Scott Simms

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, November 1st, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I was going to comment on the stimulus plan and its deadline.

Would the member care to comment? Right now many of the communities in my riding are suffering as a result of this hard deadline. Perhaps the member could talk about a possible extension.

The member did talk about the pension situation, which I raised in the House several times today. He mentioned the auto sector. In my riding, a plant that had been shut down in the last two years belonged to AbitibiBowater. The pensioners throughout the community, and there are a lot of them, are facing uncertain times because of the uncertainty of the company. It has since made great gains in getting out of bankruptcy, but it was touch and go there for a while. We had an uncertain pension plan that created defined benefits for a large swath of the population in my riding.

Can the member comment on the future debate on security for these plans? They are held by large corporations or even smaller businesses. Just how much trouble they are in, and where will this debate be going in the near future?

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, November 1st, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's comments about restoring our fiscal sanity. One of the other issues would be restoring our social sanity in the sense that we are missing the broad picture.

One of the key elements of a broad policy outlook would be through pensions and pension reforms. One of the ideas that has been floating around for quite some time, certainly on this side of the House, and one which we have looked at with a great deal of attention, is the idea of supplementary CPP. To do that, it would allow this large and one of the best managed funds in the world to be available to the average Canadian who may be moving around from place to place, from one company to another, people with a great amount of skill that they can put on the market, both national and international. It would allow them to invest in their future once they retire.

I would like for the hon. member to comment on that and other social policies he feels this particular budget misses out on.

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, November 1st, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member mentioned poverty reduction in his speech. He mentioned six jurisdictions that are now making efforts to reduce poverty. One of them is my own province of Newfoundland and Labrador, which has a wide-ranging poverty reduction strategy. This strategy includes subsidized heating costs for seniors and nutritional supplements for young low-income mothers.

This could be important. Yet the vision does not lead to an overall poverty reduction strategy. Lacking a general narrative or theme, we have only a patchwork of short-term measures.

I wonder if the member could comment on one of the general themes that he would choose as a plank for poverty reduction.

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, November 1st, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I was taken aback by part of the member's speech, which I thought was very impressive. We forget to draw links between what was a record established prior to arriving in federal governance. The provincial government in Ontario at the time had all these tremendous tax cuts in order to grow its way out of a deficit position. It did not quite work out in that manner, certainly when it came to corporate tax cuts.

Would the member please comment on that?

[Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act, November 1st, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has a beautiful riding from what I understand. My niece is a teacher in his riding, in the community of Kitkatla.

If we look at the current situation and all the points the member has made about the misgivings of this particular government, there is no doubt they are there. The expression he used was “opportunity lost”. He brought up a valid point. When I think about opportunity lost, I think about pensions first and foremost and just how we seem to be on the edge of a new way of doing pensions across the country.

For example, my riding is probably a lot like his. People in the trades travel a lot in this type of environment. They go to Alberta, Saskatchewan, Africa, Russia, especially countries in the oil and gas sector. What is one of the things he would do to help people who are not with a particular company?

Where is the opportunity lost for the Conservatives to make meaningful changes or perhaps some new legislation regarding pensions to allow people who move from company to company or country to country to find the income they need to replace their current income when they decide to retire?

[Terra Nova National Park, October 27th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, we are all aware of the damage inflicted on the east coast of Newfoundland by hurricane Igor.

One of those areas is Terra Nova National Park. Residents are quite concerned and upset about the state of the roads within the park's jurisdiction. These roads serve as the only link that the residents have to the outside world.

Could the minister in charge of Parks Canada update the House, and will he commit to helping those communities in need?

Finally, I would like to remind the member opposite who answers that this is a serious issue.

[Strengthening Aviation Security Act, October 26th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, in the course of this debate, we have heard quite a bit about the fact that rules are already in place that help to provide for the security of Canadian citizens. According to this bill, we would be taking this one step forward, whether it is the creation of a no-fly list or whether it is providing security information to other countries, and, invariably, the United States of America keeps coming up as one of the places that could use or possibly abuse this information. We juxtapose that with personal liberties and the fact that we respect privacy in this country and, I gather from my colleague, this bill would truly violate those liberties that we hold so dear.

With the current rules in place, how would this bill make it that much more insulting? I am not saying that I do not disagree with that but would the member just bare down the details of the bill on how this would be an insult to our personal liberties and freedoms?

[Fairness at the Pumps Act, October 25th, 2010]

Yes, it is still a sham. That is a good point.

The member made a valid point. The government campaigned on two options: first, a 2¢ reduction in excise tax on diesel; and second, when the price of gasoline goes over 85¢ it would cut out the GST element. Neither of those things were done.

In this particular situation, the government did not even go so far as to talk about the Competition Act, which my colleague from the NDP talked about. Instead, we have mandatory inspections. By the way, this must be paid for by the gas station owner.

[Fairness at the Pumps Act, October 25th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know if my colleague was here earlier but I mentioned that with some of these bills we are seeing a case where we haul the old t-shirt out of the closet and call it ShamWow and start cleaning with it. Just because it has a fancy label does not make it a better cleaner. The member gets the idea--

[Fairness at the Pumps Act, October 25th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the member made an extremely valid point.

I would like to point out for my colleague that this topic came up in discussions several years ago in my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador when we instituted price regulation at the pumps. P.E.I. was the other province.

Why is it that we do not have the framework by which we can cut down on what I would consider an unfair business practice after well over 100 studies have been completed? It is true that we do it in other sectors. Is it a case of this industry being so connected to world inputs, such as oil prices being determined by a huge global compact? Is this part of the reason?

I do not stand here trying to make excuses for this. I do think that in this particular situation, despite the fact that Canada has a great deal of resources, we still have the right to disentangle ourselves from the world to ensure the consumer in Canada is not unfairly gouged.