Scott Simms

[Seeds Regulations Act, March 17th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his bill in the House. A lot of it piqued my interest in some respects. He will have to forgive me, because I am not as up on the subject as he is, but I do have one question in regard to assessments.

The assessments, as I understand it, follow the production and then, of course, just before sales. So the assessment is made on the GM seed. Would that not then stifle research and development for many of the people to look at ways of creating products that could be of service around the world when it comes to GMOs?

I understand there is talk about the negativity around genetically modifying anything but in this particular case I am wondering if this bill would stifle the research and development that creates a positive aspect of a genetically modified seed.

[Business of Supply, March 17th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I certainly uphold some of the comments from my NDP colleague as well. We are talking about pension security and the many people whose pensions are in trouble right now. They are low in their value, in essence, as bankrupt companies go under. This could be a major problem for the smallest of communities. I was hoping that a recalibration would deal with that because I know that my province of Newfoundland and Labrador and his province of Quebec have been the only two provinces provincially that have been engaged in the forestry issue, particularly for newsprint, such as the mills like AbitibiBowater.

He mentioned some of the ideas that he would like to see put forward. I was wondering about the reconstituting of committees, allowing parliamentary committees to continue to function during the period when Parliament is prorogued until the start of the new session. I was wondering if that is one of the ideas that his party, or even just he, would agree with.

[Business of Supply, March 17th, 2010]

Obviously the member is concerned about the Caribbean. Maybe its legislature, in many cases, sits more than we do, which is a shame.

Let me remind the member of a particular quote, and maybe he can jump ahead and ask his leader about this. In 2005 I remember his leader sitting at the table talking about his concern for Parliament. He was sitting next to the leader of the Bloc and the leader of the NDP, and we never talk about that. He said, “When a government starts trying to cancel dissent or avoid dissent...is when it's rapidly losing its moral authority to govern”. The Conservatives have now become everything they never wanted to be.

[Business of Supply, March 17th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I remember reading over the break about one individual talking about a Conservative MP who was in California. The media called me and asked me how I felt about a Conservative guy being in California while we were prorogued. I said what were we going to do. The guy went on vacation and it was one of those things.

[Business of Supply, March 17th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, we did have rallies in our province and they were well attended, rightly so, but I was fascinated by how engaged people were in this issue, as was she.

What warms my heart is that we know deep down in some back room, there are strategists who seldom get out to the seniors' dinner in Lewisporte or to many communities in my riding. They are strategists. They do not come to terms with what is happening on the ground. They do not talk to the 100,000 people who are unemployed. They do not talk to the 700 people were laid off because the mill shut down in my hometown.

Somewhere in that back room, they had to say they were going shut down Parliament. Somebody in that room had to say that maybe people would be upset. Somebody else must have said not to worry, that they would not remember. Shame on them.

Guess what? People remember, like those people who are unemployed, and that is what so enlightening about this exercise.

[Business of Supply, March 17th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I want to start this debate by reading the NDP motion. So far I have heard some of the comments primarily from the government side. It has been a collection of four months of mixed metaphors, mixed messages as to why this prorogation existed in the first place. Let me get to the motion first, which I support. The thrust of the motion is exactly what the House needs in order to attain the supremacy of the House, in which I firmly believe. I think all members do unless placed under a cone of silence:

That, in the opinion of the House, the Prime Minister shall not advise the Governor General to prorogue any session of any Parliament for longer than seven calendar days without a specific resolution of this House of Commons to support such a prorogation.

Therein lies the thrust of this. I fully support that the House of Commons should support such a prorogation.

Let us put the clock back for a moment and paint a picture of what we have heard. Today I have heard three different responses as to why this recalibration was to take place. At Christmas, I heard the reasoning of many individuals. This is my favourite and it is the one that really made me laugh at them, not with them.

My hon. colleague from the Conservative Party said that we needed to wait so we could put our attention on the Olympics. I have no doubt that our two-man bobsleigh team was very excited and thrilled to have those members of Parliament rooting for them at home, with their feet up drinking a nice hot cup of coffee. As a matter of fact, poor Pierre Lueders never even stood a chance. He never got to the point where he wanted to, and the government is to blame. How absurd is that? However, to basically say that we needed to shut down the House so we could focus on the Olympics had to be at the pinnacle of why we would shut down a functioning House such as this in such a democracy. It was absolutely ridiculous at the time.

Then the answer had shifted in many directions. I called it the prorogation that ran madly off in all directions. We had one answer about the Olympics. We had another answer about the economic action plan. However, what I do not understand, and I will not even condemn the Conservatives on this one but I do have a lot of questions about, is this. They said that they needed to implement the second phase of their economic action plan so they had to shut down the House. What changed? Nothing really. The money rolled out as they said it did under the way they said it would. There was nothing in the way of taking money from one area and putting it in another area. The deadline was January for major projects in my riding. Everything was proceeding as they said, as normal, or maybe it was not.

The only thing that really changed was the fact the Conservatives did not renew the tax credit for home renovations. They do not need to sit around for over 30 days to realize they will not do something. Where was the vision? I expected a modicum of vision to come away from the prorogation. Instead I was told I had to leave, go home and watch the Olympics. However, I did not get to watch much of the Olympics because I was working in my riding, like many other MPs.

However, can we not walk and chew gum at the same time? Can we not elevate ourselves to be smart enough, to be talented enough to do two things at once? On this side, maybe. That was a catty remark and I apologize to my hon. colleagues. I say this because there is a whole heap of scorn being thrown upon us for what happened. It is not the time nor the venue to do this.

Let us have a look at prorogation. What exactly is it? One of the definitions is that we have to close down the House because the bulk of the work has been done. Professor Errol Mendes, University of Ottawa, said:

A proper democratic use of the prerogative power is a legitimate power to end one session of Parliament after a substantial part of the legislative agenda has been fulfilled leading to a new speech from the throne.

I see the nodding heads, therefore we all agree. Here is what else he had to say:

The use of the prerogative power by the [Prime Minister] in Dec. 2008 and again in Dec. 2009 has been used instead to avoid democratic accountability and transparency...

This is the best part. Remember I talked about the Olympics? Remember I talked about the fact that the Conservatives had to recalibrate the economic action plan? If the economic action plan had to be recalibrated, rejigged, then it really was not much of a plan to begin with, but we could go on about that for quite some time.

Every time we asked why Parliament was shut down, we were told that it was normal because this party had done it when in government. Shame on the Conservatives. Congratulations, the Conservative government has now become everything it said it would never be. That is the crux of it. Every time the Conservatives are in trouble, they always turn the spin this way.

In Atlantic Canada there is a fish called a flounder. It is flat fish. It has two eyes on one side. It swims along and whenever it sees trouble, it flips, rolls over and goes back in the other direction.

We have the government floundering its way through excuse after excuse. At times it becomes absolutely comical. It is like an episode of Yes Minister from BBC. It is absolutely ridiculous. What I call a bit of a charade continues. The Conservatives talked about the fact that they recalibrated. They came back to the House and what did they want to do? Change the national anthem. That is the best they could do, change the national anthem and only 48 hours later, like the flounder, went in the other direction.

The issue then becomes this. Where is the vision? Does the Conservative Party not have the vision by which it can see beyond this point? Did the Conservatives not know that Canadians would be upset if they changed the national anthem? Did they not know that they would be upset by shutting down Internet sites under the CAP program? Then 48 hours later, we remember the fish, back the other way. That says they lack vision. Five year programs relegated to one year funding. This is the recalibration.

To top it all off, at the end of the day, what does the world think of what we are doing here? The Conservatives keep talking about this, that and the OECD. Let us hear what Ned Franks of the Economist has to say:

Far from completing its work, Parliament was still considering important measures, including bills that are part of [the Prime Minister's] crackdown on crime, as well as ratification of free-trade agreements with Colombia and Jordan. All must now be reintroduced.

The Economist asked, why shut down Parliament? It did not make sense to it. A lot of people around the world thought the same thing. It was rather bizarre. The British Columbia legislature stayed open during the Olympics. Members of legislature did not feel it was necessary to focus on the Olympics by being off work. For some odd reason, the Conservatives did. They did not have to recalibrate. They kept pursuing their agenda.

[Business of Supply, March 16th, 2010]

My colleague, the Minister of Transport, mentions blaming Barack Obama. Is the man worth picking on that much in the House that we have to invoke his name in this? How does Barack Obama factor into a made in Canada solution, which the member brought to the House originally? I do not understand. I respect him greatly, but seriously.

[Business of Supply, March 16th, 2010]

Exactly. Where are the fish? Some people would say the seals are eating them but that is a subject for another day.

When it comes to the sealing industry, right now there is very little ice. The minister has already proclaimed that this season may not even open, but there is still time as the season does not open until the end of March.

The way it looks right now this is going to be a tremendously difficult year for sealers on the east coast, primarily those around Îles de la Madeleine, but I do not see this mentioned in these documents, and that is a shame.

The government is singling out the industries that mean the most to it. In a roundabout way, the Bloc members accuse the Conservatives of picking out industries that are pet to them to the exclusion of others when in fact they have done the same thing. Therefore, the logic of that really escapes me at this point. I am very disappointed it is not in there.

I was with my colleague from Îles de la Madeleine in Europe several years ago, where we both argued to defend sealers, their way of life, their traditions and their customs, as well as the commercial industry itself. He did a darn fine good job, I thought. However, here is a situation where it is not even mentioned.

Let us talk about cultural industries. As a member of the Standing Committee on Heritage, I have a vested interest in this issue. Quebec made a major issue out of our cultural industries in the last election, and for good reasons. Again, the Conservatives went back to singling out what they did not believe in and away they went. They will justify it in ways such as the program has run out, although there is also a question of ideology that I would have to question in some of these cases as well with the Bloc. However, the cultural industry is not mentioned in here, which is unfortunate.

I guess, in retrospect, members of the Bloc have a fundamentally good message about the particular industries they have singled out, but the problem is they have only followed suit of what happened across the way. They pick what they believe is good to them but what may not necessarily be to another one of their colleagues.

Let us go back to the very beginning. The other issue, based on our own history, is that in the opinion of the House the government has demonstrated in the Speech from the Throne and the budget that federalism does not fulfill the goals and requirements of Quebec.

Just over 50 years ago, Newfoundland and Labrador made a fundamental decision to join a nation, to join Canada. In that year, when we decided that we would join Newfoundland, it was a tough battle and it was a close battle. After two referendums, we decided that we would be a part of a greater combination. In other words, we became a part of the synergy of a greater nation that we felt we contributed to and we contributed from. As we talk about this, I would take issue for one simple reason, and I will give an example.

Federalism has worked for Quebec, but federalism has worked for Canada because of Quebec. Two days ago, I gave a speech on pensions, CPP and QPP. Some of the major positives coming out of the Canada pension plan in the mid-1960s, through Lester Pearson, came from the provincial government of Quebec, through negotiations between the two provinces. Yes, health care was brought to the House, part and parcel by Saskatchewan, a place you are quite familiar with, Mr. Speaker.

We also had a situation where other social reforms came in vis-à-vis examples from other provinces, but that is where the Canada pension plan became what it is today. It became the jewel in the crown of the 1960 social policy, at least in my opinion. During the final days of negotiations, when they went through the process of dealing with the provincial government in Quebec to hammer out a CPP-QPP combination, the Quebec government made it happen. It was the last piece in the puzzle, so the contribution from Quebec went through the rest of the country.

If members of the House feel that federalism has let them down, I can honestly say from Newfoundland and Labrador, their entry into federalism certainly did not let me down. A lot of people in my riding take advantage of Canada's public pensions, CPP, OAS, the guaranteed income supplement, for reasons that are obvious. These measures made their way through Parliament, through input from other provinces. Therefore, I vote against this motion. It is fundamentally flawed in two areas.

However, I go back to my original point. Some of the points that have made are quite clear, certainly well thought out and brought to the House with the best intentions of each individual here and for the constituents who we represent, so on that front I congratulate him.

On the environment, the members of the Bloc certainly bring up some valid points as well. When it comes to the environment over the past little while, I have seen it float from a made in Canada policy that has morphed into what seems to be in lockstep with the United States of America.

[Business of Supply, March 16th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I see we have created a stir in the past five minutes. It is almost to the point where, even though it is my turn to speak in the debate, I was almost engaged in being a spectator, given the level of debate that is going on between my colleagues from Quebec. Nonetheless, I do want to discuss the issues at hand.

I would like to speak to the Bloc opposition day motion today in the House. Since I am the final speaker of the day, I would like to read it to the House, just in case members have not seen it. It is merely a situation where I would just like to gently remind my hon. colleagues where the motion is going. I suggest, given the fact that it is coming from the Bloc, they may want to brace themselves for what is about to ensue. It reads:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government demonstrated in its Speech from the Throne and its Budget that federalism does not fulfill the goals and requirements of Quebec, as there were no commitments to allocate $2.2 billion to Quebec for harmonizing the QST and GST, to provide the forestry industry--

I will talk about the forestry with a great deal of enthusiasm in just a moment. It continues:

--with an assistance plan equivalent to that given to the automobile industry, to offer stimulus measures to the aeronautics industry, to meet Quebeckers' expectations regarding the environment, and to enhance programs to assist the less fortunate in Quebec.

Let me just speak in general about the situation that is put forward. Some of the issues that hon. members bring up in this debate today regarding the Bloc Québécois are legitimate, certainly, when it comes to sector by sector analysis, and certainly for the forestry, which is something that I can understand, being from central Newfoundland.

We recently had a mill that shut its doors in Grand Falls-Windsor, owned by AbitibiBowater. We have another mill that shut its doors, also owned by AbitibiBowater, some time ago from the riding of my hon. colleague from Random—Burin—St. George's, and now we have an industry in decline to the point where the one remaining mill in Newfoundland and Labrador is certainly in trouble. That mill produces newsprint. We are in an industry of newsprint and it is certainly a drastic situation. Because of the market prices, the demand is low. On top of all that we have had a recession all over the world, which took a bite out of just about every industry, certainly, including, as the Bloc points out, the automobile industry.

Some of the things members of the Bloc brought out in the debate deserve merit in the sense that Quebec was really the only jurisdiction that directly provided the assistance to this particular industry, that I speak of, in the form of $100 million loan guarantee.

I did not hear anything from members of the federal government side, whether they agree with it or not. The only other gesture really came from Newfoundland and Labrador when there was an expropriation issue, which was for the benefit of the people for the sake of the timber rights as well as the rights to produce electricity off the river, the Exploits River primarily. However, an interesting thing cropped up from that. I do not know if the House has discussed this issue yet, but we now find ourselves in the midst of a NAFTA challenge by AbitibiBowater, being from the United States.

Why NAFTA? It is the North American Free Trade Agreement, as members know, and a chapter 11 issue that involves the situation where the company wants to get back the money it feels it deserves. Now we find ourselves, and this is the odd part, in a battle essentially between the province of Newfoundland and Labrador and AbitibiBowater, but in essence it is now set out between AbitibiBowater and the federal government. It is funny how things take a certain turn in this world of politics.

One of the questions I would like to ask the government is this. What is the situation with that at this point? Has the government looked at this issue solidly, because some of the issues go beyond just indirect subsidies, just the community assistance that it keeps talking about in the forestry industry, or some of the subsidies in the way of making new energy. One example of course is the burning of biomass, the burning of the extra wood that is left over from the cutting of logs. We burn that to create the energy to produce the next log that comes through. It is a very simple concept and the subsidies are there to be availed of.

However, there is also an environmental situation. What we have here is possibly a massive environmental cleanup that will affect this situation vis-à-vis the private-public interaction.

I go back to my example of the mill in Grand Falls-Windsor. This mill has been around for 100 years. Back then environmental practises were not under the microscope as they are today. Obviously, our standards today are much higher when it comes to environmental remediation, more so than what they were back in the early part of the last century. What is in that mill and surrounding land that has to be cleaned up? I am not talking about a small parcel of land; this is a major piece of land.

Who is responsible when, God forbid, these mills collapse? Right now it is the province, principally. When issues such as health care, pensions, education, crowd us out, who is on the hook for an environmental cleanup?

The situation in Newfoundland and Labrador is very interesting. As a result of the expropriation, it is now a question of responsibility. I would humbly suggest that the mill is facing off against the provincial government. The federal government could get involved with its own program. It could put a line item in the budget talking about an environmental cleanup in that area.

There is a disaster in Buchans in Grand Falls-Windsor because of the high amounts of lead in the ground. The property is privately owned. Does the federal government play a role in this? I would like to think so.

There are so many facets of the forestry industry that we are not discussing. The Bloc Québécois, quite rightly, has brought up some of them. Those members seem to have delved into this issue to quite an extent.

I applaud the automobile industry, the aeronautics industry, the airline industry in particular, for their work over the years. But there too we have seen some severe layoffs over the past little while involving companies like Bell Helicopter, Pratt & Whitney and Bombardier. Thousands of jobs have been lost. The airline industry itself has taken a great hit. The balance sheets of United Airlines, Continental, even Air Canada right now are not looking as healthy as what they would like. Perhaps that is just a mild understatement. Air France and British Airways are massive corporations that have basically been the pillars of the economies of their nations. Their timbers have been shaken as one would say, certainly my colleague would say.

Very little attention has been paid to this particular industry. The Bloc does have a valid point because the automobile industry certainly did receive a lot of attention, more than the industries the Bloc has pointed out.

Are we looking at a new way of doing politics, a new way of weaving through the latest recession, which is a tapestry of investments here and there, direct or indirect? Are we singling out one industry? Do we pick winners and losers here? We have heard many times in the House the forestry sector referred to as a sunset industry. Maybe not so much.

There is one industry that is so large we cannot miss it and that is the fishery. The pillar of Newfoundland and Labrador and for a lot of communities on the east coast has been the fishery, which brings me to my next point. This is where I diverge from the opinion of the Bloc Québécois. Where is the fishery?

On the east coast of Quebec, primarily in the area we call the gulf, around Îles de la Madeleine, or the Maggies as some people like to call it, sealing is a tremendous tradition.

[Business of Supply, March 16th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I am taking a look at the opposition day motion put forward by the Bloc, and in many cases I understand where it is coming from. The exception, of course, is the part about federalism, as I am from a province that gave up its nationhood for the sake of a greater sum. I think we made the right move.

What puzzles me is that recently the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans made an announcement about the sealing industry off the east coast of Quebec.

That is very important to the east coast of Quebec and the Îles de la Madeleine.

This brings me to my question on the motion.

This motion mentions the forestry industry, the automobile industry and the aerospace industry. Why is there no mention of fisheries?