Scott Simms

[Committees of the House, October 31st, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I commend my hon. colleague, the member for Cape Breton—Canso, for all the work he has done through the years on the fisheries committee.

I first would like to comment on something said earlier by the Minister of Fisheries, who talked about how the GST cut is much greater than what the fee would be, yet at the same time, the Conservatives again raised the basic income tax for income earners in the bottom tax bracket. In typical Conservative fashion, the government gives one amount with the left hand and takes with the right at a much larger rate. That negates his little argument.

I would like to ask a question of my hon. colleague. It pertains to the committee itself and some of the good work it has been doing over the past while. For people who are watching this from outside the House, perhaps it will shed some light on some of the good he has done and seen and on what has been successful in the past year as far as work from the committee going into legislation is concerned.

Maybe he would like to comment on the good work that the Minister of Fisheries did when he brought custodial management forward in the committee. Perhaps he would like to update us on that particular motion.

[Infrastructure, October 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, there is this fish off the coast. It is called a blowfish. Whenever the blowfish gets in trouble, it puffs up, changes colours and pretends to be much larger than what it actually is.

My question is, which cabinet colleague signed off on this decision and when was that decision made? Now is the time to come clean.

[Infrastructure, October 26th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the Treasury Board president's decision to meddle in municipal infrastructure matters during an election campaign is deeply troubling. He made unproven claims about the terms of a confidential contract. He claims there will be no costs associated with delaying funding until December 15, even though he has been told otherwise, to the tune of $65 million. Also, he leaked pages of this confidential contract to justify his decision to settle old political scores.

Where is the accountability? What town or city is next on his political hit list?

[Committees of the House, October 23rd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, this may come as a shock to many people in this House, but I agree with my hon. colleague. I would go further and describe the museums assistance program as welcoming us to the days of the politics of abandonment. If groups are not utilizing this money, then I think the government takes this as being the code word for saving. The government feels safe enough to cut a program in the hopes it will not get as much negative feedback.

What the member talked about as a volunteer cuts right to the core of this issue, which is money. I am sure in his experience he knows what that means to him and to millions of others across this country.

[Committees of the House, October 23rd, 2006]

Au contraire, Mr. Speaker. My colleague touched on a very good point. There seems to be a synapse between the operations in a particular museum and what the federal government and the bureaucrats here put out. It is almost like we need more leverage.

We need to get to the people to provide them with the information they need by which to invest. My colleague brought up a very good point. As a result of the hours a volunteer puts into these programs, they become stretched to the point where the information about these programs does not get to them or they have not heard about them, or they do not realize they exist. The government should allow them the flexibility by which to make these programs work for themselves.

If unused money is out there, and the government takes it away simply because it is not used, is not to say the need is not there. I wholeheartedly agree with my colleague. It is not that the money is not needed. The fact is that it is somewhere between Ottawa and the people on the ground who are actually doing the work. As it floats there nobody seems to know how they can access it or how they could make it work for their own program. Therein lies the problem.

I will give an example of my hometown of Bishop's Falls, which is a railway town. If there is a program that is essentially tailored for it, there could be something available that the community is not aware of. It is incumbent upon it to come to us and tell us what its needs are and we can then provide it with the information it needs to make it work.

[Committees of the House, October 23rd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, let me carry this analogy a little further. The member talked about $20,000 and realized a savings of $100. If we think about it, they have to come up with savings of $100 or the new government will take it back anyway. That is called unused spending. Therein lies the trap in that little analogy. With a median income of about $25,000, it would be interesting to hear what other financial plans he has for other families in my riding.

The other thing he talked about in this case was cultural identity. We are comfortable in Newfoundland and Labrador with who we are. We tell the world we want to bring it in because we want to show it the cultural institutions by which we define ourselves.

Newfoundland and Labrador is a cultural distinction that needs investment in infrastructure, year after year core funding, operational money. If the savings, about which he talks, is to cut some sort of underbelly of spending, or some grey area, or some wasted money, then where does it go from there? Will we face more cuts in the upcoming budget out of a $13.2 billion surplus?

My other colleagues talked about how they have negated the need for this debate to happen today. Now I am starting to question the validity or at the very least the sincerity of what the government says.

As I have said before, we take one step forward and now the government plans on taking two steps backward. Every region of the country has its own cultural identity, whether it is recognized or not. This one came from Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor. That also applies to Etobicoke—Lakeshore.

[Committees of the House, October 23rd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the issue of culture and identity, two words that keep coming up. They are two words that we take very seriously, certainly in my esteemed neck of the woods in the eastern part of this country, Newfoundland and Labrador.

I have always looked at the province of Newfoundland and Labrador as brimming over with culture, as the expression goes. Certainly, anyone who travels there bears witness to what a beautiful place it is.

Over the past 10 to 15 years, Newfoundland and Labrador has gone through a lot in the way of a downturn in its traditional industries, such as the fishery. Tourism, however, has been a small gem for many areas of my province and for many areas of Atlantic Canada. One only needs to look at places like Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia where tourism is on the increase. One of the big reasons, and I would argue one of the major reasons, is the infrastructure that now exists, an investment in a vast amount of infrastructure that dedicates itself toward our culture and identity as people who live in Newfoundland and Labrador, or on the east coast in general.

To me what truly represents Canada is the diversity of culture across the entire country, whether it is in British Columbia, the north, certainly Quebec, and now Atlantic Canada as I have mentioned. The museum assistance program represents a vast investment into parts of this country that certainly show themselves to the world. For the past five or six years the numbers would dictate that a lot more travellers are coming to this country from other parts of the world to celebrate our culture, as we like to do ourselves.

One of the reasons I really like the museum assistance program is it provides the funding for the incorporated non-profit Canadian museums. So many volunteers give their time and their expertise to so many organizations, institutions and museums across this country. It is absolutely outstanding. The volunteers in this country who give up so much of their time to celebrate our culture have been absolutely outstanding. I think some of our greatest volunteers are in my part of the country, in Newfoundland and Labrador. I commend them all because to put up our culture to the world shows just how proud we are of that culture.

Approximately nine years ago we celebrated our 500 years in Newfoundland and Labrador. What a celebration it was in the town of Bonavista, which is one of the oldest towns in all of North America. It established that link between the old world and the new world with a replica of the Matthew, the first ship to come over to this country about 500 years ago. Before that, we celebrated the Vikings in L'Anse aux Meadows up on the northern peninsula.

The volunteers and the money that we have invested into infrastructure showed to the world that we have a good sense of who we are and our identity has been celebrated because of that.

The MAP funding is available under certain components. That is how the program has worked. Access to heritage, the exhibition circulation fund, aboriginal heritage, organizational development, and the Canada-France agreement are some of the programs accessed by many people across this country. As some of my hon. colleagues talked about , all the data is there, the work has been done and now all we need is to say yes to our cultural organizations across the country.

A short time ago members of the committee had the pleasure of welcoming Exporail, celebrating our linkage to the railway. Let us face it. The railway is what brought us to who we are as Canada. Being the second largest nation in the world, we certainly have a great appreciation for our geography. The railway, and the establishment of it, has shown that to us.

Anyone who has the chance should see the fantastic museum in Saint-Constant, Quebec. That is the place to celebrate our heritage when it comes to railways. There is also one in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, which also celebrates our connection to the railway. I encourage all members of the House to take advantage of this.

I mentioned earlier that Newfoundland is celebrating 500 years. I also mentioned the fact that the Vikings first landed on Newfoundland and Labrador. It was somewhat of a contentious issue I might add. Thousands and thousands of visitors over the last couple of years have come to celebrate with us. To me that is the essential link between our government, a museum assistance program and the ability of my constituents and all Canadians to show the world exactly who we are. It gives them a reason to be very proud.

I want to talk about some of the programs the museums assistance program has helped benefit over the past couple of years. In Newfoundland and Labrador alone, these include groups such as the St. Michael's Printshop. We are also involved with the National Tour of Possessions and Speaking our languages, in conjunction with the provincial museum of Newfoundland and Labrador and the professional development program. A lot of this helps us to gather information and present it. It provides essential support for many volunteers across the country and for staff as well. These programs alone will testify. Anyone who has been into the museum rooms in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador will see the celebration and linkage to the old world.

My hon. colleague from Churchill and northern Manitoba pointed out the Métis National Heritage Centre. The Manitoba Métis Federation received money to conduct a feasibility study for the centre. It is an incredible program. It helps find the information, creates the links and gives something to our young, a sense of identity and pride. It is one of the greatest gifts we can give to our next generation.

I also commend some of the projects ongoing in Prince Edward Island such as the museum development project by the Community Museums Association of Prince Edward Island and the Confederation Centre Art Gallery exhibition, “To a Watery Grave”.

I will go back to my riding once again and talk about Bonavista. Certain events over time have defined us. They may be good times, they may be tragedies, but they reflect who we are. My hon. colleague brought up the term “diversity”.

What a perfect way to show the diversity across the country when we visit the museums and institutions of Manitoba and we hear about the struggles of the Métis. The residential school museum project is also part of the museums assistance program. We also have British Columbia and Quebec. It is quite fascinating to go through rural Quebec and see some of the older churches. It is the same for our urban areas as well.

I commend the people who do much of this work behind the scenes. The bureaucrats involved in Canadian Heritage do a tremendous amount of work, and we commend them for that. They want to get in there and get every area of our country represented. This program is all about that.

I congratulate my hon. colleagues for bringing this issue to the floor. I also commend our committee for doing the work. I also commend a colleague of mine, who I served with on the heritage committee, the hon. member for Perth—Wellington, chair of the heritage committee. He has brought this matter up quite often. I commend him for the works he has done and continues to do. He has been an inspiration to us all.

I hope he manages over the next little while to convince his colleagues, when it comes to investment in our museums, no matter how big or small they are, small town or big town, that one step forward and two steps back is really not the way to go. Essentially that is what we are seeing.

Commitments were given in the election. Now recent cuts show that the Conservatives were maybe not as sincere as we had first thought, and what a crying shame. As my hon. colleague pointed out earlier, with the information that is there and the commitments that have been given, the logical step now is to make this happen, certainly for my province and for the entire country.

My hon. colleague, who spoke earlier, talked about his sincerity, about protecting our cultural institutions such as the national museums in Ottawa and other museums across the country. Let us go forward with that. Let us not say to them that we will cut this now and maybe do something in the future. One of the biggest problems with our cultural institutions is that they need the core funding to allow them to operate. It gives them the flexibility by which they can make the long term plans. Let us bring some clarity to this. Let us find out what they stand for and bring this forward to the House for a vote.

I support my colleague, the member for Saint-Lambert, in his efforts to do this. I congratulate him as well as my hon. colleague, the member for Timmins—James Bay, from the northern part of Ontario, who, like me, represents a lot of small communities that love to put their culture out there for public to see.

[Fisheries and Oceans, October 18th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister of flip, flop and flounder.

Department cuts, also custodial management, when will he practise what he started to--

[Fisheries and Oceans, October 18th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, there is a fish off the Atlantic coast called the flounder. It is kind of a flat fish. When it swims and sees trouble, it flips, it flops, and it swims in the opposite direction.

[Fisheries and Oceans, October 18th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, when the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans was the fisheries critic, he said in the House, “The department has been asked to find up to $20 million. This means devastating cuts. The government cannot giveth and then taketh away”.

The departmental estimates now prove he is cutting $100 million, affecting 200 jobs in fisheries. Why will the minister not use the money to give instead of taking away?