Ted Hsu

[Safeguarding Canada's Seas and Skies Act, November 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the concern that my colleague from Winnipeg North just expressed is very important and it worries me. The government has a record of not really allowing amendments to occur at committee. My colleague mentioned that the legislation affects the transport of Canadian energy to market. It seems to me that because of that we should do a very careful job with the legislation.

Would my hon. colleague agree with me that it is especially important, because of that fact, that the government seriously consider amendments at committee on Bill C-3?

[Petitions, November 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is from constituents in Kingston and the Islands, who call upon the Government of Canada to refrain from all further tax-supported advertising by the federal government that goes beyond providing factual information for compliance or access to government programs and to reduce the expenditure on communications to the level it was when the government took over in 2006. Finally, they call upon the government to redirect all the extra money being put toward communications toward front-line service for Canadians, which has been cut.

[Petitions, November 4th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions today. One is from constituents in Kingston and the Islands, who are concerned about the risk posed by genetically modified alfalfa. They call upon Parliament to impose a moratorium on the release of genetically modified alfalfa to allow a proper review of the impact on farmers in Canada.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, October 29th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, as I have said before in the chamber, the youth employment strategy is not working. The number of jobs the federal government has created for young people has decreased since 2006. It is something like half of what it was in 2006. I think it is very important for the government to look at that and to take some measures, because this will have a big impact on the economy. Youth is the age group for which employment has not recovered since the 2008 recession. There should be quite a focus on that, and there is not.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, October 29th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, we are not happy with how the current government has treated employment insurance. This bill was a chance for the Conservatives to change some of their plans, and they did not take advantage of that opportunity, so I would have to say that we are opposed.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, October 29th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, it is very important for a government to have access to, respect, listen to, and act on the very best advice to formulate policy. That includes science advisers. That includes, in terms of the management of NRC, advice that can come from the members of the council.

The thing that can happen, if people are willing to accept this advice, is that sometimes they realize that they are wrong and have to change what they are doing. That is what I mean by saying that sometimes we are humbled by respect for the truth. I think we should govern that way. It is a good thing for the country to govern in that way. It can be embarrassing sometimes for the government, but perhaps not as embarrassing as what the government is experiencing now. It is a good thing to be humbled by the truth sometimes. If we let ourselves be humbled by the truth, we will avoid the kind of situation the current government is in with the problems the Prime Minister's Office is having with some of the Senate appointments.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, October 29th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I was going to focus on a very particular part of BillC-4, but since this is a chamber of debate I feel I should address the very last remarks of my Conservative colleague across the floor.

This is not the first time I have heard Conservatives use the word “professor” in a very derogatory manner. In fact, the first time I encountered that was at all-candidates debate in the 2008 election. The Conservative candidate referred, very derisively, to Professor Dion.

I am sorry; I forgot the member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville is still here.

This shows the attitude that the Conservative party and the Conservative mind have towards education, towards learning, and towards respect for an inquiry toward the truth. I feel I have to point this out, because the member opposite clearly intended to insult Liberal Party members by calling us the professor party; well, I am proud to be part of a party that thinks about facts and evidence and is occasionally humbled by facts and evidence.

Canadians need to know that the Conservative Party is the party that does not value education, does not value learning, and is essentially willing to insult teachers. I have to start my remarks with that rebuke. Canadians need to know what kind of party this Conservative Party is.

I have three post-secondary institutions in my riding of Kingston and the Islands: the Royal Military College of Canada, Queen's University, and St. Lawrence College. I know that all of the professors and their students would be insulted by the remark of my colleague across the way.

Let me now talk about a particular part of Bill C-4. I am referring to the changes that will be made to members of the National Research Council, the council members who serve in an advisory capacity to the management of the National Research Council.

In Bill C-4, the composition of the council is going to be reduced from 18 members plus a president to 10 members plus a chairperson plus a president. What I would like to do today is simply ask the question “Why?” That question has not been answered in the legislation. The change appears in the legislation, but there has really been no supporting argument from the government for making this change.

I want to talk about why this should not be considered a trivial change. These are not salaried employees. Some members, as I checked the record, thought scientist employees were being cut from NRC, but these are experts who are meant to guide the management of NRC in planning for its future.

What we need to do is ask why the opportunity was not taken in Bill C-4 to, for example, establish some rules on replenishing the membership of the advisory council, to consult with them, and to put in place some guidelines on how to choose members.

Members may not know that only 5 of the 18 spots on the council are filled right now. This is a very strange thing, given the enormous changes happening at NRC. Later I will talk about that a little more.

One thing that the bill we are discussing today could have done is provide some guidelines on how to choose these council members. For example, we might want to have three sets of criteria: first, knowledge of research, innovation, and commercialization; second, the personal experience, accomplishments, and integrity of the person; and third, diversity in the composition of the National Research Council members.

This is a time of big changes, so this expertise is very necessary. The Conservative Party seems to believe in less governance and less consultation. It is very comfortable with less governance and less consultation.

Why should the management of NRC consult? Let me mention the report of a task force commissioned by a former Progressive Conservative government in 1987. In the report, the task force told the Mulroney government that it would be foolish for NRC management not to take advantage of the real and wide expertise found within the members of the council. That council would be the consultative body of potentially up to 18 members.

Why does this Canadian national institution need a large consultative body? The reason is twofold. One is that we are a very diverse country regionally, and NRC is supposed to serve this very diverse country. There is a part of NRC called IRAP, the industrial research assistance program. A web of industrial technology advisers across the country works with small companies to help them develop and commercialize their technology, connect with partners, get funding, and get the people they need to succeed. It is clear that NRC serves all of Canada and should be very sensitive to the large regional geographic diversity we have in our country.

In addition, NRC aspires to serve a large range of disciplines and sectors of technical capability. For example, it is involved in astronomy, metrology, security, aerospace, construction, health, and ICT. NRC is responsible for an enormous range of scientific disciplines and technologies. Therefore, it makes sense that its consultative body should reflect the broad range of technical capabilities NRC aspires to. This is something Bill C-4 could have tried to put in place but did not.

Let me also talk about why this is a special time for NRC and why a consultative body would be very important. It is a time of great change at NRC. In fact, NRC has never undergone such a great change. We know that there used to be institutes at NRC. They have been completely restructured into R and D portfolios with individual programs inside that have to get business plans approved through a four-step process. We know that this approval process has been very slow, probably too slow for the comfort of the Minister of State for Science and Technology. Certainly it has been too slow for the morale of the scientists and researchers at NRC.

We know that morale has been severely tested at NRC. We receive messages all the time from people who work at NRC. We even know that there was an online survey on the internal NRC website that showed how low morale was and how dissatisfied workers at NRC were. This is a time of extreme stress at NRC, and it is important to have that consultative body.

I might just throw out a question to the government to ask if a second pair of eyes checked out the idea of sending Tim Hortons cards to employees. Some went to employees who had lost their jobs.

In conclusion, this is an important time for NRC. This is an opportunity to make sure that NRC is fully consulting with the diverse geographic and disciplinary range it aspires to. This is a time when the NRC council could be strengthened and used to provide good advice to the management of NRC as it attempts this very ambitious transformation. It is a transformation that we know has had some problems. It has been a bit slow and has caused morale to suffer at NRC. The government has missed an enormous opportunity.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act No. 2, October 29th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I will quickly say that the municipal budget for the City of Kingston is going to be decreasing because of the expiry of mortgage support from the federal government for affordable housing.

My question is about a particular point my hon. colleague made, which is about penalties for software companies that write software to help people avoid paying taxes. It is very hard to enforce penalties when it is so easy for these companies to be offshore. An analogy is legislation to combat spam, which was, in fact, passed before I was elected. Not very much has come of it.

Can we really accomplish something by passing a law that punishes software companies for helping people evade taxes, when the companies are offshore, or is this just feel-good legislation?

[Science and Technology, October 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, in some sense it comes down to this for the average Canadian. I would ask the average Canadian, “Whom do you trust? Do you trust the Conservative government, or do you trust the scientists who work for your government?”

The scientists are saying, “No, we are not free to speak, and it is affecting your health and safety.” This is what is new in this long conversation about the muzzling of scientists, which has lasted several years, from even before I was elected.

What is new is that there was a survey, and 2,000 federal scientists said they know of cases in which the health and safety of Canadians has been compromised because the Conservative government has politically interfered with scientific work and suppressed information.

That is what Canadians need to know. They can decide whether or not they trust what the Conservative government says, but they know now what federal scientists say.

[Science and Technology, October 28th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, what I would like to talk about today is health and safety. The point I want to make is that the Conservative government cannot be trusted with the health and safety of our families and our children. I hope that the parliamentary secretary will be able to address this issue.

It comes up in a survey that was released last week on the subject of the muzzling of federal scientists. This is a subject that has been discussed for a number of years. When it is brought up the government says there is a lot of money spent on science by the federal government, and there are a lot of papers published by federal scientists. Then it dismisses reports of the muzzling of federal scientists and the fact that they are not able to speak freely. It says a lot of papers are published and federal scientists are not being muzzled.

Counter to that, there is some very significant anecdotal evidence of scientists not being able to speak freely or on a timely basis with the media or the public. What came out last week was a survey performed by Environics. The survey had roughly 4,000 respondents, all federal scientists. It gives some hard data to back up what we are finding from anecdotal evidence. One conclusion of this survey is that 90% of the 4,000 respondents said that they could not speak freely about their research. This is just like the salmon scientists who could not speak freely to journalists or to the public about salmon genetics, which is a very strange thing given the fact that Canadian taxpayers have paid for that research.

If you push the government a bit with all these anecdotes about the fact that it is kind of silly that scientists cannot simply talk about their research about the natural world, the next thing the government will say is that the scientists work for the government. The Minister of State for Science and Technology has essentially made this point. They work for the government and they have to work according to the rules that the Conservative government has set up, just like someone doing research for a company has to work by the rules of the company they work for. The problem with that is really exposed by the results of the survey, which says that half of federal scientists have found that the health and safety of Canadians has been compromised by political interference.

Let me quote the report that came out. I will extract the important parts of the quote. It states:

Half of federal scientists...report being aware of actual cases in which the health and safety of Canadians...has been compromised because of political interference with their scientific work. ...in which their department or agency suppressed information....

That is the problem. That is why we cannot say the scientists work for the government so they have to obey the Conservative government's rules. It affects health and safety. Two thousand federal scientists are saying they know of cases where the health and safety of Canadians is compromised.

What I would like to say to Canadians tonight is that they cannot trust the safety of their children, of their family, to the government.

I began my question last week during question period by saying that middle-class Canadians expect the government to ensure safe and healthy communities in which to raise their children. That actually came from the throne speech. What I am saying is that the government's concern for health and safety is not real. It cannot be trusted with the safety of our children and our families.