Rodger Cuzner

[June 16th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, each member of this Chamber is charged with the responsibility of coming to the House and sharing the importance of various issues from the ridings they represent with other decision-makers. Certainly the people in Cape Breton—Canso have charged me with the responsibility of bringing what is going on in the region to this Chamber.

With the difficulty we are facing in the lobster industry and the entire fishery, many families, many Canadians, are facing hardships they have never experienced before.

When we speak with fishermen at the end of the wharf, whether it is in Torbay, Glace Bay, Grand Digue, Grand Etang, Wadden's Cove or Baxters Cove, the fishery is in a great deal of peril. The fishermen are concerned about the lack of interest on the part of the government and the lack of investment. The recent investment of $65 million does very little to impact on their personal situation. The fishermen are also concerned about the helpers who work on the boats with them and whether they are going to qualify for employment insurance following this meagre season.

When the revenues are down, the catch is down, the price is down, fishermen have to cut back on their expenses. Sometimes the first one to go is the helper on the boat and they have to do more by themselves.

These people are certainly going to be challenged in the weeks ahead, as they are faced with the reality of not having enough to qualify for employment insurance.

I have spoken with people in the industry. I spoke with Sandy Evans today. He is a great champion for workers within the fishery and the industry. I have spoken with Judy Smith and Patsy Jamieson from the Canso area, who I do not really agree with sometimes, but we have had some very clear and frank discussions. However, one thing we can agree on unanimously is that people are going to be hurting this year. People are going to face hardship this year if actions are not taken, even if there are interim actions to address the current situation within the fishery.

If the government does not move, if the government does not take some type of action, people are going to be hurting.

The position of this party has been clear. Our leader has articulated this very clearly to the government. It was something we put forward and we would have hoped the government would have been able to act on it. A uniform national standard of 360 hours is something we continue to advocate for. We think this would be a great stimulus to put money in the hands of those who most need it.

These people are facing peril in very challenging times. I know that the parliamentary secretary is a good, decent honourable man. What is his government going to tell these people when they are up against it, when they cannot put food in fridge when they do not qualify for employment insurance? What is the response of this government going to be to those people?

[Business of Supply, June 16th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals will vote in favour as well.

[The Economy, June 16th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians are now facing the deepest recession in a generation. Yet the Conservative government can point to almost no tangible results that it is making in addressing the crisis. What are Canadians getting instead? Weasel words, misrepresentations, and in some cases, outright fabrications.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister got it dead wrong when he claimed stimulus funds could not be spent more quickly without further authorization from Parliament. That is absolutely wrong.

As the media reported today, Parliament has already approved over $21 billion in spending. Nothing prevents the government from spending these funds. In fact, it appears that so little funds are actually getting out the door because of political interference demanding photo ops and ribbon cuttings by Conservative MPs.

Unemployed Canadians are waiting for jobs because of Conservative vanity. That is shameful.

Canadians want honesty from their government, not false claims of accountability. When will the Conservatives drop the Harpocrisy and stop trying to mislead Canadians?

[Peggy's Cove Lighthouse, June 12th, 2009]

It is at Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia.

I did not hear anything from that side of the House, not because Conservatives do not know but because they are embarrassed that they cannot find $25,000 to paint that international landmark.

Being a good Nova Scotian, I will offer them a few ideas. I will offer them a few suggestions. How about this? They can fire the Republican spin doctors they hired for one month's work. That is $25,000 right there.

They can fire the psychic “style” consultant the Prime Minister has. The way they missed on the budget projections, they are not listening to her anyway.

They can shrink the size of cabinet. If they shrink the size of cabinet, they could paint the Peggy's Cove lighthouse 156 times.

They can slash the $1 billion that they have been using for consultants. They could paint 40,000 tourist landmarks with that one move alone.

The lighthouse is on over there, but nobody is home.

It is time to come out of the fog and paint the lighthouse at Peggy's Cove.

[Peggy's Cove Lighthouse, June 12th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I have a quiz for the House today. Where is the most famous and iconic lighthouse in all of Canada?

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 9th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the member's perception of this is absolutely right. My colleague has a great grasp on the procedural aspects of passing legislation. A number of those bills are out of the grasp of this chamber now as they are in the Senate.

With all that weighing in, we just do not see the merit in extending the hours. We are scheduled to sit until June 23 and we think the business can be done by June 23. We can accomplish what we should during the last days of this session.

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 9th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, because of the turmoil that was brought upon us from September through to the prorogation and the fiscal update in January, the closing months here in the House have been unbelievable. I know it did nothing to instill any kind of confidence in Canadians about the parliamentary process here in this country.

However, there have been some gains made. There has been some good legislation passed in the last number of weeks and months. In a minority Parliament, we can only hope that members of the House continue to work hard, that legislation is brought to committee and that the committees do their work. We know that much of the spadework in the House is done at the committee level. We hope that they continue to do quality work at the committees and that we continue to use the last 10 days of this session to try to advance some legislation.

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 9th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I defer that question to our own House leader. Certainly, with his time in the chamber and his procedural expertise, I think he would be very willing. It seems like a reasonable request. So I would defer that to the House leader and hope that the House leaders might be willing to engage in that particular issue.

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 9th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, there has been a fairly good working relationship in the House, not just between the government House leader and the leader of the official opposition, but all House leaders. As well, the four party whips have worked hard to try to make this House function. I think we have had fairly good success.

In my remarks I tried to identify opportunities lost. By identifying them and going back, it seemed that through the coalition and then through the tabling of the budget in the new session the government seemed to wake up a bit and seemed to start taking the concerns of Canadians somewhat more seriously. So it has been productive, but by highlighting the opportunities lost, maybe this will not happen again. Maybe the government will continue to try to work with the opposition parties to make sure that legislation is processed, that input by the opposition is respected, and that we can do the best we can.

Canadians want to see this place function. Canadians want to see us do our job, and certainly that is what we will continue to do through the following days.

[Extension of Sitting Hours, June 9th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join in this debate on the extension of hours. I take the government House leader at his word. I believe he is sincere when he says he is disappointed that he is not able to speak at greater length. However, I did not see that same degree of disappointment on the face of his colleagues.

I think we can frame the debate this way. As a hockey nation, Canada is seized by the playoffs. We are in the midst of the finals right now, and we are seeing a great series between the Detroit Red Wings and the Pittsburgh Penguins.

I know the people in Cape Breton—Canso are watching this with great interest, as Marc-Andre Fleury, formerly from the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles, who had a rough night the other night, and Sidney Crosby, from the Cole Harbour area, are still in the thick of things. They are looking forward to seeing the outcome of tonight's game.

I am going to use the hockey analogy. If we look at the last game--and I know the member for West Vancouver is a big hockey nut--with a five to nothing outcome, what the government House leader is asking to do would be similar to Sidney Crosby going to the referee after a five to nothing score at the end of the third period and saying, “Can we play overtime?”.

The die has been cast on government legislation through this Parliament. Pittsburgh did nothing in the first two periods that would warrant any consideration for overtime. Maybe if they had done the work in the earlier periods, they could have pushed for a tie and overtime, but there was nothing done. Certainly there was every opportunity for the government to bring forward legislation, and it missed at every opportunity.

Former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien said, “You know, they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”.

If there is such importance now in passing this legislation, we can look back, even to last summer, when every Canadian knew, every economist knew and every opinion rendered then was that we were heading for a tough economic downturn and the Prime Minister took it upon himself, with total disregard for his own law that he advocated and passed, that elections are to be held every four years, to drop the writ and go to the polls in the fall.

During that period, the economy continued to sputter, Canadians lost jobs and hardship was brought upon the people of Canada. It was an unnecessary election. Nonetheless, we went to the polls and a decision was rendered by the people of Canada.

We came back to the House. We thought at that time that the government would accept and embrace its responsibility and come forward with some type of measure that would stop the bleeding in the Canadian economy. We understood that there were global impacts. We felt it was the responsibility of the government to come forward with some incentive or stimulus, a program that would at least soften the blow to Canadians who had lost their jobs.

However, it came out with an ideological update, and it threw this House into turmoil and chaos. I have never seen anything like it in my nine years in the House.

It is not too often that we get parties to unite on a single issue. However, the opposition parties came together because they knew that Canadians would not stand for the total disregard for the Canadian economy exhibited by the government through its economic update. Canadians had to make a strong point.

In an unprecedented move, the NDP and the Liberal Party, supported by the Bloc, came together and sent the message to the government that this was not acceptable, that it was going to hurt our country and hurt Canadians. We saw the coalition come together.

There were all kinds of opportunities for the Prime Minister. The decision he made was to see the Governor General and to prorogue Parliament, to shut down the operation of this chamber, to shut down the business of Canada for a seven-week period. For seven weeks there was no legislation brought forward. If we are looking at opportunities to bring forward legislation, I am looking back at the missed opportunities. That was truly unfortunate.

The House leader mentioned that there has been co-operation. I do not argue that point at all. When the budget finally was put together and presented in the House we, as a party, and our leader, thought the responsible thing was to do whatever we could to help as the economy continued to implode and sputter.

Jobs were still bleeding from many industries in this country. We saw the devastation in forestry. We saw the impacts in the auto industry. People's entire careers and communities were cast aside. Time was of the essence, so we thought the responsible thing was to look at the good aspects of the budget and support them. There was ample opportunity to find fault in any aspect of the budget, and it could have had holes poked in it, but we thought the single best thing we could do was to make sure that some of these projects were able to go forward, that some of the stimulus would be able to get into the economy so that Canadians' jobs could be saved and the pain could be cushioned somewhat.We stood and supported the budget, but we put the government on probation at that time.

We continue to see the government's inability to get that stimulus into the economy. The evidence is significant. The FCM, the mayors of the major cities, premiers of provinces, groups advocating for particular projects for a great number of months are looking for the dollars to roll out and they are wondering when that will be. It is just not happening. There is great concern.

We do know that part of the problem is the Prime Minister's and the government's inability to recognize the severity of the problem. When we look at some of the comments over that period of time that we were thrust in the midst of an election, a TD report, on September 8, 2008, said, “...we believe the global economy is on the brink of a mild recession”. Scotiabank forecasted recessions in both U.S. and Canada.

The Prime Minister was denying it back then and saying there was going to be a small surplus. In November he said we were going to have a balanced budget. Then with the budget, he said maybe there will be a small deficit. With the ability of the Conservatives to calculate and their ability with numbers, we can see how far the government has fallen short, because the week before last we saw that a $50 billion deficit is now anticipated this year.

For the people at home, people who pay attention to these issues, that $50 billion is significant.

Just to get our heads around it, I remember three weeks back there was a very fortunate group from Edmonton who threw their toonies on the table and bought some quick picks and the next day they won $49 million. They won the lottery and that was great. If they were feeling charitable and brought that $49 million to the Minister of Finance to apply to the deficit, and then the next day they bought another bunch of tickets and won another $49 million and gave it to the finance minister, if they were to do that day after day, week after week, month after month, and if we factor in that we do not charge interest on this deficit, it would take 20 years to pay off that $50 billion deficit.

That deficit was supposed to be a small one. Two months before that, it was supposed to be a balanced budget; and two months before that, there was supposed to be a small surplus.

We have done our best. We have worked with the government as best we can to try to get that stimulus into the economy, to try to help generate some kind of economic activity within this country so that jobs can be saved and Canadians can continue to work. We know that we have had some successes here. Some 65% of the legislation put forward by the government has been passed.

We have worked with the government. We supported the war veterans allowance and the farm loans bill. Bill C-25, one of the justice bills, came through here the other day and was passed unanimously on a voice vote. We had Bill C-15 last night and we had the budget.

Regarding extending the hours, disregarding whether it was incompetence or whatever the political reasons and the rationale were to call the election and to shut down government through the prorogation, there were plenty of opportunities to avoid that and bring forward legislation.

I thought the government House leader was generous in his comments last week when he himself recognized in his comments on the Thursday question:

...I would like to recognize that, to date at least, there has been good co-operation from the opposition in moving our legislative agenda forward, not only in this chamber but in the other place as well.

That shocked a lot of people on this side of the chamber.

He continued:

I want to thank the opposition for that co-operation.

We have certainly done our part over here, but we have great concern about the extension of the hours and the additional costs with that. We think the legislation that is coming forward now in various stages can be addressed during the normal times here. Certainly on this side of the House we want to make this chamber work. We want to make this Parliament work and will do all in our power to do so.

As of last night, seven of eight bills originating in the House, for which the government wants royal assent by June 23, have been sent to the other place.

Bill C-7, on the Marine Liability Act, passed third reading in this House on May 14. The transportation and communications committee in the other place is holding hearings on that now, so that is fairly far down the road.

Bill C-14, concerning organized crime and the protection of the justice system, passed third reading in the House on April 24, and it is in committee right now in the other place.

Bill C-15 just passed third reading. That is on the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Bill C-16, An Act to amend certain Acts that relate to the environment and to enact provisions respecting the enforcement of certain Acts that relate to the environment, passed third reading on May 13, and committees are already being held in the Senate.

We want to try to continue to work in these last days of the session. Certainly we want to continue to nurture and support the relationship on legislation that we can believe in, that is not totally offensive. In a minority Parliament, sometimes all parties have to put a little bit of water in their wine. We are certainly willing to do that. In our past record we have demonstrated that we are willing to do that and we will continue to do so.

However, we have a great deal of difficulty with regard to the extension of hours. We are not sure about the other two opposition parties, but just judging by the questions that were being posed today, I would think they are probably like-minded in this area and they are concerned about this proposal being put forward by the government.

We will be opposing the extension of the hours, and that is how we will vote on this particular issue.