Shawn Murphy

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, February 5th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, my learned friend brings up a point that I did not raise, and I am glad he did; the announcement in the Speech from the Throne that the government will come forward with a Canada oceans action plan.

My learned colleague brings up some goods points. It is a horizontal issue. It does not deal only with fisheries. It does not deal only with energy. It does not deal only with environment. It deals with a whole continuum of departments, which is why the government needs an oceans action plan to deal with these issues, which are so complex, so vast and so important. These issues have to be dealt with on an integrated basis, not only with the Government of Canada but with the governments of the provinces and territories, and with all stakeholders. I look forward to working on the development and implementation of that plan.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, February 5th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, this is a continual problem in the House and particularly with members of that party. They will take a document and, instead of reading the document, they count the words. They read every word and if something is not mentioned they come forward and ask why this or that was not mentioned.

I gave a speech this afternoon in which I set out the government's agenda, the programs, the policies and the initiatives of where the government is heading. I think it is good. There are all kinds of other issues that the government is working on now. Programs have been announced in the last eight months. The government is a whole continuum and fisheries is part of it.

The document is not perfect. I for one do not think that what is in the throne speech on the aboriginal issue is an answer to the issue. However I support the creation of an independent centre for aboriginal governance. I think it is a good initiative. Will it answer the issue? No. It needs more work.

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, February 5th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the House for the opportunity to participate in the debate today on the Speech from the Throne. I will be sharing my time with the member for Winnipeg South Centre.

I want to associate myself with the great majority of speakers in the House, the great majority of speakers from civic and non-governmental organizations, and the great majority of Canadians, in saying that the statements, the messages, and the directions contained in the Speech from the Throne are embraced and welcomed.

It is my belief that the Speech from the Throne and the subsequent speech which we heard from the Prime Minister on Tuesday of this week reflect the actions that Canadians want the government to take. These actions include: living within our means, investing as we can afford, and laying the plans for the future. This is an aggressive and realistic agenda.

I like the general themes set out in the throne speech. I support the Prime Minister's objectives of dealing with our health care system. I support the new deal that was laid out for this nation's municipalities.

The statement and subsequent legislation introduced to the House changing the way things work in Ottawa is a major step in the right direction. Parliament is a tremendous institution but like every institution change is needed every now and then, and that time is now. I embrace these changes with confidence.

I fully support the statement that the government is launching a process of expenditure review. This is not something that should be launched. It should be an ongoing process. Every government, company, organization, family, and individual, should continually reallocate resources to present and emerging priorities. Taxpayers expect nothing less from us as a government.

I fully endorse the goals within the throne speech to strengthen Canada's social foundations. It has long been proven that there is a very strong connection between a strong social foundation and a strong economy.

The best investment, and it is not the only one from a social foundation point of view, is early childhood education. The government's goal to accelerate some of the initiatives under the early childhood development accord, already announced, will pay dividends down the road.

With regard to dealing with persons with disabilities, I support the goal to work with provinces and the territories to do more than what is being done now, to fill in the gaps in our educational system and skills development, and to put in place workplace supports to accommodate Canadians with disabilities.

The federal government ought to be a leader in this regard as the biggest employer in this country. The continual problem with the tax system--the fairness in which persons with disabilities are designated by CCRA--is going to be dealt with.

It is an aggressive agenda but it is also a progressive agenda. It is an agenda which I support and a direction which I believe all Canadians will support.

There is one area which I would like to dwell on and one area that I am particularly pleased with and that is the government's announcement to deal with the whole area of student loans and post-secondary student financing.

Right now the government is doing a lot in this whole area. A lot of money has been put into research right across Canada, funding for the granting councils, research chairs, and millennium scholarships. There is also the educational tax credit, the RESP system, and the Canada student loan program.

There is a whole continuum of support and a lot of money being spent. Despite that, there are still very significant problems. As a member of Parliament who deals with these issues on a daily basis, I see these problems. There are problems with young Canadians deciding whether to attend post-secondary institutions and making this decision on financial considerations. There are problems with young Canadians within post-secondary institutions deciding whether to remain in a post-secondary institution, and financing becomes a part of that consideration.

There are also problems after a person graduates from university, making that leap to the job market when the person has a certain amount of student loan debt.

I was so pleased to see that some of the directions set out in the Speech from the Throne will make the system fairer, especially for lower income Canadians. It is my belief that the education tax credit, the RESP system and the millennium scholarship system are working well but only working well for middle and higher income Canadians. It is perhaps the situation that we do not need a lot more money going into the system but the system can be improved considerably by reallocating the money that is already in the system. I would have a long look at the educational tax credit. Perhaps more of that money could be redirected to students from lower income families.

The objective set out in the Speech from the Throne to modernize the Canada student loan program, which means increasing loan limits, expanding the whole definition of expense deductibility and increasing income thresholds, are welcome initiatives, but loans are not the total answer. That is why I support the whole continuum of announcements that were set out in the Speech from the Throne.

Many young Canadians are having difficulty making that connection between the university degree and the job market. They do this with a student loan, which leads to a considerable amount of stress. I would like to see the system fairer for these young students who are having difficulty finding a job.

Another welcome announcement is the announcement to provide first year grants to lower income students and also to create incentives for lower income families to invest in the RESP program. It will depend on how the system evolves but I view these as tremendous announcements which I think will make the system fairer and level the playing field for everyone.

This is what I consider to be a tremendous announcement and one which I urge the government to move on with haste. I would like to see these announcements, these directions and these programs in place for the students who graduate from high school this June and enter post-secondary institutions in September.

In closing, I applaud the government for the directions, the programs and the initiatives announced in Monday's speech. I, like a great majority of Canadians, fully support the direction the government is taking and I am proud to part of it. I look forward to the tabling of the budget some time in the next month or two.

[Fisheries, February 4th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and member for Parliament for Hillsborough, Prince Edward Island, I would like to take this opportunity to say a few words in this important debate.

First, I would like to begin by thanking the hon. member for St. John's West for his ongoing interest in this matter. He certainly put a lot of time, effort and energy into this matter over the last number of years. It is important not only to his native province, but to Canada as a whole. As a fellow Atlantic Canadian, I certainly share his frustration.

I would also like to thank the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans for its report on this issue. The Government of Canada welcomed the work of the committee and gave serious consideration to the report and the recommendations made in the report.

Indeed, the Government of Canada fully recognizes that foreign overfishing of straddling stocks on the nose and tail of the Grand Banks and the Flemish Cap is a very serious problem. Such blatant non-compliance with NAFO regulations has a direct impact on our coastal communities in Newfoundland, on the province of Newfoundland and Labrador and Canada as a whole, and by extension everyone who makes their living from the sea.

I share a lot of the facts, submissions and statements made by the hon. member for St. John's West. I associate myself with those remarks.

The minister takes this issue very seriously and is acting promptly. He has made a commitment to enhance our NAFO program. Shortly after his appointment, he visited the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. In actual fact he took a flight over the nose and tail of the Grand Banks and saw first hand where the overfishing was taking place.

When in Newfoundland, he asked his officials for a proposal to deal with the overfishing problem. This proposal will include an increase in our at-sea presence in the NAFO regulatory area, a strategy to engage our allies within NAFO, work on organizational reform and the implementation of the United Nations fisheries agreement. A comprehensive strategy is now under consideration by the departmental officials.

The Government of Canada takes this issue very seriously. Just last month the Prime Minister discussed the whole issue of overfishing in international waters at the World Economic Forum.

However, the motion before the House today says that the Government of Canada should take immediate action to extend the custodial management over the nose and tail of the Grand Banks and the Flemish Cap. To take immediate action is to turn our backs on the international community and the attendant societal, economic, political and perhaps even military ramifications that would occur.

The government is committed to working with our international partners to come to a satisfactory solution, but let me assure my colleagues that if these efforts fail, the government will then consider all its options.

It is for those reasons the government will not be supporting this motion today.

Canada needs the opportunity to effect change within the North Atlantic Fisheries Organization. We need to be an active participant in the management decisions about the fish stocks on which thousands of Canadians rely, and cooperating with our international partners yields results. The progress we made at the last NAFO meeting in September proves that we can make a difference by working with our international partners.

Clearly, we have to improve the situation. The government is vigorously making the case to our NAFO partners and there is an urgent need for vessels to follow NAFO's rules and for government to take action when these rules are violated.

We are making some progress in continuing to convince parties of the need for major reforms.

Canada's goal is to work with its partners throughout the industry and throughout the world to make improvements. This cooperative approach is the best one if we want to make lasting improvements.

There have been some recent developments. In November of last year Canada signed the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, but more important on December 19 of last year the European Union and its 15 member states signed the United Nations agreement on the straddling fish stocks and highly migratory fish stocks. That is a very significant development that gives Canada all the attendant tools of this agreement which deals with conservation, enforcement, sustainability and cooperation. That agreement took effect on December 18 of last year, only six weeks ago. That is another tool at this country's disposal to deal with the issue on a unilateral basis. I am pleased that Canada is not alone in wanting these improvements.

In many meetings, nations like Iceland and Norway have expressed similar dissatisfaction with what is going on. They have also expressed a willingness to move forward on real, lasting change for the way our fish stocks are managed on the high seas. They recognize, as Canada does, our responsibilities: a responsibility to ensure that the rules of the fishery are being followed; a responsibility to ensure that those who do not follow the rules are punished; and a responsibility to make sustainable development a number one priority for the future.

I am confident that by working with our partners around the world, we can translate our shared commitment to the future of our fisheries into a reality. Using a diplomatic, multilateral approach is the first approach, but I want to make it clear that it is not the only approach. That is why I cannot support the hon. member's motion.

[Hazardous Products Act, October 31st, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I am addressing the House today to reaffirm Health Canada's position concerning Bill C-260 as well as to provide the House with a status update concerning the development of regulations to mandate certain reduced ignition propensity cigarettes. I would also like to provide the House with a summary of the supporting activities presently being conducted by Health Canada.

First, I want to thank and congratulate the hon. member for Scarborough East for bringing this issue forward. He has certainly put a lot of time and energy into raising the whole issue of fires caused by unattended cigarettes. For this effort, we certainly thank him.

Let me begin by saying that one of Health Canada's mandates has always been to reduce health hazards where tobacco products are concerned. Over 14,000 fires were started by unattended cigarettes between 1995 and 1999. The death toll for these fires was over 350. Another 1,600 people were injured. These numbers account for the majority of deaths and injuries caused by household fires. The resulting damage to property is estimated at over $200 million.

Some of the measures Health Canada has taken include a prevention by public education strategy. The department has also prompted the regulation of ignition sources, such as lighters and matches, and has restricted or banned flammable consumer products. These include materials used in mattresses, bedding and textiles. The department has also worked closely with the Canadian Council of Furniture Manufacturers to reduce flammability of upholstered furniture.

The final step is to mandate regulations that would force manufacturers to produce cigarettes that are less likely to cause fires. This kind of product is known as reduced ignition propensity cigarettes.

Over the course of the last year and further to recent consultations with other interested parties, Health Canada has made significant progress toward implementing ignition propensity regulations. It has found that there are some concerns which merit further attention. However, none of these are enough to preclude the development of regulations. It is expected that regulations will be proposed in the very near future.

The first formal step taken in the regulatory process was in December of last year. Health Canada released a public consultation paper seeking input on the issue of reduced fire risks from cigarettes. This document gave all interested parties an opportunity to express their concerns and also their priorities.

The feedback Health Canada received was mixed. Firefighters and non-governmental organizations were very supportive of the proposal. Although its main complaint was that government was initially too slow to take action, the comments the department received from the tobacco industry also indicated support for the proposals and the objectives.

However, the industry in this public consultation process raised concerns over issues ranging from methodology for testing to unsafe behavioural tendencies in which consumers might engage.

I would like to take a moment to address some of these concerns and offer some insight into the steps and activities that Health Canada has undertaken to address some of these issues.

The current test method has been put into question. After an extensive dialogue with experts, Health Canada maintains that the method being used by the American Society for the Testing of Materials is based on very sound scientific theory and is the best method for measuring the ignition propensity of cigarettes.

Also concerns over toxicity levels have been raised. Upon further investigation, Health Canada has concluded that the available eligible data indicates that there is no significant variation in the toxicity of reduced ignition propensity cigarettes. Due to the importance of this issue, Health Canada is considering mandatory toxicological testing throughout the implementation of the regulations to have access to sound data.

Some concern has also been expressed regarding consumer behaviour. The apprehension which was raised is that reduced ignition propensity cigarettes could mislead the consumer into believing that cigarettes no longer pose a fire hazard, leading, of course, to consumer carelessness. To date no scientific data has been provided to support this claim, and based on what I think of the assertion it would be highly unlikely that there would be any kind of empirical evidence to support this assertion.

Health Canada plans to deal with the issue by establishing fire safety and behavioural baselines. The references are twofold. The department is developing a questionnaire to measure the current behaviour of smokers and is also at the same time using data from the Ontario fire marshal's office to establish conclusive statistics regarding the nature of cigarette fires in Ontario. This will give Health Canada a basis of comparison once regulations have been implemented and will ultimately indicate possible behavioural changes in smokers.

Over the course of the last year, as has already been mentioned here this afternoon, ignition propensity testing has been performed on 62 brands of cigarettes sold in the Canadian marketplace. Only one brand has shown a significant reduction in ignition propensity.

A cost benefit assessment is also well underway. The department recently sent a questionnaire to affected stakeholders to ask for their input into cost assessment. This assessment is expected to be completed in about three or four weeks.

Let us now turn to Bill C-260. The intention of Bill C-260 is also to prevent the loss of life due to fires caused by smoking. The debate surrounding the bill has been a little enigmatic, in that we all agree something must be done, but the question we are faced with is how it should be done. That is the issue.

The position of Health Canada from the very beginning has been that the regulation of reduced ignition propensity cigarettes should fall under the Tobacco Act. There are many reasons for this line of thinking.

Among them is the fact that Health Canada has developed and implemented the federal tobacco control strategy. That would be the very best way to deal with this issue: to get people to substantially reduce smoking or to stop all together. This strategy allows Canadians to deal with tobacco-related issues by adopting a comprehensive, integrated and sustained approach. This way, the regulation of cigarettes falls under one single piece of legislation. There are several advantages to this.

Among these advantages is that of a comprehensive regulatory framework. In short, the legislative apparatus to achieve effective tobacco control strategies is, as everyone in the House is aware, already in place. This makes acting expediently considerably easier.

There is one final point I would like to make. The Hazardous Products Act sets out to deal with harmful products in two very specific ways: by regulating these products to make them safe or by simply banning them from the market all together.

One can begin to see the difficulty in incorporating cigarettes into this legislation. Regulating cigarettes to make them safe is neither feasible nor possible and makes very little common sense. Cigarettes by their very nature are a dangerous product, whether that danger is from inhaling the smoke they produce or from sustaining injuries in the fires they start. Altering them for ignition propensity is one thing. However, altering them to render the smoke safe is entirely another goal, a goal no one would know how to achieve. We may be setting a precedent that would allow other products that do not fit the model to be included in this act.

Likewise, at this point in time in the evolution of society, banning cigarettes would be difficult. It would be like banning paint additives or banning glue. Tobacco is an addictive substance. By banning it, we would be instantly turning 20% of our population into criminals.

Health Canada has demonstrated that the process to regulate ignition propensity is well underway and the mechanisms to achieve this are already in place. Cigarettes are a unique product with their own unique act. It is clear that cigarettes do not fit into the model that the Hazardous Products Act outlines. Health Canada will continue to work on measures dealing with ignition propensity that fall under the Tobacco Act.

On a global scale, Health Canada is a world leader in tobacco control. It has demonstrated this through its continued efforts and through a strong commitment to improve the well-being of Canadian citizens.

[Confederation Centre of the Arts, October 31st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, earlier this week the Charlottetown Festival was awarded the prestigious title of Event of the Year by the Tourist Industry Association of Canada.

The Charlottetown Festival, sponsored by the Confederation Centre of the Arts, is a staple of Prince Edward Island's tourism industry. Each year it draws visitors from around the world who come to enjoy professional musical theatre and comedy, including the beloved and original production of

Anne of Green Gables.

In addition to this award, earlier this year the Confederation Centre was designated a national historic site, was named top event in Canada by the American Bus Association and received the Premier's Award for Tourism.

The Confederation Centre was founded in 1964 as a memorial to the Fathers of Confederation. Covering an entire city block, the centre showcases the best in Canadian visual and performing arts.

I am sure all members will join me in congratulating David MacKenzie and all the staff of the Confederation Centre for these impressive accomplishments.

[Supply, October 28th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the difficulty we sometimes get into with these arguments is that we argue the law based upon the case we are talking about. I can go right back to the Sharpe case for that matter, but other factual examples have been illustrated here this afternoon, which everyone in the House and everyone in this country find disgusting. Any talk or suggestion of or any lawyer getting up on his hind legs and talking about artistic merit is ridiculous and should not be countenanced by the judge or by society.

There would be a certain element of artistic merit, but we must not forget that there are two tests now and the benefit has to outweigh the harm. I do not see how it could ever come to be, in the situations we are talking about, in regard to the offenders we are talking about, or what is going on out there, that artistic merit would enter into the equation at all.

[Supply, October 28th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I prefer to keep my comments to this particular motion. I have not seen the bill. I have not studied it. I have not analyzed it. Certainly I would agree with the speaker's last words, “We must do everything in our power to stamp out child pornography”. I agree with him on that.

[Supply, October 28th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I did not intend to say that at all. I agree with the gist of this motion and with the last three words. Exploitation is there. There has been some debate about eliminating all defences, but we cannot do that. Murder is just as disgusting, but some defences are available.

As for the motion as worded by the member for Wild Rose, I support it 100% and I certainly will be standing here in the House voting for it.

[Supply, October 28th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly did not suggest nor did I intend to suggest that the hon. member for Wild Rose is being opportunistic. It just happens that this supply day motion is being debated at the same time.

As the learned member has pointed out and as everyone in the House is aware, the hon. member for Wild Rose has been working on this issue for a number of years. He is committed to the cause. I congratulate him on behalf of Canadians and I thank him. We are not dealing with a perfect world, but I believe it is up to all parliamentarians to do everything we can on this issue.