Pat Martin

[Health Care System, October 30th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to ask some questions of the member for Dartmouth and ask for more specifics about the many ideas she put forward. I believe I understand the gist of most of her comments to mean that it is probably not necessary to look at any new taxation in order to find the revenue we need to backfill the terrible underfunding that has gone in our important social programs such as health care. We need only look at the tax cuts announced recently by the Prime Minister.

I would like her to comment on the fact that in the United States George Bush announced trillions of dollars worth of tax cuts and then 9/11 happened. The country found itself in an emergency situation. Many of those tax cuts, I am sorry, were cancelled. He simply said “We are in an emergency situation. We cannot show this kind of largesse. We have to reverse some of those tax cuts because we have other urgent needs.”

Would she not agree that the health care emergency that exists in this country today would warrant a similar reversal of some of those tax cuts?

[Taxation, October 29th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the Supreme Court in 1999 ruled that fines and penalties can be deductible and since then, businesses have been deducting fines and penalties. The government's own lawyers argued against this. They argued that it is contrary to public policy to allow fines and penalties as tax deductions, but they lost that argument in the Supreme Court. The government did not waste any time cracking down on the disability tax credit. Yet since 1999 it has known that this tax loophole for its buddies exists and has failed to take any action.

I ask the minister again, will the government take action within this tax year to clarify the Income Tax Act so that businesses cannot deduct fines and penalties?

[Taxation, October 29th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I find it outrageous that breaking the law should be tax deductible for any taxpayer, personal or corporate. Yet we continue to allow companies to write off fines as a business expense. Presumably Acres International will be able to write off the fine it just got for bribing the Government of Lesotho.

I ask the government, what possible justification could there be for continuing to allow businesses to deduct fines and penalties as tax write-offs?

[Supply, October 24th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, the member for Don Valley West made reference to the possible impact on jobs. I am glad he raised it. Would the member be interested in knowing that the very people who are most affected by the possible impact on jobs of the implementation of the Kyoto accord would be the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, the third largest private sector union in the country with 150,000 members?

Last week, along with the leader of the NDP, the member for Halifax, I went to its tenth convention in Toronto and it passed a resolution. The resolution stated that Kyoto must be ratified for the sake of the planet. It stated that there was no evidence that Kyoto would lead to layoffs or an economic disaster for Canada, and the CEP demanded a just transition program to ensure any workers who were affected, and communities, would not be left behind.

The hon. member can add that to the list of credible authorities on this subject which are convinced and confirmed. This union is not yielding to the fearmongering that the world will come to an end or life as we know it will end if we implement the Kyoto accord. The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada wants the government to ratify the Kyoto accord.

[Supply, October 24th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Provencher might be interested in hearing a Manitoba government news release as of today, October 24, that Minister Sale, the energy, science and technology minister, and Minister Ashton, the conservation minister, will be in Ontario today meeting with environmental groups and with federal ministers in anticipation of the national meeting that will be undertaken by the Minister of the Environment.

However, what I would like to point out to him is that they are featuring a Energy Probe Research poll done in Manitoba. Mr. Ashton notes that 64% of Manitobans surveyed supported the ratification of Kyoto while 17% were opposed and 21% were undecided. That is a significant number.

In addition, nearly half of the respondents, 49%, fully believe that the Kyoto protocol represents an economic opportunity for Canada, not an economic liability. Therefore, unless an overwhelming number of the 17% live in the hon. member's riding, I would suggest that a lot of people who support Kyoto live in the hon. member's riding.

[Taxation, October 24th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, most Canadians agree that allowing businesses to deduct fines from their income taxes is simply bad public policy. Breaking the law should not be tax deductible and this could be achieved with a simple one line amendment to the Income Tax Act.

Does the Minister of Finance agree that fines and penalties should not be considered business expenses for the purposes of income tax, and will he amend section 18 of the Income Tax Act accordingly?

[Supply, October 24th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, in 1993 I was part of the global climate change task force that toured five different cities across the country. We were dealing with Rio at that time. Those very questions were asked because that was how primitive the debate was at that time. We were at the infancy of the debate and starting to draw attention to climate change. I think the global climate change task force came away satisfied that the issues of climate change and global warming had a secondary impact and that was the air pollution side. There were two parallel tracks.

One of the recommended methodologies by which Canada will meet its Kyoto targets will be to look at the urban transit strategy. The emissions that will be avoided by a rapid transit urban strategy will include, not only CO

2

, but also other poisonous hydrocarbons such as mercury. A number of pollutants will be eliminated as we seek to reduce other greenhouse gas emissions. Poisons will be reduced in concert with the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

I hope that answers some of the hon. member's questions.

[Supply, October 24th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member raising those important issues. I believe the first point she made was that she was heartened to hear people on this side of the House interested in and understanding Kyoto. She went on to say that most Canadians in fact do understand the principles of Kyoto and why it is so important.

What she failed to say and what I will add, it seems that the only people who do not understand or embrace Kyoto are those people sitting on the benches on my side of the House, the members of the Canadian Alliance. When we survey Canadians, they understand. When we survey the other opposition parties, they understand. Therefore there is one very small segment of society, the members of the Canadian Alliance and perhaps the few people they represent who do not.

In the second point the member made, even the oil industry, the industries that will be affected, have recognized that change is necessary and they are willing to embrace change and make the necessary changes without the accompanying fearmongering et cetera. This is not something that people are concerned about to the point that we would believe if we listened to members of the Canadian Alliance.

The point is well taken that Canadians are ready, they embrace change, they understand Kyoto, and the Canadian industry is willing to be innovative and to respond and meet that challenge.

We see Kyoto as an opportunity, not a problem.

[Supply, October 24th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to join this important debate on Kyoto. I thank the official opposition for choosing this as the subject matter today. It gives many of us the opportunity to voice our concerns with Kyoto and to voice our concerns with its position on Kyoto. That is what it boils down to.

I also thank the hon. member for Windsor--St. Clair for sharing his time with me and for using the first 10 minutes of our 20-minute spot to dispel some of the myths that seem to be clouding the debate around Kyoto.

I have said in previous speeches that I think the hon. member for Red Deer must have the toughest job in Canada right now because he is the guy who is trying to explain to Canadians what the Canadian Alliance position is on Kyoto. A couple of years ago the Alliance started out in complete denial. It was the flat earth society saying there was no global warming. It moved on from that position to agree that perhaps there was some global warming but the science surrounding the conclusions was flawed so it still could not accept it. Frankly it has been a moving target ever since. It is difficult for some of us who are interested in the issue to follow where the Alliance is on a day to day basis but I do admire the dance that the member does.

I am here to bring another perspective to the debate. One of the most prevalent myths about Kyoto is that it is going to kill Canadian jobs. Ironically, the third largest private sector union in the country, which is in fact the union dealing with energy workers, the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, at its convention recently very publicly passed a resolution calling upon the federal government to ratify Kyoto. It called for a just transition in case there are jobs affected.

The union itself, as the union representing the very workers who could stand to be affected, is not afraid of Kyoto. In fact it is looking at opportunities stemming from ratifying Kyoto and meeting our commitments under Kyoto. Perhaps that is one more sacred cow to the flat earth people's argument gourd, to mix metaphors.

The just transition movement is gaining momentum. I myself in a previous incarnation as a union leader did some research regarding the members whom I represented in the carpenters union. At one time it was heresy to speak against building more generating stations or more power plants because we wanted those jobs. We were compelled to do some research to separate the myth from the reality.

We found that if we commit ourselves to demand side management instead of supply side management of our energy resources, there is three to seven times the number of person years of employment, in other words, if we could embrace the idea that a unit of energy harvested from the existing system is exactly the same as a unit of energy generated at a generating plant except for a number of important things. For one thing, it creates three to seven times the number of jobs to generate. Also it is available and online immediately instead of borrowing billions of dollars on the open market to build a new nuclear power plant and then waiting seven years for the plant to be built before we get our first unit of energy. The very minute I undertake a conservation measure, that unit of energy is online and available on sale to someone else. Plus, and this is a big plus, if we consider demand side management, we actually reduce the operating costs for the user by 30% to 50%.

Government is a prime consumer of energy. If we embrace energy efficiency, we can reduce our operating costs by 40% thus further mitigating any financial impact we may have appreciated by this change in lifestyle. That is what we are selling here, a change in lifestyle.

The last and most important thing, if we embrace demand side management and energy efficiency, it reduces hundreds of thousands of tonnes, megatonnes of harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

That is the difference between harvesting a unit of energy from the existing system through demand side management measures and generating a new unit of energy, whether it be in the tar sands, the coal mines, the oil wells or even a hydroelectric unit of energy which is cleaner but still has an environmental impact.

We have to get our minds around those things as we move from the most consumptive energy users in the world to efficiency. Canada uses more energy per capita than any other country in the world. I think Kyoto is doing us a favour because it is driving us toward efficiency.

How many people in the House of Commons have an energy efficient shower head in their bathroom? For $12 we can buy an energy efficient shower head and it will save $190 a year. That is the figure the hon. member for Windsor West cited; I have heard $75 a year in energy costs for a $12 purchase. We all know that if we put $12 down, we save $75 a year. Not every Canadian has one of those shower units in their washrooms yet. They should have. Maybe by our debating this in the House of Commons today, more will.

Something as simple as a computerized thermostat on the wall of our home will automatically turn down the temperature at night to a comfortable 18 or 19 degrees. In case we forget to turn down the thermostat at night when we go to bed, it does it automatically. It can save $300 a year and it costs $30 to install.

We can extrapolate that logic in the whole public works and government services regime in view of the fact that we own 68,000 buildings in this country. I hope this debate today and our ratifying Kyoto will finally motivate the government to seriously undertake an energy retrofit of all the federally owned buildings as a pilot project. It could be a demonstration project to show the private sector what can be done and to dispel even further the fearmongering that exists around Kyoto.

We should embrace Kyoto. We are being pushed in a direction we should be going in voluntarily. We have waited a little too long and now we have to do it. For a while it was a good idea. Now it is an essential idea.

We have already heard in today's speeches and we will probably hear again later today about the thousands of jobs lost, et cetera. The very workers who stand to be affected are members of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union. I was at the convention in Toronto when it passed a resolution. I can even read the resolution if time permits. It calls on government to ratify Kyoto and calls upon government to meet the Kyoto targets. Those workers are not afraid of this, so why should we be afraid?

I represented the carpenters union. Those workers are no longer afraid of the idea of greening. They recognize there is more job creation potential in green technology than there is in the old smokestack industries of building more and more generating stations. That is not even taking into consideration the valid point made by the member for Windsor--St. Clair.

There is also the idea that we could be developing the technology here and marketing it around the world. We could be a centre of excellence for energy efficiency. What more appropriate country in the world to become a centre of excellence for energy efficiency than the most energy consumptive country in the world in a cold northern climate?

We can meet our Kyoto targets without freezing in the dark. We can meet our Kyoto targets without costing thousands of jobs. We believe that if we do embrace Kyoto, we are opening a new door to a whole new era for Canadian workers, because we are only just beginning to explore the wonderful energy efficient ideas that are out there.

Already Canada produces the best windows in the world. We export triple pane windows with argon gas sealed units that are state of the art, the best in the world. We have only scratched the surface of those industries. We also have some of the best thermostat control units in the world. We export them around the world. Those are just the very beginning. I repeat that there is as many as seven times the person years of employment in demand side management and energy efficiency as there is in supply side management or the generating of units of energy through generating stations.

The workers involved and their unions and representatives are not afraid of Kyoto. Why are we hearing from the Canadian Alliance and some of the opponents to Kyoto that they are afraid we will lose thousands of jobs. If we were progressive and looking forward, we would embrace this opportunity to move into a whole new era of energy efficiency in the country.

[Canada Business Corporations Act, October 24th, 2002]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-254, an act to amend the Canada Business Corporations Act

Mr. Speaker, the bill seeks to amend in a minor way the Canada Business Corporations Act. It would require auditors in their annual financial statements to a company to divulge if they are selling any other non-audit services to the same company. It would add a requirement to the auditing firm to divulge to shareholders if they are also selling other financial services and therefore possibly be in a conflict of interest.

It is a consumer issue, and that shareholders have a right to know if this practice is in fact taking place in the companies where they invest.

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