Pat Martin

[Health, May 12th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, that the Liberal's allow Alberta's bill 11 to go unanswered is absolutely shameful.

As early as March the NDP tried to table a legal opinion that showed concrete examples of how bill 11 violates the Canada Health Act, but the Liberals blocked us. Our legal opinion says that the enhanced service provisions of bill 11 violate the accessibility principle of medicare because patients can choose an enhanced level of service.

By upgrading the service to include extras, the service then becomes uninsured. Since speed and quality of service would vary according to ability to pay, this creates a two tier system and, as such, violates the accessibility principle in exactly the same way the Calgary eye clinics violate it, and yet for four years the Liberals have not enforced the act on the eye clinics because of the secret 12 point deal.

The fact remains that existing violations go unpunished, bill 11 goes unanswered and the health care system goes to rot under the minister's watch.

The Canada health care system needs a champion. If the minister cannot stand up to Ralph Klein, he should step down, resign and let somebody with courage and conviction take the helm.

[Citizenship Of Canada Act, May 11th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to address the motions in Group No. 3, put forward by various parties seeking to amend Bill C-16.

I think it is worthwhile to start by pointing out what a great level of community interest there has been in Bill C-16 and the issue of citizenship. When the bill was first introduced as Bill C-63, over 37 groups and organizations made representations before the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. I would say there was an overwhelming amount of public interest demonstrated by Canadians who feel very passionately about the whole concept of citizenship.

I believe the reason these people were so motivated is because the whole idea of being a citizen of Canada hearkens to the idea of national pride, of being part of something great, like the country of Canada, where the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.

What we saw was a great outpouring of emotion. These people said to the committee, to the House of Commons, that when we amend the citizenship and immigration legislation we must ensure that the changes reflect accurately how much we value our citizenship, not just as a right, but also the duties, obligations and responsibilities that come with citizenship.

We found it necessary to move many amendments to Bill C-63, the predecessor to Bill C-16, and we were pleased when most of the recommendations, amendments and details that we found necessary to raise were incorporated into Bill C-16. In fact, the NDP caucus is now satisfied that Bill C-16 accurately reflects what Canadians told us. The changes we asked for were incorporated into the new bill, so we were quite pleased to see the new Bill C-16 in its current form. It is something that we can support as it goes through the House. In fact we hope for its speedy passage.

I note, though, that many of my colleagues in opposition parties and even some on the Liberal side are moving amendments. Group No. 3 deals with six or seven different clusters of amendments. I will comment on some of them and point out whether our caucus will be able to support them.

Motion No. 6 we would support. It was put forward by the immigration critic for the Canadian Alliance and it simply seeks to have all appointments ratified by parliament. Appointments of citizenship judges or any other type of appointment made by order in council should really come to parliament or at least to the standing committee where parliamentarians, elected officials, can approve and ratify those appointments. It is something that most Canadians would support and our party recommends supporting the motion.

Motion No. 7 seeks to amend the legislation so that a person cannot be a citizenship commissioner if that person has been convicted of the crime of defrauding immigration or smuggling or trafficking people, or any type of crime under the Citizenship Act. This is only common sense. I would like to think that the powers that be would have come to that conclusion already without having it stated in legislation. I cannot imagine anyone appointing a citizenship commissioner who had been convicted of fraud under the Citizenship Act. We support that amendment put forward by the Canadian Alliance as well.

Motion No. 8 states that the standing committee must approve the appointment of citizenship commissioners. Again we support this idea. We believe that there is a role for the standing committee to ratify and approve appointments to ensure that these appointments are not some kind of political patronage and to ensure that the right people occupy these important positions.

Motion No. 15 is clustered into this group as well. We oppose this motion put forward by the Canadian Alliance. We believe that either there was a typographical error or it simply makes no sense. The words “alternative” and “affirmative” seem to be mixed up in the way it is written. It is absolute gibberish and not worthy of anybody's support. It was either an error or the drafters were deliberately putting it forward as some kind of nuisance motion.

Motions Nos. 16, 17 and 18 are similar in nature.

We support Motion No. 20. I would rather dwell on the motions that we see fit to support rather than oppose because I think that warrants more comment. This motion, again put forward by the Canadian Alliance, would allow the governor in council to define public interest for the purposes of the act. It would actually mandate the governor in council to define what is meant by public interest. There is a whole section of articles regarding public interest in the act and we believe that it does need further clarification, for transparency if nothing else. It could be that lawyers can glean from the current act what the intent of the act is in terms of public interest, but we see no harm in further clarifying that definition so that the general public can also easily and readily see what is truly meant by that term.

We see that Motion No. 21 is also clustered into Group No. 3. We support this motion. Some of the things raised by my colleague in the Canadian Alliance are legitimate points of view that would improve and enhance the act. This particular motion seeks to make the standing committee responsible for the approving of any regulations that pertain to fixing fees for any services offered by the department, whether it is citizenship papers or whatever. We believe the standing committee should have a role in setting fees. It is the opinion of our party that the fees are far to onerous currently.

We would like the opportunity to bring forward at the committee level that the fees should be adjusted and adjusted down. It is the same as the hated head tax. We should abolish the head tax on all immigrants and refugees. We note that the government has seen fit to listen to us and has recently abolished the head tax on refugees. However it has not abolished the other service charges associated with being a refugee. It has abolished the $975 head tax but it has not abolished the many other fees which add up to more than $500.

I think that Motion No. 21, which would give the standing committee the opportunity to have some input into the fixing of any fee schedule, would be very appropriate.

I want to raise a point that I think has not been raised enough in the House of Commons. The whole concept of citizenship is tied directly to the whole concept of the nation state obviously. We are proud to be Canadian citizens because of the borders that define our geographic country.

The whole concept of the nation state, democracy and citizenship are intertwined in an inexorable way. We believe that all three of those things are jeopardized by the globalization of capital and the demise of the nation state in that free trade agreements do not recognize borders. Capital does not recognize borders. The free movement of goods, services and capital ignores borders and often ignores freely elected governments.

I raise, as a cautionary note, that as we give more and more international authority to the WTO, to the MAI, to NAFTA and to liberalized trade agreements, we diminish the authority that citizens enjoy in their democracy within their nation state. I think there is a growing awareness of this issue. We saw the battle in Seattle recently where young people were raising this very point. They were sounding the alarm that they would not tolerate this idea of diminishing democracy by diminishing the nation state and the citizen's role in controlling their own economic sovereignty.

[Sales Tax And Excise Tax Amendments Act, 1999, May 9th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I agree that the GDP is a flawed instrument to use in trying to measure the growth of the country. If there is a hurricane or a tornado the GDP blossoms in the area. That does not mean it was good for Canadians. It just means that a bunch of economic activity had to take place. We can tie GDP to disasters, for heaven's sake.

To say that Canadians are not productive because of the ratio of workers to GDP is a complete misnomer. Productivity is not the issue. Canadian workers are some of the most productive in the world. Productivity as a ratio to GDP and employment is a flawed way of viewing our economic well-being. It is misleading and I would say intellectually dishonest.

[Sales Tax And Excise Tax Amendments Act, 1999, May 9th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I could not agree more with the hon. member. If one is forced to pay into something one should have a reasonable expectation of collecting what was promised.

The example I used before was of people with mandatory fire insurance on their homes. They have to pay into it. They have no choice. Yet if their houses burn down there is less than a 40% chance of being able to collect. They would think they had been cheated, that they had been robbed. That is fundamentally wrong.

The hon. member pointed out some kind of geographical discrimination in a sense. There are other inequities in the program which are just as glaring. For instance, an unemployed woman has less than a 25% chance of being able to collect employment insurance because women are more likely to be in part time work, and part time workers are disproportionately affected.

A youth under 25 years of age, and the young people listening today should be aware of this, has less than a 15% chance of collecting any benefits, even though it is mandatory to pay into the program. The hon. member is right. It ceases to become an insurance program. It is really another tax on the paycheque.

[Sales Tax And Excise Tax Amendments Act, 1999, May 9th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to be able to answer a very good question that has its basis in actual fact. The EI fund was in deficit. The Canadian taxpayer propped it up over that period of time by a total accumulated backfill of $13 billion. The total accumulated surplus will exceed $39 billion at the end of this year. In other words, we paid back the original debt of $13 billion and another $26 billion is being hived off, again going into consolidated revenue.

The member is absolutely right again. There is no separate EI fund. All the money goes into general revenues. Our point is that any surplus above and beyond what we owe the consolidated revenue fund should be used toward income maintenance for unemployed workers, as it was intended.

If an amount is deducted from a person's paycheque for a specific purpose and then used for something completely different, at the very least it is a breach of trust. In the worst case scenario it is out and out fraudulence. We believe there has been a structured and deliberate abuse of the EI program that went far beyond paying back the $13 billion and now is being used as a cash cow.

The hon. member asked if I understood the nature of the tax cuts being proposed by the government. I do. I understand the finance committee recommended four major components: reducing the capital gains tax, dropping the middle income tax rate, eliminating the 5% upper income surtax and raising the threshold for the top two tax rates. I wonder if the hon. member realizes that these four measures would make a difference in various income brackets.

Those making $475,000 a year would get $11,650 in tax breaks with these measures. Those making $42,000 a year would get $1,140 in tax breaks with these measures. Those making $20,000 a year would get a $3 tax break. Who is this benefiting the most? Obviously the high income earner.

The hon. member from Surrey spoke to me before I gave my speech. He pointed out that his daughter made $8,000 last year. At the end of the year she received a bill for $200 for taxes owing. The kid made eight grand and still owed $200, even after paying taxes on her paycheques.

My mother makes $21,000 a year from all her sources of income such as old age pension, her husband's CPP and widow's pension. She pays $600 per quarter in taxes every year. At the end of the year she owes $1,500. Something is fundamentally wrong, I would put to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance.

[Sales Tax And Excise Tax Amendments Act, 1999, May 9th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to get back into the order and the flow of things. I missed my opportunity at the end of the Bloc Quebecois speech to add our contribution to this debate. I appreciate the latitude shown to let me speak to this now.

It should come as no surprise to anybody here that the NDP caucus is in opposition to Bill C-24. Members look shocked that we do not fully concur with the Liberal Party tax policy. I want to use my time to point out just how strongly we oppose Bill C-24 and other recent developments from the most recent budget that dealt with tax relief and tax reform, if one can call it that. We have been calling for true tax reform since we have been in the House but we have yet to see it. Frankly, we have seen more in the same direction and a continuation of the same economic policy and philosophy which we think does not serve ordinary Canadians and does not serve working Canadians well.

By way of beginning my remarks, it is useful to look at a direct quote from the majority report of the finance committee. It is just a few short lines so I will read it. The majority report of the finance committee states:

The Committee has chosen to use tax reform/relief as the primary vehicle for promoting increased productivity not because we know that there are very specific and definitive links between productivity and taxation, but primarily because of what we don't know.

The Liberals are almost jumping into this avenue of economic policy by virtue of what they do not know will be the predictable results and consequences. That should not give Canadians any comfort. It should worry Canadians very much if that is the sort of research that has been done.

I will read this again because a lot of Canadians will probably not understand how significant and indicative this is. It says:

The Committee has chosen to use tax reform/tax relief as the primary vehicle for promoting increased productivity not because we know that there are very specific and definitive links between productivity and taxation, but primarily because of what we don't know.

That sounds like nonsense. It is also very worrisome for ordinary Canadians who may pick that up and read it.

One thing I can say is that there is no empirical evidence anywhere in the country that proves tax relief creates jobs. That is a myth that has been perpetrated. It is something that we might like to believe, because it would give us some sense of surety that we are confident about the direction in which we are going, but there is no empirical evidence anywhere. There has been no academic study. There has been no proof that tax relief, as such, creates jobs.

There is also no proof anywhere, as the committee admits, that tax relief per se increases productivity. We do not know if the two are related, and the committee readily admits that in its paper.

These words of the majority report of the finance committee delivers its empty rationale for recommending $46 billion in tax cuts for high income earners as a priority for upcoming budgets. It can only be called blind faith in the virtue of tax cuts for the wealthy. We believe it is typical of the Liberal government's position in the debate about what to do with the predicted federal surpluses. It is the worst form of trickle-down economics, blind faith in an obsolete ideology.

Frankly, ordinary working Canadians are used to being trickled on. We have been trickled on a lot in recent history and it is not water that is trickling down from above and it certainly is not revenues and pennies from heaven. We are being trickled on in the most mean-spirited ways often and frequently. These trickle-down economics are a continuation of the same line of thinking.

When it comes to tax cuts, the debate we should be having should be about setting goals for improving the quality of life for all Canadians not just tax cuts for the wealthy. We should be taking steps that move us forward. A lot of us believe that society does not move forward unless we all move forward together. It is one of the basic tenets of the NDP philosophy that society does not move forward unless we all move forward together. We are against anything that further builds that gap, the great divide, between the rich and the poor.

Having set and met financial targets on eliminating the deficit, one would think that the prospect of large surpluses would now allow Canadians and the government to meet such emergencies as the crisis facing the homeless, for instance. That would be a laudable pursuit. We would have liked to have heard more in the budget about the crisis facing the homeless in the country. That would be worthwhile and we would stand up and applaud budget initiatives in that regard. Another crisis would the family farm crisis in the province I come from. Those are the types of missed opportunities that we believe the government is taking part in with its policy on how to deal with the generous surpluses it is looking forward to.

Another idea I have is that we could try to meet the target we set for ourselves 10 years ago to eliminate child poverty. That would be a laudable concept. Giving tax breaks to the wealthy does not do anything to eliminate child poverty in the country. I defy the government to show me the connection, unless it is relying strictly on that famous old trickle-down theory of an economic system with lots of millionaires and surely some of that money will spill over from their coffers and fall onto ordinary Canadians. It is a cruel myth and a lot of people are tired of being the brunt of that myth.

What about taking steps to ensure that all our children are given the best possible start in life? In the newspaper today there was a very interesting article about how youth crime and youth violence can be so directly connected to the problem of fetal alcohol syndrome, FAE/FAS children. This is an emergency in our schools. It is an emergency in our criminal justice system. It is an emergency in the inner city of our big cities, in small communities and on reserves right across the country. We have seen nothing to address that issue specifically in this budget or in any policy that we have debated in the House of Commons. This is a worthwhile emergency on which we could in fact be spending some of our surplus instead of on tax relief for the wealthy.

There is a growing movement and concern in Canada that we are losing our cherished not for profit public health care system. We are losing it to the spectacle of a two-tiered American style health care system which we know does not work. Instead of using this flourishing, blossoming surplus on protecting and strengthening our universal public health care system, again we are seeing the idea of tax cuts for the wealthy. I guess if the wealthy had more of their disposable income left in their pockets they could afford to buy the health care they need when they need it. That is fundamentally contradictory to the NDP philosophy and I am glad to be able to express that today.

There is another worthwhile initiative that we are completely ignoring and that is to provide Canadians access to world class post-secondary education. One would think in this high tech age, or the age of e-commerce, et cetera, that we would value more and make access to post-secondary education a number one priority for Canadians instead of burdening students with debt that is paramount to carrying a small mortgage when they finally graduate from university. That is not a priority. We have not heard it expressed here. Instead, again, we are talking about the implementation of bills that give tax cuts to the wealthy.

There are all kinds of other worthwhile spending initiatives, whether it is our infrastructure, our roads or our transit systems. We need these things to assure the continued growth of our economy and we are not hearing about it. To offer, in balance of these priorities, needed tax relief, we would not mind having that debate.

Let us list these priorities and address ways to deal with them and talk about tax relief. Frankly, there is nothing contradictory to the NDP talking about tax fairness. We have been talking about tax fairness since day one because we believe that working people pay too much tax. We believe that working people pay too much tax because others are not paying their fair share of taxes and it is an inequitable situation. One tax relief initiative that we would welcome, endorse and support is the gradual reduction toward the elimination of the GST.

We believe that if the government were serious about universal tax relief which would benefit all Canadians, that to reduce the GST by 1% this year would be a good first step in at least making some effort to keep the promise made in 1993 to eliminate the GST. We would certainly welcome that, but we are not hearing that today in the debate on Bill C-24, we did not hear it in the budget speech and we did not hear it in the majority report of the finance committee.

The finance committee preferred the message of the Business Council on National Issues, the BCNI, that the real urgency was to give more and bigger tax breaks to those who need them the least. It was completely 180 degrees backward to any conventional thinking on true equality, or to flattening the gap between the rich and the poor, or to addressing many of the urgent social issues I have outlined.

There is a quote from the report of the Business Council on National Issues to the Standing Committee on Finance which states that the greatest economic gains will be achieved when marginal tax rates, especially the highest ones, are reduced. In other words, we are allowing the BCNI to set social and economic policy for the country. It is an unelected body. I am surprised, frankly, that my colleagues from the Canadian Alliance are not up in arms about this. We are taking specific direction from unelected representatives of corporate Canada over the opinions and the economic outlines of elected officials like those of us in this Chamber.

People call Thomas d'Aquino the unofficial prime minister. Those of us who are cynical are certainly starting to think that, given the access that the BCNI has to power and the fact that the Liberal government is charting policy based on the needs of Bay Street and certainly not based on the needs of Main Street.

The NDP caucus rejects the committee's unbalanced approach. We recommend that a key priority be to make the investments necessary to help reverse the erosion of Canadian living standards, the growing divisions in Canadian society and the growing gap between the rich and the poor. That would be a laudable pursuit for the government, but that is not a key objective. It is taking steps today, even with Bill C-24, that will expand the gap between the rich and the poor. It will make that rift even wider. It is completely contrary to NDP policy and philosophy. We believe that society moves forward genuinely when we all move forward together.

We include in Canadian living standards investment in our children, investment in our communities, investment in our health care and education systems and investment in the environment. Has there ever been a more ample opportunity to finally do something about cleaning up the environment in Canada? We have a surplus budget situation. The Minister of Finance is in the enviable position of having money to spend on important priorities for Canadians. What could be more important than to act now to clean up the toxic waste sites in this country and to deal with small communities that still need basic sewage and water treatments centres?

For instance, my colleagues from Sydney—Victoria and Bras d'Or—Cape Breton live near what is arguably the worst toxic waste site in the world, the Sydney tar ponds. Is there money budgeted and allocated to clean up, finally, the Sydney tar ponds? Have they started to scrape the toxic effluent off Frederick Street so that people can live there again? Or, are we satisfied to have a Cape Breton version of the Love Canal? Is that one of the legacies the Liberal government wants to leave in Atlantic Canada, that even though it had the money to prevent it, it allowed this toxic site to poison more Nova Scotians? I do not think so. I think the Liberals will pay a political price for being that negligent to the real needs of Canadians.

It is useful to look at where the government's budget surplus actually came from. There is a lot of debate going on about how the budget surplus should be spent, but people are forgetting where this fantastic pile of money came from. One of the most significant sources, I would like to remind Canadians, is the EI surplus.

The employment insurance system is broken. It is completely defunct. The wheels have fallen off. It does not work any more. It is only a cash cow for the government. Working people have to pay into it, and yet working people have a less than 40% chance of actually receiving any income maintenance should they become unfortunate enough to find themselves unemployed. What kind of an insurance fund is that? Who in their right mind would design an insurance fund like that?

Mr. Speaker, what if it was mandatory that you had to pay insurance on your house. You had to pay it every month. Yet if your house burned down you would have a less than 40% chance of collecting any dividend. You would think you had been cheated. You would think you had been robbed. You would be outraged. Mr. Speaker, you would be standing in your place and screaming bloody murder that you had been cheated. That is exactly the situation in which working people find themselves.

In fact, the figures are worse than that. The average worker has a less than 40% chance of collecting any EI benefit. The average woman has a less than 25% chance of collecting any EI benefit. The changes to EI disproportionately affect working women because there are more part time working women. Youths under 25 have a less than 15% chance of collecting any EI benefits at all. Yet faithfully every paycheque those people have to pay the premium, and faithfully every paycheque their employers have to pay 1.4 times the amount that the employees pay.

No wonder there is a surplus. If the government takes and takes and never pays anything out, of course it will have a surplus. That surplus is $600 million per month; not per year, per month. There is $7 billion per year in EI premiums alone that the government takes in and fails to pay out in benefits. To use that money for anything other than income maintenance for unemployed workers, I suggest, at the very least, is being dishonest. At the very worst it is fraudulent. To take something from a person's paycheque for a specific purpose and to use it for something else is a breach of trust.

To take it one step further, to take money away from those most vulnerable in society, unemployed workers who paid into the fund, and hand it over as tax cuts to the wealthy is nothing short of a perverse version of Robin Hood. To rob from the poor to give to the rich is absolutely unconscionable and somehow the government is getting away with it without a huge hue and cry.

Tonight there will be a vote on this issue. The member for Acadie—Bathurst has a private member's bill on EI reform which will be voted on tonight. Liberal members of parliament will have to stand to say whether they agree with this absolute cash cow that is the EI fund, and they will be counted. The public will notice them and they will pay a political price for voting against EI reform. We know where the money came from that gave this budget its surplus. It came out of the pockets of working people. It came out of the benefits that should have been paid to unemployed people in this country.

The whole issue of tax reform is a necessary debate. As I said, it is nothing against NDP policy to talk about true tax reform. It is frustrating to some of us that some would deny the fact that the NDP is concerned about tax fairness. We are very concerned about it. We believe that the tax system is one of the great economic instruments we have to redistribute wealth.

I can give an example of what a difference fair taxation can make. I can give the House the state of the nation in terms of the way we use taxation in the country to try to make a more equitable society.

If we look at the distribution of market income in 1997, the ratio of the top fifth income earners to the bottom fifth is 24:1. That is grotesquely unfair. The ratio is 24:1 of the top fifth income earners to the bottom fifth income earners. After taxes and transfers, that ratio falls to 8:1. It is still obscene by anybody's standards, but a huge improvement.

If we factor in the value of public services, which we equally enjoy and do not have to dig into our pockets to purchase, the ratio of income in equity falls to less than 4:1. Starting out at 24:1, we now have it down to 4:1. Some would still say that is fundamentally wrong, that we should be a lot more equitable than that. We believe that changes should be made in that direction.

It points out how the tax system can be used as an instrument for economic fairness, justice and equality. Yet we have chosen to go in the opposite direction. The changes in the current budget take us further in the opposite direction; not toward tax fairness, but growing the inequality between rich and poor. We have been sold a bill of goods that has told us it is necessary to let the wealthy keep more of their money and ignore the situation of the lowest fifth of the economic scale.

It is a very cynical point of view, and the same is true in American politics, but there is no point in targeting a political message or an economic policy to people in the bottom fifth of the economic social scale because they do not vote. They are so marginalized and disenfranchised that they do not vote at election time. Why would government waste its largesse on 20% of the population which, frankly, would not vote for it anyway? They have given up on the electoral system as a vehicle or a means by which to improve themselves.

That might sound cynical, but I accuse the government of having gone through that thought process, in the same way the Americans have in their political system, that there is no sense in wasting messaging on people who really need it because they are so disenfranchised and marginalized they do not vote.

I want to voice our strong opposition to Bill C-24. It takes us further away from the idea of tax fairness. It will accentuate and augment the inequalities in our tax system and further institutionalize those inequalities for another couple of years until we can do something to convince the government to take steps otherwise.

[Cape Breton Development Corporation Divestiture Authorization And Dissolution Act, May 8th, 2000]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for at least going through the exercise.

I began my remarks by talking about what a shame, what a tragedy and what a travesty it is to limit the debate on such an important subject. What I was getting around to was not just the face value of the argument about the closing of the Devco coal mines, but the fact that this is an issue of much larger significance.

Many things have not even been raised. The secondary impacts of shutting down Devco have not been dealt with and they will not be dealt with in any detail in the House because the debate has been limited by moving time allocation.

One of the natural things which comes to mind, one of the obvious consequences of selling off Devco and closing Devco is the whole issue of foreign ownership, economic sovereignty, loss of control of our own industries and our inability to control our own destiny when it comes to matters regarding the development of our natural resources.

One thing we have seen in this country in recent years is an absolute epidemic of foreign takeovers. In part a low Canadian dollar has led to this, and in part it is because there are people lurking just across our border who are willing to gobble up any aspect of our natural resources they possibly can. This is one of the predictable consequences we are going to see, I believe, as we divest ourselves of the Devco operations.

An even more frightening spectacle in my mind is that the whole idea of Devco was to feed coal into the Nova Scotia Power Corporation to generate electricity and to have a vertical integration. We would enjoy that benefit and the secondary benefit of the labour created by the mining of coal, that we could create electricity with that coal. There was a natural customer for the product.

Nova Scotia Power Corporation will now be in the unenviable position of trying to buy its power elsewhere. Where? It will probably be from the eastern seaboard of the United States. Mr. Peabody will supply the coal, I presume, to Nova Scotia. Who will ship the coal from the eastern seaboard of the United States to Cape Breton? It will be Canada Steamship Lines. The Minister of Finance and steamships will be going into Sydney harbour loaded with American coal to burn in Nova Scotia Power Corporation. If this seems shortsighted, if it seems economically perverse, I put it to members that it is. That is why this needs to be debated and that is why we need more time in the House to deal with some of these predictable consequences of shutting down the whole Devco operation.

I am a trade unionist and have been a union representative for much of my working career. I find in cases like this the best way to convey the true impact of this sort of economic move is to try to personalize the issue by looking at the actual people involved. If we try to visualize in our minds the actual families and workers who are being displaced by all of this, it is useful to look at a profile of the Devco employees.

If we try to get in our minds who these people of the United Mine Workers are, and there are four unions involved, of the actual members of the United Mine Workers of America union, 414 out of 500 or so have grade 12 or less education. The average age is 44.5 years. They have industry specific skills that make it very difficult to relocate into other industries. I raise all these factors to point out the difficulty of trying to reintegrate the displaced employees into other industries, et cetera, et cetera.

One of the reasons we see such an overwhelmingly low level of education in people who are fairly my contemporaries, where it is not usual for there to be over 80% of them with grade 12, is that they were seduced into quitting school and going to work at Devco. They were told the big lie. People came into their classrooms and virtually said “You can sit here and finish high school or you can go to work tomorrow with a good $12, $14 an hour job with grade 8 or grade 9 and we will keep you employed for life, until you retire, working in the Devco coal mine operation”. That was bad advice and it has complicated the reintegration of some of these displaced workers into alternative lines of work.

One of those lines of work ironically will be the next subject that we debate here today because we have been told that the government side will not put up any more speakers on the subject because it wants debate to collapse on the subject so that we can move on to the next subject which is tourism. What it really wants all the Devco miners to do is grow long, red pigtails like Anne of Green Gables so they can be cute little tourism oddities maybe. If they can learn to play the banjo or something they could entertain American bus loads of tourists who drive to Cape Breton to see them because there will be very little else for them to do, given the callous way that this whole issue has been treated.

Had we had more time and had we been given the opportunity to debate this issue further, I am sure other important subjects would be raised. But as it is now, once again we can hear the jackboots marching to the drums of closure and time allocation.

[Cape Breton Development Corporation Divestiture Authorization And Dissolution Act, May 8th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the only reason I raised the relative shortage on the other benches was by way of introducing the calling of quorum.

[Cape Breton Development Corporation Divestiture Authorization And Dissolution Act, May 8th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I too would like to begin my remarks by commenting on the terrible state of affairs in the House of Commons when the idea of time allocation and closure is entered into so lightly and so frequently. Instead of being the exception to the rule, it has become the norm, at least in the short period of time I have been in the House of Commons.

I cannot tell the number of times I have had to stand here and criticize the government for abusing the idea of free and open debate in the House of Commons by invoking closure and time allocation anytime it is convenient for the government to do so or anytime it is worried about being politically embarrassed by the subject matter at hand. Since 1993 I believe it has been over 60 times that the Liberal government, the ruling party, has invoked the idea of limiting debate in the House of Commons. We came here to take part in the democratic process, to speak freely and raise the issues we believe are important and not to be silenced every time we turn around by a heavy-handed ruling party that sees fit to silence people when debate is clearly so important.

Having heard the members who actually reside in Cape Breton speak passionately about the bill earlier today, the people of Nova Scotia do not want the debate to be terminated. The people who live in the communities in Cape Breton want their voices to be heard. They want a free and open debate that explores all the aspects of the closure and the bill which will oversee the shutdown of the Devco corporation.

In what limited debate there has been we have heard from the government side misinformation that borders on negligence in not having had the courtesy to find out what the true facts are about Devco before the government invokes measures that will see its termination. We heard speeches earlier today that border on being intellectually dishonest.

I heard a member say that the government has poured $1.7 billion of what he called taxpayer generosity into these coal mines and that enough is enough, that we have to terminate this flushing good money after bad. The hon. member failed to point out, whether deliberately or through naivety and if it was through naivety it would be irresponsible naivety, that the Devco corporation was not just a coal mine.

Does anyone who does not live in Cape Breton realize that Devco was not just a coal mine? When it was founded Devco was a coal mine and an economic development corporation. The coal mine in fact was successful as a stand alone enterprise. For many years it showed a profit. It served a valuable function by providing coal for the Nova Scotia Power Corporation and it operated in a viable manner.

The other side of Devco in the years from 1967 to 1980 was economic development. All kinds of things were tried on the island to stimulate and diversify the economy. Some of those ventures succeeded and some of them failed. Not all of that $1.7 billion went into coal mining.

It would have been a lot more honest had that been pointed out at the front end. We would have expected someone from the government side at least to have been honest enough to portray those figures in an accurate way. The government also failed to point out that in that same period of time, the coal mining aspect of Devco produced $5 billion worth of product and economic activity in Cape Breton, $5 billion with a spinoff effect. Everyone knows that a dollar spent in today's economy gets spent four times before it reaches its final state of repose, which is usually in some American shareholder's pocket.

I am in the middle of my speech and a lot of the comments I am making are being addressed to the government side. I cannot help but note there are virtually no government members in the House of Commons. it would be irresponsible for them to push this legislation through and not even have the courtesy to be in the House of Commons to listen to what little debate we are going to have.

[Labelling Of Genetically Modified Foods, May 5th, 2000]

Madam Speaker, I also want to begin by indicating my appreciation to the hon. member for Louis-Hébert for bringing this important issue forward. It is certainly a topic that has been in the forefront of the minds of many Canadians.

Many young people I know are dealing with the issue of what they call franken foods. This is an issue that has the general public so concerned that they are calling my office and other members' offices. They are looking to government for some direction in this matter.

Canadians have clearly indicated in every poll, survey and study that they want to know what they are eating. I would take that one step further. They have a right to know what they are eating. It is a basic, fundamental, health issue right. They have made that abundantly clear.

I would put it to the hon. member from the Canadian Alliance that voluntary compliance is not working. He actually contradicted himself in the arguments we just heard. He said that Canadians have a right to know and then they can make their own informed choice. How would they know without adequate labelling on the package? He is denying them their right to choose by not clearly stating what kind of product they are eating.

The whole premise of the argument I will be making is that Canadians are justifiably concerned about the quality of the food they eat.

I believe the government has abdicated its responsibilities in this matter by trying to promote voluntary compliance and by not clearly stating what government agency will have jurisdiction over this important matter. At the present time we have a hodgepodge. It is an absolute mess. The government is readily conceding that Canadians have a right to know and that they need to know, but there are three different government agencies that have been partially responsible for telling Canadians what they need to know.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is involved. It deals with the policing of plants and slaughterhouses, the storage of unsafe items and so on. Health Canada has a role, but we are not sure where one jurisdiction starts and the other stops. Health Canada approves products with respect to quality and safety. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada assists in food production. Which jurisdiction is it? If we could establish that first we could then move the issue forward by demanding that the federal agency do its job.

I come from an area with a large agri-food industry. In Manitoba agriculture is key and paramount to the health of our economy. I hear stories from Manitoba farmers about their concern over genetically engineered and genetically modified seed crops and oilseed crops. The hon. member mentioned canola oil as an example. I have some personal knowledge of how concerned Manitoba farmers are about the genetic engineering of canola. One company had a monopoly on the seed stock. If farmers wanted to buy seed they went to go to a certain company, but they also had to sign a contract with that company indicating that they would sell all of their yield to that company. Farmers could not have the seed unless they promised to sell their yield to the company. The real stinger was that the seed had been genetically modified to have a terminator gene in it so it could not reproduce itself.

Since time began farmers have set aside a certain amount of their crop for re-seeding in future years. Farmers cannot do that any more. They have to go back to the source company, a chemical company, and buy their seed for the following year, which turns out to have a genetic terminator. Perverse is the word for it. Most Canadians are horrified when they discover how people are manipulating our food supplies through genetic engineering.

At the very least, the government owes it to Canadians to let them know whether the food they are eating is genetically modified. Never mind if it is safe or not safe. The jury is still out on that issue. We do not know. But let us not use the absence of absolute, hard scientific evidence as an excuse for not taking the precautionary measures Canadians are asking for. Canadians should be given the right to choose. They should be able to look at the labelling on a package and decide for themselves whether they want to ingest the material.

There have been mistakes. There have been recent examples which gave consumers cause for alarm. Recently a gene from a Brazil nut was introduced to a foodstuff. This resulted in people suffering a severe nut allergy, even though they were eating a product that had nothing to do with nuts. People suffered severe anaphylactic asthmatic reactions from a product that had nothing to do with nuts. People had no way of knowing because in Canada there is no obligation to tell.

The rest of the world seems to be further advanced than Canada. That is ironic, as Canada is one of the leaders in agri-food and agri-business. Europeans do not want genetically modified food on their shelves. They demand to know if the food they are eating is genetically modified.

The United Nations biosafety protocol was negotiated in Montreal during the last week of January. Several large and well known companies began taking their first steps away from genetically modified crops. They started to make noise in the right direction, but not on any moral or ethical ground or even out of fear for public safety. I think what they were really afraid of was a consumer backlash. They know that consumers are becoming better informed about this issue and are demanding to know if a product is genetically modified, because if it is, they do not want it.

We do have large companies like Frito Lay, the big potato chip manufacturing company, which told its suppliers not to send any more genetically modified corn for their corn chips, but it stopped short of telling them not to send any genetically modified potatoes for its potato chips. It produces about a thousand times as many potato chips as it does corn chips.

As I said, the voluntary compliance side of things is starting to catch on but in a very marginal way not in a meaningful way. I do not believe in voluntary compliance measures in anything, frankly, whether it is workplace safety, health or whatever, because when the bottom line is profits to shareholders, corporations have a vested interest in doing whatever is expedient from a profit point of view and not doing what is right from a moral, ethical or even public health point of view.

Seagrams, another major company, told its suppliers not to bring it any more genetically modified corn but it fell short of making a public announcement. It did not want to rock the boat. It will not publicly say that its products are made without genetically modified corn.

Loblaws has quietly made plans to stock its first genetically modified free products in some stores. It will have separate shelves. It will have genetically modified food on one shelf and it will have genetically modified free food on another shelf. Obviously it has sensed the concern in the general public. Loblaws of Canada is not stupid. It has sensed that consumer awareness is growing to the point where many Canadians will demand pure food instead of frankenfood.

Who knows if our corn flakes might contain a gene from some mutant fish? We just do not know the kinds of things that are being done. The classic example is when some people got Brazil nut genes in food and ended up having nut allergies. It is a terrible problem.

Borden Foods, which makes Catelli pastas and sauces, has issued a statement saying that its products are genetically modified free. However, it has had to do that on its own as an individual initiative. There is no obligation and no duty to do so. Personally, I will look for Catelli products when I go shopping because I appreciate what Borden Foods has done.

I have told hon. members about the impact that the whole genetic engineering industry is having on the farm community where I come from with the terminator gene. I think there is a healthy distrust for the people who are engineering and genetically altering our foods. It is an area of science that is new to most Canadians. There is not a level of comfort yet for most Canadians.

Even in the absence of absolute, hard, scientific fact that says genetically modified foods are bad for us—and I am the first to admit that we do not have that hard, scientific evidence—at least the government should be taking steps to err on the side of caution and err on the side of the well-being of Canadian people and not on the profit motives of the food producers in the agri-food business.

Let Canadians choose. Let them know what it is they are actually eating. Make labelling mandatory. Yes, it is a burden and maybe even a cost factor for the producers. They probably will not like it. However, I would urge the government to show leadership and to show that it cares for the consuming public by mandating the labelling of foods so that we can make an informed choice.