Pat Martin

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, April 28th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, that is an interesting question put forward by my colleague from Western Arctic. For years, I have tried to figure out what motivates the Liberals and the Bloc. Reason and logic do not usually drive them. They are usually motivated by some other factors that I do not pretend to understand.

Let me simply say that it would be crazy “if we had a policy to try and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions through the use of biofuels that's actually leading to an increase in greenhouse gases”. That would be the kind of thing that would be so counterproductive and counterintuitive that if, after two years, we decided that was the direction we were going in, the review hopefully would reveal it. That was a quote from Professor Robert Watson, the chief scientific adviser to the World Bank.

Another speaker on this subject, Vandana Shiva, the director of the India-based Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy, said, “If...more and more land [is] diverted for industrial biofuels to keep cars running, we have two years before a food catastrophe breaks out worldwide”.

We are seeing riots in the streets. If what we are doing is contributing to an international food security crisis, then in the review that my colleague fought for and won in this bill, I am proud to say, it hopefully would be brought to our attention at that time and we could again nip it in the bud.

What I am particularly pleased about, though, is that, should this amendment today pass, in the review process of this bill we now would be analyzing the regulations with the same scrutiny and oversight with which we analyze the original bill. To me, that is revolutionary. That is a breakthrough.

If we do that on this bill, I think we will have set a precedent that will serve Parliament well for the rest of its life and also will serve all parliaments to come. They might not build a statue of my colleague on the grounds of the Parliament Buildings for this, but surely he will be remembered in the annals of parliamentary history as the guy who made a breakthrough in the way that we do things in the best interests of the people who voted us here.

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, April 28th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to join the debate on Bill C-33 dealing with biofuels. I have been following this with great interest as it winds its way through the House of Commons. I want to compliment my colleagues from British Columbia Southern Interior and Western Arctic for providing great guidance to our caucus on the subject of biofuels.

I should note that the NDP government in my home province of Manitoba is advancing biofuels a great deal in its greenhouse gas strategies.

I should begin my remarks by saying that the NDP is not opposed to the idea of shifting from fossil fuels to biofuels in a controlled environment with the caveat that we investigate the real benefit and the real gain and that we go into this with our eyes open.

My colleague from B.C. Southern Interior tried to move an amendment at the committee to state the basic principles associated with this bill so that the country would know what it is we seek to achieve and thereby, right in the bill, we would have a yardstick by which we could measure success or failure. In other words, if we are going in with our eyes open, we want to know that the objective of the bill is to ultimately reduce greenhouse gas emissions and shift from fossil fuels to renewable fuels.

I will speak briefly to that because I want to speak about the amendment and the subamendment primarily, which are being debated here today. We note that the biomass debate being criticized by those involved in food security is largely looking at the renewable fuels, ethanol made from grains, et cetera. We really need to couch this whole debate in the notion that there are other non-food agricultural residues where we could draw biofuels from, such as wheat straw and forest biomass. Even sugar cane grown elsewhere is less of a risk to the food security issue than some of the ideas of using corn, grain and things that could otherwise be used for food.

Having said that we are not against the idea of biofuels and we want to be able to support this bill, we also want amendments made so that Canadians can feel confident that we are going in the right direction. I am very proud of the amendment by my colleague from British Columbia Southern Interior who succeeded in getting a bi-annual review of the legislation. I believe he introduced it as subclause (8). It reads:

Within one year after this subsection comes into force and every two years thereafter, a comprehensive review of the environmental and economic aspects of biofuel production in Canada should be undertaken....

I am surprised the legislation did not have that obligatory mandatory review. I am relieved now that it does.

However, my colleague from Western Arctic has taken it further today, which is what we are really debating today. We have now qualified this review with a subamendment. This is quite revolutionary. I am actually very proud of my colleague from Western Arctic. I hope what he is doing here today passes and sets a precedent for all other subsequent legislation. What he has done today is introduce language that says not only should the environment and economic aspects of biofuel production be reviewed on a semi-annual or bi-annual basis but we should also review the progress made in the preparation and implementation of the regulations referred to in subsection (140).

It is revolutionary because it sets a very virtuous precedent in that we agonize over the legislation. We debate it in full at all stages and at the committee stage we hear witnesses and then, when the bill passes, we hand it back over to the government and the government sets all the regulations. This is where the devil is in the details.

My colleague suggests that the standing committee should also have a go at the regulations. Let me walk members through how important these regulations are going to be in the biofuel legislation that we are talking about here.

The regulations, which normally the government sets without any consultation from elected members of Parliament, are going to be dealing with things like the adverse effects of the use of the fuel on the environment, human life or human health, and on the combustion technology or the emission control equipment of vehicles, et cetera. These are critical aspects and speak to the very heart of this bill. The regulations will be made unilaterally and arbitrarily by the government unless my colleague's amendment succeeds today.

I can safely say that the NDP will be supporting this bill if this amendment goes through. We will then have some comfort that the regulations will not take us all off guard; that we will not blindly vote for this bill and then be unpleasantly surprised by the regulations.

Regulations that also will come up in the context of this bill will relate to the quantities of releases, production capacity, technology or techniques used, and feed stocks used. In the case of workings or undertakings, they will relate to the date of commencement of their operation, et cetera, and the substance or the fuel source, the commercial designation and the physical and chemical properties of the fuels.

These are the thousands and thousands of details that will come into force and effect with the regulations, but by that time it will be out of our hands. We are elected representatives charged with the responsibility of testing the veracity and integrity of pieces of legislation, but we get no opportunity to deal with the regulations. I know of no other example whereby the regulations actually come before a committee to go through the same sort of oversight and testing.

That is why today my colleague has brought forward the most common sense amendment we could possibly imagine. I hope his constituents back home and the voters of Canada acknowledge this. He is saying that if the devil is in the details and the substance of the bill is in the regulations, why then do we not look at the regulations?

The rest is academic, frankly, because the real implementation, the real nuts and bolts, the real meat and potatoes, is in the regulations, and the scrutiny of regulations is something that is rarely done in this place. There is a committee called the scrutiny of regulations committee. I do not know if it has ever been convened. I think I was put on it one time just to humour me or to keep me out of trouble or something, but it is one of those committees that nobody ever does anything on, and this amendment would provide for actually analyzing the implementation regulations associated with what could be a very important bill.

I have noticed the interest in this amendment. I understand that there have been some fairly sympathetic comments in the speeches made about the notion. We should stay relevant and stay on topic. We are not really engaged in a broad, sweeping debate about the merits of the bill. It has passed second reading. It has passed the committee stage. We are now at the third reading report stage of the bill, with an amendment at the report stage.

The amendment is in order because it deals with another amendment. This could not possibly have been done at committee because the amendment that passed at committee is what is being amended now. This is the technical detail that allows us to dwell on this today.

Some of these regulations that may come forward will be dealing with the blending of fuels. This is one of the controversial things: the source and the origin of the fuel product. Whether it comes from grain or corn that would otherwise be used in food products is what is creating the controversy and the apprehension among the people concerned with global food security.

In actual fact, in Canada and the United States an awful lot of corn that is produced does not go to food directly. It is used to make Coca-Cola. Corn is grown in abundance throughout North America for the corn syrup, really, for the sugar content. A lot also goes to animal feed, but certainly some does come into the food chain for our grocery store shelves.

I am running short of time, but let me say that part of the problem is that we should not be encouraging an industry that will be counterproductive. Some of the authorities on this subject caution us that if we go in that direction we will not be achieving what we set out to achieve.

In the first place, we should have passed the amendment by my colleague from British Columbia Southern Interior, which said that we should clearly state the principles in the bill. Sadly, that failed. However, with the amendment that did pass, with a review within one year and then reviews every two years thereafter, at least now we will be able to monitor and track the progress of this bill and nip it in the bud if in fact it is being counterproductive.

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, April 28th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things in which I am most interested, above and beyond the merits of the bill, is the development put forward by my colleague from Western Arctic that would force the government to allow the regulations to be scrutinized by the committee.

I raise this only because it is a rare and unusual thing, and I hope even a precedent setting thing. All too often Parliament debates the text of a bill, the legislation itself, and gives it great scrutiny, but then it is up to the government to put in place the regulations, which have very little or no oversight at all. Will the hon. member agree with me that this is a very positive development and a precedent that should be implemented or used in other pieces of legislation as well?

[Competition Act, April 28th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the House for this opportunity to join the debate on Bill C-454. I would also like to thank my colleague from the Bloc Québécois for identifying some important concerns we share about the shortcomings of the Competition Act as it stands today.

The current act fails to defend consumers in a number of significant ways. My colleague is seeking to address those failures with the introduction of this bill. I too will be introducing a private member's bill in the following days on the subject of the Competition Act, because I believe there is a growing consensus here in the House of Commons that the act as we know it today has serious shortcomings.

I think most Canadians would agree that our free market economy is not in fact a free market. It is manipulated in many ways that are detrimental to the consumer and ordinary Canadians. The Competition Act and the Competition Bureau, which holds the tribunals when we believe there is no free competition, are supposed to be of some comfort to Canadians. They are supposed to assure us that somebody is watching out for our well-being and that we have somebody in our corner representing our views in increasingly complex industrial sectors.

Canadians have an instinctive gut feeling that they are getting hosed by some industry sectors. Perhaps the most pointed example is the daily reminder, irritant and frustration of the appalling and irrational price fixing associated with gas at the gas pumps. It is critically important that Canadians have a champion for their cause.

Competition tribunals have been struck about five or six times under the Competition Act to try to determine if there is price fixing in the gas and oil sector. They have been unable to do so every time. Canadians get optimistic and tell the government to go for it and defend them and make sure they are not being hosed, but the tribunals have failed. Canadians want comprehensive investigations done, but the limitations of the Competition Act are such that the tribunals, no matter how well meaning, have failed to satisfy their frustrations.

I note in the private member's bill put forward by my colleague in the Bloc Québécois, Bill C-454, that a comprehensive rewrite of the Competition Act would be done to hopefully give greater ability to the tribunals to give some satisfaction to Canadians.

I note that the bill would repeal all the provisions dealing specifically with the airline industry, another area in which there has been some frustration and irritation felt by users.

Bill C-454 proposes to eliminate the criminal provisions and replace them with new ones dealing with predatory pricing and geographic price discrimination. This is a regional frustration in a country as vast as Canada. We do not really know sometimes if shipping and handling is being used as an excuse to jack up prices or to fix prices, et cetera.

Another irritant that brings this to the top of mind for a lot of Canadians is the price of cars in regard to those in the United States. Even though our dollar is now at parity with the American dollar, and was even higher for a period of time, the price of cars has not dropped in any corresponding way.

This seems to be right across the board with all car dealerships. None of them reacted to the reality that the Canadian dollar actually purchased more. There was no justification for a price differential of $5,000, $6,000 or even $7,000 for a Chevy sold in Detroit and a Chevy sold in Windsor. It is this kind of thing from which we want our watchdogs to protect us and to defend our best interests in the most aggressive way possible.

The amendment that I will be introducing in my private member's bill would I think complement my Bloc colleague's bill. I believe it should be up to Canadians to invoke an investigation by a competition tribunal. It should not be left solely to government. My bill would trigger an investigation by a tribunal if 100 or more Canadians were of the opinion that an arrangement or relationship in any sector might constitute an offence under the Competition Act.

I say it is complementary because I notice in my Bloc colleague's bill that the investigation would not necessarily be limited to an individual company. Part of the reason we have not had satisfaction from the competition tribunal investigations is that the tribunal's hands are tied in the sense that it depends so much on the question put to it. If we are accusing two oil companies of price-fixing, the investigation is very narrow in investigating those two companies.

It is almost impossible to prove collusion. I am not accusing anyone here, but if there were some kind of informal arrangement whereby one oil company phoned the other, fixed the price for that day and undermined the competition, how could we prove that beyond any doubt and then apply any kind of punitive measures?

We would like the competition tribunal investigative body to be able to expand the scope of its investigation to look at the sector as a whole, even to be proactive in its investigation, to follow the money, as it were. We would like it to go from the narrow complaint, which may have dealt with two individual companies, to looking in a more general sense at the sector as a whole and then to trying to put some reason and logic to the inexplicable fluctuation in oil and gas prices, and I do mean inexplicable. The best minds in the country have tried to figure this out. The conclusion that most Canadians come to is that we do get gouged and we do get screwed.

The Canadian government does not even track gas prices any more, never mind trying to regulate or to make sure that we are getting fair pricing, never mind fixed pricing. The only consultant in the country the government members ever go to is this M.J. Ervin guy, the self-professed authority, the self-professed expert, who is actually a consultant to the oil companies. It is a fox in a henhouse situation. He never seems to see anything wrong with anything the oil and gas companies do. That is his meal ticket. I am critical of that.

We would like to think that there is somebody in our corner to make sure we are getting fair pricing even if we fall short of the burden of proof, of proving absolutely that there was price-fixing between two companies. If there is no defensible reason for the price to be jacked up arbitrarily, that is predatory pricing, and that is the language my colleague from the Bloc uses in this bill, where he notes that evidence of “predatory pricing” is required. Predatory pricing means taking advantage of people.

I have an elderly aunt who wanted to have four rooms painted in her little 600 square foot house. The guy charged her $10,000. We took it to court. Sure enough, the court ruled that the person had misrepresented the value of the service rendered. He painted the rooms, but he misrepresented the value. That is the kind of logic we would like extrapolated to industry sectors.

Canadians do not mind paying the real prices of things even if they are going up due to world forces or domestic forces, but they do not like being gouged. They like being able to trace and track how the pricing was arrived at so that they know the real value of the product they are buying. Nowhere is this more self-evident, I believe, than in oil and gas.

Let me give one more example in the minute I have left. When Colin Powell announced the invasion of Iraq, with the shock and awe campaign about to start, the price of gas went up 10¢ a litre within one hour. No one can tell me that was for gas the companies bought at a higher price. The market anticipated a problem with the flow of oil and gouged consumers an extra 10¢ in anticipation of problems that companies did not even know would happen.

That is the kind of thing we need protection from as consumers. That is why we are going to see a flurry of private members' bills coming forward along the lines of improving and enhancing the authority of the competition tribunals, underpinned by a new and reformed Competition Act. I support this bill. I wish my colleague well in its success.

[Criminal Code, April 18th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I do not disagree with the closing remark of my colleague from Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel. He always comes to the House well prepared. He made a very informative and well-researched speech on the concerns he has with Bill S-3. We have many of the same apprehensions about the bill. I was particularly interested in two points my colleague raised on which I would like him to comment.

One is the lack of respect shown to the will of Parliament and to the voice of committees. In fact Parliament and the standing committee at the five year review rejected the implementation of these terms and conditions and wanted them to cease. We believe that the voice of Parliament should have primacy. The government of the day should have listened, taken note and acted accordingly, not to reintroduce these same measures through an unelected chamber like the Senate.

There is a second thing on which I would like the member to comment. I believe that one of the basic fundamental tenets of our judicial system is the right to remain silent when accused, or in a hearing, or in a courtroom setting. We only suspend the right to remain silent with very robust corresponding measures, such as, in the case of a parliamentary committee, there is no right to remain silent, but the information gleaned at that committee cannot be used against the person in any subsequent proceeding.

That does not seem to be the case in Bill S-3. There is no right to remain silent and the information given cannot be used directly against the person, but it may be used as derivative testimony, or derivative evidence in some further proceeding.

Would my colleague agree this has to be addressed? The right to remain silent cannot be compromised unless there are corresponding protections introduced.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2008--Bill C-50, April 17th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, let me simply say that the whole country saw it as a dirty trick when the Conservatives snuck an immigration bill into the finance bill to try to ram through their radical reform of immigration policy without the scrutiny of oversight or debate or the House of Commons being able to deal with it. I want to thank the member for Trinity—Spadina for giving us at least this brief opportunity to provide some venting on what they are trying to do.

Relying on temporary foreign workers to fill labour market vacancies is not a human resources strategy at all. It is a recipe for social unrest. It should be condemned, not expanded, and I thank my colleague for raising it today.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2008, April 10th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I want to welcome my colleague from Vancouver Quadra and compliment her on her thoughtful remarks in what I believe was her maiden speech in this House of Commons.

I am sure her constituents benefited from the consultation that she did on some of the negative aspects of this bill and the subterfuge that is being foisted on Canadians by slipping these immigration amendments into the budget bill.

We in the NDP have dwelt at some length on how we find fault with the immigration section of Bill C-50 and we came to the logical conclusion that what we intend to do is vote against the bill because we disagree with the bill. It follows logically that when we disagree with something and follow our principles, we vote against that.

As my colleague is new to the House of Commons and since this will be perhaps the first challenge of its type that she will have the opportunity to vote with, I can give her perhaps some guidance and ask her a question.

The way it works here is that if members believe in something they stand up for it, and if they disagree with something, they vote against it. Those are the basic tenets of being a public officer or a public servant. The member's constituents expect that she will come here and vote her conscience on what she really believes and, on those things she opposes, she will vote against.

Therefore, will she or will she not stand up with those of us who oppose Bill C-50 and vote against it at 3 o'clock today, two hours from now?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2008, April 10th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Acadie—Bathurst for the public service that he has done for Canadians today by sounding the alarm, as it were, and notifying Canadians that a crime is about to take place, if not literally then certainly figuratively and practically, that we are about to get robbed.

It is now 12:35 in the afternoon and by 3 o'clock a crime will be about to take place. Somebody should call the cops and get them in here to witness this because hidden within the budget are two landmines that do not belong there. The first one is the immigration fiasco that the government has snuck into the budget bill. The second one is the manifestation of perhaps the greatest theft in Canadian history: $55 billion of surplus in the EI fund, paid in by employees and employers, not by the government, will be taken and used for whatever spending priorities it sees fit.

The current government, and the previous government, seem to have a misunderstanding about whose money it is. Marcel Massé was the previous president of the Treasury Board. I will ask my colleague to compare these two things. The former Liberal president of the Treasury Board, when there was a $30 billion surplus in the public service employees pension plan, by legislation, by the power vested in them, they stole that money from those pension fund beneficiaries just the same as the current government will steal the EI money. Does he not see a parallel there, that those guys do not seem to understand that it is not their money?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2008, April 10th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Vancouver East for raising a number of the issues associated with the budget, with which I too find fault. Her riding of Vancouver East has many of the same social problems and challenges with which my riding of Winnipeg Centre deals, not the least of which is a complete dearth of affordable social housing.

This is not by accident, but by deliberate policy, first by the Mulroney Conservative government, which killed most of the social housing programs. I was the president of a housing co-op at the time. During that era, most of the access to federal funding disappeared. Then when the Liberals were elected, they killed off the last remaining streams of money for affordable social housing. In fact, we can trace this negligence toward affordable housing through three successive federal governments.

I visited her in the riding of Vancouver East and the downtown east side recently, and a study was published at the very time of my visit. It made the business case for affordable housing, in that it cost more per person in social services for a person on the street and without housing than it did to provide social housing. Could she expand some on that study?

[Petitions, April 10th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition here from thousands of Canadians from right across the country who point out that asbestos is the greatest industrial killer the world has ever known. In fact, more people die from asbestos poisoning than all other industrial reasons combined, yet Canada remains one of the world's largest producers and exporters of asbestos, dumping 220,000 tonnes per year into third world countries.

The petitioners call on Canada to ban asbestos in all its forms and institute a just transition program for the asbestos workers and communities. They also call upon Canada to end all government subsidies of asbestos in Canada and abroad and also call upon the government to stop blocking international health and safety conventions designed to protect workers from asbestos, such as the Rotterdam convention.