Raymond Côté

[Energy Safety and Security Act, May 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his particularly relevant comment.

He has shed light on the fact that when we correct deficiencies in the legal framework, in the legal approach or in the compensation framework, it is often already too late. That is really unfortunate. I entirely agree with my colleague on that point.

The problem is much greater and much more fundamental than the solutions that Bill C-22 will provide. That is why we must clearly go further and, more particularly, expand the measures that should be introduced.

[Energy Safety and Security Act, May 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for Winnipeg North for that question.

The reason why I reacted badly to the comment by my colleague from Don Valley West is that I once worked as a physicist. Absolute safety is pretty much incompatible with the overall Canadian framework of a $1-billion liability ceiling.

However, my colleague from Winnipeg North talked about something else. He compared a heavy industry, the nuclear industry and the electricity generating industry, with a much less powerful research reactor. Liability is also clearly different.

That is why I support this bill at second reading. It is important for us to distinguish properly between activity sectors that are quite different and from that point on, to establish liability scales adapted to each individual sector. For that reason, debate on this bill should certainly not be limited.

[Energy Safety and Security Act, May 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

I will not hide the fact that the NDP has a perfectly coherent position, regardless of the objections he has to questions about offshore oil development or rail or pipeline transportation.

What the NDP objects to is the government’s complacency and the lack of regulatory mechanisms and inspectors. I am not even talking about the processes involved in bringing a project to completion. Basically, the NDP objects to the overall weak regulatory framework and to the fact that industry is allowed free rein.

Self-regulation is tantamount to living in a fantasy world and refusing to face reality. We must not be naive. We must be demanding and demanding is what the NDP will always be.

[Energy Safety and Security Act, May 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to start with a preliminary comment. I find it incredible that our country's federal government has taken so long to address risk management, internalize costs and protect the public interest.

In his speech about nuclear energy, the hon. member for Don Valley West said that safety is a top priority. However, it is all relative, given that liability is limited to $1 billion. As he said, Canada's nuclear industry is mostly privatized. The Conservative vision, which the Liberals support, is clearly behind the times when it comes to the future of Canada's nuclear industry. The Conservatives' shoelaces are untied and they are about to trip over them without realizing that they are going to crash to the ground.

The government is seriously going to have to take the time to listen to what the NDP is saying, in order to understand the real issues in the debate we are engaged in right now. Obviously, I would point out another paradox that borders on the ridiculous and in fact is so ridiculous, it enters the realm of caricature. Today, the government imposed a time allocation motion on a bill that has been sitting on the shelf and was even torpedoed by the Prime Minister when he failed to abide by the fixed election date law in 2008. The bill sat on the shelf for years, and catching up got put on hold for decades before the government corrected one obvious flaw, only in part and relatively clumsily.

There is nothing to prevent me, like all of my New Democrat colleagues, from supporting the bill at second reading. We will at least have a base to work on, somewhat wobbly though it may be. In cabinetmaking, when a table is wobbly, you can always try to level it, particularly if you have some expertise and a degree of skill. You have to make sure it is solid and the dishes will not fall off.

In the second part of my speech, I am going to focus on the nuclear industry. The nuclear industry needs to assume its responsibility completely. I do not think that comment will generate debate. To start with, it is a matter of the public interest. I would hope that everyone will agree that the safety of the Canadian public as a whole is absolutely non-negotiable, in spite of a few somewhat nonsensical comments from government members.

We also need to learn from the various events that have taken place in the past in various parts of the world. Based on that, we have to draw the following conclusion: in the Canadian context, setting the limit at $1 billion will be insufficient to cover the cost without requiring that the government invest large amounts of taxpayers’ money to deal with certain potential accidents. Zero risk does not exist anywhere. If I take my car out tomorrow, I assume a share of the risk, for which I pay through my insurance. However, the risk must be completely assumed by the industry. That is a very basic question of how a market operates. We are talking about internalizing the costs associated with the risk to be assumed. It is a very simple principle. Plainly, understanding how a market functions in economics is an insurmountable obstacle for many government members.

There is also the issue of the competitiveness of the Canadian nuclear industry. It must be viable and exportable, and our Canadian businesses must be able to compete and offer their skills and expertise by having optimal conditions on our domestic market, no matter the area of activity, whether it involves the design, construction, operation, or development of certain parts of the systems in the nuclear industry.

We are not the only ones talking about this. This is a concern shared by experts in different fields about both the nuclear and the oil and gas industries. I will first quote Joel Wood, senior research economist at the Fraser Institute, who had this to say about the absolute liability cap:

Increasing the cap only decreases the subsidy; it does not eliminate it.

The subsidy is obviously a concept that I hope my Conservative colleagues will be able to grasp. I hope that they will be able to follow my logic. However, I am not very confident that they will since the Conservatives manage to confuse collective savings with the Canada pension plan and a tax, for example, which shows that the government has a very limited understanding of very important social issues.

Mr. Wood goes on to say:

The Government of Canada should proceed with legislation that removes the liability cap entirely rather than legislation that maintains it, or increases it to be harmonious with other jurisdictions.

When speaking of other jurisdictions, as the member for Saint-Jean said, we are speaking about foreign examples that are comparable in terms of the development of the nuclear or oil and gas industry.

Let us take a look at oil and gas development. One of the first elements is rather strange. In fact the bill deals strictly with offshore development, and does not deal with the entire issue of oil and gas development and transportation. We are already wondering why the government took a slapdash approach.

Earlier, I attended a meeting of the Standing Committee on Finance, where I was filling in for my very esteemed colleague from Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques for the clause-by-clause study of the bill.

During the period for questions and comments on omnibus Bill C-31, which I would remind the House is a monstrous bill that is impossible to study in the context of our work in the House or on committee, I raised some very serious concerns that the riding of Beauport—Limoilou has about the transportation of dangerous goods by rail. Bill C-31 was compromising, possibly even severely compromising, the regulations in that area.

Unfortunately, in Bill C-22, we are going to, yet again, end up partially correcting past failings and massive negligence by the Liberals and Conservatives. There is a reason we see them working so hard on joining forces to try to stop us. We saw that earlier this week with the conditions put on the debates scheduled to take place between now and the end of June.

We cannot look at this type of activity separately or in isolation, using a piecemeal approach, without understanding all this might entail for our society, our citizens, the environment and even for industry. It is truly deplorable to see the government improvising so easily and providing hollow, ready-made answers that do nothing to address the legitimate concerns that Canadians might have.

[Energy Safety and Security Act, May 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech.

I would like to immediately follow up on the question from my colleague from Winnipeg North. I must admit that it boggles my mind that he was talking about a number of years, because what this bill will fix in part—it will not fully fix it—is the result of decades of negligence on the part of successive Liberal and Conservative governments. Nearly four decades of inaction on nuclear safety and compensation is what will be partly fixed here.

I would like my colleague to tell us how successive governments have failed to keep up with the how the industry assesses risk. Take for example how the German bank WestLB determined that it was nearly impossible to manage the risks of developing oil in the Arctic.

Could my colleague talk about how inaction on the part of successive governments caused Canada to lose a great deal of its competitiveness in terms of developing its natural resources.

[Committees of the House, May 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Prince Albert for his speech.

I especially want to thank him for mentioning the proposed Canada-Honduras free trade agreement because I think it is an example of the government's naive and very simplistic approach to advancing human rights in various countries around the world and in the Americas in particular.

I will give an example dating back to the late 1950s and early 1960s, after France's failure in Indochina in the face of the Communist movement. Members will recall the famous domino theory. This resulted in the United States in particular entering the Vietnam war and trying to find a solution to the supposed potential invasion of neighbouring countries by what was known at the time as the evil of Communism.

Similarly, can my colleague quote a single compelling, documented, clear example of a trade agreement of this type that protects the human rights of the people in question?

I maintain the exact opposite. The government concerned must take responsibility well in advance of considering a trade agreement. To my mind, this clearly amounts to blind support on Canada's part for Honduras.

[Committees of the House, May 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his speech.

One aspect of his speech that stood out for me is how Canada's interest and attention have shifted from the Americas to Africa. Paradoxically, what I have been hearing for three years is that on the ground, some embassies and consulates in Africa have been closed, the number of diplomats there has been greatly reduced and those still there are largely ignored by the government when it comes time to make contacts or begin the process of signing agreements or negotiating treaties with specific countries. The diplomatic corps is largely ignored. The government is wreaking havoc on our network, which was well established and had a very good reputation.

What does my colleague think about that attitude, which is so completely contradictory and ambivalent, not to mention costly for Canada's economy and global influence?

[Fair Elections Act, May 13th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Richmond Hill certainly has enough hot air to brag about this bill. I actually do not know how he manages to meet with his constituents and tell them with a straight face that he is improving the democratic process and making it more accessible.

In December 2005, at the press conference where I launched my first federal election campaign, I highlighted the fact that, unfortunately, 40% of our voters in Canada do not exercise their right to vote. Of that group, an even larger proportion of young and very young people, who are just becoming eligible to vote, do not participate. We are not even talking about aboriginal people who unfortunately do not participate in large numbers.

The participation rate of the most vulnerable groups of our society, which are far too easily held hostage by the powers that be, is much lower. The rate is barely 30% or 40%. In his work The Price of Inequality, Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner in economics, described the Tea Party approach, which is used to exclude disadvantaged segments of society through methods like the ones found in Bill C-23.

How can the member for Richmond Hill exclude the weakest and most vulnerable Canadians, including those in his riding, from our country's democratic process?

[Fair Elections Act, May 13th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Nipissing—Timiskaming clings to every branch within his reach. The hon. member for Yukon held out a big branch to him, but it broke.

The Conservatives are trying to create confusion about the irregularities in voter identification. However, there are no related cases of alleged fraud. The Conservatives are abusing the language terribly in this regard.

I will remind the hon. member, as my colleague did previously, that there was an alleged case of fraud involving the Conservative Party's database. Unfortunately, the Commissioner of Canada Elections ended his investigation because he was unable to get to the bottom of things.

On March 12, 2012, my colleague voted in favour of the NDP motion to give the commissioner more authority. Why is he going back on his word now?

[Business of Supply, May 6th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Prince Edward Island for his speech.

This morning, the Liberals did an about-face, unfortunately. As we all know, I seconded the motion by my colleague from Newton—North Delta to amend the Liberal motion to reflect last week's debate. At the time, the Liberals voted to impose a moratorium on the low-skilled category. That is what is causing the biggest problem with the temporary foreign worker program.

I would like my colleague to explain to me why he supported the motion last week and is now saying the exact opposite.