Scott Simms

[Copyright Modernization Act, November 22nd, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague is well-read on this issue. She talks about the preamble very eloquently and brings up some aspects that were pointed out to me, especially with respect to the five year review. Sometimes when one thinks about it, that is even too long itself.

She mentioned WIPO, which was signed around the mid-nineties. It seems as though every time technology pushes ahead, the legislation's regulations are way behind and trying to catch up on how it works. For example, look at how long it took Tim Hortons to catch up with a cafe latte. That is an idea of what we are talking about.

Therefore, if we look at it in this particular sense, I would like the member to comment on artists. One of the glowing omissions to me pertain to artist resale, which is an intensive issue throughout Europe and the world really. For some reason, it is not taken as seriously here.

[Copyright Modernization Act, November 22nd, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, once again we have gotten off the rails in our debate, which is on the idea that digital locks have become way too powerful. Smashing a mosquito with a sledgehammer is a little much, and we end up without the flexibility around this issue that we need in order to be successful.

I agree with my colleagues about the video game industry and how digital locks protect that investment. There is no doubt that they do, but I would be careful in marrying oneself to the idea that we have to legislate around a particular business model by which this legislation will change every year, not just every five years, as this legislation would suggest.

My question for the hon. member is about the consultation process. What I find particularly egregious is that we have heard from a few particular people and should probably hear from them again at committee, because she, as a new member, has not heard them yet. I would like her comments about all the people who should be involved in the special legislative committee.

[Copyright Modernization Act, November 22nd, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague from Oshawa makes some good, valid points. I think we are getting off the topic of copyright again.

However, before we go on, he is right in the sense that there is a fundamental role for digital locks played in that particular area. As a matter of fact, I think digital locks for the video game industry is a good thing. It is a fundamental concept of protecting the investment to which the member spoke.

The problem is that the digital lock becomes the ultimate machine in the operation, if I can use that term. There are no ways to test, like he burn test, the burn convention test, and the three-step, six-step test, those sorts of thing, that allows, in certain circumstances, such as education, to circumvent that digital lock, the flexibility and freedom of fair dealing. I think that is at the core of it. The points from the member from Oshawa are correct.

Unfortunately, because the digital locks have gone that far it does not give us much flexibility, so the balance that he is seeking here could be worked out with things like a six-step or a three-step test process?

[Copyright Modernization Act, November 22nd, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure if I agree with the statement about TPMs being harsher in other regions of the world. Other people dealt with the same issue, when digital locks were really stringent in the beginning, and then eased back on some of those restrictions later on, especially when it dealt with the education exemption.

One thing that gets overlooked in the House, and also gets overlooked in the bill, is the issue of artist resale rights. Basically, it allows artists in many other countries, especially Europe, to gain a percentage of sales as they sell their works of art. This would be a great situation for Canadian artists. As the art appreciates in value over the years, that percentage will certainly be beneficial, especially in the aboriginal communities where we have a lot of art at play. Could my hon. colleague comment on that?

[Copyright Modernization Act, November 22nd, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, this is to follow on the point of my hon. colleague from Leeds—Grenville who said yes in the House to send the bill to committee to make fundamental changes.

I had discovered several years ago, and it is one of the major issues that I bring up from time to time, that we cannot make fundamental changes once we have said yes in principle to the bill. At second reading, if the majority votes for it, we have accepted the principles and the scope of the bill. Therefore, the fundamental changes that one had wished to put into the bill would not be accepted by the Speaker. It does not matter if everybody in the House agrees with the fundamental changes. The Speaker has the ultimate responsibility to see if it goes beyond the scope and principles of the bill.

To the point made by the hon. member for Trinity—Spadina that there is no grey area on some kind of recourse for a purchased material that could be transferred to another device, that can be trumped by the fact that we have what is called a digital lock. The bill would give us one of the harshest provisions for digital locks in the world.

[Petitions, November 21st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, this is a petition on behalf of many residents in Labrador, primarily from Red Bay, but also from Mary's Harbour and Charlottetown.

They are calling for more work to be done on the vital transportation lifeline for Labrador communities, providing access and economic activity and allowing residents to obtain health care and all other vital services. They cannot afford to wait any more years, or decades, for phases two and three of the Trans-Labrador Highway and the Labrador Straits portion of the Trans-Labrador Highway, which form part of the national highway system.

[National Flag of Canada Act, November 18th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, over the past couple of weeks I have looked into the ramifications of this bill quite a bit and sought out many opinions about how people feel about this. We are getting into an interesting discussion about pride in the flag. We talk about what happened in Vancouver at the Olympics. The hon. member for Vancouver Quadra knows this quite well, as was pointed out earlier. Many celebrate Canada Day as the sun breaks over the Canadian flag on Signal Hill in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador and it is certainly a moment that stops one's heart, a true Canadian heart.

I would like to make a few points that have been brought up in debate so far. These are technical matters because as I look into this bill, it is the technicalities of it that really bring it down even though it has the best of intentions.

I want to thank my hon. colleague because he is onto something with regard to the situation that happened in his riding and it certainly deserves the attention of the House.

In the beginning I may not have thought that, but as time goes on, I actually believe it does because these are people who are told they cannot do something to express pride and therefore they are diminished.

That being said, in the House we have several measures by which we can express the opinion of those who wish to be proud of their flag, and those who want to do it and not be hindered to do so. What the member is looking at is more of a private member's motion than a private member's bill because the bill takes the idea of ensuring someone has the right to fly the flag and unnecessarily penalizing people in many respects. I do not believe that was the intention of the bill to begin with.

The member talks about sending the bill to committee for the sake of making major amendments and then bringing it back, but the problem with that is that once it gets to the heritage committee, if the amendments that we make go against the principle and scope of the bill, then the Speaker would have to rule it out.

The way to get around that is to send the bill to committee before second reading, before anyone in the House says yes to it because there are many things we cannot change.

I know many people will tell me not to worry. If the committee says it wants a change, it will change. That is not how it works. If the changes go beyond the principle and scope of the bill, the Speaker has the responsibility to say we cannot do that, but the Speaker had already said yes to it.

I bring that up because some of the amendments that we choose to make to this proposed legislation, my hon. colleague from Jeanne-Le Ber in the NDP and members of the Liberal Party, really go beyond the scope of the bill in my opinion.

Back to the bill itself there is a case in point. Several years ago, by way of protest, the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador of the day, Danny Williams, ordered the provincial buildings to take down the Canadian flag. May I humbly suggest, do we send in the RCMP to the premier's office to serve an order? I bring this situation up simply because these are some of the things we may be faced with and certainly some things that changes in committee cannot get around.

There are many other aspects. For example, how have the provinces been brought into this conversation? Fundamentally, it works like this. The Attorney General of Canada makes an application in the superior court of the province and therefore provinces have to enact this. They have to ensure it is enforced. The first thing they do is to serve notice or serve a court order to tell a person not to fly the flag. If it goes beyond that, we are looking at a maximum of two years imprisonment which is particularly harsh given what we are dealing with here. In order to do that, the provinces have to carry this out. I do not know what conversations have taken place with the provinces on this piece of legislation, but it creates a myriad of responsibilities that have not been fundamentally addressed.

Despite the fact that we are all proud of our flag, our symbols, and our emblems, I believe that the headaches created by this would really be too much to handle right now. That is why I would have suggested the member move a private member's motion, committing this House to the flag itself and the freedom to fly the flag, and not so much to the penalty phase of it.

For example, there are so many questions that arise. I cannot stand in front members here today and hold up the Canadian flag. The Standing Orders say I cannot do that because it is a prop. Members are pointing to the flag that stands next to the Speaker. I cannot hold that flag because it is considered a prop. But it stands in its rightful place. So, there we have it. I have not been permitted to fly the flag, just as a point of reference.

Just by way of explanation, the bill has two orders. Primarily, the bill would give remedies that the court could use when someone is denied the right to fly the flag. They are restraining orders, injunctions, orders of compliance, and any such order necessary. The secondary punishments can be given at the discretion of the judge, including either a fine, the amount set at the discretion of the court, and again we go back to the provinces, or a prison term not to exceed two years.

I heard the member speak earlier about the situation he had with the condo development people. It is a good point. I do not think, in many of these cases, these people should be allowed to prohibit someone else from flying the national flag.

What about provincial flags? It is the same story. If I am not mistaken, I believe provincial flags are also owned by the Government of Canada. So, why are provincial flags not in here as well? I would suggest that could be the case.

The province of Quebec says that the provincial government buildings are not allowed to have many emblems on them regarding the Government of Canada, if I am not mistaken. Would we go to the province of Quebec and tell it we are going to serve it with an order and a prison term not exceeding two years and so forth?

We can see the layers and the problems that we would face with this. I would respectfully say that despite the good intentions of the bill, there is nothing we could amend in committee that would ensure these intentions remain just that, good intentions, as opposed to the problems that we would create and the situations that I have illustrated here.

It was tried in the United States in 2005. There were some changes that had to go through there. The bill was brought forward by Roscoe Bartlett. He was a member of the Republican Party and a member of the tea party faction of the party, if that actually exists. In any event, that is what he claimed. There were problems similar to what we are talking about here, and my hon. colleague from Jeanne-Le Ber mentioned the same thing.

I suspect that if we were to debate it today, it should have been a motion as opposed to a bill. That is why we are voting against this right now. I think there is another way of going about doing this. The ramifications within this particular proposed legislation, despite the good intentions, are not that functional, especially when we are dealing with the fact that we have the Attorney General of Canada petitioning provinces about doing this, and they have not really been brought into the discussion, as well. I am sure they would like to see much the same for their own flags.

I thank the House for this time, and I also would like to thank the member for his good intentions.

[Petitions, November 18th, 2011]

Madam Speaker, once again, this is on behalf of many residents in the area of my riding known as Bonavista North, who had a unique relationship with Service Canada over the past five years at least.

The relationship was such that a community partnership developed between the Service Canada office in Gander. If one travelled about two hours away to Bonavista North, the local community had an office set up for people who wanted to get help with their Canada pension plan, their employment insurance and any other government service.

The problem is the government has now ended that partnership. Twice per month someone from Service Canada goes to that area. If people do not have computers or they are seniors who are not phone savvy, this becomes very problematic because many individuals appreciate the face-to-face contact they had at that office.

This petition is from many people in the Bonavista North area who want to restore that partnership.

[Business of Supply, November 17th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I neglected to mention the conversations that take place at the federal-provincial level. We know about this in Newfoundland and Labrador with the situation we had several years ago in northern Labrador.

I do not feel that standards are as vigorously enforced as they should be. My colleague from British Columbia mentioned the same thing earlier. When it comes to the standards by which we judge clean drinking water, where is the law on this? Where are the regulations? Where does it say that we need to have this? In order to have a basic human right fulfilled, we need to have a law that is enforceable so that the people have an opportunity to fight for their basic human rights through the processes that we have in the country.

I noticed in a letter to my hon. colleague for St. Paul's from the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development that it talked about the assessment released on July 14, 2011. It reads:

...the majority of risk is due to capacity issues, although infrastructure issues and lack of enforceable standards are also a factor. Department officials are engaging with First Nations and other stakeholders on the recommendations and next steps.

Herein lies what I think is a monumental task. It has a lot to do with communication, more so than getting the right equipment in there to ensure this happens and engaging the community in the best way possible, but a lot of times we do not do that.

I suspect that a couple of months from now those 200 boil water advisories I spoke of in my province will still be there. A lot of it has to do with the communication. We need to provide the spark in order for the federal government to talk with the provincial and territorial governments, as well as first nations groups across this country, including people like Shawn Atleo.

[Business of Supply, November 17th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague from St. Paul's who has provided a great deal of leadership. I would also like to thank and congratulate the preceding speaker from Saanich—Gulf Islands, the leader of the Green Party, who did a fantastic job on her speech. It was a pleasure sharing the time with her.

I was just reading this morning about boil water advisories, which has been an ongoing issue in my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador. There are approximately 200 of them right now, which is a substantial amount for an island province and of course the mainland portion of Labrador. That is a quite a number for a province with a little bit over 500,00 people.

That gives us an idea of the situation we have and what we are dealing with, especially in some of the more remote and rural areas, and those that are of first nations are extremely vulnerable when it comes to this.

We have signed on to many agreements and we have had many aspirations that tell us that we should look at this as a human right for individuals who want clean drinking water and who have a right to receive it. Certainly, our government has the responsibility to live up to these standards, to meet with the right people and the community groups that are on the forefront of this issue.

As my hon. colleague just pointed out, regarding the particular groups in this particular situation, we get the information from them, we go through the consultation processes, and then in the end we seem to fail to connect that bridge between the action items we decide we want to do. I know some cynics would say that usually happens in government. In many cases it happens.

Unfortunately, in this case and in many others, action does not happen soon enough, and because it does not happen soon enough the most vulnerable are the first ones to receive the worst part of this, which is not receiving clean drinking water.

I want to congratulate the member for Toronto Centre, the leader of our party for bringing this motion forward, as well as the member for St. Paul's.

I would like to get into this particular document first. I find that it is one that is pertinent and that creates an international standard that we have to live up to. I have read this before and I find that it is actually a fantastic document to read from. I will cite from article 21:

Indigenous peoples have the right, without discrimination, to the improvement of their economic and social conditions, including, inter alia, in the areas of education, employment, vocational training and retraining, housing, sanitation, health and social security.

States shall take effective measures and, where appropriate, special measures to ensure continuing improvement of their economic and social conditions. Particular attention shall be paid to the rights and special needs of indigenous elders, women, youth, children and persons with disabilities.

Therein lies the responsibility of governance, not just this particular government but other governments. I know we have been lost in debate about whether this is an aspirational thing to do, or is something that we must do in the immediate term. Anything we sign on to has to have the right policies in place in order to turn these into action items and to make these goals into realities, and to reduce the number of communities across this country that do not need to boil their water just to receive the basic service of clean water, like many nations do.

We have experience in the past little while where we have signed on to a few treaties, and yet the action that follows has become futile at best. Unfortunately, it gets bogged down into a lot of the machinations of bureaucracy and the machinations of how we debate in this House, and how we are confrontational in the way we handle politics here in the House of Commons, which is extremely disappointing.

My colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands touched on this just a short time ago, when asking about congeniality and how we could come to a common agreement. Nobody in this House would ever say, “Let's hold on. Let's just not do this right now. Let's put this down the list when it comes to providing clean drinking water”. Nobody would say that.

However, for some reason we start to debate the details of this and the narrative gets lost, the narrative being providing clean drinking water. Pardon the vernacular, but sometimes we need to collectively give our heads a shake in order to realize what the end result of this would be.

My niece, who is from Newfoundland and Labrador, is a school teacher who taught in Attawapiskat. When I went there to see her, I was struck by a community that I thought was in need of so many of the basic services, such as housing, water, health care and education. Even though it was considered a remote community and although over time the conditions had become worse, I wondered how it had arrived at that point.

At what point should we say that the standards by which these people are living are not measuring up to the international agreements that we signed? How does that happen in a country like Canada when we have become the leader of the world, when we have become the country that everybody wants to become? Many international leaders have said that we need to bring Canada to the rest of the world. The problem with bringing Canada to the rest of the world is that it would bring this as well. It would bring forward the fact that we are making some mistakes.

We need to aspire to all the goals that are outlined within this particular agreement, but more important, we need to turn these into action.

I want to talk about some of the back and forth that has been happening over the last little while.

The federal government is responsible for supplying first nations on reserve communities with the tools and resources that they require, all the services that I listed prior on some of the first nations communities that I visited. The duty is divided among three ministries. The Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development provides funding to first nations for infrastructure repair and managed water services in their communities. Health Canada monitors water quality management on reserves. Environment Canada manages sourced water protection.

In many cases, I have heard that the rules and regulations have taken effect in many communities, not just aboriginal communities but non-aboriginal communities as well. This is one of the big reasons that, in places like Newfoundland and Labrador, there are over 200 boil water advisories in the smallest of the communities. The reason is that local governance has become extremely frustrated in dealing with that higher end of government. This argument is not new. This argument pertains to many departments.

As was pointed out earlier, we need to engage in discussions with the people at the very base of any particular community that sees itself under a boil water advisory. I have some of them in my riding. They are non-aboriginal. The problem is such that the infrastructure crumbles beneath them. For aboriginal communities, like Attawapiskat, it was even much worse. It has so much to overcome. People who consider themselves an expert on infrastructure and providing clean water must look at this and ask where we start. However, we need to start somewhere.

I am glad we are raising this issue because maybe today's debate will create a spark by which we will be able to make that mechanism a far easier way to help the most vulnerable.

I want to again thank my colleagues for doing this today because I have heard some really great stuff concerning not just clean water, but the basic human rights of communities and individuals. Canada is the greatest country for communities because we band together and we band together to make better communities for our children. What we have here is a great debate.

I would encourage us to move from this point, as my friend from Saanich—Gulf Islands pointed out, to a point of positive action to ensure that the basic human right of clean water that is outlined in international agreements comes to fruition in a great country like Canada.