Todd Russell

[Business of Supply, June 7th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague's words very closely. What I sensed out of this was a “blame the premiers” approach, the premiers could not arrive at anything that would meet the commitments and promises that the Prime Minister and his party had made. He gave us a lecture of the deficiencies of the new accords that have been signed.

With regard to my province of Newfoundland and Labrador, he was absolutely right. When there was a cheque delivered for $2 billion, when there was an agreement signed between the Liberal government, under the then prime minister, the right hon. member for LaSalle—Émard, and Danny Williams, the people did cheer. However, when they saw the budget and when they saw what the Conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, had delivered—

[Business of Supply, June 7th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the word hypocritical comes to mind when I hear certain comments from the hon. member opposite.

We have a leader who, when he gives a commitment, will honour that commitment. We have a leader who has integrity. For the hon. member to get up and defend the broken promise of his leader, the Prime Minister, is unconscionable.

That is bad enough, but I find it so disappointing today that I do not hear a voice from the Atlantic Conservative caucus members. I do not hear that voice of response. I do not hear that voice of Atlantic Conservative caucus members and I do not see them standing up for their particular province. I find that disappointing.

I would say to the hon. member that there is another vote coming. He can tell his Prime Minister to do the right thing for Saskatchewan, where the hon. member is from, and for Atlantic Canada, and he can tell all those members from Atlantic Canada to vote against the budget. It is a bad deal for Atlantic Canada, a bad deal for Saskatchewan, and a bad deal for Canada.

[Business of Supply, June 7th, 2007]

Saskatchewan is in there as well, as I am reminded by my colleagues.

It did not take them too many days to break that promise and to really shaft the people of our province. We are hard-working people in Newfoundland and Labrador, as they are in Nova Scotia and across the country. We believe in electing politicians who are going to stand up for their people and follow through on their word.

What they have done is basically turn their backs on the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan. They have perpetuated a fraud on the people, and I believe this not only when it comes to the Atlantic accords but on the other issues that I have enunciated here today. I believe there are members in the House who could come up with their own examples of how the Conservatives have perpetuated a fraud not only on Atlantic Canada but on all Canadians.

[Business of Supply, June 7th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly do agree with the member's comments. Those members opposite in the Conservative Party of Canada came into our small towns and our harbours, sat with our fishers and plant workers, the hard-working men and women of our province, and promised to protect the Atlantic accords. They looked them in the eye and said they would protect the Atlantic accords. It did not take them too many months, or I should say, too many days--

[Business of Supply, June 7th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. Leader of the Opposition, the member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville.

I am pleased to speak to today's motion. I would like to thank my Liberal Party colleagues on this side of the House and from all regions of the country who have supported those of us from Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia. We are two of the provinces most directly affected by the Prime Minister's broken promise but, as we all realize, if he can do it to us he can do it to everybody else.

If it were not so serious it would be funny in retrospect to recall the finance minister saying that with his budget the days of arguing over fiscal federalism were over. In fact, he opened up new fronts in that ongoing dispute and picked fights he did not need to pick. He could have honoured the Conservative election promises but he did not. He could have kept the commitment that the Prime Minister made no less than six times but he did not.

In his famous mail out to thousands in Newfoundland and Labrador, the Prime Minister said:

That's why we would leave you with 100% of your oil and gas revenues. No small print. No excuses. No caps.

It was a promise made and a promise broken.

In his election letter to Premier Williams, the Prime Minister said:

We will remove non-renewable natural resources revenue from the equalization formula to encourage the development of economic growth in the non-renewable resources sectors across Canada. The Conservative Government of Canada will ensure that no province is adversely affected from changes to the equalization formula.

It was a promise made and a promise broken.

In a letter to the Council of the Federation, to every provincial and territorial premier, he wrote:

We believe that a new equalization formula should exclude non-renewable resource revenues for all provinces....

However, the finance minister chose not to honour those commitments and now he and others will have to live with the consequences. Those consequences include, as of Tuesday night, driving out one of their own member's of Parliament.

This is the second broken promise on a budgetary provision that has led to serious discord on that side of the House.

The hon. member for Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley has joined our colleague, the hon. member for Halton, in the exodus from the sinking Conservative ship. This, despite assurances from the Minister of Foreign Affairs that members from Nova Scotia and from Newfoundland and Labrador would be able to vote their conscience without repercussion. These members knew all along that they were in political trouble due to the Prime Minister's broken promise concerning equalization and its impact on the Atlantic accords.

Last month, the Minister of Foreign Affairs told us:

We will not throw a member out of caucus for voting his conscience. There will be no whipping, flipping, hiring or firing on budget votes....

Not only was there hiring, firing and whipping, there was flipping and flopping.

Not that long ago, a Liberal member of Parliament voted in this place against the budget. What did those members opposite, when they were still calling themselves Reformers, say then? They called it heavy-handed and iron fisted. They said that it put party and politics ahead of principles and people. They said that it would not matter if an MP voted against a government bill, even a money bill. In the immortal words of the current Minister of Human Resources and Social Development, who said:

I appreciate what he's done. I think he has taken the right position. He's standing up for his constituents.

How times do change.

Before our hon. colleague from Nova Scotia had even sat back down from voting his protest against this broken promise, his name was being erased from the government party's website and access to his important computer files was cut off. We all know who has the iron fist now.

Where are those Reformers now? I think we sometimes long for those reformers who called for an end to party discipline and promised that they would do what they campaigned on or resign.

The example set by our friend from Nova Scotia is especially galling to people in my province, especially in those three Avalon Peninsula seats occupied, for now I would say, by members of the Conservative government. They had the chance to show some backbone by standing with their constituents and with their province but they chose not to. They still have that opportunity. They still have a chance to show some honour in the vote on third reading.

The hon. member for Avalon already knows what it is like to side with his constituents and put principles above politics. He did that as a provincial MHA. It cost him his seat in government, but it endeared him to his own electors and launched him on his way to the House of Commons. However, it is sad on a personal level to hear what those people who supported him then are saying now. It is sad and disturbing to see the position he has been placed in by a Prime Minister who cannot keep his word.

The hon. member for St. John's East, who has served in politics with distinction for many years and has announced his retirement with the next election, has nothing left to lose. There should be no fear of party discipline or punishment on his part, and in any event, the foreign affairs minister already granted immunity. Yet he sided with the Prime Minister and the finance minister and voted to break a solemn promise, a written promise.

The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans said, during the last great debate on this issue back in 2005, “You cannot ever turn your back on your province on an important issue like this, even if it meant your party says tough stuff, you have to sit in the last seat, last row”.

It is okay for him. He is still on that front bench. It is our friend from Nova Scotia who is now in the last seat and in the last row.

In Labrador we have long known about the worthlessness of the Prime Minister's commitments, written and otherwise. In 2005 he promised 60% federal funding for the Trans-Labrador Highway and in 2006 he promised to cost share the project, but in 2007 these promises are still left unkept. There was supposed to be a federal-provincial deal by June. It is now June, but there is still no deal.

The Prime Minister promised us a 650 troop rapid reaction battalion for 5 Wing Goose Bay, along with a 100 member unmanned aerial vehicle squadron. The defence minister said he would personally give the orders to establish these units, but all of us in this House know what the value of one of his orders is.

The Prime Minister said that he wanted stable funding for Marine Atlantic. What did the Conservatives deliver? Rate hikes.

The Prime Minister said he would “accept the targets” for social and economic progress for aboriginal peoples set out in Kelowna, and then scrapped the Kelowna accord altogether.

He promised, again in writing, to support regional development agencies such as ACOA and did so by cutting their budgets.

Supposed Conservative commitments on fisheries retraining and emergency measures to deal with the ice blockade this spring have also led us nowhere, other than in circles as we try to decipher the contradictions coming from that side of the House.

Overall, we view every broken Conservative promise and every platform plank left unfulfilled through the lens of the broken promise on equalization and the Atlantic accord. The Prime Minister promised to protect the deal that our Liberal government negotiated with Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia. The Prime Minister made those commitments. He made them in writing. He made them six times.

With this budget, he broke them. He went back on his word. With the support of his Atlantic Conservative caucus, trained seals all but one, and with the support of the separatists, he is about to turn his broken promise into the law of the land.

For my hon. colleagues I would only issue this warning: if he did it to us, he can do it to them.

Let me repeat that: if he can do it to us, he can do it to them.

The Prime Minister and his government deserve the censure of this motion.

[Business of Supply, June 7th, 2007]

moved:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government has failed to live up to verbal and written commitments made to Premiers by the Prime Minister during the last election campaign with respect to the Equalization Program and the Atlantic Accords.

[Atlantic Accord, June 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, last night, the newly independent member from Nova Scotia did the right thing and stood up for his province and his region. He voted with the Liberal Party and against the Atlantic accord betrayal. His five former colleagues from Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia fell in line with their bully boss, the Prime Minister, and voted, not just with their own party but with the separatists.

We had problems with harp seals and now we have problems with trained seals.

With one more vote to go, will Conservative ministers and members from Atlantic Canada finally stand up for their constituents and their province?

[Atlantic Accord, June 6th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, the ranks of Atlantic Conservative dissenters keeps growing. First it was Progressive Conservative premiers, then a list of Conservative candidates condemned the attack on the Atlantic accords and then those Conservatives booted out one of their own after last night's vote.

Now John Crosbie, a Progressive Conservative, has been added to the growing list with a blistering memo proving that the finance minister betrayed my province and Atlantic Canada.

Those Conservatives are like jellyfish: totally spineless, no backbone and sting us when they can.

How can the former Progressive Conservative ministers continue to sit in that caucus and represent their provinces?

[Fisheries Act, 2007, May 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, that is shocking information. I did not know that Mr. Giraud, one of the few who responded in a positive way, was on the Conservative executive out in B.C.

It would seem that the Conservative definition of consultation is to go to fellow Conservatives, listen to what they want, stick it in a bill and draft a press release for when it is tabled. Fishermen in my community would be appalled to know that is how the government operates. I will be sure to make them aware, having learned this particular fact, of how they get treated.

The Conservatives do not listen to the fishermen or the plant workers. All they want to do is ram something down their throats at the behest of some interest group or some individual within the Conservative Party, and that is not appropriate. It is disrespectful to the people who really depend on the fishing industry, who have depended on it for generations and who have taken it upon themselves in many regards to protect the resource and to fight for the resource, sometimes without regulation and sometimes without an act being there at all.

I remember protest after protest in which I was involved in trying to protect the fisheries resources. I was arrested on a number of those occasions but I was never convicted, which may be why the Conservatives want to change the act.

I must say that it is appalling that the only people the Conservatives have so-called consulted with are people from the mining industry or, as some people would call them, the contaminating industries, although some people in the mining industry are good and there is no doubt about that, and that they only consult and ask Conservatives.

[Fisheries Act, 2007, May 29th, 2007]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think anyone disagrees with the principle or the intent behind Bill C-45. No one has spoken against changes to the Fisheries Act. No one has said that we do not need a new act or that we cannot make improvements on something that is 138 years old.

However, the fundamental principle of consultation, of going on the wharves, of accompanying people on the boats, of listening to people in the fish plants, listening to processors, union representatives and aboriginal groups, that principle of listening and then developing a bill that accommodates their needs and aspirations, bearing in mind the principle that the parliamentary secretary just read out, in my opinion there is no disagreement with the principle as he has read it out.

What I have a problem with is the fundamental process in the way that the government has gone about it.

If we have the hoist motion, and I am no expert on parliamentary procedure, but if it effectively kills the bill and we have a postponement period, then we take that postponement period to develop, implement and properly resource an effective consultation process.

It would seem to me that would be tantamount to abiding by the law that exists, particularly when it comes to the Haida decision and aboriginal groups. It would be respectful of all those who have a concern in the industry. Perhaps if we can all agree and we listen to people in the communities, we would not need to go through as long a committee process at the end of it.

We may in fact be shortening the process to some extent if we allow the hoist motion to go forward, put into effect a proper consultation process and then bring back a bill that is more reflective of the needs and aspirations of particularly those in the fishing industry and in the fishery resource itself. We could probably find more agreement among parliamentarians, get it though committee and then we would have something that is better for all of us, not only for today but for many generations to come.