Pat Martin

[Petitions, September 21st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour of introducing a petition signed by literally thousands of Canadians from all across the country, more often than not in Quebec, calling upon the House of Commons to take note that asbestos is the greatest industrial killer that the world has ever known and, in fact, that more Canadians now die from asbestos than all other industrial and occupational causes combined. These signatories point out that Canada remains one of the largest producers and exporters of asbestos in the world and that the Government of Canada spends millions of dollars subsidizing the asbestos industry and blocking international efforts to curb its use.

Therefore, the petitioners call upon the Government of Canada to ban asbestos in all of its forms and institute a just transition program for asbestos workers and the communities in which they live. They also call upon the government to end all subsidies of asbestos both in Canada and internationally, as well as to stop blocking international health and safety conventions designed to protect workers from asbestos, such as the Rotterdam Convention.

[Canadian Wheat Board, September 20th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the Canadian Wheat Board is the largest and most successful grain marketing company in the world. We do not dismantle a $6 billion a year corporation without significant closing costs that KPMG has actually set at $500 million.

In this era of high deficits, how can the Conservatives defend borrowing $500 million they do not have just to indulge the foolish free market flight of fancy of a feckless Minister of Agriculture?

[Privilege, September 19th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I would like the opportunity to intervene first on the point of privilege raised by my colleague from Malpeque and also provide some comments on the intervention by the parliamentary secretary.

I would start by saying that the parliamentary secretary stood and very categorically announced that there is no breach of parliamentary privilege or contempt here. I only raise this point to put to you, Mr. Speaker, that it is not for him to make that determination, but for you as the Speaker of the House to determine whether my colleague from Malpeque has a legitimate point of privilege and whether a finding of contempt may in fact stem from it.

Addressing my colleague's point, we took note as well that the request for proposals on the MERX website that took place in August very clearly stated a wish for help in evaluating and auditing the wrap-up costs associated with terminating the Canadian Wheat Board's single desk monopoly by July 31, 2012. In other words, the Canadian Wheat Board as we know it would cease to exist on August 1, 2012. I agree with him and ask you, Mr. Speaker, given that Speakers are bound by jurisprudence and precedent, to take note of the precedents that he cited, not from one Speaker but three separate Speakers, that such an announcement can presuppose, undermine and prejudice the parliamentary procedure that necessarily determines legislation and would be able to result in the final abolishing of the Canadian Wheat Board.

I would point out that it is not only the collective privilege of members of Parliament that is being impacted by this presupposition, this announcement for all the world to see, that the Wheat Board is finished, over and dead. It is not only those of us in the chamber who are impacted, but the rural Prairie economy is also affected by such an announcement. If this announcement gazetted on the MERX website was so benign and innocuous, as the parliamentary secretary would have us believe, why do we see the spike in the share prices of the very grain companies that will benefit by assuming the very lucrative market share left behind by the $6 billion a year corporation that the government is so hell-bent and determined to dismantle? If this announcement was so innocuous, why are the share prices going up in these companies in anticipation of what the government has very publicly announced?

We should take note that the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, the minister who is responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board and who should by all rights be the Wheat Board's greatest champion, not its worst enemy and saboteur, has visited the offices of the Canadian Wheat Board only one time, and for 20 minutes, although some argue it was 22 minutes. He was being timed.

We just learned this from the CEO of the Canadian Wheat Board during our meetings in Quebec City not three days ago. It was announced to us that the one and only time the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food responsible for the Wheat Board has ever visited the Canadian Wheat Board was to announce to it this summer that on July 31 it will cease to exist and that on August 1, 2012, there will be no more single desk monopoly for marketing grain through the Canadian Wheat Board.

That is a public declaration. That is an announcement. That is not even giving us the right to entertain first reading, second reading, committee stage, third reading and report stage of a piece of legislation before the government has decreed by its advertising in MERX and by its public declaration to the directors of the Canadian Wheat Board that they are finished. That does undermine, sabotage and strip away my privilege as a parliamentarian to effect change to that legislation.

It may be that the government will not get its legislation through. It may well be that it becomes amended or modified or ameliorated, or that some of the worst aspects of it do not succeed, even though it has a majority.

We know that for the government to meet that July 31 deadline, that legislation has to clear the Senate by December 15. The members on this side will not allow that to happen. We will use every parliamentary procedure possible to ensure that the government does not get legislation passed, if we cannot amend it to modify it.

That means the government will be undermining the Prairie economy, destabilizing the key industry in our agricultural sector, throwing confusion and chaos into the marketing of grain and grain exports. Grain to Manitoba is what oil is to the province of Alberta. The government cannot be so cavalier and reckless.

The government intends to dismantle the largest and most successful grain marketing company in the world by July 31, 2012, and it does not even know what it will cost. It is only starting to ask now for some help in auditing the impact. Never mind the fact that the government has not done a cost benefit analysis. It has not even done an initial adjudication as to what this might cost.

The figures from the Canadian Wheat Board directors are loosely $500 million in wrap-up costs. A $6 billion a year corporation cannot be wrapped up without some closing costs, not when the government has just contracted to buy new ships for the Great Lakes, not when it has producer cars, not when it has standing contracts that it will have to break.

I would add my voice to ask you, Mr. Speaker, to take note of the rulings as set out by my colleague, the hon. member for Malpeque, and to take into consideration that the unilateral and arbitrary declaration by the government that the Wheat Board is over is deleterious to my privilege as a member of Parliament, deleterious to the Prairie economy and deleterious to the Prairie farm producers who count on the Wheat Board to provide the best return for their grain sales.

Speakers are guided by precedent and jurisprudence and there is an abundance of jurisprudence that supports the point that my colleague raises, that we are being denied that most fundamental right and privilege of all members of Parliament, and that is to determine the outcome of legislation and not have it presupposed by a government that has very little respect for Parliament.

[Agriculture, September 19th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, our American neighbours certainly see the benefit in the Canadian Wheat Board to Canadian farmers, because 13 times they have gone to the WTO and trade tribunals to complain that it is an unfair competitive advantage.

Now our Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board will do the Americans' dirty work for them.

My question is simple: what side is the minister on? Why is he standing up for the American agrifood giants and not standing up for Canadian grain producers, who benefit from the Canadian Wheat Board?

[Agriculture, September 19th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, there is no business case for abolishing the Canadian Wheat Board. It is an ideological crusade, plain and simple.

Now a clear majority of Canadian grain producers have voted to keep the single desk monopoly of the Wheat Board.

I argue that the minister is both duty bound and honour bound to uphold the democratic will of prairie grain producers and to respect the very act that defines his ministry, which guarantees a vote of prairie producers before the government interferes with their ability to market their grain.

[Restoring Mail Delivery for Canadians Act, June 25th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, most successful western democracies have a relatively tripartite approach to their economic development: business, government and labour. Whether labour is at the table or not, their rights to negotiate fair wages are enshrined in ways that cannot be eliminated.

Again, we have a saying that fair wages benefit the whole community, but the only way to elevate the standard of wages, working conditions and working people has been through free collective bargaining. Again, we cannot shrink our way to prosperity, we believe we grow our way to prosperity. A burgeoning, healthy, consuming middle class is key and integral to our economic recovery.

[Restoring Mail Delivery for Canadians Act, June 25th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, someone used a quote from Winston Churchill against us a little while ago.

There is a quote from Disraeli that says: “A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy”.

The hypocrisy that exists here is the government that manufactured this crisis in a classic wag the dog kind of a scenario and then points to us as if we are problem here. The government picked a fight and it is a scrappy thing to do.

There are some scrappy guys on that side and they like to throw their weight around now that they have a majority. So the government picked a perfect enemy, a straw man. It decided to jump all over Canada Post's union because it has the reputation of being sort of a militant union. The tough guys here are going take the union on, so that they show their base. As the Conservatives say, throw some red meat to their base by getting tough with big labour. They just love it. They eat it up.

What worries me is it is like the Wisconsin experience. All over the United States the public sector unions are being taken on and sure enough, the Republicans are trying to ride that into the next—

[Restoring Mail Delivery for Canadians Act, June 25th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I am trying to tell a story that happened in the 1990s as a graphic illustration of why our side gets so animated about these issues. The employer padlocked the door on the outside. Underpaid rural black women from North Carolina who largely made up the workforce were taking home wing tips so they could make soup out of it and the place caught on fire: 43 employees died and another 110 were hospitalized. This was the worst industrial relations incident since the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory of 1913 in New York City, so we have come full circle.

If anyone has travelled in rural Pennsylvania, rural North Carolina, or Florida, I think there are 60 of these right to work states, which smashed the labour union in the United States thinking it was the road to prosperity. I saw a bumper sticker the last time I was in the United States that said, “At least the war on the middle class is going well”. That is the only war they are winning. They have gone from the richest and most powerful civilization in the history of the world to almost a failed state. It is a false economy.

There is no utility in forcing wages down. We are not going to shrink our way to prosperity. Fair wages benefit the whole community and the direction we are seeing revealed in the Conservatives' weaker moments when they are tired, sleepy and grumpy and their true colours start to show, scares us a great deal. It is not the Canadian way. We are 33% unionized.

My colleague argues we should be more unionized because fair wages and free collective bargaining have led to labour peace. That was the post-war compact. Right after the war there were a lot of wildcat strikes and a lot of violence on picket lines. Guys had their heads split open on picket lines, but by free collective bargaining through a prescribed negotiations process we eliminated that violence. We eliminated work stoppages with fair wages, et cetera.

The Conservatives are inviting labour unrest the likes of which we have not seen since the 1930s and they are starting with the most volatile industrial relations environment in the free world, which is the Canadian post office. Believe me, one does not mess with the Canadian post office's labour relations. One does not invite tourists to the bargaining table in that particular environment, because it is a tinderbox that is ready to blow at any given time and the government just pressed the plunger. The postal workers have offered to go back to work.

If it were not for the irresponsible, reckless, mean-spirited, inflammatory actions of the government with this unnecessary back to work legislation, the workers have agreed to go back to work with no rotating strikes. However, they want to press their agenda because it is the tea party all over again here. It is the Republican Tea Party political environment. Conservatives have to throw some red meat to their base, so they are going to take on the big, bad union of Canada Post Corporation and show it a thing or two with a stable majority Conservative Government.

The government does not know the damage and the misery it is inviting. The worst thing that could be done for an economic recovery is to invite labour unrest and that is what it is doing. Conservatives are a bunch of amateurs.

[Restoring Mail Delivery for Canadians Act, June 25th, 2011]

Some members are laughing.

[Restoring Mail Delivery for Canadians Act, June 25th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for that ruling.

As I was saying, as the party of grumpy old guys gets grumpier, its base is getting grumpy as well. That party's base is getting frustrated. Every single principle upon which those members got elected by that base, the party has compromised and jettisoned overboard, thrown overside in the interests of political expediency, whether it is stacking the Senate with their cronies, which the Conservatives said they would never do, or whether it is racking up record deficits, which they said they would not do. The Conservatives' base is starting to wonder where the party is that they elected. Now that the Conservatives have their majority, now is the time to come on strong.

I would think the Minister of Finance was channelling Maggie Thatcher, if he had a sweater set and pearls. Every time I am in the men's washroom at the urinal, I expect to look over and see Maggie Thatcher right beside me, but no, it is the Minister of Finance.

The Conservatives are looking south of the border. If people liked the Mike Harris government, they will certainly like the labour legislation those guys have in mind. We are getting an inkling of what that will be like now. They take on big ticket items, such as defined benefit pension plans. Thomas d'Aquino and the 140 CEOs in the country are who those guys work for. That party is the political arm of the Business Council on National Issues. They have said that we have to do away with defined benefit pension plans, so those guys are dutifully falling into line. They would have us put in place some American-style 401K plan, and we know how well that has worked for American workers who invested their life savings in Enron and others.

The Conservatives would have us revisit our labour laws, like the right to work laws in the United States. As they have set about trying to recreate Canada in the image of the George Bush or Ronald Reagan United States, or however limited their vision is, I do not know if they realize what a fight they will get from the official opposition.

Also there are predictable consequences. There is a point in law that says a person can be presumed to have intended the probable consequences of his or her actions. I will tell one story as a graphic illustration of the predictable outcome of the direction in which the Conservatives are taking us.

In 1913 there was a famous fire in New York City at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Hundreds of workers died because of the sweatshop conditions, et cetera. It was at that time that workplace health and safety conditions began to improve, just out of public outrage, until about the time the Reaganites said, “Enough of these union nuisances. They are holding back prosperity. We have to smash the unions”. They put in place right to work states, like North Carolina, not unlike what the Harris government tried to do in Ontario.

I will tell a story about a chicken factory in Durham, North Carolina. This is a recent story. It happened in the 1990s. In a chicken processing plant, the chickens go by so fast that the poor women who work in the place have to do 40 actions per chicken per minute. They have to cut the wing tips off, cut the neck off, and so on. It goes so fast and it is ice cold in the plant, they do not know they have cut themselves until they see the blood dripping on the ground because their hands are so cold. They are paid $7.50 to $8 an hour. They started stealing the wing tips, the necks and the giblets that would otherwise go into hot dogs, and they would sneak them home. This is a true story. The employer padlocked the doors from the outside. The place started on fire.