Pat Martin

[Supply, February 24th, 2004]

moved:

That, in the opinion of this House, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Review Board should be guided by ethical investment policies which would ensure that our pension investments are socially responsible and do not support companies or enterprises that manufacture or trade in military arms and weapons, have records of poor labour practices, contribute to environmental degradation, or whose conduct, practices or activities are similarly contrary to Canadian values.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the House for the opportunity to raise what my party believes to be a pressing national issue, an issue that is very much top of the mind with many Canadians, especially at this time of year when they are making their choices about where to invest their RRSPs.

I believe that many Canadians take the time to ensure that the money they put away for their retirement is used ethically, through investments, for instance, that do not harm people or the environment. However, the Canadian government has no such scruples.

This year, $2.5 billion in Canada pension plan funds were invested in corporations that manufacture the world's deadliest weapons, including missile launchers, incendiary bombs, battle tanks, high tech fighter aircraft, anti-personnel cluster munitions, warships, and even landmines. Many of these were used in the U.S.-led war in Iraq. The Canadian government has conscripted us into war profiteering whether we like it or not by investing in what we call the merchants of death.

In order for this to change, the mandate of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board must also change. Profit is currently the sole criteria for determining investments. It is our goal as the NDP caucus to inject an ethical screen and socially responsible requirements into that pattern.

I should point out by way of introduction what the current policy is for the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. It speaks specifically to the call for ethical investments. The board's website states:

Our legislation specifically prohibits us from engaging in any investment activities other than maximizing investment returns without undue risk of loss.

This policy--and I should point out that it is a policy rather than legislation--further states that the board, and I quote:

will not accept or reject investments based on non-investment criteria.

I will go through the point that we are raising, which is that we do not have to sacrifice profitability to introduce ethics into our investment strategy. The empirical evidence is clear that having an ethical investment screen on our investment strategy does not in and of itself compromise profitability. In fact, I will point out examples where ethical investment plans and funds outperform conventional free and open indexes on the open equities stock market.

Let us talk about what we mean by ethical investment, because I believe there is a great deal of misunderstanding about this. What we are talking about is socially responsible investing. Ethical investment funds can be implemented using either positive or negative screens. A positive screen would seek out companies that fulfill certain environmental, ethical or social objectives. A negative screen would exclude companies that violate these same standards. Some common negative screens that are mentioned in many of the ethical investment plans include barring the purchase of shares involving tobacco, the creation of pornography, which I feel particularly strongly about, and military production.

Some of the negative screens we are asking to have introduced would prohibit investment in tobacco, military production, any activities which violate human rights, or those that involve environmental degradation.

Key and paramount among what we believe to be these practices that Canadians would object to our investing in is the production of pornography. There is no limit or restriction on the current Canada pension plan investing in the legal creation of adult pornography even though most Canadians would not want their Canada pension plan money invested in this, no matter how profitable it may be.

An ethical investment plan rewards companies that operate in a certain way and provides a carrot to firms that do not meet these criteria and urges them to improve their behaviour to the highest standard.

As a result, society benefits from firms acting, for example, in an environmentally friendly way. We would not advocate that our investment strategy avoids industry sectors all together, such as logging, on the basis that it may not be environmentally friendly. We would argue that we should selectively invest in companies that have environmental practices so that we invest in those companies that have the best practices in that sector and therefore urge other companies to also adopt that high standard of ethical and environmental accountability.

In comparing rates of return, the most common and frequently used argument when we raise this issue is that we will be sacrificing rate of return and therefore somehow compromising the retirement security of pensioners.

There is no clear cut evidence that funds invested ethically always perform better or worse than funds invested according to normal market principles. The results depend on the index or the fund that is being looked at and the time period in question.

I have examples both ways that I would like to go through. One example in the United States is the Domini 400 Social Index which was created in 1989. It has qualitative screens on the Standard & Poor's 500 index of companies and then added certain other companies.

Since 1989 the Domini 400 ethical investment fund has generally outperformed the Standard and Poor's 500 by a small margin. In recent years it has lagged slightly in back of the Standard and Poor's index, but over a 10 year study it has in fact ended up 1.1% higher in performance than an index that has no other governing objectives in its investment strategy.

A similar trend can be seen in a like-minded Canadian index, the Jantzi Social Index. This index invokes different screens than the Domini index and uses as its starting point the Standard & Poor's TSE 60. Using recent data the Jantzi outperformed throughout the mid and late 1990s and since June 2001 it has generally under performed the wider market. However, on a 10 year average it ends up approximately 1% higher than the other indexes.

What seems clear from these two examples is that ethical funds do not chronically underperform more market oriented funds. In fact, we can have our cake and eat it too. We can invest ethically in a way that does not compromise the values of Canadians and does not offend Canadians, and still receive a good rate of return to our investment.

The current record has not been all that sterling with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board since it was created in 1997. It hemorrhaged money. Even with its generous guidelines that have no limits on it whatsoever, it lost billions of dollars. We could have done better by playing pin the tail on the donkey in choosing stocks to invest our hard earned pension money. It rolled the dice and gambled, and it did it badly.

I do not think we should hear too much high flown talk about the downfall of ethical investment when the experience without any ethical guidelines has been abysmal, frankly. We said “Here's $20 billion. Don't lose it”, and it went out and lost about $4 billion. We would have been better off digging a hole and putting that money in the ground. At least we would still have the principal. We would not have lost it.

Our arguments for ethical investment could not have done worse than the current experience with the 12 person Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

Let us talk about the fiduciary obligations of trustees of any pension plan. I was a trustee of a union health and welfare benefit plan. I know the limitations. However, we could craft the trust document to allow as many ethical investment funds and allow for other considerations to be factored into the investment strategy other than simply maximizing the rate of return.

If we only wanted the maximum possible profit, we could be making porn movies because one can make a 60% and 70% profit making pornography. We could be selling landmines more than any other activity because landmines and armaments are very profitable. We argue that there are better things that can be done with our money.

We believe that the fiduciary obligations, as contemplated in the trust document of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, could be amended or modified to allow that an investment in a positive rate of return does not have to compete with the best rate of return. In other words, an adequate or reasonable rate of return should be the language that we should be using in order to take into consideration other issues.

The Ontario public service employees union, OPSEU, pension trust fund is a large jointly trusteed pension plan. It stipulates that a reasonable rate of return is the target. That gives it the latitude in its plan to either achieve other secondary goals for which it may wish to use some of its investment strategy or to ensure that it is investing in a selective way that does not offend the sensibilities or the values of the participants in its plan.

Another major investment house dealing with pension plans is the hospitals of Ontario pension plan, HOOPP, which has invested according to four major ethical screens. The president of that plan, Mr. Ed Baker, noted that in order to meet the actuarial assumptions, the plan did not need the biggest returns. He stated that what was needed was a return that was reasonable and invested in a socially responsible manner. Socially responsible are the operative words here.

There is little support for the theory that ethical investments necessarily yield a lower rate of return. I have a list of some 120 ethical investment funds that I can cite that are outperforming on the open market other plans that have no such ethical guidelines attached to them.

In Canada the only evidence about social investment and the rate of return is anecdotal at best. In the United States there is some systematic research related to social investment strategies. In a comprehensive review of the U.S. literature on pension fund activism, there is no substantial effect to having ethical guidelines or ethical screens compared to having none at all.

In Canada the anecdotal evidence states that ethical investments are above average performers compared to mutual funds. For example, the social investment organization has reported that the ethical growth fund with a screened portfolio has performed as well or better than non-screened mutual funds, with an average annual compounded rate of return over 10 years of 12.5%. Over the same period, the ethical growth fund outstripped the TSE 300 by 1.1%. However, given the interest in the issue, there is little systematic research. Much of this is anecdotal.

The issue has been treated completely unfairly by the media of late. There have been two editorials, one in the Ottawa Citizen and one in the Vancouver Province , that hastily did away with any idea that we should have any ethical guidelines involved in our investment strategy at all. They were not only badly researched, but they were out and out rude toward those who felt strongly about this issue, calling people who believed in ethical investment silly socialists.

I represent a large group of Mennonites in my riding. They feel strongly about the fact that they do not like to have part of their income tax used to invest in the military. Some of them withhold a certain percentage of their income taxes per year, about 2%, because they believe 2% of the GDP or tax revenue goes toward the military. That is how strongly they feel about it. For these newspaper articles to accuse those well-meaning Christians of being silly socialists because they do not want their investment dollars being spent on landmines is ignorant on the part of the newspapers. They would not even entertain the general argument in any realistic way.

We should look at other ethical investment funds for direction because many are doing it very well. The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec invests over $120 billion for a number of Quebec pension plans and the Quebec pension plan. It uses its investments for other strategic secondary goals other than simply the maximum rate of return. Again, a reasonable and acceptable rate of return is language that is used in many of these plans, but they are not bound by a trust document that so clearly limits the use of this massive fund.

People would question whether we should be investing our Canada pension plan in the equities market at all. We now have $30.6 billion in equities and real estate and about $34 billion invested in bonds and other secure investments.

Should we be rolling the dice with our pension plan? We believe that there are other secondary goals for which we could use this pot of money. For instance, lending money to municipalities for infrastructure programs or rapid transit at a stable but lower rate of return would achieve other secondary goals with our investment strategy.

The parliamentary leader for the NDP wrote a letter to the Minister of Finance on December 15 of last year, just three days after he was sworn in, to raise this very issue with him. He wrote that Lockheed Martin, along with Raytheon, General Electric, General Dynamic, Carlisle and two other American corporations that benefit from significant Canada pension plan investments were all complicit in the production of anti-personnel landmines for the U.S. military.

He said that Canada pension plan investments in these corporations contravened the convention on the prohibition of use, stockpiling, transfer and production of anti-personnel landmines and section 1 of that convention, which was ratified by Canada. It started here with the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lloyd Axworthy, and others on the Liberal benches who initiated this laudable international goal to eradicate the world from landmines.

Our leader further stated that subsection 1(c) of article 1 of this treaty signed by Canada in Ottawa on December 3, 1997, the very same year that the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board started investing in landmines, stated that, “each state party undertakes never under any circumstances to assist, encourage or induce in any way anyone to engage in any activity prohibited to a state party under this convention”.

This is strong language. No wiggle room whatsoever; it was ratified by Canada on December 3, 1997, the very same year that the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board began investing in these obnoxious anti-personnel landmines. He went on:

He went on to say that they were not allowed to develop, produce or otherwise acquire anti-personnel landmines. The Canada pension plan investments, our parliamentary leader argued, were therefore made in companies engaged in business that was unlawful in this country and these contraventions were unacceptable. He therefore urged the Minister of Finance to halt the investment of CPP funds in any corporations that developed or produced anti-personnel landmines.

My motion today goes farther than that. Obviously, this turns heads because it is so reprehensible to even think it. The motion that I introduced today on behalf of the New Democratic Party goes further than just barring investment in merchants of death. It states that:

...the Canada Pension Plan Investment Review Board should be guided by ethical investment policies which would ensure that our pension investments are socially responsible and do not support companies or enterprises that manufacture or trade in military arms and weapons, have records of poor labour practices, contribute to environmental degradation, or whose conduct, practices or activities are similarly contrary to Canadian values.

I believe there is broad cross-party support and national support for such ethical guidelines for our Canada pension plan.

[Contraventions Act, February 23rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to enter into the debate on Bill C-10 on behalf of the NDP caucus.

I wish to pay tribute to the work done by the NDP's social policy critic, the member for Vancouver East, who has dedicated a great deal of energy and resources to this issue. She has tried, as is her way, to introduce a voice of reason into a highly charged and emotional debate about the decriminalization of marijuana. Her contribution has been noted by other speakers in the House and I too would like to acknowledge the good work she has done on the bill.

It was during the previous session of Parliament that Bill C-38 was examined by the special committee for the non-medical use of drugs and was amended. Throughout the committee process, the member for Vancouver East and the NDP pushed for a number of changes. We did get some movement from the government on certain aspects of the bill. When Parliament was suspended in November and the new session commenced, Bill C-38 became Bill C-10 and is now up for debate in the House today.

There is a lot of misunderstanding about this bill and about the government's effort. On September 30, 2002, the Speech from the Throne indicated that the federal government would consider the possibility of the decriminalization of marijuana possession. This piqued the interest of a great deal of people across the country. Many of us believe that it is a waste of time and resources to lock up a whole generation for the simple possession of marijuana.

Many of us are reminded by our own youth when we learned that places like Texas were locking people up for 30 years for simple possession of small amounts of marijuana. There are still people in Texas jails serving the remainder of 30 year sentences that they received in the 1970s for marijuana possession. Our belief is that this is absolute folly.

We should be clear though that what was introduced in the Speech from the Throne was never passed because by May 2003 a government backgrounder on the bill stated that:

Under the proposals included in the bill, cannabis possession and production will remain illegal in Canada under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. What will change is the approach to enforcement.

The justice minister at the time made a public statement. He said:

--you say I'm saying it's not decriminalization. It has never been decriminalization.

Let us not let the Liberal government mislead people to think that the bill is about the decriminalization of marijuana. It is not and it never has been. What has been introduced under the bill is a fine regimen for simple possession under 15 grams.

Our problem with that approach is that, if enacted, the bill may lead to increased prosecutions and increased waste of resources by having this mandatory fine system and having fewer people charged criminally. The reason being is that quite often police let people go for a simple possession of under 15 grams because it would tie up the courts.

That would now be eliminated. Those people would now be fined. Criminologists have found that lowering, but not eliminating a punishment, results in more punishment. Among criminologists, it is called the net widening effect.

Individuals charged with fines and the people the police would normally have let off with a warning and a wave under the old system will instead be guaranteed to be hit with a fine. In other words, decriminalization in this formula could lead to more people being punished, not fewer. The Ottawa Citizen on May 28, 2003 stated:

A cutting-edge plan--if this was 1968: Replacing the criminal charge for possession with a fine will change little, or nothing at all.

What did the federal NDP push for? Our member for Vancouver East was very active in the committee and she pushed for the amnesty provisions that past charges or convictions for simple possession of marijuana should be erased. A pardon does not go far enough. We said that it should go back as far as records were kept.

I still have people who have difficulty travelling to the United States because on their permanent record they have a simple possession from back in 1970. If they answer honestly at the border if they have ever been convicted of an offence and they cite their simple possession charge in 1970, they run into difficulties.

We made suggestions that the records of people who received a fine for simple possession and/or cultivation for personal use would be sealed and not shared with Interpol or other foreign jurisdictions. That is a sensible thing that the NDP member for Vancouver East pushed for at committee and we are happy that the government side did accept it. This is truly something to celebrate.

I also wish to recognize the member for Burlington and her efforts on the committee and her willingness to work toward a reasonable resolution to some of these issues.

Under the non-commercial transfer of marijuana, simply giving marijuana for no money, in other words passing a joint, would be technically trafficking. When someone says “Pass that joint over to me”, technically the person who passes it may be guilty of trafficking.

Bill C-10 should be amended so that the non-commercial transfers of up to 30 grams of marijuana would not be considered trafficking. We pushed for that idea.

Under reasonable grounds for searches, changes should be made to the provisions which are required for police to obtain a search warrant to enter a person's home. Currently, under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act suspicion that an illicit drug of any amount in a home is enough for a warrant to be issued.

The bill should include new provisions that are more consistent with decriminalization. The bill should be amended to require that police demonstrate reasonable grounds to believe that an amount of marijuana in the home would exceed 30 grams or that trafficking is in fact taking place in order to receive a search warrant.

Under fines, the NDP proposed that we eliminate the proposed fine for possession of up to 30 grams of marijuana. That was our base line position. Our member for Vancouver East argued that as aggressively as she could.

Under personal cultivation, non-punitive provisions for personal cultivation should have been included in the bill allowing for the personal cultivation of up to five plants. This has always been an irritant to any reasonable person in the country, that something that grows wild in the ditches could be a criminal matter if it is grown in their home.

The NDP did succeed on some issues. Throughout the committee stage, the two primary issues the NDP pushed for were ensuring that information on people who received fines for personal possession would be kept sealed and not shared. We are pleased that is the case today and that the laws would be amended to allow for the cultivation of small amounts of marijuana for personal use. We did get some improvements in these two areas.

The committee amended the bill to prohibit the disclosure of information on people who had a fine for simple possession. That is a very important measure because it would prevent law enforcement agencies in Canada from sharing that information with other countries. The U.S., in particular, often prohibits people from crossing the border if they have marijuana related charges or convictions.

Although the federal NDP pushed for amendments to allow personal cultivation of up to five plants, the Liberal dominated committee chose to set the maximum at three and it still supported imposing a fine. However, rather than the risk of jail time, those found with up to three marijuana plants would face a $500 fine. This is not satisfactory.

The NDP believes strongly that the bill needs to contain amnesty provisions for people who currently have criminal records for simple possession. Let us put a retroactivity measure in the bill, which we should have had, to correct an historic injustice and an historic wrong.

If simple possession of marijuana no longer risks a criminal charge, those who now have a record for a similar conduct should be entitled to amnesty. We feel very strongly on this point.

We had hoped that Bill C-10, or Bill C-38, would be a first step in recognizing the harms associated with a prohibitionist policy toward marijuana.

However, the new Minister of Justice has not given any indication that he supports further changes in this direction, leaving intact the myth that the criminal law can resolve problems relating to the use of drugs. We disagree and we feel it is sad that we could not get more of our amendments put through.

[Adverse Drug Reactions, February 20th, 2004]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased on behalf of the NDP to join in on the debate on the motion put forward by the member for Yellowhead. I thank him for recognizing that a very similar motion was put forward in the first session of the 37th Parliament by the NDP health critic, the member for Winnipeg North Centre.

We certainly share the hon. member's very real concern over this issue. We recognize that the motion tries to address a question of health of very real and timely pertinence to all Canadians. It seeks to ensure that the medications that people are required to take because of illness are in fact safe beyond a reasonable doubt.

The motion is very simple and very straightforward, as the best motions often are. It calls upon the government, in cooperation with the provincial and territorial governments I should add, to put in place a system of mandatory reporting of adverse drug reactions.

Many of us were shocked to learn in investigating this issue that it is estimated that approximately 10,000 people a year die of adverse drug reactions in Canada. I do not think any of us are naive enough to think that by putting this registry in place we would prevent all 10,000 deaths per year, but it is safe to say that we could prevent a significant number of them if we took proactive, concrete steps to introduce a systematic way of sharing the information on adverse reactions.

Like so many things, I think a lot of Canadians believe that such a system is already in place in Canada. Many would be surprised to learn what a disorderly system is currently in place.

I should back up for a second and point out that Health Canada started to keep track of adverse reactions of drugs in the 1960s. The database was set up after women who had been taking the drug thalidomide gave birth to babies with serious birth defects, as many of us of the right age will remember. Health officials worldwide had noticed the problem too late, tragically. They vowed collectively it would never happen again. A database was put together and was started in this country, but researchers have been having a difficult time finding out what is in that database, how it is structured and how that information is in fact used.

When we did finally get to the bottom of it in researching this database, we found that there are 162,000 records of Canadians who have had a bad reaction to prescription drugs. Data in and of itself is meaningless until it can be analyzed and shared and used. This stockpile of incidents is not satisfactory in terms of having a mandatory adverse reaction registry that can be shared and can be accessed by all doctors and pharmacists.

One of the things that really turned a lot of heads when this research was done was that the number of adverse reactions among Canadians has absolutely skyrocketed in recent years. Among children in the last five years the number of serious incidents has tripled. That in and of itself should motivate Parliament to take action.

Again, I compliment the member for Yellowhead for being the one to champion this issue in the House of Commons because I was shocked to learn that Health Canada obviously is missing some of these vital signals.

One of the reasons the rate of adverse reactions in children has tripled and is growing much more quickly than in adults is that often there is off-label use of the drugs and the drugs were never tested on children. They were not really designed and meant for children.

A ridiculous example is that Viagra is being given to children who have serious lung problems to open up the cardiovascular capacity in their lungs. It was never intended for that use.

Pediatricians are in fact using drugs, what is called off-label use of drugs, more and more and there have been serious incidents of adverse reactions. The number of incidents has tripled over the last five years. We need no other reasons frankly, but if that were the only reason to introduce the mandatory adverse reaction registry, it would be enough for me to hold up my hand to vote for its introduction right away.

For many of us the issue crystallized when we learned of the well-publicized death of a young girl in Oakville, Ontario, Vanessa Young. She was 15 years old. She died because the drug she was prescribed, Prepulsid, was prescribed for the wrong circumstances. By all accounts this was a preventable death. Her father, Terence Young, to whom we should pay tribute, has carried on a mission since his daughter's passing to ensure that we as a society learn a valuable lesson from Vanessa's death. Surely that should compel us to take action today; that father's suffering and that family's suffering for an unnecessary and preventable death of a young Canadian girl, what more reason do we need.

We certainly became much more aware of the problems associated with adverse drug reactions and the absence of any substantive policy in this area as a result of Vanessa's death. We owe it to her to ensure that her death was not in vain, that we learn lessons from this tragedy. We must ensure that people in similar circumstances are not affected by something that is so preventable, so easy to grasp and so relatively easy to implement, in fact. We are not looking at a huge cost factor, as the mover of the motion pointed out.

At that time, the member for Winnipeg North Centre, the NDP health critic, raised with the House of Commons that Health Canada had information that it could have shared and acted upon many months before the death of Vanessa Young, but it failed to do so. It was not compelled to do so. The information was housed in a warehouse of information with 162,000 incidents. It did not constitute a database; it constituted a pile of information, essentially. There was no easy way for pediatricians, family doctors or pharmacists to research recent experience with certain pharmaceutical products.

The point of today's debate is not to lay blame but to find solutions. As a result of Vanessa's death, there was a coroner's inquest. The jury made a number of recommendations. One was the mandatory reporting of adverse drug reactions within 48 hours of the incident taking place. That seems to be a very reasonable solution to a very serious problem and one for which there is no reason to delay and no reason to avoid action.

I was disappointed to hear the rather vapid approach by the parliamentary secretary on the government side who spoke to this issue. I honestly thought that we would hear a more enthusiastic approach. What would be wrong for the Liberal government to stand up and say to the member for Yellowhead that he is right, that we should do something about this? The Liberals would not lose any political points for admitting that this is a shortfall in our health care system. They would gain political points for leaving their political baggage at the door for once in their lives and for doing what was right for Canadians in this regard.

I welcome the opportunity to throw my enthusiastic support behind the member for Yellowhead on this initiative, and the support of the entire, massive NDP caucus, as many votes as we can muster. We will be voting in favour of this initiative.

It is a pleasure to end the week on a note of doing something that would be good for Canadians were this motion allowed to go through to its natural conclusion.

[Petitions, February 20th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to present a petition today containing the names of thousands of residents of mostly Manitoba.

The petitioners wish to draw the attention of the House to the fact that trans fatty acids, or hydrogenated vegetable oils, are deadly manufactured fats which cause obesity, heart disease, and diabetes, all of which are on the rise in Canada. They point out that these trans fats not only raise the level of bad cholesterol, but they prevent the good cholesterol from clearing the circulatory system. Just one gram per day of trans fat can increase the risk of heart disease by 20%, although Canadians are eating 10 to 30 grams of this toxic poison per day. The petitioners also point out that the Liberal government's labelling program will not prevent Canadians from eating this toxic poison.

The petitioners call upon Parliament to eliminate trans fats from Canada's food supply.

[Income Tax Act, February 20th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, for four years now, with the futility of Diogenes, I have asked the government to put an end to the outrageous tax loophole where companies can write off their fines and penalties as a business expense.

It adds insult to injury to consider that thieving Liberal communication firms will now be able to avail themselves of this public policy perversity.

The government could put an end to this mockery of justice with one simple sentence added to the Income Tax Act. Why will it not do the right thing before the sponsorship scoundrels thumb their noses at us again and write off their fines as a business expense?

[Taxation, February 13th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, all Canadians hope that these crooked Liberal advertising firms will be prosecuted and fined to the fullest extent of the law. However, happily for them, Canada is the only country in the free world that allows businesses to deduct their fines from their income tax. The Liberals have consistently refused to plug this outrageous tax loophole.

I ask the new Minister of Finance, will he change the Income Tax Act so that not another tax season goes by where breaking the law is tax deductible?

[Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, February 9th, 2004]

moved, seconded by the member for Hamilton East,for leave to introduce Bill C-474, An Act to amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (unpaid wages to rank first in priority in distribution).

Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour for me to rise today to introduce and give first reading to a private member's bill that seeks to amend the bankruptcy act so that in the event of a bankruptcy, any unpaid wages, benefits or pension contributions would rank as the first priority in dividing the assets of a bankrupt company.

I am especially pleased to acknowledge and thank my co-sponsor, the member for Hamilton East, for the dedication and commitment that she has shown to workers' rights and especially for the political courage she has shown in leaving her partisan politics at the door and doing what is right on behalf of working people in this case.

I am optimistic that if my colleagues from all parties are free to vote their conscience on the bill, they will do the right thing and put the interests of hard-working Canadians first, ahead of the banks and other secured creditors.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Steel Industry, February 9th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, that is enough to make anybody furious, especially people in Hamilton. That is the same kind of could not care less attitude we saw during the SARS crisis: that it has not done anything because no one has asked yet.

If Hamilton steelworkers want help, maybe they should fold their pink slips into little paper dolls, because that clearly gets the Prime Minister's interest.

Jack Layton, the leader of the NDP, asked a simple question and I will ask it again. Which comes first, Stelco or keeping CSL all in the family?

[Steel Industry, February 9th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, Stelco Steel in Hamilton is in crisis. In fact, the whole Canadian steel industry is in crisis.

As finance minister, the Prime Minister could not get involved in steel tariff issues because he owned a shipping corporation. People are wondering why he is AWOL on the Stelco file.

Ship to shore, where's our Prime Minister?

Will the Prime Minister personally intervene to help our steel industry, or do his corporate ties get in the way?

[Food and Drugs Act, February 6th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I believe that Canadians deserve to know what is in the food they eat. While I agree that a healthy diet is more a matter of education and individual choice than it is the heavy hand of state regulation and control, the government does have a role to play in ensuring that the food we eat is safe.

For instance, we now know that trans fats, hydrogenated vegetable oils, are really bad for us, yet they are nearly everywhere in the processed foods that we eat. The New England Journal of Medicine states that just one gram a day of trans fats increases the risk of heart disease by 20%. The average Canadian eats over ten grams per day. The recommended daily intake, by the way, is zero.

But when I asked this Minister of Health and the previous minister what steps were being taken to eliminate trans fats from our diet, their replies suggested that the government is not willing to do anything to eliminate this toxic garbage from our food, and “toxic” is the terminology used by the food scientists with regard to trans fats. The government is not willing to do anything to remove these toxins from our food as long as the food is properly labelled.

In other words, our Minister of Health is leaving it up to Canadians as to whether or not to feed poison to their children. Furthermore, our Minister of Health is giving the food companies up to five years to rewrite their labels and, amazingly--get this--baby food is exempt. I am sure the House will be shocked to learn that baby food will not in fact be labelled at all even though there are high contents of trans fats in baby food.

My problem with labelling as it pertains to the context of this particular private member's bill is that most people do not read the labels on the processed food that they eat. In fact, studies have shown that 70% of people pay no attention to the labels on the processed food they buy. Of the remaining 30%, many would not or could not comprehend the technical data that they read in the fine print. In other words, labels have no editorial content. Labels simply say that this product contains x amount of trans fats. They do not say, “And that's too much, so don't eat it”.

It is ludicrous, by the way, to think that we should mandate labelling on food to advise people not to eat it because it is poisonous, or in other words, allow the manufacturers to put toxins in our food and then mandate labelling to educate Canadians to not eat this food. It is simply ludicrous, really, when we think about it.

I raise this issue partly because I believe there is a class issue here. I believe that low income people are more vulnerable to this trans fats hazard to our health than anyone else. Frankly, in my opinion, and I represent a low income riding, it takes a fair amount of economic stability and economic security to eat properly and to eat well. Many of the people in my riding do not have a car to use to drive out to a supermarket where they can buy large amounts of whole foods and unprocessed foods. They end up spending their low incomes in corner stores and 7-Elevens and buying more pre-packaged and processed foods because their economic instability leads to an unstable household where a balanced diet and regular meals are not the norm.

I believe for all these reasons that high-flown arguments about informed choice are irrelevant in the context of labelling foods. Yes, people should be aware of the nutritional value of the foods they eat, but not everyone is able to make an informed choice no matter what kind of labelling is on the side of packages.

Other countries have effectively banned trans fats from their food supply. There are healthy alternate choices that do not compromise either quality or taste. I believe it is the role of government to tell the industry to stop using trans fats. In fact, I will go further. It is the role of government to help the industry stop using trans fats. I would fully support the government using research and development grants to assist the food processing industry to find other healthy choices. I would welcome that. There would be no criticism from this sector of the House if some of the technology partnership loans money were used, or research and development grants were used, or if the National Research Council were asked to assist industry in a special project to develop alternative sources of fats and oils for food manufacturers to use.

In fact, that would have been a sensible answer to the question I asked in question period today. I was stonewalled by the current Minister of Health. He simply said that mandatory labelling would be enough and that we should not be concerned. I do not accept that. I think that we now know enough about trans fatty acids: they should not be labelled, they should be eliminated.

Denmark has taken steps to do just that. We cannot ban trans fats outright. I will be the first to admit that. There is some naturally occurring trans fat, especially in dairy products. What Denmark did, and what I recommend Canada do, is regulate the amount of allowable trans fats in foods to no more than 2% of the total amount of fat in that food product. The scientists agree that this would represent a trace level of trans fats that would likely simply pass through the body and would not represent a real health risk.

We know that these trans fatty acids are extremely bad for us, especially for our children. They are forcing up Canada's rate of obesity, which is virtually epidemic in the current generation. We have record levels of diabetes, traced directly to trans fats, and as I said, heart disease is up exponentially. The New England Journal of Medicine says it believes that trans fats are even a contributing factor in Alzheimer's disease as well.

So get rid of them, right? That is the logical thing to do, but again, the frustrating thing in my mind is that when I have approached the government, two successive ministers of health have refused to even contemplate regulating and getting rid of them. The only thing that my staff and I can think of as a reason why the government would be reluctant to ban them is that it is worried about a NAFTA challenge. It is worried about chapter 11 of NAFTA. The Government of Canada could be sued by a corporation for lost opportunity if we pass regulations that may affect doing business. I would hate to think that would be the determining factor.

The other factor, of course, is our Constitution. Not many people realize that margarine is a constitutional issue, but if they look at the British North America Act, they will see that Canada must be the only country in the world that has two paragraphs dedicated to oleo margarine in our Constitution, due to John Crosbie and his family and the terms of union for Newfoundland joining Confederation, but that is another story.

Walter Willett, the chairman of the Department of Nutrition of Harvard University and the author of some of the most damning studies about trans fats, has said that hydrogenated vegetable oil, the process by which trans fats are created, is the biggest food processing disaster in history. Harvard University estimates that 33,000 deaths per year can be directly attributed to trans fats.

Trans fats are the biggest single public health issue since the war on tobacco, yet we are not taking it seriously and it can be solved with the snap of a finger at no cost. At no cost, the government could protect the well-being of a whole future generation of Canadians by eliminating trans fats.

We do have Voortman cookies. I want to take a minute to compliment the industry on the efforts it is making too, because no one argues the fact these trans fats are silent killers. Not a single food scientist in North America or in the world, in fact, argues that. Even the industry is not denying that these are silent killers.

Voortman Cookies produces 120 product lines. As of March 2004 every one of the Voortman Cookies product lines will be trans fat free. Mr. Voortman's daughter is a food scientist and, to her great credit and his great credit, she lobbied him and he agreed that he would eliminate trans fats. It took him three years to find an alternative that does not affect quality or taste, but he found it and he is implementing it in his product line.

We want all products manufactured in Canada to be trans fat free. We also want all products imported to Canada for sale to consumers to be trans fat free. We also want restaurant foods to be trans fat free. The only way to do that is to regulate it so that no one can sell any product to any consumer that contains more than 2% of total volume of fats as trans fats. That is the subject here.

While I acknowledge that the original intent here is that Canadians deserve to know what is in the food they eat, my view is that labelling is inadequate when we are dealing with a known toxin. It is not okay to put poison in our food as long it is properly labelled. That is crazy, frankly.