Pat Martin

[Canada Elections Act, February 16th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I will comment on two aspects of the speech by my colleague from the Bloc.

First, I am a little taken aback with the enthusiasm shown by the Liberal Party and the Bloc for the bill. It seems the government has introduced the bill based on the premise that it is necessary to change the part of the Election Acts dealing with voter ID because of widespread fraud.

I went to the website of Elections Canada. In the last federal election one person was charged and prosecuted for having voted incorrectly. The person was not yet a citizen and should not have cast a ballot. In the election in 2004, there was not one incident. In the election prior to that there were three.

First, if we are entering into these fairly draconian measures, which we argue will have the effect of disenfranchising many Canadians who will be unable to produce the extra photo ID contemplated by this, and if we are doing away with the idea of a statutory declaration as being acceptable for identification, why are we taking such heavy-handed measures when there really has not been a pattern of voter fraud? That is the first point I would raise to my colleague from the Bloc.

The second is the date of birth going on the permanent voters list is an appalling recipe for identity theft. We might as well be helping those who would steal identities. All one needs to get a fake credit card is name, address, phone number and date of birth. It is like having a PIN number.

During an election campaign, hundreds of volunteers go in and out of our offices. We cannot stop them from having access to that voters list. I agree it is important for Elections Canada to have dates of birth, but to have dates of birth, that personal, private information, floating around is absolutely dangerous.

My colleague, the hon. member for Ottawa Centre, said that relying on the government to protect one's privacy is like asking a peeping Tom to install one's window blinds. This is the risk that we are running.

I sit on the privacy committee. We are currently in the process of looking at the PIPEDA legislation, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, dealing with just these very issues of people having a right to privacy, which is just as important as many of the other competing rights and privileges.

It gets to be a charter issue. Section 3 of the charter guarantees the right to vote in the elections of members of Parliament or provincial legislatures. We believe the barriers put in place by these new stringent identification rules are a barrier to the point that thousands of people will be disenfranchised and will be denied their charter right.

We just heard a constitutional expert, someone who teaches constitutional law at university, the member for Vancouver Quadra, say that he approves of this legislation. How can he and the member justify what will clearly infringe upon one's right to vote and access to vote from a constitutional and charter point of view?

[Textile Industry, February 8th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from the Conservatives agrees that Canadian manufacturers face an almost insurmountable unfair competitive disadvantage. For that very reason China agreed when it joined the WTO that safeguards might be needed to avoid disruptions in domestic marketplaces where it hoped to trade. Therefore, the United States availed itself of that offer from the WTO to limit increases in Chinese imports to 7.5% per year. The European Union very wisely also availed itself of this negotiated phase-in period. Mexico, Argentina,Turkey, most countries said if they did not phase in this influx of Chinese imports, their domestic industry would collapse. Why did Canada not do the same? It boggles the mind.

From January 1, 2005 to July 1, 2005 we were faced with a 40% increase overall in Chinese imports. In certain categories, for instance, men's jackets and blazers, imports grew 358% in the first five months. In the area of 11 million units came flocking in here. In women's skirts the growth rate accelerated 233%.

Clearly, China was waiting for this date. It is within its right and within the WTO rules to bombard the Canadian marketplace with Chinese imports. We know that if we look at labels for where things are manufactured, it is difficult to find something that is not manufactured in China or Bangladesh. It is more and more difficult to try to support our domestic industry.

We are not asking for anything unusual. It defies reason that when we brought it to the minister of international trade and the Liberal government in 2005, we were met with a stone wall. The Liberals said, “No, we are free traders. We drink our milk from a dirty cup”. I suppose they were trying to be some kind of tough guys.

In actual fact, why not avail ourselves of the measures that were put in place to protect domestic markets? The result has been predictable, devastating and irreversible, but there is still time. The Conservative government could still tap in to this phase-in period. This is our opportunity to raise it with the new government and ask if it would please consider this.

I should note that in November 2005 the Conservative official opposition critic for international trade said that he supported the safeguards, “A Conservative government would stand up for Canadian workers and work proactively through international trade policies to ensure Canada competes on a level playing field”. He was speaking specifically about the garment industry trade safeguards when he was the official opposition critic. I think he is now the chair of the international trade committee.

The solution is simple. The WTO allows member countries to impose limits on the growth of specific categories of Chinese clothing imports. It can be 7.5% growth per year for a period of three years. This would translate into hundreds of millions of dollars of economic opportunities for our domestic manufacturers to be able to plan a strategy at least instead of being attacked in this way.

The question is, the rest of the world has acted, why not Canada? If we value this industry sector, if we have not abandoned the garment industry and simply resigned ourselves to the fact that Canada will not manufacture clothes any more, and I would like to believe that no one in the House of Commons believes that, then we have to help this industry in a way that is not a handout but is simply availing ourselves of the protective measures that other countries had the common sense to put forward.

There are strategies we could talk about further. The motion that we are negotiating today addresses some kind of a transition plan for the workers that are going to be displaced. There have been casualties. There has been collateral damage to the extreme. There have been more jobs lost since January 1, 2005 than there are left in the industry. We are down to less than 50,000 jobs in manufacturing across the country now.

My own riding of Winnipeg Centre took one of the hardest hits because the industry has a certain critical mass in Montreal and Toronto that we do not enjoy. It has been devastating and I do not say that trying to overstate the situation. My riding is the poorest riding in Canada already. To lose this many jobs in that key industrial sector in the inner city of my riding is a blow that I cannot remain silent about.

As we look at an industrial strategy for Canada and as we address pressures on the auto industry, we are urged to act. As we address pressures in the aerospace industry, we seem motivated to try to encourage our domestic industry sector so that it continues to be a viable force and a well-respected sector internationally.

I am urging the policy makers and decision makers in the House of Commons to apply the same attention to the garment industry. Whether it is men's clothing, women's clothing, textiles or weaving, it should be one of the value added industries that is exciting.

I appeal to all members present to pass this motion and extend the spirit of the motion by availing ourselves of the opportunity in the WTO. The safeguard measures are important. They might be our last chance to save this industry.

[Textile Industry, February 8th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to enter into the debate on Motion No. 158 put forward by my colleague from the Bloc. It gives us the opportunity to draw attention to an industry that suffers terribly from neglect from not just the current federal government but a series of federal governments.

Time does not permit us to go through the complex difficulties that this industry has. Let me start by saying though that I represent 43 garment manufacturers in the inner city of Winnipeg. That number is down dramatically from its peak perhaps 10 or 20 years ago when it was a major industry in my home province. Still today well-meaning companies are doing their best to hang on but it is literally by their fingernails, companies like Western Glove, Tanjay, Peerless and Gemini. Their workforces are dramatically reduced but they continue to try their best to maintain their second and third generation companies.

Let me for a minute express how important these jobs are to new Canadians. In many ways the garment sector in Winnipeg has offered gateway jobs for newcomers who come to Canada. It is often the first job that they find. These are good jobs. They are unionized jobs that pay a reasonable wage with fair working conditions. These are not sweatshops. These are quality jobs. Often there is a day care centre in the building. They are quality jobs that we are seeing fly out the window with very little action taken to try to arrest this flight of jobs.

The single issue I will dwell on today in the few minutes that I have is to appeal to the Government of Canada to reconsider exercising the safeguards that are available to stem the onslaught, the absolute floodgates of Chinese imports that have taken place since the January 1, 2005 WTO system of quotas was lifted for Chinese imports. This has been devastating to the riding that I represent. It is a material tangible issue we can see in the inner city of Winnipeg. I do not rise in any way to object to international trade or free trade, et cetera. This is all about fairness.

The reason China enjoys this unfair competitive advantage is what we believe are the illegal and unfair subsidies given to the Chinese producers in the form of currency manipulation, non-performing loans, reduced or free utilities provided to those factories, subsidized shipping, sometimes no property taxes, export tax rebates, et cetera.

[Textile Industry, February 8th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I share the outrage of my colleague from the Bloc Québécois. For 10 years or more, the NDP has raised the issue of garment workers and the garment industry and how successive federal governments have abandoned this industry sector.

There is a clear simple thing that the current federal government could do that would be of great benefit to the Canadian garment industry. It has to do, as my colleague raised, with the WTO and the safeguards put in place.

When China entered the WTO, it contemplated the impact that this surge of Chinese garments coming into Canada, without any tariff or duty, would have on the domestic industry. Other governments like the United States, the European Union, Mexico, Turkey, Argentina and other countries around the world took advantage of the available safeguards and limited the increase of the Chinese imports to 7.5% per year. Our Canadian government, in some zeal to be free traders, allowed 200% and 300% per year increases. Some sectors were flooded with specific garments such as ladies pants. It was as much as a 385% increase.

This devastated, undermined and almost crippled the industry in my home town of Winnipeg, in which I have 43 garment manufacturers. At least the last time I checked, I had 43 garment manufacturers. By the end of today, we have probably lost two or three more. They are dropping like flies because of the negligence of successive federal governments, which refused to take advantage of even those protective measures that were available to them.

Could my colleague give us any indication what possible reason the government could have for not implementing the safeguards available to us under the WTO? What is the rationale?

[Business of Supply, February 8th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, in that same spirit of cooperation expressed by my colleague, I will say that I agree with much of the tone and the content of his remarks, even if it did not directly answer the opposition day question specifically.

I agree with him that we have an opportunity to become the world centre of excellence in demand side management in energy conservation. Even in our harsh northern climate, we can show the world how to do more with less and perhaps that will be our most valuable export: the technology associated with the demand side management of our precious energy resources.

I do not see evidence that the government has embraced that notion, other than the programs that my colleague mentioned, a small housing retrofit program. As a demonstration project, could the Government of Canada not do a comprehensive energy retrofit on the 68,000 buildings that it itself owns and operates to show the world how it can be done, and to show the private sector how we can save as much as 40% in our energy costs and greenhouse emissions by energy retrofitting comprehensively those buildings that are under the direct control of the federal government?

[Business of Supply, February 8th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Western Arctic for a very thorough and interesting speech. We can tell how comprehensive his background and knowledge is on this issue.

However, I must remind my colleague from Quebec, who says that Quebec is the only province that has a plan to implement Kyoto and that the NDP will never form government anyway, the NDP has formed 20 provincial governments in four provinces and one territory.

In fact, in the province of Manitoba, the NDP government has a Kyoto plan and could achieve Kyoto targets with the generous support, I would hope, of the federal government, which our motion, which we will vote on hopefully later today, does clearly state. While we support the initiatives of the province of Quebec and wish them well in their initiative, there are NDP governments in this country that are just as anxious to get going in meeting our Kyoto commitments.

One of the ways we hope to do this, with direct federal involvement, as was mentioned by my colleague, who I hope will talk more about it, is the east-west grid, building the new national dream. Just as building the railway was the national dream, we need that kind of energy and enthusiasm to tackle the greatest problem we have ever faced as a nation, climate change, by allowing the province of Manitoba and even the province of Quebec to sell their excess hydroelectricity east-west to help our neighbours, our fellow Canadians, to meet their challenges, such as those in the province of Ontario.

Why do we have coal-fired generating plants in Thunder Bay when the province of Manitoba has a ton of excess clean electricity that we can only sell to the United States? We cannot get it east-west. Would that not be a logical place for the federal government to put its energies?

[Business of Supply, February 8th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the federal government could help the province of Quebec and all of the provinces in fact reach their Kyoto targets with one simple measure. The Government of Canada owns roughly 68,000 buildings across Canada. Many of them were built in an era when energy conservation was not an issue; they are wasteful and older. The government also leases space in many buildings that are of a similar vintage.

Through its energy retrofit program, the federal building initiative, it has renovated I believe less than 1,200 buildings total out of 68,000 and usually just in very simplistic ways, such as changing the light bulbs to a different type of ballast, et cetera, picking the low-hanging fruit.

I am sure the minister is aware that a unit of energy harvested from the existing system by demand side management measures is indistinguishable from a unit of energy generated at a generating station, except for a couple of important things. It is available at one-third the cost. It creates seven times the number of jobs. It is available and online immediately for resale to someone else. It saves greenhouse gas emissions. These are all huge pluses.

Would the minister not agree that one thing the feds could do immediately without even an outpouring of cash to the provinces would be to clean up those energy wasteful buildings?

[Criminal Code, February 5th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I am one member of Parliament opposite who was not sleeping. I was listening very carefully and with great interest because I am trying, for the life of me, to understand why the Bloc is so opposed to this bill when the rest of the country needs it so very much.

My colleague said there is no room for it, there is no need for it, speaking about this bill. In actual fact, this bill is the legislation which would allow my province of Manitoba to do something about the thieves, the criminals, who are ripping off the people in my riding.

A lot of the payday loan industry are charging rates of interest that are illegal, that are criminal. They are gouging them and they are sucking the life right out of the inner city of Winnipeg; however, the federal government has jurisdiction over this. This bill would give the jurisdiction to the provinces, so that my province of Manitoba could do something about these, as I say, blood-sucking leeches who are profiting from human misery, from low income people.

I should tell my colleague that these payday loan outfits are charging as much as 10,000% interest. Not even a cocaine dealer, not even the Hells Angels, gets 10,000% interest. But in actual fact, we now know some of the payday loan industry is in fact run by organized crime because where else could one get that kind of money? So, we went to the federal government and said to cede this federal jurisdiction to the provinces so that we can clean up this mess within our own jurisdiction.

I thought that was exactly what the Bloc Québécois wanted, for the federal government to give jurisdiction to the provinces. In every speech I have ever heard from my colleagues from the Bloc, they have demanded for the federal government to get out of their business and for them to have jurisdiction over their own issues. In this case, I agree with them. We should pass this bill, so that the provinces could solve their own problems within their jurisdiction.

This reminds me, in a way, of the ban on pesticides. The NDP tried to get pesticides banned in Canada. Most members of the House of Commons agreed. The Bloc voted against it, and the bill was defeated, because Quebec has already banned pesticides. Well, just because Quebec has already solved its problem, please do not stand in the way of the rest of us who are trying to solve the same problem in the rest of Canada.

[Criminal Code, February 5th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's concern for pensioners tweaked my interest. I think he will agree with me that one of the root causes for the proliferation of these payday loans is that there have been so many bank closures, at least especially in the inner city in the riding I represent. As the banks closed, that void was filled with these fringe banking outfits that actually charge to cash cheques. I did not know this until recently, but it is against the law to charge to cash a government cheque. Some of these places charge 3%, 4% or 5% to cash even government pension cheques.

As for my question, I wonder if my colleague is aware that the plight of pensioners who rely solely on OAS-GIS has actually gotten worse. In the last federal budget, the government decreased the basic personal exemption from $9,039 to $8,639, I believe, so it was decreased by $400. That means $400 more that a senior is paying taxes on. Even at the lowest rate of taxation, which I believe is 15.5%, seniors are now paying taxes on $400 more than they ever used to before.

I did some quick math, and my colleague is probably better at math than I am, but that is $60 or $61 a year, which only looks like $5 a month, except that because this came into effect on July 1, the government doubled it for the remaining six months to spread it out over the whole year, so it is a cut in pay of $10 a month. When a lot of seniors voted for the Tories to form the government, I do not think they knew they would get their pay cut by ten bucks a month for that six month period and five bucks a month thereafter. Was my colleague aware of that? Does he run into that issue in his own riding?

[Criminal Code, February 5th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if my colleague from Malpeque would agree that the reason these payday loan outfits have popped up like mushrooms in virtually every town and community in the country is that the banks have abandoned many places. We have had 15 branch closures just in my riding of Winnipeg Centre in the last five years. In their place, these payday loan ripoff outfits, and I do not hesitate to call them that, have popped up to provide for the basic needs of people who might need financial services.

Would he not agree that while we are trying to regulate and rein in these payday loan outfits, we should also be reminding the banks of their obligations under their charters to provide basic services for Canadians? For instance, under the Bank Act the banks must allow somebody to open a bank account even if that person has no money. Maybe these people would not need to go to a payday loan outfit if the bank had a branch somewhere within miles of where these people live and allow people to open a bank account so they can cash their cheques without paying 3% or 5%. Would he not agree that we need to get after the big banks to live up to their obligations at the same time as we are trying to rein in these ripoff payday loan outfits?