning asbestos in all its forms and yet Canada is still one of the largest producers and exporters of asbestos in the world. The government is spending millions subsidizing and promoting asbestos. We call it corporate welfare for corporate serial killers.

Putting asbestos in children's toys is a spectacularly bad idea. We should ban asbestos in all its forms and shame on the government for promoting a killer and exploiting human misery.