Scott Simms

[Committees of the House, December 8th, 2016]

Being lost in translation is nothing new to me, Mr. Speaker. As I have said, I have a lot of experience being a politician, and it happens on occasion that I have an accent, but I will try to tone it down just a little bit. Perhaps that may have been a problem.

Mr. Speaker, I am a direct representative, and I love the fact that I represent this Parliament directly, and to me, that is sacrosanct.

Why would a person choose people to sit in the House when local issues, like the one I just expressed, would never be addressed or might only addressed some day down the road when it is too late?

From 2004 straight up to 2010, I was a person who believed that every member of the House should be directly responsible to one riding and one riding only. However, the leader of the party a few years ago named me critic for electoral reform, and I got to speak to a group of people from Fair Vote Canada. I also spoke to another group from Leadnow. We had a fabulous discussion about representation in this country. Should votes of an individual be counted? Should the representation in this House reflect the general vote of this country? That is a legitimate question. Why should a person feel like they have wasted a vote because they have voted for a party that is in a small corner of the House, which we were at that time?

I was struck by several elements of this. As I was talking about it, I became more open to the idea of introducing perhaps some type of proportionality, which would be good for this country by better reflecting where it wanted to go, just by parties and party policy, not from the direct representatives. I am not saying that I endorse that position, but I certainly became interested in the concept, thanks to people who engaged in the discussion. Here we are, to this day, having this discussion and the myriad of ways that we can go.

I believe that we need to speak to Canadians in terms of their values, as was done in many other countries, for example, New Zealand and Australia. Many countries throughout Europe have engaged in this, and many Canadian provinces.

I had the distinct honour of visiting British Columbia to meet with a lot of people involved in its campaign to bring in STV. I met with many people from Ontario who had a referendum on MMP and discussed the effects of that referendum. I have also spoken to people in P.E.I. who have done the same about the systems.

I truly believe that this discussion needs to branch out into many areas that have not been discussed. I can tell members that I went to my riding with a question when I had my forum. I asked what system they wanted. Did they want AV, STV, RU-STV, or MMP? My constituents looked at me as said, “You know, with all those letters, it's a lot of BS quite frankly”. However, this is essentially what we need to do. We need to ask, “What do you want?”

Everyone needs to take the journey that I did, where we go from strictly, “I want everyone in this House to represent one riding and one riding only”, to a broader perspective. When I spoke to people, they gave me a perspective that I had not thought about before. I was not rigid. Before anyone in this House accuses me of flip-flopping, which I think is a ridiculous term, this is a journey for all of us to take.

In all of the provinces, the committee held a total of 57 meetings, and heard 196 expert witnesses, 567 open-mike participants, and received 22,000 responses to surveys. This is a good step.

I will recite to members a favourite quote of mine from the report, which is on page 2. I have managed to read past page 2, by the way, but page 2 really struck me.

There is a gentleman by the name of Thomas Axworthy. I have met him before and am always interested in his writing on how we can progress as a nation, as a federation. We are a large country with few people in an international perspective, and so we have to have a system that strengthens that federation. This is the other part of that journey that I have discovered. He said:

...there is no perfect electoral system. There are advantages and disadvantages to all of them, and it is really a question of values, of differing perspectives,

This is the differing perspective I received when I became the critic.

Not everyone in this country has the benefit of being here, but we certainly do realize that benefit; all of us do. Mr. Axworthy also said, “It is basically a political process of deciding your purposes and values and what you value most”. It is about what we value the most.

I still believe that I want to represent one riding. I still want to represent the people who live in the place that I call home. I have done it for 12 years. I will do it for as long as they deem necessary, and at that point upon reflection I will call it one of the greatest honours anyone in this House can receive.

When I had my forum, something very interesting happened. People started exchanging ideas about where we should go. They said they have a system called MMP, in which two thirds of the House is directly elected like we are now. One third is what is called PR, proportional representation; and there are certain variations of that, by the way. Essentially, that would result in a better reflection of the national vote. There was one gentleman in the audience who said to me, “I have a question for you, sir. There is something that no one is asking in this. You keep talking about members of the House, who they are, where they're from, what political group they're with, and how many seats they represent, etc. No one has ever described to me what the ballot will look like”.

Here is one of the arguments that arose when I looked at MMP and I thought that maybe this is not a bad idea. One side of the ballot would say that the voters want this person to represent them in the House of Commons; the other side would say which party should lead this country, which party should lead this federation. I am not endorsing MMP, but, by God, that is a valid point.

Every point is valid. Should we have ridings that have multi-members, bigger ridings where everyone gets to go on a ballot? We could have two or three people from the same party on that ballot. I may not agree with that, but there is an element of logic in it that makes sense. If we do not engage with Canadians on values, then we are never going to see the logic of a new system that creates a better country. That is what we need to do.

[Committees of the House, December 8th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Montcalm.

This is the first time in a while that I have stood in the House to speak about electoral reform. I used to speak about it quite often in the last Parliament. If it is okay with everyone else, I would like to start with a story. It is my own personal development around this issue. I do not think my situation is that much different from any other Canadian who may not have had a distinct interest in this topic or an interest in changing the system. Here is why.

In 2004, I was elected as a member of Parliament. When I was 12 years old, I wanted one job in life, and that was to be a member of Parliament. I wanted to represent my riding, my colleagues, my brothers, my sisters, and my family. I wanted to be the representative of my home. I take no greater pride than in being that person who currently represents the office, and I respect it greatly.

To me, the essential part of democracy was about direct representation. I was directly elected to represent my constituents. By way of example, recently the Coast Guard announced it was going to remove the oil from a tanker that sank many years ago. If we had a system in our country where everybody in the House was chosen by one person to sit and represent the whole country—

[Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Implementation Act, December 7th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I have travelled with him on several missions to Europe, and the topic of CETA was always first and foremost for the most part.

The investor-state dispute mechanism that the member talked about is of great concern to me as well in many respects, from the beginning until now. His point about regulating or legislating in the public interest is a key component.

According to the Lisbon treaty, over 90% of the competencies of this will be ratified within the European Parliament; however, there is that sliver of slightly less than 10% of the competencies of the individual 28 member states. They will have to vote on it. My understanding is that the dispute mechanism is involved as well in that particular vote, which is of great concern, because there are 28 votes that have to take place.

How does the member feel about that, and the concerns of Wallonia? Does he echo the same concerns that it did in this particular agreement?

[Committees of the House, November 25th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the fourth report of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, entitled “Supplementary Estimates (B) 2016-17: Votes 1b, 5b and 10b under Fisheries and Oceans”.

[Salvation Army, November 25th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is the last weekend in November. What does that mean? Christmas is upon us.

This weekend, it will be sheer madness at all stores for shoppers. However, outside of the madness of the shopping weekend, outside of every store is one of the greatest Christmas traditions: the red kettle of the Salvation Army.

Mary Downey of the Salvation Army in Newfoundland and Labrador said:

The loonies, toonies, you drop into The Salvation Army kettle will be used to provide more than 1,800 families/individuals throughout Newfoundland and Labrador with a Christmas Hamper, more than 3,800 children/youth with a gift or two..

Each Christmas season, I spend hours accompanying the red kettle, volunteering my time. Therefore, I challenge every member of Parliament and every minister in the House to volunteer their time accompanying a Salvation Army kettle. They will meet great constituents and they will raise money for a great cause to help the impoverished.

I wish everyone a merry Christmas. Please give hope today.

[Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Implementation Act, November 22nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I do not like to see anybody take over resources; there is no doubt about it. However, going back to the original comment, if he did not expropriate a mill, why do we own it? We now own it. I do not know how this happened without his expropriating the mill. No deal was signed.

What I would say in this particular case, to the essence of whether a tribunal would look at our rights over natural resources, yes, absolutely. On the secretive part of it, NAFTA aside, I hope that this one is thorough. I think the instruction is right in there, in CETA, that tells us there would be a thorough mechanism by which these disputes would be settled.

[Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Implementation Act, November 22nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure if I can totally kill the curiosity, but nevertheless I will give it a shot.

The member mentioned something about an agreement that was in place. There never was an agreement. There was not even an offer, not even that. There was an assumption of an agreement that took place by the province, and the province said it had something in place, but the federal government said it did not. That was the problem with it, because there was so much confusion. They had a huge press conference. Nobody from the federal government, not one bureaucrat, even showed up. That part is out.

As I mentioned from my other colleague's question whether I believe in a transition fund, yes, I do. Will I always work for it? Of course, I would. I always believe that, as a government, we need to invest in how we transition from one fishery to the other or, in this case, minimum processing requirements. I can honestly say that there is so much to be done because our fishery is transitioning, not just from MPRs, but there are several other factors.

[Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Implementation Act, November 22nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I hope I do not sound too vanilla. I hope to inject a bit of Neapolitan into this debate and provide maybe a bit more.

I was there during the ruckus that occurred between the last two governments. I say this, and I will try not to get too partisan about it, but here it goes.

There was an agreement on one side and not the other. There was a dollar value that was agreed upon on one side and not the other. The intent was fine. It is a transition fund that the member is talking about to go from certain species of fish to others, but primarily focused on the processing part, which is the minimum processing requirements.

Do I believe in a transition fund? He can bet I do. I think there is a valuable investment that can be made to do this. If I can look to another example of that outside of the dairy agreement, I am also talking about the European fisheries fund, which was something that helped small communities around much of eastern Europe.

I hope that was a little less vanilla, if I could use that term.

[Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Implementation Act, November 22nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I want to say to all my colleagues in the House, congratulations on a great debate thus far. I have been in this House since 2004. I have been involved with the Canada-Europe Parliamentary Association. I am now proudly president of the Canada-Europe Parliamentary Association. We have talked a lot with our counterparts in the EU, both with individual members of Parliament from member states, whether they were U.K. MPs or senators from Italy and the like, and also the members of European Parliament, who are expecting a vote on this debate, just as we are here today, in the month of December. In a few weeks from now our counterparts in Brussels will be doing much of the same.

The EU represents a very important economic partner. It is the world's second largest economy and Canada's second largest trading partner after the United States, of course, so this is a monumental agreement.

In addition to that, I know we are second to the United States as far as that is concerned, but consider this for a moment: This is not one particular bilateral agreement, this is one agreement with 28 nation states. It is comprehensive to say the least. Not only did we include the fact that we are dealing with 28 member states in the European Union, but it had an unprecedented involvement of the provinces of this country in the forefront of negotiations way back when.

We talked in the past about how involved provinces have been, and in a piecemeal kind of way. Some successes include the Rideau conference on the environment. There were talks on the free trade agreement with the United States that took place in the late eighties, but they were never involved to the level that they are now, because a lot of this CETA deal will involve provincial jurisdiction. Procurement is one of the big ones, and this is one of the original demands of the European Union to discuss how to get the provinces involved in the discussions so that they will not turn their backs on some of the issues contained within this agreement, and rightly so.

Although they do not have the ratification authority, I can honestly say, and this is from a personal standpoint, what I have seen in the involvement of all the provinces with the federal government in negotiating this have been quite thorough. I have spoken to officials from my home province, Newfoundland and Labrador, who have been involved quite a bit.

There was, in the beginning, some trouble regarding seafood, regarding seals and that sort of thing, and certain trade embargoes and bans, but we have got over that at this point. I am still working, trying to convince European parliamentarians that their ban on seal products is something they should not proceed with and we should look at changes in doing that from a commercial aspect, but that is a battle for another day, as they say.

My hon. colleague from British Columbia talked about some of the numbers and about $21 billion in seafood. Think about this for a moment. On a personal level, in my particular riding, I had a shrimp plant. It was northern shrimp, the little ones. They are called salad shrimp in Europe, and there is an insatiable appetite in the United Kingdom for this type of shrimp, and we export quite a bit of this.

Over the past 15 to 20 years, shrimp has represented a large portion of income for a vast number of fisheries throughout northeastern Newfoundland, and a lot of it was exported to Europe. They were slapped right away with a 20% tariff on top, and it was a very difficult situation. We made a lot of sales despite that, but I think of the opportunity lost.

A large shrimp plant closed down in my riding about four years ago in Port Union. I truly believe to this day that if this deal had existed back then where there were no tariffs on the shrimp, that plant would have survived today. We have had a resource issue on shrimp, but I think this particular plant would have survived, based on the sales that they could have had with the European Union, in particular, western Europe, and that is a shame. They made some qualifications where the first 20,000 tonnes of shrimp would be subject to a 7% tariff instead of 20%. Thanks to this, now we go to zero.

As was pointed out earlier as well, 96% of these tariffs vanish on entering into force. It is an incredible opportunity for seafood, processed particularly, because we want to provide employment for our plants no doubt.

I heard some of comments about agriculture, and quite frankly, from some of the numbers that have been thrown around here, especially in pork, there is an incredible amount of money to be made in revenues from this trade agreement.

In the beginning, we talked about some of the hiccups or issues that the European Union had with us, such as fuel quality directives, and I spoke of the seal issue. However, we have managed to overcome that to the point that, not only do we have a commercial trade agreement, we also have a strategic partnership arrangement, or SPA, as well. Basically, we have political lines when we talk about human rights, and the fact that we will uphold the values that we hold dear in human rights to parallel with this commercial agreement. Of course, if we do something that is a violation of human rights, then we must look at this commercial agreement and question it as well, which is a good thing. This is why I think the agreement will hold as a gold standard for other bilateral or multilateral agreements.

Labour and environmental standards were also addressed. Of course, in the legal scrubbing of the legal agreement, we discussed the dispute settlement. Personally, I have always questioned the dispute settlement in this arrangement, simply because there has to be one, and I will give an example.

In my riding, there was a mill that was confiscated by the former premier. A mistake was made, and the province wanted to take back the rights of the water to flow to the rivers and the forestry. In essence, it ended up confiscating a mill at the same time, and was fined for it under NAFTA. These are the types of things where we need to settle disputes. I believe in them, and we have a tribunal set up to do that.

On the tribunal going forward, of course, it would come into force once the member states ratify this agreement, and is part of the less than 10%. For the most part, a little more than 90% will come into effect following the vote of the European Parliament and sanctioning by the European Commission.

I want to mention a few other things as far as the agreement is concerned.

Procurement is also going to be a golden opportunity for us as we look to share expertise in the jobs that we do and export some of our skilled trades. Over the past 20 years in my area in central Newfoundland, in Newfoundland and Labrador in general, and all rural areas really, one of the greatest exports we have right now are skilled trades.

The collapse of the cod industry in 1992 saw a rash of smaller private colleges opening up to compensate, because a lot of people were getting remuneration for training. At the time, these colleges were able to gear people toward the new world, oil and gas, and mining, where a lot of technical trades are involved. Now for these people, after being educated and with 10 to 15 years in the workforce, as someone described it, they do not go to the wharf as much to go fishing, they go to the airport and bring their skills with them to places such as Africa, Russia, Norway, and Alberta.

The recognition of skills in this agreement is a major part that I am glad to see. There is a chapter on that, which I think will prove to be another gold standard as to how we can recognize the work that we do and are able to go to other markets exporting these skilled trades.

However, there is an alarming trend. The most recent report for the World Trade Organization and other international institutions on trade barriers published in June noted that G20 economies introduced 145 new trade restrictive measures between mid-October 2015 and mid-May 2016, which is the highest monthly average since 2009. I witnessed this myself.

The anti-trade movement and some of these concerns were brought up here earlier. I share the same concerns, such as dispute settlement concerns, pharmaceuticals, and concerns in the seafood and agriculture industries. I believe that a progressive trade agreement such as this will help this country simply because, as has been said probably hundreds of times today, Canada has to punch way above its weight when it comes to trade. We have no choice.

For a nation of this size, with an economy of this size, and with 35 million people, I mean, it is almost to the point where free trade or no free trade is a ridiculous argument. It has gone way past that. It is like an argument over whether the earth if flat or round. No, we are free traders, it is as simple as that. We have no choice.

I do believe that this goes a long way to providing us an example of how we can do this in the future. For example, we know Brexit is going to happen. I would encourage our government and others to start a negotiation with the United Kingdom to make sure that the standards that have been set in CETA follow through on what I guess we would call “Brexit plus one”.

That being said, I look forward to the questions and comments.

[Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement Implementation Act, November 22nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I have been here awhile and have been going through CETA for quite some time, from the time I was in opposition in the third party.

I always knew that it had great benefits for the agriculture industry, so I want to thank the member for her speech because I did not realize how much was involved here, the metrics around some of this, in terms of canola, rye, barley, grains, and oilseeds. I think two examples alone caught my attention: sugar beets, at $100 million per year; and pork, at $400 million per year alone. It is a substantial amount of growth that could be achieved through this agreement.

I am from a seafood area and the numbers are similar, though probably not to the same level as pork, but nevertheless the metrics are much the same.

For most of the producers in western Canada right now, what do they need in order to transition toward a much larger market, or is there much transition involved?

I am just trying to get a grasp of some of the difficulties there could be for them to transition to getting that amount of product over to Europe, including transportation from Alberta?