Rick Casson

[Petitions, June 4th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to table another petition with 125 names. It calls upon parliament to uphold the motion presented some time ago that reaffirmed that marriage must be between a male and a female.

[Petitions, June 4th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I have three petitions to present today. Two of the petitions deal with the issue of protecting our children in Canada.

The petitioners call upon parliament to protect our children by taking all necessary steps to ensure that all materials which promote or glorify pedophilia or sadomasochistic activities involving children are outlawed.

One petition contains 50 names and the other contains 44 names.

[An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, June 3rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-15B is just part of a long list of threats facing our agriculture community right now, a lot of which has been brought on by the government. We have the species at risk act, the Kyoto protocol, the combat we are having in the international trade industry and the use of pesticides in Canada. The list goes on and on.

The minister of agriculture and his colleagues have been quick to say they want to avoid crisis management in agriculture. Do they not realize that implementing the bill will bring our farmers, our ranchers and our animal researchers into court day after day to fend off the attacks by the extreme animal rights groups?

[Public Safety Act, 2002, May 29th, 2002]

Do not just read the headline, read the whole article.

[Supply, May 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question. Indeed, his expertise in the trade file over the last number of years has been exceptional and we appreciate his contribution to the debate.

Absolutely, we should not sit on our hands. It was the same when the softwood lumber agreement came to an end and when the U.S. farm bill was presented and signed. We know these will happen. The Liberal government sits and waits until it happens and then cries foul because the Americans have come out with some protectionist agenda.

Certainly the Americans are wrong in what they are doing but should not our government, which is responsible for the Canadian situation, be on top of these things and be working well in advance of the implementation or conclusion of agreements to come up with a solution that would save our industries?

[Supply, May 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the member posed a number of questions but I will address the one that referred to the member for Peace River stating that we did not desire an agreement in softwood lumber.

Our position has always been that there should be free trade in softwood lumber. That is where we stand. There has been a 30 year history of problems with these negotiated deals. Everyone and the government knew about these problems. We warned the government that this agreement was coming to an end, that something needed to be done, however it was allowed to collapse.

The government kept indicating that when it was over we were supposed to revert to free trade. That is fine, but where were the contingency plans? Where were the studies that were done to indicate the problems that would exist if indeed something like this would happen? That was certainly one of the options the government should have looked at as one of the outcomes when the agreement came to an end.

There is one thing that we keep going back to. I do not understand how the parliamentary secretary and the minister keep getting away with saying how much effort, time and resources they have thrown at the softwood lumber issue and that they are doing their jobs. The Prime Minister has talked directly to the president. All of these things are going on and absolutely nothing has happened.

We have a huge tariff against our industry. We have tens of thousands of softwood lumber workers out of work. We have no indication there will be an end to this. In my mind the full efforts of the government have utterly failed the industry and continue to do so.

[Supply, May 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Lanark--Carleton.

I would like to congratulate the member for Vancouver Island North for bringing forward the motion today. The member has been dealing with the softwood lumber file for our party. He has done an excellent job and has earned the respect of the industry in Canada and south of the border as well for his efforts in bringing the government to understand the full ramifications of what has happened. I applaud him for that.

Over and over again we hear the minister and the parliamentary secretary say that they have worked hard particularly on the softwood lumber file. They have put their best effort forward. They have spent all the resources they have on this file.

I do not think that is much to brag about because they have come up with nothing. They have not come up with a resolution. If that is the best they can do, they had better change their tactic or yield to someone who can do better because Canadians deserve better.

The problem that really exists is the poisoned atmosphere between the administration on Parliament Hill, the Liberal government, and the Bush administration. There is no love lost between the two. It is becoming quite apparent. The fact that they cannot talk to each other is reflected in all the problems that have been created in the trade file.

I would like to focus my remarks today on the impact the country of origin labelling provisions of the U.S. farm bill would have on our agricultural sector. This is one aspect of the U.S. farm bill that is facing our producers today which could have been avoided. We tried to warn the government back in February. I brought a question to the House for the minister telling him that the country of origin labelling issue would be coming forward. It had been circulating in the beef industry in the United States for quite some time and it was put into the bill.

It states that a product must be born, raised and processed in the United States to be labelled as a product of the United States. It would affect meat, fruit, vegetables, fish and peanuts. It becomes mandatory within two years.

We feel the government needs to challenge this provision immediately. It is something that has been added to the U.S. farm bill and it is something we should have a hard look at and ensure that the WTO and NAFTA processes are put into place, and if indeed we can stop this.

Last year Canada exported $1.8 billion in beef products and another $1.7 billion in live cattle exports. Hog, live and meat, exports were worth $2 billion, vegetable exports were worth $1.6 billion and fruit exports were worth $400 million. With this country of origin labelling aspect provision being brought forward in the U.S. farm bill, all of this would be in jeopardy.

U.S. retailers and processors have stated that if this comes into effect and if it becomes mandatory the easiest way for us to work around this is to only deal with American produce and American farmers. That would immediately cut off the trade that we have created over the years with the Americans.

We have received indications that the country of origin labelling has already restricted investment in the agriculture industry in Canada. Canadian investors are so concerned with what the country of origin labelling could do to certain sectors of our agriculture industry that they have stopped building, planning and putting money into it. Therefore it is already having that kind of effect.

The threat of country of origin labelling was known long before the U.S. farm bill was signed. Despite warnings from ourselves and others the government did nothing and there it is in the U.S. farm bill, becoming mandatory within two years.

The Liberal hesitation on the softwood lumber case cost tens of thousands of Canadian jobs. That is part of the motion that we brought forward today. How will the government address the harm that has been done in the softwood lumber industry and the agricultural industry through these trade actions?

We have not heard anything from the Liberal side on that today. I do not know why the Liberals are not responding to that aspect of the motion. Maybe they will and they should. The government has gone back and forth across the country many times on agricultural issues. The time for study is over and the time to act is now.

I will offer some solutions as I wrap up. The country of origin labelling was completely avoidable. If we had shown the Americans that we were serious in opening up our border to back and forth trading, particularly in live cattle, we would have been able to avoid a lot of this.

It was the beef industry that really pushed this forward although the national beef congress in the United States reduced it from being a mandatory to a voluntary process for a couple of years. However, we should have shown some indication that we were going to implement, for one thing, the terminal feed lot protocol which allows cattle to come into Canada, be fed in Canadian feed lots and then shipped back to the United States for processing. The wording of the country of origin labelling provisions states that it has to be born, raised and processed in the United States to be able to be classified as American.

This has become an issue. It is a question we raised in the House back in February with the minister and we had no indication from him that he would do anything about it. He indicated there was a connection. He said in his remarks that there was a connection between the terminal feed lot protocol and the country of origin labelling. He was aware but was unable to resolve it, I guess, if he did raise it with secretary Veneman. He indicated that he did but there was no resolution to that.

It just shows that the Americans are not listening to our negotiators since the Bush administration took over. The relationships have been poisoned between the two governments. We have to become more forceful at the trade table or we will continue to lose on these issues and they are picking us apart.

Another part of the industry in Canada that has become successful is the pulse industry. It has done a tremendous job of expanding its industry as well as the processing that goes along with that industry. That has been targeted in this U.S. farm bill because it has seen it as being successful and it wants a piece of that action. By moving these crops into the U.S. farm bill, that were not there before, we feel is another angle the government could use to go to the WTO and to the NAFTA tribunals to challenge it and to have it reversed.

One of the things we need to be doing is to gather our partners in trade around the world and say to the Americans as a group, the Cairns group for instance, what is going on here? We do not appreciate the bill the U.S. put forward and it is ruining our industry. If Canada were to bring as much power to bear as it could then some of the poisoned relations that we have seen between ourselves and the Americans would be somewhat hidden.

We have also heard much from the industry on compensation for trade injury to the sectors of our economy that are being affected. That has not been addressed today by the government at all. It has chosen a different angle to attack us on. However I am proud of one thing we have done. Last June we submitted to the agriculture and trade minister our idea of a rapid response process for agricultural trade disputes. We acknowledge the WTO and NAFTA processes have to be gone through but we need another process that could circumvent these long and costly battles.

We presented that and I have a letter from the agriculture minister saying that is all fine and good but it is not something that the government is going to embrace. Then, lo and behold, when the government toured around on its framework for the future of agriculture, one of its recommendations is a rapid response trade resolution mechanism. It actually used the same words that we provided.

We also understand that the United States and Mexico have signed a memorandum of understanding on agricultural trade disputes. Part of it is a rapid response mechanism to circumvent some of these long and costly disputes that happened in the agriculture sector. We took this to our Canadian Alliance assembly in Edmonton in April and we were able to bring this to the floor as a resolution. It was adopted by the Canadian Alliance and will be part of our policies from hereon to state that we need to have a rapid response trade resolution mechanism in place to circumvent some of these long expensive battles that we have seen.

We have seen it in the beef industry, the potato industry and in softwood lumber. We have seen it in other agricultural products. We need to have a process in place whereby parties could come together and come to some resolution before these things turn into full blown trade wars.

The motion we brought forward today has some aspects that deal with what should be done to the injury that has been carried out to the industries of softwood lumber and agriculture. I hope we hear from the government today as to what its response is to that.

[Petitions, May 23rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I would like to present two petitions in the House today.

Both of the petitions, signed by hundreds of people, call on the Government of Canada to state that the creation and use of child pornography is condemned by the clear majority of Canadians and that the courts have not applied the current child pornography law in a way which makes it clear that such exploitation of children will be met with swift punishment.

[Agriculture, May 2nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, thousands of softwood lumber workers have been thrown out of work due to United States protectionism and the Liberal government's lack of action and foresight.

Another crisis in trade is at hand: Our agriculture sector could be crippled by the new U.S. farm bill that will soon become law. Along with the disastrous increase in production distorting domestic subsidies, the U.S. farm bill also calls for country of origin labelling to be mandatory within two years. For a commodity to be labelled as a U.S. product it would have to be born in, raised in and processed in the U.S. This will cause shock waves to resonate throughout Canada, affecting all sectors of our economy.

Canada's threatened agriculture and agrifood exports are worth $25 billion per year. The sector employs almost two million Canadians.

With NAFTA and WTO appeals taking years to settle, I call on the Minister for International Trade and the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food to get prepared this time and to challenge this policy the minute it is signed into law.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Veneman is in Ottawa today. She must hear this message loud and clear.

[Public Safety Act, 2002, May 2nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it is good to take part in the debate today on the new bill the government brought forward, Bill C-55. It replaces a couple of other attempts the government made to address the issue of security.

I do not feel Canadians who read the bill would feel one bit more secure. The safety and security of the citizens of a country is the number one job of a government and in this instance they have been let down.

The bill is an omnibus bill that addresses 19 different acts of parliament in nine ministries, all lumped together into one bill brought forward by the transport minister. It is to be dealt with by one committee and we feel therein lies one of the greatest problems. The bill should be split so that each area would be dealt with by the ministry or committee to which that section pertains.

We support some of the things that are being addressed in the bill but one of the factors of real concern is the extra special powers given to ministers without prior approval by cabinet, or furthermore, by the House. The ministers affected are: environment, health, fisheries and oceans, transport, justice and immigration. It would give them an interim order ability which would give them more power to act without any consultation with cabinet or parliament. However, the general increase in authority is not accompanied by any new specifics or assumptions of the responsibility of the minister concerned.

We have the ability to create the special situation but we do not have the coinciding responsibilities to which the minister must adhere to in carry it out. That is one of the things that needs to be addressed. We were hoping for that and maybe when we get into discussion in committee some of these things could be brought up. Certainly more than one committee needs to address the issues in the bill, not just transport.

We talk about the $24 charge for a round trip ticket to increase security at airports. I fly quite regularly. There are no X-ray machines at Lethbridge. Carry-on baggage is checked by hand and I joke with the people who do it that if I am ever missing anything they should remind me and I could go home to get it. They are getting quite familiar with my belongings.

We asked the minister to explain to us in detail what the $24 per head would bring to the airport, specifically Lethbridge in my riding. We have not seen anything concrete come of that. We have some 60,000 passengers, and times $24 is a large amount of money. What will the government do to make us feel more secure when we travel?

This whole thing is in response to the terrible crimes that were committed on September 11. It has taken our government eight months to come up with a bill that will be debated, and go on for I do not know how many more months, to address the situation of security in Canada. That is not acceptable.

It is a situation in which we now exist. It could happen in Canada at any moment if we are not vigilant. Yet we are still fudging around with the laws that would allow our country to protect itself better.

There is the issue of some of the defence measures that would create special military zones. I support that and I believe our party supports it to some degree but we need some definition of it. There has been concern raised as to what it would entail. If a military vehicle were to be parked somewhere could one go in to protect it by using any means thus getting around the whole issue of creating a special security zone?

These are points that need definition. We do not see it in the bill. Somebody should be bringing that forward to allay some of the fears that it will be abused. If indeed it is intended to protect military equipment, if we have ships or whatever that need to be protected, then let us define that and make sure that is what it is doing.

The issue of money laundering is a whole separate problem this country has that needs to be addressed but that is in the bill.

One thing too is job protection for people who are called up from the reserves. That is important. We have a competent, capable and willing reserve contingents in this country. When they get called up it almost goes without saying that the job they had should be protected while they are performing that special duty.

We talked about taxes, special levies, airport fees, and this $24 security tax. One set of figures brought forward dealt with a flight from Calgary to Edmonton where the actual cost of the ticket was $100 and it was $188 by the time we were finished paying for it. It cost 88% more on top of what the actual ticket was when all the fees were added on.

This $24 charge is causing some problems. Lethbridge has an operation called Integra Air that flies directly from Lethbridge to the municipal airport in Edmonton. It is a small operation but it offers a service that is well subscribed to. This $24 fee has made it revisit some plans it was looking at for expansion into Calgary to connect to some WestJet flights. It is unfortunate when a levy such as this adversely affects the future plans or the operating plans of a company in Canada. We need to look at what we are doing and what we are getting for that $24.

I know the transport minister has addressed this issue to some degree saying that any cases like this would be looked at. He wants to know when an operation has been affected by this $24. We have brought that to his attention so we will be watching him carefully to ensure that it is addressed.

We have seen omnibus bills before. Bill C-15 was one of those. We eventually split into Bill C-15A and Bill C-15B. We had issues that dealt with the protection of children from predators and pedophiles, cruelty to animals legislation, and regulations affecting the gun registry. We fought to separate those issues, some of which we supported. They were put into Bill C-15A and we supported it and moved forward. We are still debating and have some problems with Bill C-15B

I would like the government to consider that aspect. We should quickly put into place certain issues without holding up the entire bill because of some aspect of it that we do not particularly like. It should be done in a way that reflects the powers of each ministry so that the committee and the minister responsible for that particular section deal with it in a very direct way.

I wish to mention the issue of documents. Every time we ask questions of the immigration minister he would sooner return an attack. I guess he believes that the best defence is a strong offence. The issue is about people travelling on airplanes. We must know who they are. What happened on September 11 was that terrorists used planes and the people on them as virtual bombs to attack the United States.

We must know who is on those planes. Are they a threat to the people on the plane and the people on the ground? The ability to collect documents, to identify, to share that information with law enforcement agencies, and to pass that information on to the RCMP and CSIS is critical. Without that how can we possibly feel that the bill would work?

There are a lot of issues to be addressed. It has taken a long time to get this far which is unfortunate. The United States was able to put a bill forward very quickly. The government has been trying to mirror that for eight months now and it does not have it right yet. Hopefully some of the suggestions that are coming out in the debate today will be taken to heart so that when it is finally passed the bill will reflect what Canadians truly need.