Philip Toone

[Fisheries and Oceans, December 13th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I hope the Conservative government will listen to the commissioner, because he emphasized the importance of having reliable, up-to-date information in order to ensure a sustainable future for fisheries. With the decline in fish stocks in Canada and its devastating effect on the economy and coastal communities, the advice of scientists and proper monitoring are crucial in order to allow stocks to rebuild.

Why is the government reducing its scientific capacity just when fishers need it the most?

[Copyright Modernization Act, December 12th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I think the member is referring in his first question to what is called the trickle-down theory, where people who are super rich will eventually perhaps spend money and allow the less privileged, the workers who work in those institutions, to benefit from the wealth that has been created.

I think it is about time that the people who actually create the wealth in this country actually benefit directly from that wealth. I do not think the Viacoms of the world should be the biggest beneficiaries of bills like the ones before us today. We need to ensure that everybody has a shake of the stick. Frankly, I think that this bill is entirely biased toward those who do not need our help.

I will remind the members opposite that, yet again, they are talking about tax cuts for the wealthiest corporations. If that is the case, then clearly they do not need the money. It is the people at the bottom of the heap who probably need it a lot more.

[Copyright Modernization Act, December 12th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I was recently elected, as was my colleague, the member for Winnipeg North. A great number of MPs on both sides of the House in fact were recently elected. I would challenge a great number of them to say how much time they have actually had to speak to just about any bill that has been presented in the House since we started sitting in June.

Frankly, the government seems to be in a huge hurry to pass bills without the due reflection that is required. We need to seek the comments of our electors, the people who live in our ridings, to ensure that the bills before us are properly conceived and will be properly delivered. I do not think that we are given nearly enough time to do so.

Again, we have a situation where the government is trying to steamroll legislation through the House. I am frankly quite appalled that the lack of democracy in the House is tolerated by members on the opposite side.

[Copyright Modernization Act, December 12th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I also rise in the House today to oppose Bill C-11, a bill the Conservatives decided to call the Copyright Modernization Act. My colleague from the Liberal Party pointed out that the bill will benefit big business at the expense of authors. Today, we are trying to get some balance into this bill. Unfortunately, once again, debate has been limited and the Conservatives do not want any amendments, so the debate in the House today will most likely be of no benefit to the bill. It is truly undemocratic to try and ram this through faster than our constituents want.

Canadians want this bill gone over with a fine-tooth comb and properly debated so that it can be amended and its major shortcomings addressed. For example, Bill C-11 creates rights for big business, for the content owners. Creators will not benefit from the bill. The big winners will certainly be the content owners, in other words, big business. This bill compensates those who already make a decent living and are well off. And yet, it is the artists that are having trouble getting by and who need our support. They are the ones in our regions and in our big cities who make Canada culturally rich. They are the ones that need the government's support. Things are going very well for big business.

Frankly, the revenue that the government derives from big business is entirely adequate. The proof is in the pudding: the government is trying to cut back on the revenue it gets from big business. That would suggest that the revenue is too high. Small businesses, creators and artists are the ones that need the help. This bill also greatly affects young people and students who would only have about 30 days to erase any copyrighted products in their possession.

There are some pretty tough clauses in this bill. For example, the fines in this bill include penalties of up to $1 million and 5 years behind bars. That is really over the top. These penalties are in keeping with the Conservatives' priority: to have a law and order society. They are bent on building prisons and sending good, upstanding Canadians there. The Conservatives think that we all want these people behind bars. Frankly, the Conservatives' position is quite over the top. Five years in prison to protect big business' copyright is over the top, just like most of the crime bills that have been introduced

It is clear that the Copyright Act should be amended and should better reflect the transformation of technology and of our methods of communication in Canada. While the title of the bill is the Copyright Modernization Act, the story we are being told is an old one. The act is not being modernized; what we are seeing is how things were done in the 1900s or even the 1800s, when big corporations made money at the expense of the workers, the creators and small businesses. They want to reward big corporations. Honestly, this is an old story. There is nothing modern about it. It is quite antiquated. The government should perhaps think about it a little more and help all our constituents and all Canadians, not just those who are well off, like big corporations.

What is being proposed today is a transformation of the print media into digital media. This has brought about profound changes in the way Canadians discuss politics, society and culture. In Canada, creativity, innovation and vision are emerging from the places where people live and identify themselves as Canadians. All works of art, whether in music, literature or the visual arts, are based on the experiences of people who live in their native regions.

They are not based on the bottom line of a big corporation making big profits; they are based on everyday life. People's everyday lives are where we should be lending a hand. We should create tax credits for artists. We should go looking for them and lend them the hand they need. Instead of that, they are being told that we will favour big corporations and maybe, eventually, if artists are lucky, they will be able to sell their products and make some money. As well, we are told that once that is done, they will have to forget about their rights to their creations, because they will belong to the big corporations, who will get 100% of the profits from them.

In my riding, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, there are large numbers of artists. Most of them are not particularly wealthy. There are a few exceptions. Kevin Parent, for example, has benefited from the cultural life in our region and relatively strong support for his work. People love his work. As a result, he has been able to move onto the international stage—not because some big corporation gave him its support, but because ordinary people gave him their support. Sylvain Rivière, a writer, also benefits from the support of the people in our region.

We want the artists in our region to be well equipped and well positioned to move onto the national and international scene. We want the festivals in our region to benefit from a rich cultural life and from our artists. To achieve that, we have to lend them a hand.

Again, this bill does not do that. It will do nothing but increase the profits of the big corporations. Frankly, I do not see why big corporations would need anyone to lend them a hand. The fact is that it is small artists and small businesses that all members of the House claim to support. Frankly, I think that it is only the people on this side of the House who support them.

Festivals and artists are essential to the cultural life of our regions, but unfortunately, Bill C-11 will take millions of dollars in revenue away from artists, and away from the people who make the festivals in my region possible. It is going to erode the market.

This bill includes a long list of exceptions that do not adequately recognize the rights of creators. That is what we should be debating today. Once again, the Conservatives do not want their bill to be amended. They want to limit debate. They do not want the House to improve the bill. Honestly, we must take the time needed to end up with a good bill.

We must try to respond to our constituents' requests. We have been asked by many people to amend this bill. Unfortunately, to date, the Conservatives have not been willing to amend the bill we are considering.

I would like to quote a well-known technology commentator, Mr. Geist from the University of Ottawa, who succinctly summarized the issue, “The foundational principle of the new bill remains that anytime a digital lock is used—whether on books, movies, music, or electronic devices—the lock trumps virtually all other rights.” This means that fair dealing and the new rights in the bill cannot be supported.

It is very unfortunate that our Conservative government really does not want to listen. We all know that the vast majority of businesses in Canada are small, local, family businesses. The vast majority of artists are independent. They are local people. The artists transform the culture and society and sow the seeds, but it is the multinational entertainment industry that will reap the rewards.

Canadian copyright legislation can strike a balance between copyright and providing fair compensation to artists for their work, while ensuring consumers have the right to reasonable access to content. We want to find the right balance. This bill provides a number of new privileges with regard to access to content, but it does not provide any alternative means of compensating our artists.

This will seriously impact our artists' ability to survive. The Copyright Modernization Act gives with one hand and takes with the other. I hope that this bill will not pass.

[Copyright Modernization Act, December 12th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her very interesting remarks.

Unfortunately, in our House the time set aside for debate is extremely limited. Limits are constantly being imposed on us—and that is truly very disappointing—especially when it comes to the bill before us today, which may very well affect many artists in Quebec and across Canada. She mentioned that the bill seemed to favour big business and not creators. I would like her to talk a little more about how a bill like the one we have before us could help creators. How could this bill be improved?

[Atlantic Canada, December 12th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, that answer is not going to help the hundreds of employees and their families have a relaxing Christmas.

This government plans to cut at least 200 jobs in the department, in essential services such as the coast guard and scientific research. The inability of this government and its predecessors to manage our aquatic resources has already deprived countless fishing families of their jobs.

Is that the Conservatives' economic action plan? Dismiss hundreds of employees at Christmas?

[Newfoundland and Labrador Fishery Rebuilding Act, December 8th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, I will pick up where I left off last time, about a month ago. My colleague from St. John's South—Mount Pearl has proposed a very worthwhile bill. My colleagues in the Conservative Party have said that the collapse of the ocean fishery has already been studied and the federal government has already done all it can to restore the fish stocks that have collapsed. If that is really the case, the cod and other fish stocks in the Gulf of St. Lawrence would not be in danger or have almost completely collapsed. We know that the groundfish stocks, such as cod and ocean perch, are already considered to have collapsed. Their recovery prospects in the medium term are fairly poor, at best.

The cod population in the Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence is at its lowest level in 61 years of monitoring and is still declining. The mature cod population from 2008 to 2010 is estimated to be, on average, 37% of the average level observed from the mid-1990s to the end of that decade, and 10% of the average level in the mid-1980s.

Since 2009, there has been no cod fishery in the region because of a third moratorium imposed on catching cod in the southern gulf.

How can we rectify the huge mistakes that caused this catastrophe? We have to start with an inquiry, as the bill proposes. That will give us the scientific, ecological, economic and social information we need in order to rectify our mistakes, to undo the ineffective and often destructive fisheries management policies that the federal government has imposed on fishers.

An inquiry would allow us to understand the big picture, the economic, social, political, and scientific aspects of the fisheries collapse, which is without a doubt the biggest catastrophe that Atlantic Canada has ever faced.

We do know some of the causes of the fisheries collapse: overfishing, caused by a lack of essential scientific information needed to understand the true health of the fish species in the Atlantic and the Gulf of St. Lawrence ecosystems; overfishing, caused by weak international laws that allow fishers from other countries to decimate fish stocks with impunity; climate change, caused by greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation and rampant urbanization, which has led to changes in water temperature and water acidification; and many other forms of human intervention that have damaged the Atlantic and the Gulf of St. Lawrence ecosystems.

When settlers first came to the coast 500 years ago, cod was so plentiful that sailors could scoop them up into their ships with buckets. The cod fishery is one of the mainstays of the economy of the Maritimes, including the Gaspé Peninsula and the Magdalen Islands, and it was one of the main reasons for settlement.

As recently as the 1940s, cod fishers were landing between 300,000 and 600,000 tonnes of cod per year. Then in the 1990s, the federal government banned cod fishing in response to the collapse of the cod fishery. By 1993, all Canadian cod fishing was banned. Today, in 2011, no real solution to the devastation of the cod fishery has been either proposed or implemented.

In the Gaspé and the Magdalen Islands, the loss of the cod fishery has been devastating. Not only were cod and other groundfish the mainstay of the economy in the region, cod was also a cornerstone of Gaspé culture, as exemplified by the tradition of cod curing, so famous to the region that it became known as the Gaspé cure.

The Gaspé Cure is the result of a drying method that is made possible by the climate on the coast of the Baie des Chaleurs, a dry, windy climate that provides ideal conditions for sun-drying cod.

Today, the Gaspé Cured company continues this century-old tradition that has been passed down over the years. The company has established a major processing plant in Sainte-Thérèse-de-Gaspé, one of the places in the Gaspé where fishing is most active.

According to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, cod fishing has been the backbone of the Quebec fisheries, in both the Gaspé Peninsula and the Magdalen Islands. As a result, the community had become heavily dependent on these resources. However, the moratorium and the decline in total allowable catch have affected it severely.

In 1985, there were nearly 1,700 groundfish licences in Quebec, and more than 3,300 fishers and fisher's helpers were engaged in the cod fishery. At that time, the total cod landed values were in the order of $18 million. In 2002, there were fewer than 1,000 groundfish licences. In total, for all of Quebec, the number of active cod fishers and fisher's helpers was estimated at 1 150 in 2002 for landings of a total value of only $3 million.

Nearly half of those fishers are found in the Gaspé Peninsula. The sustainability of many coastal communities that depend on fishing is under threat at present.

This way of life in my riding is threatened in large part because of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' rules and regulations. Thanks to the department's questionable conservation policies, and thanks to its foot-dragging when it comes to taking real action on overfishing, the fisheries of the east coast have been mismanaged almost to the point of annihilation.

The minister said no to an inquiry into the state of the fish stocks in Newfoundland, even though federal management of the fisheries has clearly been a failure. An inquiry into the reasons for this failure is long overdue.

The minister's refusal to allow the inquiry has an impact beyond the borders of Newfoundland. This mismanagement that destroyed the Newfoundland fisheries has either destroyed or severely damaged many of the fisheries in my constituency also. When an Atlantic fishery collapses, it does not affect only one province; it impacts all of the regions that are part of the species' habitat.

The commission of inquiry called for by Bill C-308 would provide Canadians with a rare but crucial resource needed to rebuild the east coast fishery: clear and accurate information based on the experience of independent scientific experts, fishers and other stakeholders who rely on the Atlantic fisheries.

I urge the government to recognize the national importance of the Atlantic fisheries and pass the bill. I also urge the government to recognize the importance of the Gulf of the St. Lawrence to all Canadians.

By passing Bill C-308, the government will finally open the door to creating a sustainable Atlantic fishing economy throughout Atlantic Canada.

[Political Loans Accountability Act, December 8th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his presentation. I thought it was very interesting.

The bill is interesting even though it has some shortcomings. Today, it seems that the government is focusing on opening the door to major corporations so that they can have a rather considerable weight in the democratic process.

Clearly, we have to change the way representation can be done in our country. I am intrigued by what my colleague said in his presentation. He said that we should give some serious thought to the demographic issues raised in the bill. For example, women in Canada are disadvantaged if we compare their situation to that of men. Could he expand on how we could improve the participation of women and change this bill to make more room for women?

[Natural Resources, December 5th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the Canada-Newfoundland Offshore Petroleum Board was forced to change the mandate of the panel studying the Old Harry project because it could not perform its duties in the other provinces. That is a worrisome decision by the Conservative government and it creates confusion. It could have been avoided if the minister had set up a federal review panel from the very start, which he refused to do.

Will the minister admit that he failed to fulfill his responsibilities?

[Democratic Representation Act, December 2nd, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I am very much in favour of the bill introduced today by my colleague from Compton—Stanstead. Everyone should support it.

Representation in Canada is not about each riding having exactly the same population numbers. That is the way things are in the United States. The electoral districts there are nearly equal in population. Each electoral district, from California to Maine, has exactly the same number of people. In Canada, things are not like that; there are differences. This is very important. In a country as vast as Canada, with so many communities of interest, we cannot have a Parliament with perfect representation. It is understood that in Canada, there is no direct representation by population. If that were the case, every Canadian citizen would vote over the Internet. But that is not the way it works; voting takes place in Parliament. There are representatives in Parliament. We are here to represent our communities and our ridings.

A riding like mine, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, is not, however, a single entity. There is not one, single community that lives in the Gaspé; there are several. There are anglophones, francophones and aboriginals. This is also the case in other ridings, and even more apparent in urban ridings where there are many communities. All of these people must be represented effectively in Parliament.

Representation will never be perfect. In the Carter decision dealing with an appeal regarding provincial electoral distribution in Saskatchewan, the Supreme Court gave us some excellent terms of reference. Once again, I repeat, this was a Supreme Court decision. That decision came from a very prestigious institution, and it has significant meaning. We need to reflect carefully on that and understand the objective of the Carter decision and its repercussions. That decision pointed out that there are communities of interests in Canada. However, we must also have geographical representation. In the end, we need to take several factors into account when creating Canada's electoral ridings.

I must come back to the fact that we cannot have strictly direct representation by population. The Carter decision points out that when we are dealing with communities of interests, they must be properly represented in the House. Canada has several founding nations. Let us not forget that the anglophones are a founding people. And so are the Quebeckers, the francophones. Let us not forget that the francophone community in Canada is not made up of Quebeckers alone. There are also the Acadians, Franco-Ontarians, Franco-Manitobans and Franco-Albertans. Francophones from across Canada must be properly represented.

When creating ridings, even in Alberta, it is not simply a question of population; it is also the fact that the representatives of Alberta must also represent Franco-Albertans. There is a reason the Supreme Court decision in the Carter case in 1991 clearly refers to special communities of interests. The decision was not necessarily referring to Quebeckers. That decision was talking mainly about aboriginal communities in northern Saskatchewan, but the principle is the same across Canada. In the end, what we want is for all communities to be properly represented.

My colleague's bill proposes a kind of balance in the House. It is true that we will never have perfect representation in Canada. What we are really seeking is compromise. We discuss things in Canada. Canada has always been based on the principle of creating consensus. We want to move forward. We will never have a perfect union, but we have a satisfactory union that works quite well.

Canada is probably one of the least uniform countries in the world. It is multi-ethnic and not at all monolithic. Many communities have to be represented in the House.

The bill proposes that communities of interest and community groups be represented in the House. We have to think about that and offer them our support.

In 2006, the government declared that Quebec was a nation. That decision must not be an empty gesture. The House decided that Quebec was a nation because it believed that Quebec deserved that title, which comes with certain obligations. Quebec is very important and carries a lot of weight in Canada. This province represents one of the founding peoples of Canada. That cannot be ignored. We must ensure that Canada's demographic reality is represented. We must also take Canada's history into account in our discussions in the House. Canada's history is very important.

All cultural groups in Canada are here and participate in our democracy. These are very important elements of our democracy. They are what make our democracy so vibrant. Canada has a rather high participation rate, but it is on the decline. The cheap shots that are made in advertisements unfortunately make some people uncomfortable. We absolutely want to get people involved once again in the democratic process in Canada. We must tell them that their member of Parliament is here to represent them in the House. Saying that representation is simply a matter of population completely disregards Canada's history and its cultures, which are so vibrant and vital and which must be represented in the House.

In 2006, the House decided to recognize Quebec as a nation. Quebeckers form a nation within a united Canada. It is important to remember that, at that time, Quebec had a certain percentage of seats in the House. Quebec is of the opinion that this decision must be given some weight. If the House decided in 2006 that Quebec was one of Canada's founding groups, it should be properly represented in the House. The bill introduced by the member for Compton—Stanstead clearly explains the value of this decision.

We in the NDP firmly believe in the principle of representation. We firmly believe that the people must be well represented in the House of Commons. We must take into account the Supreme Court's decision in Carter. Our bills must clearly reflect this decision. For that to happen, the hon. member's bill must be supported.

I urge all the members of the House to think carefully so that, when the bill comes back to the House for further debate, we will be prepared to tell all Canadians that we are there for them and that the House is here to represent them. We must pass this bill.