Pat Martin

[Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, June 16th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by paying tribute to my colleague from Honoré-Mercier for using his private member's opportunity to bring such an important bill to the House of Commons. The short title of the bill is the Kyoto protocol implementation act. I can serve notice that the NDP is in support of Canada maintaining and fulfilling the obligations it stipulated itself to in ratifying the Kyoto accord. I can say categorically that this initiative has our support.

The first leader of the NDP, Tommy Douglas, was fond of quoting Alfred, Lord Tennyson by saying, “Courage, my friends, 'tis not too late to build a better world”. Many of us have not lost faith that it is not too late to build a better world. We are still true believers in our international institutions. Even as some countries are turning their backs on the United Nations, many of us still have hope that internationalism is the way forward, whether we are dealing with overall development aid, fighting world poverty, or in fact this critical issue of climate change. Surely the world can come together and agree on a priority like saving our planet.

When Canada ratified the Kyoto accord, there was a wave of optimism throughout the land that the world was finally seized of this pressing issue. Finally those in the flat earth society who had been denying the science about climate change had come around and matured in their thinking. We were coming together as a global community, but now, one by one, even some of those countries that did stipulate themselves to putting in place a climate change action plan along the guidance of the Kyoto protocol are cooling off and backing out.

This is an opportunity for us to serve notice to the government of the day that the majority of the members of the House of Commons disagree with the minority ruling party in this 39th Parliament. We disagree profoundly and we are demanding that the government take action and fulfill its obligation.

It was not the Conservative Party of Canada that signed the Kyoto protocol; it was not the Conservative Party that ratified the Kyoto protocol; it was Parliament on behalf of the people of Canada. The majority of Parliament say that we want Kyoto implemented. We demand that Kyoto be implemented. The Conservatives seem to want to cut and run, as they are fond of saying.

When I was the head of the carpenters union, we did a lot of research on energy retrofitting, on the demand-side management of our precious energy resources. This is an area in which perhaps the Conservatives, even in the absence of a commitment to Kyoto, could take the opportunity to engage themselves.

The federal government has direction and control over 68,000 buildings. Many of those buildings are energy hogs. They were built in an era when energy conservation was not an issue.

A unit of energy harvested from the existing system through energy retrofitting or demand-side management is indistinguishable from a unit of energy generated at a hydroelectric station or a nuclear power plant, except for a number of key things. First of all, it is available at about one-third the cost. Second, it provides a cost saving to the building owner. Third, it creates seven times the number of person years of employment to harvest this energy through demand-side management versus supply-side management. As well, that unit of energy is online and available for resale immediately instead of the seven year lag time that would be the case if we needed to build a new nuclear power plant, like Ontario is contemplating today.

The federal government could show leadership to the private sector by embarking on a comprehensive demand-side management energy retrofit program of its own 68,000 buildings. I believe the estimate is that at 30% savings, it would be $1.5 billion a year in energy saved. Look at the jobs it would create. Look at the greenhouse gases that it would preclude from being generated through generating stations. This is an idea whose time has come. All of these things would be given life. They would come to fruition under the rubric of the Kyoto accord.

I am concerned that in the absence of any structured commitment, such as this international accord, none of these ideas will occur, or if they do, they will be done in a piecemeal fashion and random ad hoc little flare-ups. It will be just enough to keep the public quiet, but in actual fact there will be no real comprehensive strategy to reduce our own greenhouse gas emissions and also, by this one simple initiative, to enjoy these many secondary benefits that I have outlined.

There is a secondary point. Coming from the province of Manitoba, I would be remiss if I did not remind my colleagues in the House that there is another national strategy which needs to be embraced in the context of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and that is the fact that my province of Manitoba has a net surplus of hydroelectricity. We produce and generate more electricity than we can use. We export it. We export it to the United States, whereas Ontario is on the verge of another brownout season for its want of electricity. We have no way of transmitting and selling it domestically. We end up selling it internationally. It is madness that we do not have a national energy strategy.

My colleague from B.C. will testify to this as well. British Columbia is also a net producer of hydroelectricity while parts of Canada are wanting. We need an east-west domestic electricity grid so that we can produce virtually environmentally friendly hydroelectric power. I am not trying to diminish that there is a footprint left behind in the generation of electricity, but it pales in comparison--it does not even compare--to that of nuclear energy, thermo-generated electricity, an appalling producer of greenhouse gas emissions.

Again, I am concerned that it is difficult for us to raise the east-west power grid in isolation, but in the context of the Kyoto accord protocol, in the context of implementing our commitments under Kyoto, the east-west power grid would be a logical place to begin as a benefit to all Canadians and to bail out Ontario in this emergency the province is facing, which is a looming political problem if nothing else.

I am pleased that the 39th Parliament will in fact be dealing with and be seized of the issue of the Kyoto protocol. I am grateful to my colleague from Honoré-Mercier for bringing this forward.

I should spend the last minute of my time in recognizing and also paying tribute to my colleague from the Liberals, the hon. member for Don Valley West. In the previous Parliament, he was the former secretary of state for municipal infrastructure and investment.

I would like to recognize him personally because in the last Parliament the Kyoto protocol had no greater champion. In fact, there was only one place where practical measures were not only being recognized and acknowledged but implemented. For some of the municipal infrastructure initiatives being put forward, my colleague from Don Valley West had the pleasure of going around the country signing and delivering the cheques to municipalities. We have to recognize that this was taking us in the right direction.

Again, this is the type of initiative that loses its momentum in the absence of a greater context, which the Kyoto protocol initiative offered.

If we can say anything to Canadians, we can say that they should be lobbying their members of Parliament, especially those on the government side, to make it known that Canadians expected Kyoto to be implemented. They approved it and they directed their Parliament and their House of Commons to ratify it. Now we are waiting for the action plan to implement it.

[Public Health Agency of Canada Act, June 16th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, seeing as the new public health officer was created under the Liberal government, perhaps my colleague from Mississauga South could tell us why the mandate of the new public health officer had what I would see as built in weaknesses, built in limitations such as that in the event of the Quarantine Act being implemented, which I would think would be at the very point we would want the public health officer to be in direction and control, the authority reverts back to the Minister of Health. I do not understand that.

I do not know if my colleague will be able to answer my next question because he cannot speak on behalf of the former government, but he has been a longstanding member of Parliament and was on the government side for many years. What was the attachment that the previous Liberal government had, and apparently the new Conservative government has, to the asbestos mines? Why this irrational commitment to an industry that is dying, an industry that is killing people and an industry that will collapse without the corporate welfare that successive governments continually shove at it?

The member's government was fairly right wing in its economic policies and the former prime minister, when he was minister of finance, was the most right wing finance minister in the history of Canada. Why did he support corporate welfare for asbestos mines that should have been left to die by market forces? Why this artificial life support to a deadly material that should be eradicated from the face of the earth?

[Public Health Agency of Canada Act, June 16th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, as is often the case, the member for Mississauga South has a valid point.

I appreciate that he reminded me to pay tribute to Dr. David Butler-Jones. As my colleague from Mississauga knows, the federal microbiology lab where Dr. Frank Plummer and Dr. Butler-Jones work is located within my riding. We are very proud to have that lab in my riding and play that role in the network of public health agencies across the country.

The member raised some valid concerns regarding the act. I do not know why the power to enforce the Quarantine Act remains with the Minister of Health when there is a new Chief Public Health Officer. Surely that officer is more specialized and capable. There is more professional competency, with no disrespect to the Minister of Health, within the Public Health Agency than there is in the Minister of Health's office.

I do not understand why the Public Health Agency is not given the authority to act cross-boundary. If a crisis transcends a provincial-territorial border, what disease recognizes provincial and territorial borders? What outbreak or crisis that the Chief Public Health Officer has to deal with is going to stop at the border? I do not understand some of those aspects of the bill.

Even though the new Public Health Agency has been seized with being ready for things such as West Nile virus, another SARS outbreak, or Asian flu, I want the new agency to be seized with some of the ongoing public health concerns that I identified, such as asbestos, the cosmetic non-essential use of pesticides, and the pervasive use of trans fats in processed food. These are things the agency could do on an ongoing basis through education, through educating lawmakers like us, through advocacy, things that are not crisis oriented but are general public health oriented.

That is the way we will elevate slowly the standard of general health in our country. We do not just need better ways to fight and combat disease. We need prevention. I hope that with the emphasis on energy and resources, we will be prioritizing prevention at least as much as cure.

[Public Health Agency of Canada Act, June 16th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the President of the Treasury Board, for recognizing the joint contribution that was made to move the federal accountability act through its stages in the committee. It was shepherded masterfully through the committee stage by committed people, by those who stand up for openness and transparency. They had to go to the wall, because openness and transparency has its enemies.

In the past I have quoted a British TV show Yes, Minister in which Sir Humphrey is talking to the prime minister. He says, “You can have open government or you can have good government, but Mr. Prime Minister, you cannot have both”.

This is a shocking signal. There are opponents to the idea of open government. It takes political courage to champion the concept and to stand by it, to bring it to fruition and to make manifest these lofty principles, which were only clichés under the last government, of transparency and accountability. To make that manifest will be to the betterment of all of us.

Under the new access to information provisions, which we forced through on Bill C-2, anyone who wants to know about the inner workings of the public health agency, the financing, funding and administration, would be able to file an access to information request. Prior to to those motions being passed in committee, that would have been excluded. This new agency would have been operating in the dark because it would not have fit in the definition of government institution.

We have made great progress for Canadians. I hope Canadians realize that we are at the end of an era and at the start of a new era, I would hope, in terms of accountability and transparency.

[Public Health Agency of Canada Act, June 16th, 2006]

Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas and some of those Conservatives actually know what they are talking about. Yet Parliament did not take any action, even though some of the world's leading authorities on cardiac health insisted that we do so. Denmark banned trans fats and we should ban trans fats.

[Public Health Agency of Canada Act, June 16th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased, on behalf of New Democratic Party, to join in the debate at third reading of Bill C-5, an act respecting the establishment of the Public Health Agency of Canada and amending certain acts.

I and the people of my riding are proud to have the federal virology laboratory located in the riding. We have taken a great personal and professional interest in following the evolution of the realization that our public health initiatives are equally important and perhaps even of more importance than our health care system generally in that our health care system dedicates so much of our resources and energies to fixing people after they are broken. The public health regime is dedicated to elevating the standards of our general health and, hopefully, preventing people from getting sick.

I think all the authorities in the field of delivering health care have come to the realization that it is all about finding better ways to create a healthier population. We support Bill C-5 and this initiative because it would take us one step further in prioritizing the public health of Canadians at least equally with the priority of helping Canadians once they have been stricken with an illness and helping them to cope with it.

In giving thought to the issue of greater public health, this debate gives us the opportunity to review some of the accessible things without a great deal of expense and resources spent that would have a direct impact on public health.

I note that the creation of the new Public Health Agency of Canada would also create the chief public health officer whose mandate surely would be one of education, to help Canadians understand and realize what steps they can take to create a healthier population and enjoy a better quality of life. As a secondary benefit, it would take enormous pressure off our overtaxed public health care system.

A couple of obvious things come to mind, which I sincerely hope the newly appointed chief public health officer would be seized of. One is the fact, and I say this with some shame, that Canada is still one of the world's leading producers and exporters of asbestos. It is hard to imagine in this day and age of scientific awareness of the health hazards of asbestos, but we continue to produce and export it at an alarming rate of 240,000 tonnes per year. We know that one fibre can and has caused devastating health conditions for those who, after a terribly cruel and long incubation period, are struck down with mesothelioma, the cancer caused by asbestos.

We should encourage our newly created public health officer to address the asbestos issue because there is no business case to continue supporting the asbestos industry the way we do. We are one of the world's largest producers and exporters of asbestos while the rest of the world is banning it. The entire European Union has banned asbestos, as has France.

In fact, Canada went to the WTO to stop the banning of asbestos, if anyone can believe that, which is why I said that I had introduced this issue with some trepidation and some shame. Canada tried to intervene to stop the good people of France from banning asbestos by claiming that it would be a trade barrier. We would not be able to sell our Canadian asbestos to France anymore. Fortunately, Canada lost and France won at the WTO and France continued in its logical step of trying to get this poison away from its citizens.

France is now calling for a global ban on asbestos. It is rare for a nation state to appeal to other nation states in this era of delicate diplomatic relationships but France is calling, very overtly, for a ban on asbestos globally. I hope Canada heeds the message and takes note of that.

Last week the ILO, the International Labour Organization, passed a resolution calling for a ban on all forms of asbestos. The world should no longer be exposed to asbestos and yet we continue to dump corporate welfare into the crippling asbestos industry in the province of Quebec.

I know the hazards of asbestos because I used to work in the asbestos mines. I have friends who have died and friends who are dying of asbestos related diseases. I know how we were lied to about asbestos and how that industry continues to lie to Canadians and to the world about the effects of asbestos. It is not overstating things to say that the asbestos industry is the tobacco industry's evil twin in the damage it causes to the general public health in Canada where the countryside is littered with asbestos, even in the buildings that we work in on Parliament Hill and around the world.

The only place Canada can find a market for its asbestos is in the third world, developing nations, that rarely have health and safety measures at all, much less ones that are enforced. We do not see HEPA filters on a day labourer in Pakistan who is shovelling Canadian asbestos from a wheelbarrow into a pile of cement to make asbestos cement tiles. I have seen the pictures. The labourers are barefoot, bare chested and have no health protection whatsoever. It is happening as we speak with Canadian asbestos.

I hope our new chief public health officer listens to the world and ignores the asbestos industry, stops giving corporate welfare to these guys and stops using our Canadian embassies to promote asbestos. One hundred and twenty conferences in 60 different countries were paid for by the Asbestos Institute, which is funded by the federal government, to promote Canadian asbestos. At the most recent one in Jakarta in May, the Canadian embassy was used to host this asbestos promotion event which was paid for by the Government of Canada. I think it is appalling.

The second issue I would like to touch on in terms of public health is in the context of the new Public Health Agency of Canada and the role of the chief public health officer. I hope the new chief public health officer will take note of the fact that over 90 Canadian municipalities have banned the cosmetic non-essential use of pesticides in their municipalities. I hope he takes note of the courage and tenacity that it takes on the part of often volunteer reeves and councillors of small municipalities and cities who only work part time in many cases.

Those individuals have to stand up to the massive chemical lobbyists who pounce on communities. As soon as they indicate that they are interested in banning the non-essential cosmetic use of pesticides, they get inundated with the lawyers, the lobbyists and the threatened lawsuits that the cosmetic use of pesticides cannot be banned because it is an unfair trade restriction and they have no jurisdiction. They bog them up in the courts for years trying to stop them from doing what common sense dictates they do.

That is the situation that over 90 municipalities in Canada have had to struggle through. The City of Ottawa failed by one vote after two years of trying. I hope our new national chief public health officer can recognize the problems the municipalities must struggle with and encourage the government to do nationally what municipalities are forced to do municipally.

Parliament had an opportunity to pass an NDP opposition day motion to ban the cosmetic non-essential use of pesticides and to lend support to those courageous municipalities. I should point out that Hudson, Quebec was the first municipality in Canada that managed to do this. It was in response partly to two young men in the area of Hudson, Quebec who lived in the vicinity of five golf courses that were regularly sprayed with these chemical pesticides. The cluster of chemical and environmentally related cancers in that area was astounding.

Those two young men both contracted brain cancer in their early teens. They made a pact with each other that if either of them survived the other would go on to be a champion of having these pesticides banned. One died and the other went on to be a champion. I have heard him speak and I wish everyone in the House of Commons could hear him speak.

Those communities, one by one, were banning cosmetic pesticides until the entire province of Quebec did so, to its great credit. The province took it out of the hands of those struggling municipalities. It said that it would stand up to the big chemical companies, that it would fight the court cases on behalf of the municipalities and that it would do away with the hundreds of thousands of kilos per year of usage of non-essential cosmetic pesticides.

True public health is when we take steps to try to improve the general health of our population. It does not make sense to wait until more and more people contract environmentally triggered cancers and then scramble for the money to find better treatments for those people. I do not think we will ever keep up.

My home province of Manitoba now spends 42% of its provincial budget on health care, and it is not enough. We still have waiting lists. We still do not have enough CAT scans. I do not think it will ever be enough until we turn off the tap at the front end and have less people coming into the system with catastrophic diseases, these appalling cancers.

There is a terrible statistic of which we should all be cognizant and of which we should all take note as members of Parliament. My children are in their twenties. Of their generation, 50% of them will die of cancer. People say that it is because they are living longer. That is not true. It is because they are being exposed to a chemical soup that is unprecedented in the history of mankind. It is only in the post-war years that the petrochemical industry has exploded and the exposure to new chemical compounds has exploded as well.

The burden of proof to prove that they are dangerous is on us, and that is the problem. We tried to put forward a motion in the House of Commons that would put the burden of proof on the manufacturers. They would have to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that a product would not harm us before the product could be sold. Instead, it is innocent until proven guilty for chemicals.

Manufacturers are allowed to put chemicals on the market with very little oversight, other than their own testing, which has self-interest to it. Then, after 20 or 30 years of usage, if we can prove there is enough people affected with cancer from their product, maybe then we can start to fight to get it taken off the market. We want the onus to be reversed. I hope we have an ally in our new Chief Public Health Officer, through the Public Health Agency of Canada. We will be appealing that to the person who takes the job. We will be asking for help to keep Canadians safe from this rampant exposure to the chemical soup.

I will not dwell on this much longer because I know I have to speak directly to the bill. However, there is a compounding effect of which none of us are aware. Even if we accept the chemical companies at their word, that compound A, in and of itself, is not harmful to us, there is another chemical company selling compound B to us. When compound A and compound B join forces in our kidneys, our livers and other organs, they create compound C, which kills us.

That is what we are faced with this and that makes it difficult for us to prove any one chemical causes this reaction. Our bodies are saturated with a chemical soup of 20 different compounds. We need to minimize the exposure, especially among infants and pregnant women, and we do that by proactively reversing the onus. The burden of proof has to be on the manufacturer.

I welcome the creation of the new Chief Public Health Officer because it gives us somebody to whom I can appeal. Parliament rejected our idea out of hand. It is let the free market prevail, people will not buy the product if it is killing them. If it kills them, then they will not be buy it so the company will go out of business. That is not good enough for leadership in terms of our public health.

The last thing, in the context of public health and achievable doables, to which this Parliament could attend itself, is the issue of trans fats. Many of us who were here in the last Parliament know NDP put forward an opposition motion on my private member's bill to eliminate trans fats, to take them right out of our system.

The Liberal government put in place measures to require mandatory labelling of trans fats. In other words, the Liberal Department of Health acknowledged that it was desirable to get trans fats out of our system or to at least eliminate Canadians' exposure to trans fats. Its proposed methodology, though, was to require labelling.

We are grateful the government at least acknowledged the issue, but it is not okay to put poison in our food just because it is properly labelled. I will not accept that. Labelling is inadequate. A hungry teenager, standing in line at a fast food restaurant, will not spend a lot of time to compare the technical Latin terms of one chemical versus another in the concentration of that component of the french fries he or she buys. They are hungry and they will eat them. As a result, these deadly manufactured trans fats have poisoned a generation.

There is a class issue involved with this too. It takes a fair amount of economic security to eat well in Canada, to buy healthy fresh foods and to keep cupboards and fridges stocked with good food. Low income people, with less organized lives due to the pressures they face, are more likely to eat fast food. Canadians eat an average of 10 grams of trans fats a day. Teenagers eat as much as 35 grams of trans fats per day. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, one gram per day increases the risk of heart disease by 20%.

Scientists, who address research on trans fat, use the term “toxic”. It meets the literal definition of a toxin, yet it is common throughout all our processed foods. Western prairie farmers would thank us if we eliminated these partially hydrogenated oils. Certain strains of canola oil are the best alternative to trans fats in terms of shelf life and to maintain quality and taste without changing the product directly. If we were to ban trans fats, it would create an enormous burgeoning industry. Our three Canadian prairie provinces are the best places in the world to produce these strains of canola oil. We could provide the world with a safe oil so french fries could still enjoyed by our children, but would not kill them.

Even though I am pleased that we are seized of the issue of improving public health, it frustrates me that three achievable things are in front of us today, but we are not acting on them.

We should ban asbestos. We should stop mining and exporting asbestos to the Third World. Canada is viewed as being an international piranha. If we think we have a bad reputation for the seal hunt, ask other countries what they think about Canada dumping asbestos into the Third World. It is shameful that the federal government continues to undermine this dying and deadly industry. The asbestos mine I worked in closed. It died a natural death due to market forces. I do not care if the remaining asbestos mines are in Quebec, but they should be shut down and allowed to die a natural death too. By staying open, they are killing a lot of people.

We do not need to read Silent Spring again to know that chemical pesticides have a dilatory affect on our organs and our quality of life.

We need to ban trans fats. For Heaven's sakes, what is the holdup? Members do not have to listen to me, but they should listen to the Heart and Stroke Foundation. They should listen to Dr. Wilbert Keon and Senator Yves Morin, a Liberal senator and a Conservative senator, who worked with me on the trans fat initiative. These gentlemen are heart surgeons; I am just a carpenter.

[Elections Canada, June 16th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, my point is, do we have election financing laws or are these just suggested guidelines that only suckers like me follow?

I will not tolerate any double standards. The integrity of our electoral system depends on the fair application and the enforcement of the rules. There has to be consequences for those who would abuse those rules, or we might as well have no rules at all.

Law and order means more than just street crime. Law and order should apply to the application of election financing laws. I call upon the elections commissioner to investigate and enforce those rules.

[Elections Canada, June 16th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, my colleagues in the NDP would not dare spend one nickel over our election spending limits for fear of the dire consequences with which we are always threatened. Therefore, we were shocked to learn that the member for Newmarket—Aurora spent $241,000 on her election campaign, and Elections Canada seems to find nothing wrong with that.

There were unreported corporate donations of illegal size. The $75,000 she spent on her election night was more than I was allowed to spend on my entire campaign. What gives? Do we have elections--

[Public Health Agency of Canada Act, June 16th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the remarks of my colleague on Bill C-5 regarding the creation of the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Since I have been a member of Parliament, the overwhelming majority of our time in this chamber has been spent on health care. I think everyone would agree. It has been the number one, top of mind issue, but very little of that time is spent on talking about public health and actually making Canadians healthier.

Recent events in the House of Commons have given us the opportunity to do something significant for actually improving the general health of Canadians, but this has not met with broad support from members of the House of Commons. Most of us were moved by Wendy Mesley's CBC program about the contamination and chemical soup we live in today and the terrible reality that 50% of our children's generation will get cancer due to exposure to chemical agents, much of it environmental.

Just weeks ago, the chamber dealt with an NDP opposition day motion to ban the cosmetic use of pesticides. I had wanted to ask my colleague from Nunavut a question about this, given that even people in the far north are finding residual chemical pesticides in the milk of mothers living in the far north. The level of contamination is staggering.

I want to ask my colleague for his views on two important public health initiatives that we have missed acting on in just the last 18 months. One is the opportunity we had to eliminate 200 million kilos per year of chemical pesticides being used for non-essential cosmetic purposes, hopefully to elevate the public health of all of us. Also, there is the fact that 18 months ago the House of Commons voted to ban trans fats, a known public health hazard for which there are safer alternatives available. No action ever came of it.

It is frustrating to Canadians and certainly frustrating to me that as we stand here and talk about creating a new Public Health Agency of Canada we are not putting our money where our mouth is in terms of taking concrete steps to improve the general public health of Canadians.

[Canada Elections Act, June 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, it seems that Apotex is not the only corporation playing fast and loose with the Canada Elections Act.

We have now learned that the TD Canada Trust has seen fit to pull a volpe and violate the donations limit of the act. These people must think that illegal is just a sick bird.

I would like to ask both the Liberals and the Conservatives if they intend to give these donations back but I know I am not allowed to. Instead I will ask what the government intends to do to ensure both the spirit and the letter of the law are respected when it comes to donations under the Canada Elections Act.