House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2011, with 39% of the vote.
Petitions February 24th, 2014
Mr. Speaker, I have another petition from constituents about income inequality. The petitioners call for an evidence-based approach, perhaps like the Minister of Finance has now looked at regarding income splitting, to restore social equity and to reverse the actions that the current government has taken that have exacerbated income inequality.
Petitions February 24th, 2014
Mr. Speaker, as members know I always stand to present petitions from my constituents, and today I have two of them.
The first petition concerns the fact that the Conservative government has granted licences for the commercial production of cannabis. People of limited means in Kingston and the Islands have signed a petition to express their concern that personal affordable production of medical marijuana will be prohibited very soon, at the end of March. The petitioners call on the government to reverse that prohibition.
An Act to amend the Federal Sustainable Development Act (duty to examine) February 14th, 2014
Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to talk about Bill C-481.
I want to begin by quoting the title of a book. It is a very interesting title. It is You Can't Eat GNP.
As individuals or as households, we need to know how much money we have, how much we owe. We need to keep track of our income, our household income, our salary, and then also our household expenses. It is important to account for all these things and look forward.
If we are running a business, we need a business plan. For the business plan to make sense, it has to have honest estimates of revenues and of expenses, so that our business can survive and thrive.
This is one kind of accounting.
However, for us, money is not enough. That is the point of the title of the book, You Can't Eat GNP. We need food, we need clean water, and we need clean air to live as well.
We also need strong, caring families and strong, connected communities. We need justice and we need equality of opportunity. We need broad stakeholders in society. There are a lot of social qualities we need to survive and thrive as human beings.
My point is that sustainability is about honest accounting, in a very broad sense. Honest accounting is something we know about in good business management. It is also something that is important for good economic management, the good economic management of a country and the overall management of a country.
I want to start by giving some examples of areas where questionable accounting may not be good for the country.
The first is the idea of selling government assets to balance the budget. The problem with that is that quite often assets are very old and their value is taken to be their so-called book value, which could have been their value from 20, 30, 40, 50, or 100 years ago. Then, when the government sells these assets, it sells them for the market value, hopefully, the current value, and all of a sudden the government's accounts show a huge profit.
How do we avoid that? I think the principles of good accounting say if we want to run a business or an enterprise then we should have good accounting. The problem here is that the value of the asset that was sold was not properly accounted for and the profit that was booked was not a real profit.
It makes it very hard to manage a country if we are not dealing with real numbers that mean something.
The second example has to do with values that are important, from a social point of view.
One thing that is unfortunate is that, over the last few decades, voter turnout has been decreasing consistently. That is the long-term trend, with a few ups and downs for different elections.
I think that is dangerous for democracy. People have called that a democratic deficit. It really is a deficit because the fewer people—the citizenry of Canada—who engage in their democratic government, the more poorly they are governed. It is often said that people deserve the government they get. If most people do not engage, they will not get a good government.
Sometimes the political process discourages citizens from engaging. We have examples of what comes out of campaign battles: we have negative advertising; we have attacks between politicians, ad hominem attacks. All this results in cynicism in the country about politics, and lack of confidence in the government.
Ultimately, it means the decreasing ability for the elected government to tackle big problems. That is the social cost of the democratic deficit. Sometimes, when we are fighting political battles, we do not take into account that social cost. We do not honestly account for that social cost.
The third example is this. In the budget that was presented earlier this week, approximately $250 million was set aside for disaster relief in the future. Actually, the government has had to pay out quite a lot more than that in the past because of the floods in Alberta, so we have to ask ourselves whether the $250 million amount set aside for disaster relief is enough. Disasters will continue to happen in the future, and we know that reinsurance rates are increasing. The reason is that insurance companies have been studying very carefully the expected effects of climate change and have realized that they had better charge higher premiums because they are going to have to pay out more money in the future.
This $250 million allocated right now is only for the next five years. Where, in the government's accounting, is the cost of future disasters, the money that the government knows it is probably going to have to pay out, on average, for disaster relief? It is an amount that is increasing faster than inflation, because that is what the reinsurance premiums are doing.
If I can get a little technical, let us think about the net present value of all of those future liabilities. I do not think the government is accounting for that aspect, and that is a problem. It is a problem because if we ignore it, we will think we are getting away with not dealing with climate change, but those liabilities exist, and they will bite us or our children or grandchildren. It is important to do some honest accounting in these different areas of environmental costs, social costs, and hidden financial costs.
The previous Liberal government created the environment commissioner, who releases regular reports, which I will talk about in a second. What is important is that the Liberals put this environment commissioner in the Office of the Auditor General. This idea of properly accounting for environmental liabilities and treating them just as they would be treated in a financial audit is very important.
I will go through some things in previous environment commissioners' reports that I thought were very interesting.
The environment commissioner looked at old mines and the money that was set aside to close these mines and clean up the sites. The environment commissioner questioned whether enough money was put aside to clean them up. When the decisions were first made to operate these mines 20, 30, or 50 years ago, the cost of closing and cleaning up the mines properly was probably not included in the business plans. That accounting was not done; had it been done, the mines might have been operated differently, because the companies would have been liable.
As another example, the environment commissioner also talked about whether enough money had been set aside to deal with possible accidents, such as offshore oil spills or accidents at nuclear power plants, so honest accounting is very important.
It is very important for a government that is evaluating costs and benefits to account for all possible hidden and future liabilities. If a government did that and made an honest accounting of all the costs and benefits and looked under all the rocks, this bill would not be necessary, because whatever the government tried to do in terms of laws, regulations, taxes, and spending would have automatically been carefully accounted for.
This legislation calls for the justice minister to review all bills and regulations and anything the government tries to do from the point of view of the Federal Sustainable Development Act. If a government always tried to do the best possible honest accounting, I am sure it would always satisfy the act, but I think the point is that the government we have today does not do that. That is why my hon. colleague brought forward this private member's bill.
We have some concerns about the true cost of examining every bill and regulation. My colleague from Scarborough—Guildwood, for example, brought up the cyberbullying legislation and how that is affected by consideration of sustainable development. We have to look at the cost.
However, the Liberal Party recommends that the bill goes to committee at second reading, and I urge my fellow members of Parliament to vote for that.
Petitions February 14th, 2014
Mr. Speaker, the third petition calls on the government to refrain from tax-supported advertising that goes beyond factual information for compliance or access to government programs and asks the government to redirect those funds to provide front-line service for Canadians.
Petitions February 14th, 2014
Mr. Speaker, the second petition from my constituents calls for a moratorium on genetically modified alfalfa, to allow for a review of its impact on farmers.
Petitions February 14th, 2014
Mr. Speaker, I present all petitions from my constituents and I have three of them today. The first one asks the government to sign and implement agreements to keep global warming to under 2° Celsius and to help the poorest nations of the world adapt to climate change.
The Budget February 14th, 2014
Mr. Speaker, Canada has put tens of millions of dollars over a decade into the world-class James Clerk Maxwell Telescope.
There is confusion over where $700,000 a year for bare bones operations will come from so that we do not have to give it up to another country this fall.
Given budget 2014's recognition of basic research in the new Canada first research excellence fund, would the minister please instruct either the NRC or the CFI to provide operational funding so that Canadian scientists continue to have access to this world-class research?
Canadian Heritage February 14th, 2014
Mr. Speaker, tomorrow is Flag Day. Fifty years ago, in March 1964, a conversation took place at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario, between a native of Alberta, George Stanley, dean of arts at RMC, and a native of Quebec, John Matheson, Liberal MP for Leeds, a conversation that led to the design of the new maple leaf flag.
Under the leadership of Prime Minister Lester Pearson, the new flag was approved by Parliament and took effect on February 15, 1965.
To change the most important symbol of a country, to leave behind the old and journey ahead with the new, was a courageous expression of a profoundly optimistic and ambitious vision of Canada's potential, Canada's future, and Canada's place in the world.
May we continue to express and journey ahead toward an ambitious vision for Canada.
The Budget February 13th, 2014
Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague from the Conservative Party mentioned the venture capital action plan, which was announced in last year's budget. I was looking at the description of the funds that the Conservatives would be investing in. I read the words “invest primarily in Canada-focused...funds”. That is not investing exclusively in getting Canadian discoveries commercialized.
I wonder if the member is concerned about that, and if he might be able to quantify the government's thinking in terms of what qualifies as sufficient Canadian content for these venture capital funds that we are investing taxpayers' money in.
The Budget February 13th, 2014
Mr. Speaker, I thank my Conservative colleague for her review of the government's stimulus of the economy during and following the 2008-09 great recession. However, I am reminded of an article in The Globe and Mail this past weekend that talked about how billions of dollars were wasted in that stimulus.
This is not meant as a criticism. However, given the member's recounting of the history, I want to ask whether she thinks it would be a good idea to do what was suggested by Martin Shubik, an economist in the United States, and also by Michael Mackenzie here in Canada, which is to have an independent panel that maintains a list of pre-evaluated public works projects. Therefore, if a recession hits and we need to provide stimulus, we would have a list of quality, non-partisan, economically viable projects that are ready for stimulus. Would that be a good way to avoid wasting billions of dollars in the hurried stimulus of the next economic recession?