Pat Martin

[Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006, November 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I want to take the opportunity in the final minutes of this debate today on the amendments to Bill C-24 to, if nothing else, recognize and pay tribute to my colleague, the hon. member for Burnaby—New Westminster, who on behalf of all Canadians has done a valiant job in representing their interests in the face of this appallingly bad trade deal that sells out Canadians.

I do not think it has been raised enough here today. The House has probably heard a number of reasons why the NDP is opposed to this bill, but I do not think Canadians realize how the member for Burnaby—New Westminster was muzzled in committee, and blocked and barred from bringing these important issues where they properly belonged, which was at the House of Commons standing committee studying Bill C-24.

I have never seen anything like it. The tricks and stunts that the committee, in cooperation with Conservative, Liberal and Bloc members, pulled to unilaterally and undemocratically silence our colleague at committee should be noted here. I believe sanctions should in fact be brought to bear because members ganged up on him, muzzled him and reduced his time.

Let me explain what they did. They were in a televised room where committees are often heard, so that the general public can follow these meetings, and they turned off the cameras. They said they would not have it televised because they thought the NDP member was going to be speaking at some length on many of these amendments and the clause by clause analysis of the bill. That is what committee members are supposed to do. That is what good opposition MPs do in a clause by clause analysis of a bill.

The first thing they did was turn off the cameras. Then I believe, against the rules of the House and I will try to make that case in another place, they arbitrarily limited his speaking time to three minutes per clause. This is a bill of such complexity that most lawyers would have a hard time getting their minds around it. Most lay people, who may take an interest at home or at a sawmill where they work and have a vested interest in this bill, would really struggle to try to understand aspects of this bill within a few minutes.

That was not good enough. They then slammed his speaking time down to one minute per clause. This is all by some cooperation with the other three parties trying to muzzle and silence the valiant attempt of this fourth party opposition member. There is only one member on that committee from the NDP. He alone was fighting the good fight on behalf of Canadians and they conspired to silence him.

Time does not permit for me to--

[Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006, November 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I was most taken with my colleague's remarks when he drew the connection between what the new Conservative government is doing regarding the softwood lumber deal and this mad crusade that it is on to dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board.

I would like the member to expand on his comments. I believe he was saying that these are two serious trade irritants to the Americans and that the Conservatives are doing the Americans' dirty work. Could the member expand on what he meant by bringing the Canadian Wheat Board into this debate on Canadian softwood lumber?

[Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006, November 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I would not blame people who are at home watching this debate for trying to figure out what exactly happened, because many of them may have tuned in a couple of years ago to see the current Minister of International Trade when he was on the other side of the House, when he was a Liberal minister arguing the softwood lumber deal. At that time, he was trying to sell Canadians a bit of a bill of goods or a package that none of us found suitable, but then he flip-flopped over to the Conservative benches and, within weeks of being a Conservative minister, he came to us with a package that suddenly we were supposed to take. Suddenly it was as good as he could do.

I wonder if my colleague could point out the irony in the situation. First, we do not believe Canadians were well served by this minister when he was on either side of the House. Second, what can he tell Canadians to give them any confidence that someone is driving this bus with any degree of competence?

[Softwood Lumber Products Export Charge Act, 2006, November 21st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I have one specific question for my colleague. It stems from a previous speech that he made on this subject in the same context of saying that the Liberals are doing the Tories' dirty work in committee.

Is it not true that Canada is in effect doing the Americans' dirty work in their long known animosity toward the softwood industry in Canada? Is it not true that some of the money left on the table will in fact be used against the best interests of Canadians by our American enemies in this trade issue?

[Federal Accountability Act, November 20th, 2006]

Briefly, Mr. Speaker, treated in isolation, I did not object to the notion at the committee stage. Shortly following our treatment of the Wheat Board at the committee, the government undertook a full frontal assault on the Canadian Wheat Board, announcing that it would undermine the board's single desk selling without a vote, and muzzling farmers and the Wheat Board from even representing their own points of view. It then became clear this was part of a package to undermine the Canadian Wheat Board. We will not play into that. We may have been duped at one point. We are going to fix that today.

[Federal Accountability Act, November 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I do not care if the member wants to hear what I have to say afterwards. I will tell her what I have to say afterwards. Access to information legislation for government agencies is fine. I believe in absolute freedom of information.

The Canadian Wheat Board is not a government agency. It is an organization of farmers. Not one penny of government money goes into the Canadian Wheat Board. The government has a plan to try to abolish the Canadian Wheat Board. The Conservatives are on a mad crusade to try to abolish the Canadian Wheat Board because they are ideologically opposed to collective action.

It is the collective action of farmers trying to look after their own interests that formed the Canadian Wheat Board and continues to serve them well. We should not play into the Conservatives' scheme to undermine the will of the people on the Canadian prairies. The Canadian Wheat Board is a great prairie institution. We on this side of the House will do nothing to undermine it.

[Federal Accountability Act, November 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, many of us spent the 37th Parliament and the 38th Parliament trying to get the Liberal government to introduce some measure of whistleblower protection. I had a private member's bill and I think my colleagues did, even those within the Liberal Party, trying to get the government to move.

What we wound up with in Bill C-11 was the best we could achieve with an unwilling government of the day. It was a flawed bill from the start. I like the chapter on whistleblowing in Bill C-2 far better than I ever liked Bill C-11, so there was no point in trying to implement Bill C-11 while Bill C-2, we hoped, would have had royal assent by now.

I do not agree that we should have done both of them, because implementation would have been a nightmare. The best thing we can do to introduce meaningful whistleblower protection is pass Bill C-2 as quickly as possible.

[Federal Accountability Act, November 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the official position of the NDP is that the Senate should be abolished. I do not share that view. I have different views. I think the Senate can be salvaged and that we should have a bicameral system of government in Canada, but what the Senate has done with Bill C-2 makes it very difficult for me to say that the Senate has any merit or should be staying in any form. The Senate has overstepped its boundary. It has interfered with this bill in a way that is far beyond what senators are mandated to do.

Let me simply and by example say that even though there was great urgency to Bill C-2 and even though we wanted the bill to be passed in the first session of this Parliament, the Senate took the entire three month summer break. When the Senate came back for a week, it lost another full week of work because one of the senators had to be on a parliamentary junket to the Philippines. One senator was on a beach in the Philippines and we had another week's delay for Bill C-2. How can that be defended? It simply cannot.

As well, many of the amendments that the Senate has put forward simply put the Senate's nose into business where it has no place being. In regard to the public appointments commission, some of the amendments put forward by the Senate say that the Senate should have a role in the process of appointing those commissioners. That is simply problematic. It is unclear if it is a constitutional issue.

Much of what the Senate did was self-aggrandizing. Fully 43 of the Senate's 154 amendments dealt with this separate ethics commissioner, as to whether there should be one, two or three ethics commissioners. It was all about the senators. It was not about making the bill better. It was all about protecting their own backyard.

I think the Senate wasted an enormous amount of time. I do not apologize to anyone for saying it. I think it was political mischief so that the Senate could delay this bill until the Liberals have had their Liberal leadership campaign. Those Liberal leadership hopefuls should fall in line now, show some leadership and tell their rogue senators to stop mucking around with this bill and allow it to pass.

[Federal Accountability Act, November 20th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, one of the many details about Bill C-2 that we in the NDP found worthy of support was the idea that we can put an end to patronage with a public appointments commission, so that people would get these appointments and fill these many governor in council appointments based on their merit and qualifications, not on which political party membership card is held in a person's back pocket. I would argue that this is one of the key three irritants for the general public with regard to the way politics operates in Ottawa today: it is who people know that gets them to the top.

There are literally thousands of these appointments made every year, and they used to be done from a single desk and a single telephone in the PMO. People simply would work their Rolodex of party faithful. That is who would get these important jobs, critically important jobs such as those at the Immigration and Refugee Board, jobs that do require great specific skills in order to provide a service to the public.

The public appointments commission alone would be worthy of our support. If it were a stand-alone bill or the only thing we managed to achieve in passing this bill, that alone would be worthy of the support of members of the House of Commons. I am proud to be associated with and to have played a role in the introduction of this important reform of how we do things in Ottawa.

[Federal Accountability Act, November 20th, 2006]

I do not know why they would undermine the Canadian Wheat Board, because supply management in Quebec is very important to the well-being of the agricultural sector in Quebec. In a similar way, the Canadian Wheat Board is very important to the good people in the prairie provinces where I live. I do not know why they would seek to undermine the Canadian Wheat Board in this way.

As far as a Senate ethics commissioner is concerned, again, I will not get into that debate. I do not care how many ethics commissioners those members want, as long as they do not hold up the important amendments dealing with Bill C-2.

We worked like crazy on this bill. It has been a pleasure to be part of something productive. If we get this bill through the Senate this time, it will be something that we can all look back on and be proud of, because we will have changed the way Ottawa does business. We will have changed the culture of secrecy and corruption that caused us all such consternation with the past government.

I understand why the Liberal Party hates the federal accountability act. It is all about the Liberals' last 10 to 12 years. Every page of it, I suppose, would be an insult if one were a member of the Liberal Party, because a lot of what it does changes the culture of secrecy that allowed corruption to flourish in previous years. It is the job of members to put a stop to it. We are going to do our best to see the speedy passage of Bill C-2, even if it means compromising on some of the minor details.