Pat Martin

[Committees of the House, April 11th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, my fear is that by passing the motion put to us today, we would actually be lowering the likelihood that we would get around to the full comprehensive reformation package that needs to be put forward at the committee. I am fearful that we may jeopardize the bigger picture by going for this lesser picture.

I point out that the motion put forward today by my hon. colleague is long on preamble and very short on the actual recommendations. It says all the right things in the preamble about how frustrated we are with the status quo but when it comes to the actual recommendations to change the practice it falls short of what the leadership of first nations, the churches, the NGOs and other human rights advocates across the country are asking us to do in their report, the one I suggest the House of Commons should adopt.

[Committees of the House, April 11th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, if I honestly believed that the motion put forward by the Conservative Party would expedite settlements or even act as a stepping stone to a lasting resolve I would support it but I actually do not believe that.

Now that we have had time to carefully read the motion crafted by my colleague from the Conservative Party, it is actually a step backward. I am very concerned that some of the language in it is detrimental to the entire issue.

I would much prefer to adopt the report of the Assembly of First Nations, which was crafted by experts in the field, that went beyond first nations people. These experts included university professors, a former judge, a professor of law from the University of Quebec and people with backgrounds in human rights. Fifteen or 20 people crafted the proposal on how we move forward in the compensation for abuses at residential schools. That is the model we should be implementing.

My fear is that if we were to adopt the motion put forward by the Conservative Party today we would be one step further away from this satisfactory resolve, which is in fact the motion that I put forward at the committee. If we vote down the Conservative Party's motion, tomorrow morning we can begin debate at the Indian affairs committee and finish the motion I started, which is this book. That would bring us toward a resolve. It has expedited plans where people will get money in their pocket more quickly.

I do not believe the motion put forward by the Tories does that.

[Committees of the House, April 11th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, by way of starting, I am pleased that this issue is before the House of Commons where I believe it properly belongs. I believe the terrible legacy of Canada's Indian residential schools is our greatest shame as a nation. There has never been an injustice on this scale or of this magnitude in the country.

In spite of a national consensus that there should be compensation and reconciliation, the overwhelming majority of the money set aside to compensate victims so they can get on with their lives is being burned up in legal fees and bureaucracy. There is some confusion over the figures. Some say by a factor of 4:1 that more money is spent on bureaucracy than compensation. Some say that it is 35:1. All we need to know is that the money is not going into the pockets of the victims so they can rebuild their lives.

I wish all members could have heard some of the testimony in our committee.

I intend to share my time, Mr. Speaker, with my colleague from Nanaimo—Cowichan.

I cannot get out of my mind one elder who came as a witness to the committee. She was an 88-year-old woman named Flora Merrick. She ran away from her residential school when she was nine years old to attend her mother's funeral. When she was caught, she was beaten black and blue and locked in a room for two weeks.

I will not dwell on how horrific this is and the state of fear in which these children lived, except to point out that when she filed a claim under the ADR process for a $3,500 maximum, the government spent $30,000 to oppose that claim, to call her a liar. Then when she was awarded $1,500 as a settlement, the government appealed it. It is going to spend another $30,000 to appeal this lousy $1,500 settlement for Flora Merrick. This is truly outrageous. If Canadians could hear this, I think they would be standing with us today calling for a just reconciliation and compensation program for the Indian residential school victims.

I cannot support the motion for concurrence put forward by my colleague from the Conservative Party. I believe the report of the committee, which he has moved concurrence in, fails to grasp the necessary elements of reform for this compensation program.

The standing committee had put in front of it a motion by myself, which essentially was that the Assembly of First Nations' recommended action to solve the Indian residential school situation. That motion contains three elements that I believe are necessary for us to begin to move forward.

One is fair and reasonable compensation in an expedited process, which is blanket lump sum compensation. In other words, no more wasting money trying to prove these victims are lying. This money should go into their pockets.

Eligibility for compensation should be based on the fact that someone was there. We accept that being torn from the bosom of one's family for 10 years in a row and denied one's culture and language in itself is abusive. We do not need to know how many times one was sexually abused or what size the stick was with which that a person was beaten. Those details do not matter because being forced to retell those stories re-victimizes the victims. Enough is enough. We should put the money that was set aside for compensation into the hands of the victims. This would be the first element and it is lacking in the motion put forward by my colleague from Calgary today.

The second element is a full public apology by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons. Aboriginal people will settle for nothing else. They want an apology. They remind the House of Commons that the government of the day made a formal apology to Japanese Canadians. It has made formal apologies to other victims for reprehensible things former governments did.

As I started by saying, in this case there is no greater injustice in the history of Canada than the history of the Indian residential schools. We want and they want the Prime Minister of Canada to stand in the House of Commons and admit that what was done was wrong. This is not included in the motion we are debating today, as put forward by my colleague from the Conservative Party.

The third element that must be a part of any package to reform the Indian residential school situation is a truth and reconciliation process so that even though the compensation would be lump sum and universal, there would be an opportunity for people's stories to be told so both sides could begin to heal. I do not mean just the victims telling their stories. The churches want to tell their stories. The government wants to tell its stories. Non-aboriginal people who feel sick to their stomachs about this situation want their feelings to be heard. That is the path toward healing and toward true reconciliation. This element is absent in the motion my colleague from the Conservative Party would ask us to vote in favour of today.

I urge my colleagues in the House of Commons to vote down this motion because those other elements which I have raised are within grasp. The motion that I put forward in the standing committee, I now have information that it has the support of the government, of the ruling party. We can get all those three key elements in a motion adopted by the House of Commons. That is why the Assembly of First Nations, the elected leadership of first nations around the country, is asking us as members of Parliament to vote against the motion put forward by the Conservatives today, to stay strong and to keep fighting for a new resolution with the key elements we have identified here today.

I believe we owe it to this issue to do it right and to do it right the first time. This is simply an interim measure. I compliment my colleague from the Conservative Party for what he did at the committee. When it was clear my motion did not have support, he moved another motion which kept the issue alive and it brought the issue into the House of Commons where it properly belongs. However, let us not settle for half of the loaf when the whole loaf is available to us.

Let us not put in place a problematic resolution and motion when we can put in a motion that leads toward healing. One of the elements of the motion we have before us today is problematic in that it calls for simply abolishing the alternative dispute resolution system. Our point, and the point of the Assembly of First Nations, is we want to correct the alternative dispute resolution system, not abolish it. What about all those people who are halfway through the system now, who are 80 and 90 years old, who have been waiting for years for justice? We cannot just cut that program off willy-nilly with nothing to substitute for it. I urge colleagues to keep that in mind.

The motion put forward by the Conservatives recommends that the process be handed over to the courts to supervise and enforce. There should be some judicial oversight, but we do not want to put it strictly into the hands of the lawyers, some of whom are charging a 30% contingency fee for all settlements. That is a mistake. Oversight, yes, but handing it over strictly to that outside third party is wrong.

I urge colleagues here today that when this comes to a vote, to vote against it and vote in favour of a package that more accurately reflects what the leadership of first nations is asking us to do. That is the way to move forward to heal this historic injustice.

[Committees of the House, April 11th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the speech by my colleague from the Bloc Québécois, which was better than any I have heard to date, clearly outlined the true wishes of first nations and he pointed to three key points that would satisfy him.

His first point was that all students at residential schools be provided with blanket universal compensation without being questioned on whether they had been abused. We assume they were abused because they were deprived of family development for a decade.

His second point was that he would only be satisfied with a formal apology from the Prime Minister in the House of Commons. That is a key element.

In his third point he identified a truth and reconciliation process so that both sides could heal.

Does my friend from the Bloc Québécois recognize that the motion put forward by the Conservative Party does not contain those elements? However we do have an opportunity to move forward with a motion that would include all three of those components. Would he prefer to support a motion that had the three elements that we cite as primary?

[Committees of the House, April 5th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I should preface my remarks by saying that I know Glen Murray. I worked on two of Glen Murray's election campaigns and he worked on my election campaign, He knocked on doors on my behalf in my riding of Winnipeg Centre. Therefore, I know a lot about him.

Much has been made of his relative merits or lack of knowledge of environmental issues. However, what I am more concerned about is his lack of commitment in seeing things through. When he was elected as mayor of Winnipeg the last time, people asked him directly if he intended to work through his full term of office or would he run out on them and run for member of Parliament for the Liberal Party. He said that his commitment was to the people of Winnipeg. If they gave him their trust, he assured them that he would work through his entire term.

He was asked the same question at the environment committee when being grilled about this job. In response to the question about breaking his word to the people of Winnipeg, he said that he had changed his mind, which was different from breaking his word. He said that was not the same thing. I do not see the difference.

Is my colleague concerned that if the Prime Minister appoints Mr. Murray, in spite of the wishes of Parliament, that he will bail as soon as the writ is dropped for the next federal election and run for the Liberals in Rosedale or some place?

[Employment Insurance Act, April 4th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to represent the NDP during the second reading debate on Bill C-278. I want to recognize and pay tribute to my colleague from Trois-Rivières for bringing the issue of employment insurance to the House of Commons where we can debate it. I would also like to recognize and acknowledge the contribution that my NDP colleague from Acadie—Bathurst has made in his tireless advocacy on behalf of an employment insurance system that works instead of an employment insurance system that clearly is broken, dysfunctional and fails to provide its core function, which is income maintenance on behalf of unemployed workers.

I am here to tell everybody here that the current employment insurance system does not work any more. It is not an insurance system at all. It is another tax on workers because they have to pay into the program but it is almost impossible to collect any benefits should they become unemployed.

The current employment insurance system is a cash cow for the Liberal government. It was designed that way and, believe it or not, and it is almost unbelievable to me the more I research it, it was yielding $750 million a month more into the coffers of the Liberal government than in benefits being paid out. The Liberals could have fixed that but they chose not to because they were harvesting the money. They were reaping the money out of the employment insurance system and on the backs of unemployed people.

I want to point out that just in my own riding of Winnipeg Centre the cutbacks to eligibility caused $20.8 million less per year in benefits going to people in my riding; $20.8 million a year sucked right out of the heart of my riding. It has pushed more low income people into actual poverty because they have gone from unemployed wage earners to being cut off the insurance program that they paid into in good faith.

To deduct something from a worker's paycheque for a specific purpose, income maintenance if one is unemployed, and then to use it for something completely different, such as tax cuts for the wealthy, is, at the very best case scenario, a breach of trust and, in the worst case scenario, out and out fraud. That is what we have been faced with for the past decade of the current employment insurance program.

When the member for Trois-Rivières tries to bring some integrity into the employment insurance system, I am here to thank her, applaud her and celebrate that action.

I cannot believe the comments from the member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell when he tries to sell this as an improved employment insurance program. Nobody qualifies any more. They take and take off people's paycheques but if people are unfortunate enough to become unemployed they will not be eligible for any benefits. What kind of an insurance scheme is that?

What would we think of a house insurance scheme that makes it mandatory to pay premiums but if our house burns down we would have less than a 40% chance of collecting any benefits? We would not call that an insurance program. We would call that a rip-off, a fraud and a lie.

The government has been harvesting money out of the employment insurance system for a decade and incrementally rationing little improvements back up to where it once was. It was once operating as an employment insurance system.

I am a carpenter by trade. I have been on EI probably 10 times because it was designed to help people who, because of the nature of their work or other reasons, were simply unlucky to find themselves unemployed. That is what it was for. Well, I wish everyone good luck in qualifying now. I will not even have time to go into the gender bias. It is completely unfair to women in that women are more likely to be in part time employment situations and the least likely to qualify. Does anyone know what the percentage is of women in part time jobs who are eligible for EI? It is 25%. If we factor in Canadian youth who are unemployed, it is 15%.

Who would design such a program? It is clearly not designed to provide income maintenance to unemployed people. It is designed to be a cash cow for the Liberal government so it can use it for its priorities, one of which has been tax cuts for the wealthy. Talk about a perverse form of Robin Hood; rob the poor to give tax cuts for the rich.

As members can tell, this program has infuriated me ever since 1996 when the government implemented these changes and gutted the UI system.

The member for Glengarry--Prescott--Russell pointed out that the government has to assume the responsibility if the fund goes into arrears and therefore it is justified to go into surplus. If we add up the total accumulated deficit ever since the program was implemented in 1948, it has been $11 billion. It has fallen into arrears by $1 billion, $2 billion, $5 billion now and then in times of high unemployment, for a total of $11 billion to $13 billion, depending on how we add it up, but the current surplus in the fund is $50 billion. It is almost five times higher than it needs to be, which is what the Auditor General keeps pointing out. The government is stockpiling money like crazy, except it is not stockpiling it. It is spending it.

As the Prime Minister has pointed out when questioned on this, there is no EI fund, there is no pile of $50 billion of our money waiting there. The government spent it. It was taken off our paycheques. The unemployed were promised income maintenance and then the government spent the money on something completely different. That is not fair to Canadians.

Let us point out again that this is not the government's money. In the 1980s the federal government stopped contributing to the EI fund. It used to be a tripartite venture: employer, employee and the government paying into it. It ceased to be that. Now it is just employee and employer. The government does not pay a penny into the EI fund other than to administer it. Therefore it is not even the government's money. It has no right to the money, except that it passed the prerequisite enabling legislation where it says that it has the right to deduct that money off our cheques and use it for whatever it sees fit.

I have to mention one of the most galling changes the government made. As a carpenter I deal with carpenter apprentices in trade school. The government began assigning a waiting period for apprentices when they leave the job to go to trade school. They are not unemployed and they never had that problem before. Income maintenance for apprentices in trade school was one of the designated uses allowed under the old Unemployment Insurance Act but the government started applying a waiting period, so for the first two weeks of their trade school they do not get any benefit at all.

It is a lousy $80 million a year savings when the government chose to do this but the calculated effect that it has had is that 11,000 apprentices have dropped out of trade school because they could not afford to be without income for that period of time.

The government is showing a surplus of $750 a month by gutting the income maintenance for apprentices at trade school. It is saving $80 million but 11,000 tradesmen are leaving the trade because of this incredibly flawed policy in dealing with employment insurance.

I am looking at Bill C-278 as an opportunity to restore some fairness back into the employment insurance system and get the qualifying period down to where people will actually be eligible and qualify for benefits, and to increase the benefits, not wildly but back to where they were which was at 60% of our income, which is what my hon. colleague from Trois-Rivières is proposing.

She is not proposing a grossly luxurious plan. She is proposing that the EI program be put back to where it was before the Liberals cut it back to 55%, to do away with the waiting period for apprentices when they are in trade school, and to deal with the incredible gender inequities and imbalance. If the government is supposed to have a gender screen or gender analysis to any legislation it puts forward, somehow this missed the analysis and the screen all together.

I will be voting in favour of Bill C-278 in the interest of fairness, in the interest of giving people what they paid for and in the interest of ending this travesty that the government calls the employment insurance system, but which has really been the biggest rip-off in recent Canadian history.

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, March 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to add a few thoughts to Bill C-272 which was put forward by my colleague from Burnaby—Douglas.

I come from the riding of Winnipeg Centre where I can say without any hesitation and without any fear of contradiction that this particular bill is of utmost interest and importance to the people I represent.

When the bill was introduced by my colleague from Vancouver East we held town hall meetings. We had ethnic leaders and groups from all walks of life coming forward to say that the bill was what they wanted and what they needed. They asked us to fight for the bill in the House of Commons so they would be able to reunite their family members.

If members have not heard it from enough people, I am here in this final moment of the debate to tell members that the bill has merit, that there is a demand for it and that members should listen to new Canadians when they appeal and plead for help to reunite their families because the current family reunification system does not serve their needs.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to add my voice on behalf of the many new Canadian families in the riding of Winnipeg Centre.

[Tax Conventions Implementation Act, 2004, March 11th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the topic of my speech is tax treaties, tax havens, and Canadian companies' use of tax havens. When I cite examples that are common knowledge and a matter of public record, I do not expect to be corrected nor sanctioned for pointing those things out.

We owe a great debt to people in the private sector like Professor Léo-Paul Lauzon who are compiling the empirical evidence on the actual experience of our current tax system and the cost to Canadians in allowing this corporate ripoff to continue. This is the biggest corporate giveaway since the railway. It is knowingly and willingly allowing Canadian dollars that should properly be put to use for the benefit of Canadians to fly out of the country.

We are being gouged and ripped off. We look to our federal government for help and support in situations like that. Governments are elected to look after our interests, to put our interests first. Somehow big money has controlled things in Ottawa for so long that not surprisingly all the legislation seems crafted to look after their interests instead of looking after the interests of the ordinary person.

Just once I wish common sense would prevail in this place. Just once I wish reason and logic would carry the day.

I am not an accountant or even particularly bright and I get what is wrong with this. I saw it immediately. Anybody on the Sparks Street Mall would say it is fundamentally wrong to be gouged and ripped off like this. If this were common knowledge, it would make Canadians' blood boil.

It could be simple. Within the parameters of Bill S-17 the government could have introduced tax treaties with Gabon, Ireland, Armenia, Oman, and Azerbaijan and torn up the tax haven with the Barbados. Eliminate it. Get rid of it. Let us do something useful around here. It is the end of the week and it would be delightful to leave on a positive note that we just found $7 billion that knowingly and willingly has been flushed down the toilet for many years but now we can put that money to good use. I can think of any number of positive things the money could be used for in my riding of Winnipeg Centre.

While I recognize the merits of Bill S-17 in terms of the effect it will have on our financial relationship with Gabon, Armenia and Oman, we have been victims of a diversion. We are avoiding the issue of tax avoidance as it pertains to corporate Canada, and we continue to allow Canadians to be ripped off. It is shameful that many companies avail themselves of that.

[Tax Conventions Implementation Act, 2004, March 11th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I too am looking forward to this opportunity to debate Bill S-17 brought forward via the Senate. I should mention first that the NDP as a matter of principle and a matter of policy resents and objects to bills that come to the House of Commons through the unelected second chamber, the other place. Let me make that point right off the bat.

I am looking forward to speaking to Bill S-17 for two reasons. First, I will speak to the fact that we recognize this has merits and it is seeking to be a reasonable initiative to enter into expanded tax treaties with countries so we can avoid the issue of double taxation. We welcome that. We recognize the need. It increases the number of tax treaties of that nature to 87, I believe. The nation of Canada is in relations with 87 other places in that regard.

Second, it also gives us the important opportunity to address the larger issue, we believe, the lost opportunity involved with tax avoidance, tax evasion and what we in our party call tax fugitives.

We condemn in the strongest possible terms the economic treason associated with those Canadian companies that knowingly and willingly undermine our tax base by avoiding taxes, by taking advantage of the tax havens and the tax loopholes that exist. Very real opportunities exist for Canadian companies that have the will and the ruthlessness, I would say, to undermine the integrity of our Canadian tax system through tax avoidance.

Tax avoidance is perfectly legal in the context of the tax havens that we allow in this country. We are not calling anybody a criminal here. We are questioning their ethics and their morality, perhaps, for what is in known in chartered accountants' circles and tax accountants' circles as “tax motivated expatriation”. They call it tax motivated expatriation because it has a nicer ring to it than “sleazy tax-cheating loopholes”, which is what I call it when these companies take advantage of the tax system to locate offshore for the express purpose of avoiding paying their fair share in this country.

This is a megatrend in corporate Canada. It is a growing trend. More and more Canadian companies are reincorporating themselves offshore as a way to slash their tax bills, often by hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, the total aggregate lost revenue estimated by the tax havens that exist currently is $7 billion a year.

We see our Minister of National Revenue wrestling to find another $1 billion a year in revenue that the Liberals can put toward more useful spending. They do that by cutting and trimming and frankly by reducing programs in many cases, programs delivered to Canadians and that Canadians value. However, they are ignoring and showing a wilful blindness to the $7 billion that is hemorrhaging offshore and is not being taxed.

Furthermore, I will point out another problem. Profits move offshore to these havens like Barbados. If the profits come back into Canada in any way, they are taxed, but if they are reinvested in a third foreign country, in another place, they are not taxed.

This actually encourages the flight of capital from Canada. Not only is it deposited in Barbados long enough for companies to avoid paying income tax on it, but if it is reinvested in Mexico or China or some third world country for building a plant there rather than bringing it back to Canada to build a plant or grow a company, it is tax free altogether. This is an absolutely self-defeating policy that shortchanges Canadians and undermines everything we are doing. It makes me furious, frankly, the more that I think about it.

Setting up shop on a sun-kissed island like Barbados really is as simple as creating a post office box and the bare shell of a company. When companies say they are investing their profits in Barbados, we all know that is tongue in cheek. It simply is not true. There may only be four or five employees in the shell company in Barbados, a post office box and a telephone, but as my colleague from the Bloc Québécois, the member for Joliette, just pointed out, $23 billion a year is invested in Barbados in a country of 700,000 people. I do not believe them. I am not calling anybody a liar here, but I do not believe that is a legitimate investment in that country. That is a tax shelter to avoid paying Canadian taxes. It is to our detriment, to our great loss, because we are losing this revenue.

It is completely unfair for a Canadian citizen or a Canadian company to enjoy the benefits of all the things that are good about Canada, but to legally avoid paying their fair share to maintain what we consider a great country and a great place to live. I do not know how they sleep at night.

I know we are not alone. It occurs in the United States. This is a trend that we are copying in the corporate world generally. Capital knows no borders. I also argue that capital has no conscience, but it certainly knows no borders and we are following this negative trend in the United States.

Everybody's favourite company to beat up these days is Enron, which pushed the envelope, I suppose, farther than anybody else. It had 881 dummy tax companies in the Caribbean, Bermuda and Barbados, and they paid no taxes for the last four out of five years until they completely collapsed. People without scruples, morals or ethics will find a way to avoid paying their fair share.

Another more famous Canadian company, Canada Steamship Lines, does not have one company in Barbados; it has 13. There are reasons companies move their money to one Barbados company, then to another and another, all within the same tax haven and tax shelter. Then, as I said, if they move it farther offshore out of Barbados, they avoid paying taxes altogether, because they never repatriate that money into Canada. It never gets reinvested in this country. It is a motivation to keep moving that Canadian money farther and farther away.

This is a real travesty. Those Canadian companies which are availing themselves of this unethical practice are in the company of Tyco and Enron which paved the way for them. The most irritating thing of all is that these companies I accuse of economic treason are still given federal government contracts. We still reward their bad behaviour with contracts.

At least the state of California put its foot down, to its credit. It is way ahead of us here. The state of California has a blacklist of 23 major contractors, such as Ingersoll-Rand and Tyco, major corporations that it refuses to deal with. It refuses to invest in them. It refuses to give contracts to them because they are tax fugitives who refuse to pay their taxes in the United States, but they are still given contracts from the federal government.

Interestingly enough, one company was given the very contract to design a website for the Internal Revenue Service. Accenture received a $1 billion contract to design Internal Revenue Service's website. That company is a tax evader, a tax fugitive which moved all of its company offshore so it does not have to pay American taxes. I wonder if it built into that IRS website a portal through which people who go to that website can funnel their money out of the country so they do not have to pay taxes on it in that country. That is how bad it is getting.

It is similar to inside information. Those guys who meet with the secret handshake in the corporate boardrooms of the nation all know how to do it. They share that information with each other and it is compounding and growing.

It is incumbent upon governments to put in place a tax regime where people pay their fair share of taxes, yet the government has taken no steps to plug this outrageous tax loophole that exists for the Barbados. One would think that while we are debating a bill about tax treaties and havens, we would plug this last remaining egregious tax loophole, because our dollars have wings on them and they are flying out of this country.

Imagine what we could do with the $7 billion in lost revenue that we knowingly and willingly allow to walk out of the country every day. We would not have to pay so much tax if others paid their fair share of taxes.

We keep lowering the corporate tax rate. One could argue the efficacy of that on either side; there are two debates to be made. We knowingly and willingly allow corporate Canada to lower its tax rate to 1% and 2% by sending it to Barbados. Why would we do that? How low do we have to go?

I guess the story we would hear from the Business Council on National Issues is that the only acceptable corporate tax rate is no corporate tax rate and it does not want to participate in paying taxes to build this great nation. That burden falls to the individual taxpayer. It is negligence on the part of the government to knowingly and willingly allow this money to fly out of the country.

There have been $23 billion of investment in Barbados. I have never been to Barbados but I know there is not $23 billion per year worth of construction going on by Canadian companies.

The banks are masters at this game. Of course banks know money. Money is the banks' stock and trade. It is their business. There was some excellent research done which I will recognize and pay tribute to today by Professor Léo-Paul Lauzon at the Université du Québec. He pulled no punches in condemning the big banks for their exploitation of tax havens.

According to an article in the Montreal Gazette , the tax bill for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce would have been roughly $844 million last year, but it dropped to $239 million largely due to the bank's use of tax haven branches. That is $500 million from one of Canada's five chartered banks in lost opportunity to Canadians.

The last time I checked, the banks were not struggling. They are showing record profits from quarter to quarter. Why are we not making them pay their fair share of taxes? Why are we inviting them to abuse the tax system and making us all pay more to struggle to maintain the social services that we value? It is incomprehensible to me. At some point in time while I am here I hope I will be able to--

[Canada Shipping Act, March 11th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, may I first begin by complimenting you on the judicious way you are bringing great credibility to the chair in your performance today. Having said that, I hope you will give me great latitude in the comments I am about to make regarding Bill C-3.

I begin my remarks on behalf of the NDP by paying tribute to the contribution that our critic, the member for Churchill, has made in her tireless efforts to improve Bill C-3 at the committee stage. I also want to recognize the contribution that the NDP member for Sackville—Eastern Shore has made in the context of the Coast Guard and of maritime issues generally and certainly even more pointedly, in the context of shipbuilding which I may come around to within my comments.

I am looking forward to explaining perhaps in a roundabout way the position of the NDP on the bill. We should note the unique nature of the bill. It reverses the choices made in 1994 by the Liberal government when it reversed the changes made to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Transport Canada. This puts me in mind of a number of changes made in the way the country was run during that era.

It was a very prolific era in terms of reform. In the fullness of time and having had the time to look back and review things, most choices made during that period have been catastrophic. They warrant being reversed by this bill, or perhaps some omnibus piece of legislation could be brought in to mop up after the Liberals because of that era.

In the context of debating Bill C-3, it would be negligent not to point out other things that were happening in that same period of time. For instance, that is when the superportfolio was created at Human Resources Development Canada which lumped together an almost impossible shopping basket of portfolios, programs and areas of jurisdiction such as the Canada pension plan, EI, and training. All of those things were lumped into a superportfolio which we learned later was an unmanageable portfolio. Half of the budget of Canada fell under that portfolio because of the breadth and extent of the jurisdiction. We have learned that was a bad idea. It was bad management.

At the same time there was a scheme to unite the OAS and the GIS. It triggered a blue rinse revolution across the country, much like when Brian Mulroney when he was prime minister tried to deindex the pension. Senior citizens across the country rose up and told the government to put the brakes on that one and the government had to reverse it. There were devastating EI cuts during that period of time which we are still reeling from today. We are incrementally putting that program back together after it was systematically dismantled by the Liberal government.

It has taken us a decade of fighting back to finally repair the effect of those early years of the Liberal mandate. In speaking to Bill C-3 we have to be cognizant of the other failed initiatives of that era.

The bill will have real implications on the ground for environmental protection and enforcement. It has given great cause and concern to members of our caucus for that reason. It deals specifically with pleasure craft. We could support the moving of the management of pleasure craft and its environmental enforcement into the ministry of transport on the assurance that the provinces would be properly consulted and properly compensated if enforcement responsibilities flow with this with added costs and expenses.

I raise this because I personally have had negative experiences with the cross-jurisdictional nature of administration of laws dealing with small craft, pleasure craft and small working boats. I will give one graphic illustration to point out some of the pitfalls of what we are going into today with Bill C-3.

Not too long ago there was a very tragic case on Lake Winnipeg. A 19-year-old man was killed at work on a small fishing vessel. It was the young man's first day at work and he was killed on the job. It should be a routine matter that some agency would get involved in a situation like this to investigate what was a workplace accident, to do a proper inquest, to make recommendations so it could never happen again. It would have helped the family bring some closure by having an investigation into this death, other than the police's cursory investigation to make sure there was no foul play and that it was an accident.

Complications arise when dealing with small vessels inland on the freshwater fishery. With the crossover of jurisdiction, nobody has a clue whose job it is to investigate these things. I personally tried to work with workplace safety and health with the province first of all, but I was told it was a federal transportation issue. I went to the federal jurisdiction under the Canada Labour Code, but was told it was not that jurisdiction either. It was not the Coast Guard's jurisdiction. People at the Department of Transport said they could not help.

The family in this case was reeling with shock because nobody wanted to take any responsibility for what was a tragic event of a young 19-year-old boy killed on his first day of work. It was a workplace industrial accident on a fishing boat, which is a workplace; I do not care if the boat is 16 feet long or 60 feet long, it is a workplace. Nobody knew whose jurisdiction it was.

I am drawing this as a parallel because we now contemplate transferring the jurisdiction for all pleasure crafts under this bill. I am pointing out the very real concerns we have about the question of jurisdiction, the complication of jurisdiction, and sometimes the competing interests of jurisdictions. It should be noted that DFO and Transport Canada have completely different priorities, completely different mandates, completely different and sometimes competing agendas.

The room for complication, crossover, lack of clarity and lack of certainty is going to be compounded by what we seek to do here today. With all of these things I am simply saying that any possible conflict between the management of these areas of jurisdiction and the enforcement by the Coast Guard need to be explored thoroughly.

I began by pointing out our general observations about how this is a reversal of work done in 1994. In light of these complications I am addressing today, I can say simply that the bill would have been welcomed in a far more enthusiastic way by the NDP if we had raised the Coast Guard in the context of recognizing the very real need for growing our Coast Guard, for giving our Coast Guard the tools it needs to do an increasingly difficult job and to meet the increasing expectations that we have for our Coast Guard.

Like most of the opposition members present, I expected far more in the federal budget for the Coast Guard than $275 million over five years. This is a paltry recognition of the need. I come from Winnipeg where maritime issues are not always top of mind, but as a Canadian I am well aware that we have the largest coastline of any country in the world. We have a Coast Guard fleet that is not capable of offering any of the services that we expect as a maritime nation. The modernization of the fleet should have been a topic of debate for today if we were serious about reform.

We clearly do not have the ships to meet the needs and the demands of the Coast Guard. Yet, the expectations of our Coast Guard continue to grow.

By way of background, in our involvement and position on the bill, I would like to point out that back in December 12, 2003, the Prime Minister announced that the responsibility for policy on marine security and safety would be centralized under the Ministry of Transport.

To that end, when some parts of marine safety and security were transferred from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to the Department of Transport, these policy responsibilities gave some consternation to anyone involved. It was at that time I first heard the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore sound the alarm that something was brewing.

It was a rather veiled announcement that the Prime Minister made at that time. It was difficult to determine to what extent the Prime Minister would be going. Was this going to involve navigation services, pollution prevention, or other issues like safety and awareness programs? The scope of what was being proposed was not certain until October 8, when the government introduced Bill C-3, an act to amend the Canada Shipping Act.

At that time our member for Churchill, also fully engaged in this issue, sought amendments at committee regarding environmental enforcement. One of our real concerns was, with this shift of enforcement duties, would environmental safety be first and foremost? Would it get primacy, if you will, in our application of these regulations? We were very concerned it was not.

We believe that pollution properly belongs with the Minister of the Environment. The Ministry of the Environment has the tools and the mandate to protect our environment. The Department of Transportation again may be at cross interests, and now, with a new task and a new obligation to enforce environmental integrity, how does that conflict with other aspects of the Ministry of Transportation? These are some of the obvious contradictions that come to mind when we look at what, on paper, looks like a simple administrative transfer of duties and regulations. It is not that simple.

In the field where it matters and on our waterways it is not that simple. We are not sure who we look to. Ship source environmental pollution is a sore point with the government. We know that. The largest environmental fines ever given out in this country were to do with ship source pollution. It was a ship owned by Canada Steamship Lines in Halifax Harbour. This is why I know it is an irritant and the Liberal government would rather downplay it and not make reference to it.

It is a huge problem. With pleasure craft, commercial craft and even military craft from other countries, we find ship source pollution to be a significant worldwide issue that is not satisfactorily addressed. It properly belongs under the environment ministry because it is the Ministry of the Environment that can levy those heavy penalties for ship source pollution.

I am only pointing out some of the reservations made by our critic, the member for Churchill, who at committee valiantly made the case against significant opposition for keeping the environmental aspects for marine pollution protection and prevention with the Ministry of the Environment. Those amendments were ruled out of order.

That is an illustration of the difference between a minority government and a majority government, because at that time in October 2004 there was a majority Liberal government which would not accept common sense amendments. Getting an amendment through at committee six or eight months ago was a very novel thing because of the attitude that the majority will rule in spite of reason and logic.