Ryan Cleary

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, December 3rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, that is a very good question in terms of the importance of the federal government and provincial governments working together. However, one thing we have seen again with the Conservative government and the Prime Minister is the absolute unwillingness to sit down to meet with provincial premiers. He just will not do it.

On health care, it is one of 70 pieces of legislation contained within this omnibus bill and so it is very hard to comment on just one piece of legislation.

On this side of the House, we recognize how critical it is for the Prime Minister's Office and the Prime Minister to speak with the provinces, but that is not happening. That will change in 2015.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, December 3rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I have to take the member up on a couple of points he began with.

He described the Conservative government as “strong” and “stable”. I would never use those adjectives to describe the Conservative government.

The Conservative government is so weakened by scandal, such as the Senate scandal and the scandal in the Prime Minister's Office, and it is so weakened by non-answers that it has not become “strong” and “stable”, but absolutely ineffective. The business of our country is practically at a standstill because of scandal and because the government is so far from strong and stable.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, December 3rd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I stand in opposition to Bill C-4, A second act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 21, 2013 and other measures, for two main reasons. First, is the content and the second is the process.

With respect to content, this budget implementation bill impacts much more than the Conservative budget. This is an omnibus bill. The word “omnibus” is derived from the Latin and it means “for everything”.

The Conservative government has thrown practically everything into this omnibus bill, as is its habit. This is the fourth omnibus budget implementation bill. This omnibus bill would amend 70 laws or regulations in one bill. That is a massive amount of content. How is a member of Parliament, how is an opposition expected to thoroughly analyze and study all the amendments in this one bill, especially with the introduction of time allocation? I will come back to that in a moment. That particular Conservative tactic deserves a few special moments.

The content in this omnibus bill ranges from changes that got health and safety protection for workers to reductions at the Veterans Review and Appeal Board to gutting the National Research Council. Hundreds of our country's top scientists and researchers have been laid off or muzzled. They cannot speak their minds. They are not free to outline their research or their findings. Why? For fear of retribution, that is the answer. They cannot speak for fear of losing their jobs, for fear of being blackballed, for fear of being blacklisted.

Now with Bill C-4, the Conservatives are cutting nearly half of the positions at the National Research Council and giving more power to their hand-picked chairman.

Mr. Speaker, a question is, “Have I lost you yet?” The content goes on and goes on. This omnibus bill also includes two entirely new bills, the Mackenzie gas project impacts fund bill and the public service labour relations and employment board bill. This omnibus bill repeals the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board.

Have I lost you yet, Mr. Speaker? This bill pushes ahead with a tax hike on labour-sponsored venture capital funds. This omnibus bill even gives new immigration powers to the minister. Bill C-4 allows the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to create a requirement that foreign nationals wanting to enter or remain in Canada as permanent residents must be issued an invitation from the minister, or must express their interest to the minister through an expression of interest.

Have I lost you now, Mr. Speaker? Do I sound like I am all over the place? I should sound like I am all over the place, because I am all over the place. More specific, the Conservative omnibus bill is all over the place with everything in it but the kitchen sink. The tabling of such a wide-ranging bill in such a short time frame undermines Parliament.

Why does this omnibus bill undermine Parliament? It denies MPs the ability to thoroughly study the bill and its implications. That is the short answer.

I want to move on now from content to process.

Earlier today the Conservative government introduced time allocation on Bill C-4. With this motion, the Conservatives have shut down debate 58 times since the election in the spring of 2011, 4 times alone since the opening of the new session. The Conservatives are setting records, the worst kind of records.

The Conservatives rushed the bill through the House at second reading in order for the finance committee to start studying it. However, the finance committee was busy with prebudget consultations so it took almost three weeks before it could start studying the bill.

That is the Conservative process. Then what happens when the Conservatives rush a bill through the House? They make mistakes. The government is using its omnibus budget bills to fix mistakes it made in previous omnibus budget bills.

What would this omnibus budget bill do for the Canadian economy? Let us see. Despite what the Conservatives claim, it eliminates thousands of jobs. It cuts direct program spending. It weakens GDP growth. The Conservatives told Canadians to wait an extra month for Parliament to resume this fall so they could reset their policy agenda, press the reset button. Only they missed the reset button, or ignored it entirely and they hit the carry on as if things were normal button. Only the Conservatives are not normal. They are so far right they have lost sight of the Canadian way of balance between development and the environment, balance between industry and regulation and balance between health and safety and profit.

The Conservatives claim the economy is their flagship. That is what they boast most about. To that sentiment, I quote Michael Harris. He is well-known in my province of Newfoundland and Labrador for his writing and for his journalism, but he is known just as well here on the mainland. He says:

The PM and his government are not good managers. The nauseating repetition of the claim that the Tories know what they’re doing with the country’s finances will not make it so. They've pissed away more money than Madonna on a shopping spree—a billion on the G8-20 meetings that put a dent in the world’s Perrier supply and little else. They just plain lost $3.2 billion and the guy in charge over at Treasury Board is still there....They are such good fiscal managers that we now have the highest deficit in our history.

Over the last couple of decades, or more, the median wage rate has hardly changed.

Let me make another point on omnibus bills. This omnibus bill, as I said earlier, would amend 70 laws or regulations. As conservative commentator Andrew Coyne has pointed out:

We've no idea whether MPs supported or opposed any particular bill in the bunch....There is no common thread that runs between them, no overarching principle; they represent not a single act of policy, but a sort of compulsory buffet.

It will not be long now before a Conservative MP stands up in the House and rips into an opposition MP for not supporting a particular piece of legislation, when the legislation the Conservatives are ripping us for was likely contained in an omnibus bill and it was that omnibus bill that the opposition MP voted down. It is an insane Conservative circle. This government stuffs as much non-related legislation into an omnibus bill as possible to get as much passed, to get as much by Canadians as possible.

Conservative MPs stand in the House day after day and sidestep or outright ignore pointed questions on scandals, on abuse and on government itself, but Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are paying attention. Canadians are paying attention. The deception is sinking in. We will work tirelessly on this side of the House to ensure Canadians do not forget these massive omnibus bills or the non-answers. We will work tirelessly to ensure they do not forget the government's undemocratic and un-Canadian ways.

Jack Layton once said that the moment one was absolutely sick and tired of repeating a message, so tired that one could not possibly repeat it another time, it was only then that the message would sink in, that it was getting across. I will never tire of spreading the truth about Conservatives and their agenda.

[Questions on the Order Paper, December 3rd, 2013]

With regard to Transport Canada, and specifically the St. John's Port Authority: (a) what new commercial infrastructure projects does the Port Authority currently have underway on the St. John's waterfront; (b) what are the details of the commercial arrangements for the infrastructure projects; and (c) what other developments does the Port Authority have planned for the St. John's waterfront?

[Questions on the Order Paper, December 3rd, 2013]

With regard to the Department of Natural Resources and the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board (C-NLOPB): (a) can the department provide details of any studies carried out on helicopter night flights to oil facilities, specifically the safety of day flights versus night flights in transporting employees to and from the offshore work site; (b) has the government taken any action to implement recommendation 29(a) of the 2010 Offshore Helicopter Safety Inquiry into the establishment of an independent offshore safety regulator; and (c) has the government investigated the costs associated with establishment of the office of an independent safety regulator, and, if so, can the department provide a breakdown of the cost?

[Questions on the Order Paper, November 29th, 2013]

With regard to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the 2007 citations issued by the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) inspectors to vessels fishing in the NAFO Regulatory Area: (a) has the government been informed of any penalties or fines imposed by the vessels’ home countries; (b) has the government inquired about any penalties of fines imposed by vessels' home countries; and (c) were the fines or penalties paid by the vessels that were fined?

[National Hunting, Trapping and Fishing Heritage Day Act, November 27th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I stand in support of Bill C-501, an act respecting a national hunting, trapping and fishing heritage day.

Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are great hunters, great trappers and great fishermen, be it for cod, salmon, trout, Arctic char, moose, caribou, seals, rabbit, beavers, turr or grouse. We live off the land. We live off the sea.

Our first nation and aboriginal peoples have lived off the land and sea for thousands of years, and they continue to do so.

Our ancestors who got off the boat, primarily from Europe, made a life in Newfoundland and Labrador on the edge of the North Atlantic, in the most inhospitable of places, to be closest to the fish that sustained them. Life was hard. Life was brutal. Life was work from dawn till dusk, but that life made us strong. That life made us self-sufficient. They were certainly not the richest of people, not in terms of cash dollars, but rich in terms of how hunting, trapping and fishing built character, shaped our culture and formed our heritage.

This bill is important because hunting, fishing and trapping have been instrumental to the social, economic and cultural development of communities in every region of Canada, not just Newfoundland and Labrador—although that is my focus, as the member of Parliament for St. John's South—Mount Pearl, in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Hunting, fishing and trapping still play a vital role in the outports and communities that dot Newfoundland and Labrador, urban and rural. Most freezers in most homes contain local moose. They contain local fish. There are not many outport kitchens that do not have bottled salmon or rabbit or moose.

I was on the south coast of Labrador last spring. The woman whose home I entered apologized as soon as I got there because she did not have anything prepared to eat. By the time I left that house, I had eaten bottled salmon, bottled lobster, rabbit, turr, the sweetest partridge berries I had ever tasted, homemade bread and fresh vegetables from the kitchen garden. I had a feast of food prepared from the land and food prepared from the sea.

However, the best meal I have had so far this year was in a fishing shed in Petty Harbour, just outside St. John's, after a day on the North Atlantic, fishing crab.

When we got in, one of the fishermen pulled out a couple of bottles of moose and cooked it with some onions on the floor of the shed, in a huge frying pan, with a propane flame. I can taste it now. It was lovely.

We still live off the land and off the sea. I am proud of where we come from.

This bill is recognition of the importance of hunting, trapping and fishing to our way of life.

However, there are problems that we should reflect upon in this debate.

Let us begin with moose. The animals, moose, are not indigenous to Newfoundland, to the island portion of the province. Moose were only introduced successfully in 1904. However, since then, the population has ballooned, exploded, to the point that moose-vehicle collisions are a real problem. There are literally hundreds of moose-vehicle collisions every year.

I had a collision myself, in October 2012, on the edge of Terra Nova National Park. I will never forget it. It was dark. It was misty. I was driving relatively slowly. The speed limit was 100 kilometres an hour; I was driving 80. Out of nowhere, in front of me, appeared a moose. I hit it head-on. I remember thinking, “If that moose flies through the windshield, I'm dead”. It rolled over my bonnet and flipped over the windshield. The moose died about five minutes later. I had about $9,000 worth of damage to my vehicle. I lived. I am here to tell the tale.

The Conservative MP for the Manitoba riding of Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia recommended last summer that we cut down on moose-vehicle collisions. How? What was his recommendation? His recommendation was that we kill every last moose.

Let me quote the Conservative MP, a quote contained in a press release that was on the MP's website:

...the obvious solution is to cull (in other words, kill) all the moose on the island. Removing all the moose from the island will be a huge public safety benefit, it is the environmentally friendly action to take, and it makes economic sense.

For me, that makes no sense.

I stand here today in support of An Act respecting a National Hunting, Trapping and Fishing Heritage Day. An outrageous suggestion such as killing every last moose, an entire population of a food source, does not respect our culture. It does not respect our hunters or even nature.

Moose may have been introduced to Newfoundland, but the cod are what drew us to Newfoundland and Labrador. Codfish were once Newfoundland and Labrador currency. “In Cod We Trust”: not anymore.

For the true story of the destruction of our commercial groundfish fisheries, such as cod and flounder, I recommend a new book that was released two weeks ago. It is called Empty Nets: How Greed and Politics Wiped Out The World's Greatest Fishery. That book is by a former industry leader named Gus Etchegary.

In case the hon. members of this House do not realize it, the world's greatest fisheries were on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Codfish stocks have been pounded to the point that the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, or COSEWIC, is recommending that Atlantic cod be declared an endangered species.

There is still a food fishery, when Newfoundlanders and Labradorians can fish cod for our tables, but that fishery only takes place during a narrow window, with strict catch restrictions. Newfoundland and Labrador was known for its fish. The day, the decade, has actually come when it is illegal for most of the year for a young boy or girl to fish for cod from the edge of a wharf. That day came more than 20 years ago, a day nobody thought would come. It is 21 years since the Government of Canada shut down the northern cod fishery for the first time in a 500-plus year history, and there is still no recovery plan for that northern cod. It is shocking that there is no recovery plan for a commercial fishery that was shut down more than 20 years ago.

Let us move on to seals. Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are proud of our sealing heritage. However, let me read a quote from 1985. This quote is from a sealer, and it was contained in the report of the Royal Commission on Seals and Sealing in Canada:

As a sealer, as a fisherman standing before you today, I say to you that I am the endangered species. I am endangered but I still fight back. I will survive. I will not let animal rights become more important than human rights. I will not let people give souls to animals while they rob me of my human dignity and right to earn a livelihood.

That was from 1985.

Our tradition of sealing suffered yet another blow this week with the decision of the World Trade Organization to uphold the European ban on Canadian seal products. The Conservative government has announced plans to appeal that ruling, but if the government were serious about standing up for the seal hunt, the Conservatives would have made the seal ban a make-or-break issue during trade talks. They did not do that.

Under the current Conservative government, we have witnessed the greatest body blows to the seal harvest in our history, with ban after ban. A national hunting, trapping, and fishing heritage day would be a good time to reflect on the current government's absolute failure to stand up for the seal hunt.

A heritage day would also be a good time to reflect on how the government has gutted the federal Fisheries Act. A recent federal court ruling in Newfoundland and Labrador noted that the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans has the ability to control the alteration, disruption, or destruction of fish habitat. In other words, if there is no monetary value for a fish, it is worth nothing.

To sum up, I support this bill, but I also support policies that ensure that hunting, trapping, and fishing can continue in this country in a sustainable and meaningful way. It is one thing for the Conservatives to say they support hunters, trappers, and fishermen, but if their policies do nothing to protect our land and our sea and do nothing to protect our culture and our heritage, then the words are meaningless and a fishing heritage day would mean nothing.

[Offshore Health and Safety Act, November 25th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the bottom line is that rescue sub-centres in Quebec and my riding of St. John's South—Mount Pearl have both been closed.

There is an argument to be made for keeping both open. In Quebec, obviously, there is a unique language, the language of Quebeckers. In Newfoundland and Labrador, there is the language of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, which is also our own unique dialect. There is an argument to be made for the fact that with our unique dialect in Newfoundland and Labrador, if the sub-centre is moved to Halifax, these mainlanders, even though they are Maritimers, may not understand the unique language of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

On this side of the House we have fought to keep both rescue sub-centres open. However, talking to the Conservatives is obviously like speaking to a wall, especially today with none of the Conservatives getting up to speak about such an important issue.

Another thing I want to mention is the emergency response times for our military's Cormorant helicopters. I am not sure if the people watching this debate today understand, but we have two sets of response times for emergencies in our offshore. Monday to Friday during working hours, nine to five, the wheels-up response time for our Cormorant helicopters is 30 minutes. It takes 30 minutes for them to get off the ground, but outside of nine to five, during evenings, weekends and on holidays, the wheels-up response time for our search and rescue helicopters is up to two hours.

In every respect, when it comes to the health and safety of our offshore workers, the Conservative government misses the boat. It does not have a clue.

[Offshore Health and Safety Act, November 25th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I think there is an effort by the current Conservative government to get out of the business of regulatory regime, period. If it were up to the government, industry would regulate itself in every way that could be imagined.

We are here to ensure that does not happen.

[Offshore Health and Safety Act, November 25th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I understand his question in terms of being tongue-in-cheek, if it were not so serious.

When Peter Penashue was in this House as the Conservative member for Labrador, one of the first appointments of the government was to appoint his former campaign manager to the board of the C-NLOPB. That campaign manager had no idea whatsoever about the offshore oil industry. That appointment did not stand, in the same way that Mr. Penashue's time in this House of Commons did not last either. Too often we have had examples where patronage appointments have been put on regulators like the C-NLOPB, and it does not do the industry or the people justice.

The bottom line with the C-NLOPB is that we have a regulatory body that looks after industry regulation, safety, and the environment. That is too much for one regulatory body to look after.

We have been preaching. We have been pushing Justice Wells' recommendation for the independent safety regulator, and nothing has happened.

Again, let me put this question to the Conservative government, to all the Conservatives on the opposite side of this House today. Why do they not follow through on the Wells inquiry recommendation for an independent safety regulator?