Paul Szabo

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, June 7th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to provide a few comments on Bill C-2.

It is interesting that this is the first bill the government brought to Parliament. We have been on quite a journey with this bill and it bears some reflection on where we came from.

First, I want to indicate that there is no question that rules-based bilateral trade deals are intrinsically a good thing. When we enter into these arrangements, as we have with a number of countries, it is a win-win situation. There are synergies and things that happen that make value come between the economic inputs that each can bring.

In fact, I was much swayed by the argument that other countries that are doing this will have the benefit of the tariff arrangement that would be entered into and that if Canada does not do this, then our businesses that want to do business in Colombia will be impaired. It is an interesting argument. I do not think I have heard the answer to the question on whether we should proceed at this time or whether there is a point at which current bilateral trade with Colombia might be impaired because of that.

I was also intrigued that the standing committee looking at this in the first instance came back to the House with a recommendation that the first thing that should happen is an independent human rights assessment. That was the starting point and all the parties said that but it did not happen. Canadians probably want to know why. I do know that I had read where Amnesty International was reluctant to participate or to conduct such an independent assessment. I do not know why.

We have had a number of debates on this matter for some time and the issue of human rights has often been raised. I gave a speech at second reading after doing some work. I was looking at what was happening in the United States, which was also working on this. I was looking at some of the reports out of Colombia that talked about judicial corruption. I was talking about some of the reports from Colombia that showed that the number of prosecutions and convictions of those who had participated in human rights abuses and murders was almost nothing.

I could not understand how, if we had a situation that was improving, we could have circumstances where the judiciary was corrupt, where prosecutions were not being followed through on and where people were being disrupted and displaced from their homes. This is part of the partner with which we are looking at in terms of doing trade.

If I am not on the committee, when I look at any bill I have to depend on the committee to provide that information. I can only do so much research myself. I do know I still have questions about the agreement to have Colombia do an assessment on human rights as a consequence of the trade that would happen as a result of Bill C-2; the incremental or the specific impact of additional trade on human rights in Colombia. We would hope that it would improve it. However, from the standpoint of due diligence and of doing the kind of work that would be necessary to prove it, we need a mechanism. I think one of the Conservative members said that we need a rules-based free trade deal.

I understand, and I stand to be corrected, but the understanding is that the Government of Colombia will do an assessment of its human rights situation and the impact of trade on that, how trade has impacted human rights as a result of this deal, and report to its government.

I think we would get a copy of that, but I am not sure. However, when it was first introduced, it sounded like both governments would do their own independent assessments and report to their Parliaments. The other interpretation was that Canada and Colombia would work together on an assessment and would each report the same report to both Houses. I do not know where that is right now but I do know that it is a big question. I do not know whether there is a mechanism in place that could actually make an assessment of the impacts on human rights.

The fact is that the government wanted to have this amendment to the bill, an amendment that it had not contemplated. If we think about it carefully, it is not just an appeasement. It probably reflects a concern that there will be a major constituency out there concerned about the human rights element here.

As parliamentarians, we have heard from Canadians right across the country about the human rights aspect. I know they are in the same position as many parliamentarians who are not on this committee. They do not have all of the facts. However, when parliamentarians do not have all of the facts and the government says that we should trust it because trade is a good thing and it will deal with this, I am not sure. So, as a parliamentarian, we would look at what other countries are doing.

In the United States, President Obama was very aggressive in saying that getting out of the hole in the United States will be by promoting bilateral trade. I read the article on his speech and he had made a list but he did not mention Colombia, even though his country was working on a free trade deal with Colombia. I then heard congressional leaders saying that they would not go there and that it would be a long time before they looked at it. I do not know the precise reason but my understanding, from the media reports, is that the Americans are not proceeding aggressively with their free trade deal with Colombia.

Again I have some questions and parliamentarians should not be left with questions. We need to have answers. We need to have credible, reliable, verifiable information from all of the stakeholders in this matter and that includes from all the various human rights groups that have expressed concerns and who wanted to appear before the committee.

I understand how committees work and I know that sometimes it is very difficult to hear from everybody, but if there were any issue that we had to identify that was the principal concern that some people have about Bill C-2, it is about human rights. I have not heard many challenges to the benefits of trade, whether it be in agriculture or mining, but there has been some concern about that. I would have thought that the committee would want to ensure that the principal representatives of stakeholders across the country related to human rights issues would have had an opportunity to present their case to the committee so that the committee could ensure that Bill C-2 would contain measures to help mitigate or in fact eliminate the concerns that may have been raised. Those are the questions that as parliamentarians we wish were answered. It is fundamental.

I do not have to stand here and give a technical speech about the bill. The bill is about doing a free trade deal with Colombia. I hope that we can do many free trade deals that are rules-based and that take into account all of the factors that cause certain stakeholder groups concern. However, the fair way to do it is to listen to those stakeholders.

When we start this House, every day we say a prayer in this place before it is open to the public and the last line is that we make good laws and wise decisions. There is still time.

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, June 7th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I have no doubt that there is not much disagreement that bilateral trade is a good thing intrinsically. The member is aware that the concerns are with regard to what happens to the people. Specifically, the information that has come out is that much of the proposed activity would involve the significant displacement of persons.

I wonder if the member would care to comment on how we would ensure that the people who would be displaced by some of the aspects of the trade arrangements would be taken care of.

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, June 7th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, like all members, I, too, have received many communications from constituents and others.

I have a two items to mention today.

First, there was a proposed amendment to the bill, which would require an assessment being done of the impact of trade on the human rights situation in Colombia. Could the member advise the House when that would happen and what the process would be in terms of making that assessment? Is any funding provided for such an activity in Colombia and/or Canada?

Finally, could the member identify whether the United States has decided to move forward at this time with its free trade deal with Colombia?

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, June 4th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, the member is quite right. She gave a very good example of how the government has absolutely abrogated its responsibilities with regard to important environmental assessment elements. That leads straight to the issue of accountability.

On the environment, the government is pre-empting the scheduled five-year review of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. The bill would allow the minister the discretion to dictate the scope of environmental assessments. Even if we had any work done there, it would not necessarily be done in a fulsome way that would permit public participation, which is the third element and one that is so important.

Canadians care about the environment. The Conservative government does not care about the environment, which is why we need strong laws that promote public participation and input into the controls, the regulations and the processes that happen in terms of matters that affect Canada's environment and our children's future.

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, June 4th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, the member says that it was okay to do something wrong because somebody else may have done something he did not like.

One of the points that the member made was that the finance committee had 50 witnesses. The committee looking at the changes to the Environmental Assessment Act would have had 50 witnesses itself. The committee dealing with the changes on the Canada Post remailers would have had 50 witnesses itself. The committee dealing with the changes proposed with regard to Atomic Energy of Canada would have had 1,000 witnesses because it would have deserved it. That is the difference. The member just thinks that one committee can do it all.

The Conservatives may have talked about the subjects, at least by title, but they never had a real debate where there was due diligence in holding the government to account because they handled this bill as an omnibus bill rather than being accountable to Canadians.

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, June 4th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, the member knows I am the runner-up this year, so I am going to get a chance to get my speech.

But I congratulate him on the honour that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance received this week. He has a good speaking voice, too.

In any event, in this bill we know there are some items that were not pre-disclosed. It is an 880-page bill.

That bill went to committee, but if that bill includes a number of items that are not included or not part of the mandate or the discipline of the members who are at that committee, how could they possibly give it the due diligence? How could they possibly give it the attention? It is like having a dozen serious, detailed pieces of legislation all put into one bill and treating it as if it were one. That means the whole process of second reading, referral to committee and hearing of witnesses, report stage, third reading, all of these things, are done once. Yet in the budget implementation bill, there are items that in themselves could have been a separate bill and would have required substantial debate within the House at second reading, substantial review and due diligence activity at committee to ask the tough questions of the government, as well as the making of amendments at report stage, and then, of course, the rest of the legislative process.

The government has preempted that. It has preempted that process by including these pieces of legislation.

One of the big changes we have, as I referred to in a question earlier, is significant changes to the rules, the laws of Canada, as they relate to environmental assessments. Our environment committee would have liked to have had an opportunity to call experts and Canadians and to promote public participation in terms of significant environmental issues. Buried in Bill C-9 are provisions that would preempt the five-year review of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

That is a legislative review. It is something that we do very often.

As a matter fact, I have one coming to my ethics committee, hopefully early in the fall. It is a legislated, mandated review of the Lobbying Act.

These are important pieces of legislation and they are to be reviewed to ensure that they continue to provide the representation of the public interest.

Bill C-9 also allows the minister to dictate the scope of environmental assessments. It leaves it up to the minister, delegated authority, effectively, that the minister can truncate the scope of work that would be done. Environmental assessments are done because Canadians have said we need to know what will be the consequences of a variety of initiatives or projects that may take place.

This now gives the authority to the minister to limit the scope and the number of environmental assessments that will take place. Does it paint a picture? It is going to weaken the public participation.

We always talk about the importance of representing our constituents. Yet the government, through this ploy of an omnibus bill and throwing this in and not allowing the full amount of debate, has destroyed the opportunities that Canadians have to deal with important issues such as the environment.

The government does not have the environment as a priority. It thought that Kyoto was a socialist plot trying to transfer money from the rich to the poor. It embarrassed us at Copenhagen. It has no priorities and no plan on the environment, yet it is going further to weaken the legislative tools and the rights of Canadians with regard the provisions of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

That is not accountable. By burying it in this bill, it is not transparent. It is not plain, it is not open, it is not clear, it is not concise, it is not correct. It is wrong. The government boasts about accountability but does it with its fingers crossed behind its back. It does not want to be accountable.

As a matter of fact, the government is even ordering witnesses not to appear before committees, who have been summoned under the law to appear before those committees. It is telling them not to appear, because it does not want the committee and Canadians to hear what witnesses have to say about the obstruction of the Government of Canada in terms of the release of public information under the Access to Information Act.

Is that accountability? No. It is not accountable. In fact, it is promoting secrecy. It is promoting, “I'm doing it our way and we are not going to tell anybody anything”. This is the kind of attitude that the government has shown.

There are many other examples. We have Canada Post Corporation. One of the changes that is going to happen as a consequence of Bill C-9 is that buried in it is a little clause that is going to change the Canada Post Corporation Act to say that the exclusive privilege referred to in subsection 14(1), which is the privilege of Canada Post to collect and deliver the mail, does not apply to letters intended for delivery to an addressee outside of Canada.

Can we imagine the impact of that? Can we fathom the reason that the government would bury this amendment in a budget implementation bill?

Is there more? Of course there is.

How about Atomic Energy of Canada Limited? Its offices are located in the Sheridan Park research centre, a couple of hundred yards behind my home. It employs a very large number of engineers, technicians and experts. They work on projects, whether they be related to Candu or other reactors where we are dealing with the production of medical isotopes or whatever. Somehow the government believes it can take pieces out of AECL; it can privatize it; it can sell it off.

We do not have the confidence. The government is saying by this bill and how it has handled AECL that it does not care about AECL anymore. It does not care about how we are going to provide for medical isotopes. It does not care about the reputation of the extraordinary technological knowledge, experience and expertise we have in Candu reactors and AECL's future.

All the government cares about is that it can sell off an asset and get some capital injected by someone else, not by the government. Why? It is because it has destroyed the fiscal position of the country.

The Conservative government inherited a $13 billion surplus from the prior government in 2006, and now it has driven it down to a $50 billion deficit. It is going to go higher and unemployment is still going to go higher, notwithstanding the recent reports.

This is a government that is scrambling with the lamest of approaches to try to capitalize on asset sales or on disposing of other rights or authorities of the government, passing on future profits for cash today so that it can say it is getting the deficit down.

The bill should be defeated because the government has not been accountable.

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, June 4th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate at third reading on Bill C-9.

This is the budget implementation bill. Canadians would think that the budget implementation bill deals with items that were in the budget and in the throne speech. That is not exactly true. In fact, it is the basis of concern of a lot of parliamentarians and Canadians that buried in the budget implementation bill are a substantial number of significant items that have just been added to it. What the government has done, in fact, is to avoid its obligation to be accountable, to be open, to be transparent.

I remember giving a speech to a parliamentary forum in which I tried to define accountability. I try to apply this in most of the work that I see in the House, to see whether accountability has been achieved. I define accountability to say that one is accountable when one has explained or justified one's decisions or actions in a manner that is true, full and plain.

I do not believe the government has been accountable in Bill C-9. The budget implementation bill is really an omnibus bill, because it includes in it changes to an awful lot of pieces of legislation and acts in Canada that were never included in the throne speech, the budget speech, or in fact, in the budget document itself.

Why would the government do that? In my view, it is to seek to be unaccountable, to be less than transparent, to be less than open--

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, June 4th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-9 includes provisions that would change the laws of the land with regard to the environment.

Bill C-9 would pre-empt the five-year review that we were going to do of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. It also would allow the minister to dictate the scope of environmental assessments rather than allowing for the normal assessment process. It also would weaken the participation of the public in efforts to protect our environment.

Would the hon. member advise the House why he believes this weakening of our environmental laws in Canada is in the public interest?

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, June 4th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order with regard to the issue of relevance.

We are speaking about Bill C-9. The member is reflecting on the Olympics and the people in the Olympics. As much as I agree with his sentiments about the great games we had, we should really be speaking to Bill C-9.

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, June 4th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, under the Canada Post Act there is a provision which refers to the exclusive privilege of Canada Post.

Bill C-9 introduces an amendment which says that the exclusive privilege would not apply to letters intended for delivery to an address outside of Canada. This is commonly referred to as the remailer issue that the member talked about.

Although there is a moratorium on rural post office closures, moratoriums are at the discretion of the government, and I believe that rural post offices would be at risk because of this change. I also believe that because of the contracting, the contracting of even urban postal outlets would further impair Canada Post.

I wonder if the member believes that this change would in fact impair, not help, Canada Post.