Pat Martin

[Labour Market Training Act, February 2nd, 2001]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-204, an act to provide for the establishment of national standards for labour market training, apprenticeship and certification.

Mr. Speaker, this is another bill that I feel very strongly about. It would put the onus on the government to set national standards for apprenticeship, curriculum and training.

In the interests of the mobility of working people going from province to province, the certification of a journeyman carpenter would be the same in B.C., Manitoba or Newfoundland. There is a great demand for this in industry. I think it is in the interests of industry that we adopt this bill, and I am very proud to present it.

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

[Bankruptcy And Insolvency Act, February 2nd, 2001]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-203, an act to amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (unpaid wages to rank first in priority in distribution).

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to present this bill today. The purpose of the bill is that in the event of a bankruptcy the interests of the employees will be put before the interests of any other creditors. In other words, if there are unpaid wages or severance pay owing, the company will have to deal with those debts first before the debts to the banks or other creditors.

We believe it is overdue. It stems from the drastic situation of Giant Mine in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.

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

[Occupational Health And Safety, February 2nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, we are nearing the 10th anniversary of the Westray mine disaster, where 26 miners were killed due to gross negligence and a wilful blindness to workplace safety and health.

Last spring the justice committee unanimously agreed that the government should table legislation to amend the criminal code to include corporate accountability in the case of gross negligence causing death in the workplace.

Today we are reminded again of the need for a Westray bill. Nova Scotia courts have just found a company guilty of a workplace accident causing death. It was fined a paltry $50,000. This is pin money for a large corporation.

I call it murder when a worker is killed at work through gross negligence. If an employer is found guilty he should not just be fined under the workplace safety and health act. He should be charged with murder under the Criminal Code of Canada. That is what the committee directed parliament to do, to table that legislation, and we are anxiously looking forward to the opportunity to debate that bill.

[Speech From The Throne, February 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I too would like to welcome the newly elected member for Crowfoot and compliment him on a very good maiden speech.

He raised two things that are of special interest to me as a resident of Manitoba. The first was the agricultural crisis, and I thank him for outlining that issue in great detail.

The other issue that the member raised and on which I would like him to expand somewhat is the crisis in fuel costs, be it home heating fuel, gasoline, diesel, natural gas or anything else.

Would the member agree that the federal government has some role to play in trying to regulate and intervene at this point to put some sense of order to the spiralling, out of control, skyrocketing fuel costs that affect all of us and especially farmers? Would he agree that we need a regulatory commission to act as a regulatory body that would intervene on behalf of Canadians to put some order into the fuel cost crisis?

[Speech From The Throne, February 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with much of what the previous speaker had to say about the shortcomings of the throne speech. He did not choose to comment on what has to be one of the most glaring oversights, which we just witnessed when the Minister of Human Resources Development spoke about doing her best—I think that was the term she used—to help the most vulnerable and that the theme of this year's throne speech and this parliament had to be about helping the most vulnerable. Then she went on to contradict herself by saying that the EI system is yada, yada, yada.

Does the hon. member agree that the EI system is so completely dysfunctional that it has ceased to be an insurance program at all and is in fact used as a revenue generator, a cash cow? In fact, it is another tax on people's paycheques, because there is no insurance value from a program that denies over 70% of all applicants any benefits whatsoever.

Does the hon. member agree that one of the most galling things about this particular parliament is that the government side refuses to admit that it is using the revenue from the EI system for purposes other than income maintenance and benefits, that in fact the revenue from the EI system is being used as a cash cow, and that it is fundamentally wrong?

[Speech From The Throne, February 1st, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I would like to be the first to welcome the member for Winnipeg South Centre and to commend her on what was a very fine maiden speech. Many of the remarks I have no problem associating myself with. In fact, she almost sounded like an NDPer for a little bit there.

We actually share a border in that the riding of Winnipeg South Centre borders the riding of Winnipeg Centre. As such, we share a great number of issues and, frankly, a great number of social problems. The hon. member pointed out that an awful large percentage of children in her riding live below the poverty line. The figure for the riding of Winnipeg Centre is that 52% of all children live below the poverty line. It is a staggering statistic and a huge challenge for both of us.

I rise, though, to point out that the hon. member was a school trustee in the city of Winnipeg for many years. School division no. 1 has 92 buildings and schools within its boundaries. Surely one of the challenges the hon. member faced was how to heat and pay the operating costs of those schools.

Would she not agree that the government should play some role in regulating the skyrocketing costs of heating fuels, not only for homes but for institutions, for schools, hospitals, universities and all those other public institutions that are being crippled by their operating costs and debt loads?

Should the government not have said something in the Speech from the Throne about what to do in regard to the heating fuel crisis in this harsh northern climate?

[Speech From The Throne, February 1st, 2001]

Madam Speaker, there is sort of a cruel joke going around the area that I live in. It is about the farmer who wins the 649 lottery and his friends ask him “What are you going to do with all that money?” He says “I am just going to keep farming until it is all gone”.

As the member pointed out, farmers are farming at a loss of as much as $80 per acre. Our caucus just met with a delegation of farmers who were on the Hill. They pointed out that 22,000 farmers left the farm last year alone in the three prairie provinces. That is an emergency.

The Minister of Industry dumbfounded most Canadians the other day when he tried to justify giving Bombardier billion dollar loans. He said it was an industry that we could not afford to lose.

My question is for the hon. member who represents that side of the House. Is the prairie agricultural industry not an industry that we cannot afford to lose, and just as important as the aerospace industry in Montreal?

[Speech From The Throne, February 1st, 2001]

Madam Speaker, the previous speaker outlined a whole host of shortcomings in the Speech from the Throne. Would he agree with me that one of the most horrendous oversights in the Speech from the Throne is the complete omission or the lack of any comment whatsoever on one of the most pressing issues facing Canadians: the spiralling cost of home heating fuel, gasoline, diesel fuel and the completely unregulated way the free market seems to be gouging Canadian consumers in this regard?

We have had phone calls from northern Manitoba where people are now paying more to heat their homes than they pay for their mortgage, at $900 and $1,000 a month. In the province of Alberta where they completely deregulated natural gas supply, the price of natural gas is going up 125%.

There has been absolutely no comment from the federal government on how it might intervene to bring some sense of order to the whole distribution and production of this precious natural resource. Would the hon. member like to comment on that glaring oversight in the Speech from the Throne?

[International Boundary Waters Treaty Act, October 20th, 2000]

I apologize for the comment and I retract any statement to do with lying. I was taken up in the heat of the moment.

[International Boundary Waters Treaty Act, October 20th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the speech of the hon. member for Beauséjour—Petitcodiac was so full of inherent contradictions that I felt I had to stand up and ask for some clarification. The most noticeable contradiction was a glaring omission. She failed to mention the fact that, even though she was a member of the NDP caucus and should know better, it was the NDP that moved the opposition day motion back in February of 1999 which called for the government to do something to ban the bulk sale of water and the interbasin transfer of water and to protect that precious natural resource. I am wondering if that was a deliberate omission, because, frankly, it could be taken as being rude to fail to at least acknowledge that in a lengthy speech.

There is another contradiction that exists. Now that the member is in fact a member of the Progressive Conservative Party and a sitting member of the Tory caucus, she did not mention anything about the real nature of the Tories' attitude toward the bulk sale of water and the interbasin transfer of water. I use two examples because I only have a few minutes. I could mention many more, but these are two glaring examples. One is the right wing Tory premier, Wacky Bennett. They did not call him wacky for nothing because his big plan was to flood the Skagit Valley, divert the great northern rivers of British Columbia and sell the water to Washington State.

As if that was not crazy enough, other Tory premiers came along with similar ideas, like Gary Filmon, the former premier of Manitoba, who wrote his engineering thesis in school with a plan to use nuclear blasts to blast a trench from Lake Winnipeg into North Dakota, then divert the water further into the Columbia River system and into the United States.

All throughout history right wing Tories have had this plan to commercialize Canada's water and turn it into a marketable commodity. When they went into the NAFTA deal we begged and pleaded—the opinion of the NDP is that we should not have entered that deal at all—“Make sure that water is off the table. Do not commercialize our water. Do not make it subject to these liberalized trade agreements”. It was the Tories who put the future of our freshwater supply at risk by doing that very thing.

It is Tory prime ministers and premiers who have said “Water is the oil of the next decade”. Can we believe anyone who would view a substance that is so essential for life itself as something that should be subject to the profit motive?

I guess I am asking the hon. member for Beauséjour—Petitcodiac when she was lying. Were you lying when you were a member of our caucus or are you lying now that you are a member of the Tory caucus?