Pierre Nantel

[Canada-Panama Economic Growth and Prosperity Act, June 7th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I have been waiting for a long time to have the opportunity to speak on this exciting subject. It was so exciting to once again witness a vote to stop us from speaking. It is rather pathetic. I do not think it is right. I am smiling a little but there is nothing funny about this. In fact, it is completely disgusting. There is no other word for it.

The people at home who are watching the proceedings of the House of Commons are saying to themselves that, at some point, their member of Parliament will be allowed to speak, but then they realize that he was not allowed to do so or that he was allowed to speak for only two minutes instead of five.

Since this 41st Parliament began, the people in the riding that I represent have been finding that I do not speak very much. The members do not really have the opportunity to speak because 25 gag orders have now been imposed on us. The cynic in me would like to point out that this is our silver gag order. When you get married, you celebrate your silver anniversary after 25 years, so this is our silver gag order. At the rate things are going, we will be celebrating our golden gag order before Christmas. It is absolutely pathetic.

I would like to add that after a while, unfortunately, we get used to this dictatorship and the extreme lack of respect for democracy demonstrated by the members opposite.

I will get back to the matter at hand because, clearly, the Conservatives are amused by my objections to how they are treating us.

With regard to Panama, I read a short paragraph on the Amnesty International website that summarizes the situation. It states:

Safeguards of the human rights of Indigenous Peoples remained inadequate, especially in the context of large infrastructure projects built on Indigenous land. There were concerns about restrictions on freedom of expression.

That is written on the Amnesty International website, and I will come back to this in a moment. However, I would point out that the publication L'État du monde is no more encouraging.

Anyone who follows current events, watches the news and hears anything about free trade with a country might think that this is a free trade agreement with the United States, and that it makes sense because they are our neighbours and we need to makes things easier. When one realizes that we are talking about Panama, one might find that strange and decide to do a little research. That is what we did.

Clearly, during the many committee meetings when we discussed this potential trade agreement, our representatives stated repeatedly how important it was to be cautious and express our concerns about this agreement with Panama. One such person was the hon. member for Burnaby—New Westminster.

The Canadian government even made some requests of Panama, which refused to sign a tax information exchange agreement. That is another issue. The way I am addressing this is somewhat awkward, but the reality is that Panama is not a simple county to enter into an agreement with.

The Conservatives are saying that this agreement may be a bit complicated, but that we have to trust them. Excuse me? How can we trust them? Do they take us for fools? I am asking the question today for the second time: do they think I am that easily manipulated? It does not make any sense that they want to teach us a lesson and that they are surprised that we want to continue to debate and discuss this subject. Really.

The Conservatives are not proposing something clean and simple; rather, they are proposing a free trade agreement with a country that it is completely legitimate to have doubts about. But no. We do not have the right to do that, apparently. This is another example of the bad faith of this government, which claims that we are against the economy, against progress and against trade. Come on. The Conservatives are always trying to sneak things through and do things at the last minute. They keep everything to themselves and are really the champions of poor communication.

One thing I would like to address is the report found in L'État du monde. It is worth reading a few excerpts.

The second year of Ricardo Martinelli's mandate was marked by considerable tension. His popularity declined rapidly. Many criticized the president's entrepreneurial rhetoric [that sounds familiar], his authoritarian decisions and lack of dialogue.

Goodness me. These are the Conservatives' pals.

Labour code reforms affected unionization conditions and the right to strike, resulting in major demonstrations and a general strike on July 13, 2010...

How about that? It is clear who they have been swapping houses with.

Violent clashes between demonstrators and police in banana production regions resulted in the deaths of at least two people.

Fantastic. Reading that really makes me think, gee, maybe we should trust the Conservatives and let them ram this down our throats without a word of protest. It makes no sense.

Moving on. Here is another really excellent part.

The president's anti-judge [and anti-government official] decisions, appointments of friends to strategic positions and frequent about-faces on critical issues were also the subject of much controversy.

I understand.

I have only one minute left. It is too bad that time is so short. What can I say? We do not have time to fool around here. We put as many bills through the machine as the public can handle. As soon as the Conservatives' popularity plunges, they will become very nice and come and tell us that they want to listen.

[Arts and Culture, June 6th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is funny, but telling me that things are being digitized does not necessarily reassure me in any way regarding what is happening at Library and Archives Canada. It really seems as though the Conservatives believe that Canadians can be easily manipulated.

As for Canadian cinema, we have been very successful in recent years, with several awards and nominations. This year, the Philippe Falardeau film Monsieur Lazhar was nominated for an Oscar.

Yesterday, Philippe Falardeau himself spoke out against the fact that the government is “getting rid of things without any idea of how to replace them”. Someone mentioned consultation earlier. This is the same thing.

Is this how the government wants to reward such tremendous international success, by making these draconian cuts to the NFB?

[Arts and Culture, June 6th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member that what was said yesterday in the House was not very bright.

So we will give the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage another chance to find something intelligent to say, because yesterday he was way off base.

The Conservatives can claim that they invest in culture, but when we look at their actions, we see that, really, they are destroying this sector. The Conservatives are axing thriving institutions, although they claim to support artists. They are ruthlessly closing the CineRobotheque in Montreal and Mediatheque in Toronto.

Can the government explain how these closures are supposed to help culture?

[BUSINESS OF SUPPLY, June 5th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, first of all, the hon. member is right. We are going to jog and exercise together to have a sound mind in a sound body.

Second, in response to his question, I honestly think that the government is not interested in knowledge per se, because they do not have a long-term vision for our society. They are constantly looking for short-term solutions. So, in the short term, when a lobbyist comes in the door, they ask him what he wants and say, “Sure, man. We will do that for you.”

[BUSINESS OF SUPPLY, June 5th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, I am being asked to respond, and I will respond, but honestly, the answer is self-evident because my colleague is giving me an example that has nothing to do with what I am talking about.

First, I invite him to go and see the people from Archives Canada, the people who are in the park and who are protesting. They could tell him about the people doing research at the University of British Columbia.

Second, this is classic. In Bill C-38, the government is deliberately including worthwhile things, such as the enhancement of the travelling exhibitions indemnification program, but it is also including a bunch of garbage. Then, I will be criticized for voting against the enhancement of assurances with respect to travelling exhibitions.

[BUSINESS OF SUPPLY, June 5th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, I have no doubt about the hon. member's good faith, but I did not really understand his question very well. However, I appreciate his candid, honest reaction.

I will simply say that, when I was at the demonstration 10 days ago, I met a man who told me how devastating it was to see that his work was being threatened. Actually, he was working on something that the hon. member might be able to relate to. He was involved with the archiving of aerial photographs of Canada. I do not recall their date, but they were clearly very old photographs. To take them, you needed a plane and a camera. That tells you how old they were. I am no aeronautical engineer or expert photographer. But it was still clear to me how relevant it was to have a portrait of Canada from the air at that point in time. And if those photographs are not archived properly, information will certainly be lost when someone is trying to talk about our country, about the erosion of riverbanks, or any kind of subject that has nothing political about it and does not deal with the art of mime or dance. Those are things that should normally interest the hon. members opposite.

[BUSINESS OF SUPPLY, June 5th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, we will try to stop using bad words, even though we are being told that we are getting caught up in a web of our own lies. That is quite something to say as well. I have to wonder if the word “lies” is unparliamentary language. Regardless, I will share my time with my colleague from Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine.

Once again, we are gathered here to talk about the blind cuts being made by this government. Unfortunately, some competent people who actually know about these subjects are currently leaving the room, which is too bad because I would have re-read today's motion to them:

That, in the opinion of the House, Canadian scientific and social science expertise is of great value and, therefore, the House calls on the Government to end its muzzling of scientists; to reverse the cuts to research programs at Environment Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Library and Archives Canada, National Research Council Canada, Statistics Canada, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada; and to cancel the closures of the National Council of Welfare and the First Nations Statistical Institute.

The purpose of today's debate is to protect those people in the public service who aim to fuel the debate with objective facts and observations. It is something scientific. Several people said earlier that some people on the other side were having difficulty accepting scientific facts. I would not say that it is because a portion of them are creationists, but there are some people across the way who think that the world is flat or who thought that for some time, anyway.

Today, we wonder if some are denying certain facts deliberately. Why? Is it because of their religious views or because they have strong ties to large companies that, of course, would themselves prefer to choose environmental data analyses with results that suit them better? What is their motivation?

I do not know, but there is a reason why this is the theme of our opposition day: science generally does seem to be losing more and more ground. My colleague who is a member of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage was just called to order on that very issue. I do not believe that this is a topic that he tries to avoid at all costs, but he certainly has his hands full.

This man constantly has to defend the positions of the Conservatives on heritage, archives, libraries and culture, so many issues that they obviously do not care about, with the exception of an editorial line of narrow thinking and a precise reading of history, which they try to shove down our throats with a vengeance. With the exception of those two specific themes, they do not care about those issues.

But when one is the representative in the House of the people at the Department of Canadian Heritage who are responsible for those areas, when one is responsible for constantly defending those issues on behalf of a team that does not care, one is constantly busy. The Minister of Canadian Heritage said himself on TV that his team was constantly backstabbing him because he stood up for the CBC and other noble cultural issues associated with fine arts and Latin literature, in their view.

I even heard him say just now that he was very proud of cutting the ribbon at an institution. I would rather hear him talk fondly about organizations he has a connection with than talk about the cuts that the Conservatives are currently making.

But what I am really interested in, for example, is the doublespeak on Library and Archives Canada. Earlier I heard the hon. member opposite praise the merits of digitization. Of course, that probably has to do with a date in history that adds up to 21 exactly—yes, I am talking about 1812. I have no doubt that he is really interested in that because he likes numbers a lot.

All that aside, they talk about public servants who are digitizing information so that it can be shared. However, the current bill will mean that 50% of the archivists will be laid off, something that seems to me in fact to be completely illogical.

There will always be a need for archivists. Right now, the Conservatives are saying quite enthusiastically that it is marvellous to have access to information. They are patting themselves on the back and saying it is extraordinary that today culture is available on the Web, but on the other hand, they are making cuts. It seems they are taking credit for properly managing the troops, they are congratulating the archivists for their good work, but then they are telling them to get lost. That is what they are saying.

I myself went to meet with the archivists, when they were in town 10 days ago. They were completely shattered. Honestly, no one is more passionate about knowledge than the people at Library and Archives Canada. These people are only interested in the truth, in history and in facts.

No one is in a better position than they are to assess the thoughtlessness with which these cuts are being made, under a gun. Because cuts had to be made, the Conservatives just found a place where cuts could be made and they cut. What happened at that point? The cuts were not made in any visible areas, but rather in an obscure area. What happens when they do not know what it is they are cutting?

Is it not true that the most important thing in a home, or in a society is its foundation, its culture, its history? It is crucial. As we speak, we may well be in a period of restraint. We will have to find out whether things are going well in Canada, or not. We no longer know for sure, because it changes from day to day, according to our colleagues opposite.

The NDP believes that work must be done in broad daylight and that the best antiseptic is sunlight, that the best way of knowing we are doing the right thing is to do it in the open. This is something that I criticize constantly. Watching the Conservatives, we see that they work in the shadows. They decided to make cuts in places where it would not be too obvious.

It is clear that if 100 archivists showed up in a park in Ottawa, it would be a rather low-key affair. In their heart of hearts, they would rather not breathe fire, wave placards or set fire to mailboxes. They are intellectuals, they are pragmatists, and they are rational people. Of course, they will be against these cuts. There is no better target for cuts than people like them, people who usually work behind the scenes. If the government decided to cut back on snow removal because of a shortage of money, that would really be obvious. But cuts to archiving will go through like a letter in the mail—assuming there is no lockout.

I would also like to mention another very sad program. Actually, the program is not sad at all; on the contrary, it is a wonderful program. But it too was arbitrarily cut. It is called the national archival development program. What is deplorable about it is that we constantly hear from the people opposite about the value of a penny here and a penny there. But we all know the value of a dollar.

It is all a question of choice and of management. You have to know how to manage wealth creation and sharing. This is a very strange example. The national archival development program is being cut, though its main feature was getting communities involved. With each dollar invested by the federal government, people managed to interest private partners in the community so that they could organize local exhibitions and enhance local archives. But the choice was made to cut it. Once again, it was an arbitrary cut.

What is sad in all this is the short-term, panicked vision. That kind of behaviour is what scares me most at the moment. We can feel that everyone associated with the Conservative government is afraid; they are afraid of being cut and they are afraid to speak out loud and clear.

I have seen constant examples of that fear from people who have come to testify about the cuts. It can even be seen in the Prime Minister's staff.

[National Film Board, June 5th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the arts community is currently crying for help to save the NFB's CineRobotheque. Indeed, the complex will have to close its doors because of the Conservatives' cuts. But it is central to the cultural life of Montreal, Quebec and Canada and has been for some 20-odd years. The CineRobotheque is well used by members of the public and artists alike. No fewer than 30,000 people visited it last year.

Philippe Falardeau, an Oscar nominee who has been praised many times by the Minister of Canadian Heritage, is a good example of the NFB's relevance: he got his start there.

Once again, the minister needs to think about the consequences. If the centre closes, we will be left with nothing, but we will see.

I invite him to reconsider his decision in order to keep this cultural centre open.

[Canada–Jordan Economic Growth and Prosperity Act, June 4th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, according to my sources of information—including people who were members of the previous Parliament—the argument was made many times that increasing trade with Jordan would pave the way for a better dialogue concerning human rights and workers' rights.

I would like to know what pragmatic goal we have to verify that, and to get further information on the subject.

[Canada–Jordan Economic Growth and Prosperity Act, June 4th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I would also like to congratulate my colleague from Malpeque on his eloquent speech. Is he worried about applying a double standard to goods and people?

In Mexico we saw limits on the number of people crossing borders, but none on the amount of goods. Does this also apply to Jordan?