Wayne Easter

[Committees of the House, June 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, if we want to talk about fearmongering, we should go back to the last House of Commons, back to the language used by the then opposition party. If medals were given out for fearmongering, the former Reform Party, the Alliance Party and then the CPC would have won those medals. They would be over at the Governor General's receiving them hand over fist for the fearmongering they pursued.

On the question the member raised, through the motion, we are trying to give the government the chance to show some backbone to the rest of the world that it is with the Canadian supply management industry in its endeavours in negotiating at the WTO.

[Committees of the House, June 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, there is no question that the Conservative Party left the impression during the election campaign that they would support supply management. However, contradictory statements have been made about the agreement between the now Minister of Foreign Affairs and the current Prime Minister which should cause the supply management industry to worry.

If we were to support the concurrence motion it would send a clear signal to the rest of the world that all four parties in this House are united in terms of our strong and unequivocal support for the supply management system.

We heard the discussions at committee and, yes, some on the industrial side are worried about how they would remain competitive if the tariff line were changed, and I understand those worries. However, I do not understand why the government always sees fit to put pressure on the producers instead of on the industry. If we were to support this resolution today I think it would take some of the pressure off producers and show them that we are solidly behind them. It would then require the Industry to come to the table with more willingness to compromise and maybe more willingness to support us in terms of our endeavours at the WTO.

[Committees of the House, June 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I know the member made a slip when he said “this government”. I know he wishes we were the government, as do we, but we are not.

I need to make a point on this 13 years in which, yes, we formed the government. International trade, as the member knows, is 149 countries and we worked pretty consistently toward a solution at the WTO.

I want to make a couple of points which the minister and the Prime Minister fail to mention consistently. When the previous government was in power, producers had the highest payments in Canadian history. The previous government balanced the books and left the present government with a huge surplus. Never before has a new government come to power in such good fiscal shape.

What did the Conservatives do for the farm community with the surplus? Absolutely nothing. They announced in their budget more money but the more money they announced in the budget was actually less money than was committed by the previous government.

They talk about immediate cash for farmers but there was no immediate cash for farmers by the spring. However they did announce, which went through the House the other day, a $100,000 cash advance for farmers, which is a loan. Farmers cannot borrow themselves out of debt. I wish the government would realize that. It needs to give them some assistances in terms of payments to their commodities.

At the WTO at least this government was negotiating, negotiating tough and a sensitive products category in there to protect supply management and believed in state trading enterprises, which the government obviously does not do.

[Committees of the House, June 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am indeed pleased to speak on the motion by the member for the Bloc Québécois. The motion before the House calls upon the government to join with the opposition parties and stand behind our supply management producers.

I am really amazed by the government changing its tune from what it said it would do during the election. This is what the Conservative election platform said with respect to supply management. It stated:

A Conservative government will:

Ensure that agriculture industries that choose to operate under domestic supply management remain viable.

That sounds good. The platform went on to state:

Canada needs efficient production planning, market-based returns to producers, and predictable imports to operate domestic supply management systems.

Yet, and this is where the real concerns come in, there is another document by the Conservative Party, signed by the current Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs in February 2004. It stated:

A Conservative government will ensure that any agreement which impacts supply management gives our producers guaranteed access to foreign markets, and that there will be a significant transition period in any move towards a market-driven environment.

That is really sliding away from protection of supply management and how the supply management system operates. That is really suggesting that the Conservatives would go to an open market marketing system and have a transition period so that the supply management system could figure out what to do with itself in that time. At the end of the day, though, producers would be in an open market marketing system at the mercy of the multinational corporate sector, which many of the other commodities are at the moment, and that is why they are in such great difficulty.

This statement clearly will result in the undermining and destruction of supply management. Neither the Prime Minister nor the foreign affairs minister repudiated this statement. There is an opportunity for members opposite, for the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food or indeed his parliamentary secretary, to do that today. We will see if they will. We will give them the opportunity to come clean on where the Conservative Party of Canada really stands with respect to the supply management industry.

With respect to supply management, then, the system was the result of government and farm organizations realizing that to stabilize the Canadian industry, to ensure security of supply and quality, and to provide the basis upon which the primary producer would realize an adequate income, a system of supply controls, reflecting demand, would prove to be the best course of action. In other words, through the Canadian milk supply management system, it is effectively figured out what market demand will be in the country and then production is matched to meet demand.

That is why this discussion is so important. We allow, as I said earlier, 6% imports of dairy products. That is factored in. The opponents of supply management talk about supply management being absolutely protectionist. It is not. We allow 6% imports of dairy products into this country. The Americans allow only 2.75%. Canada is much more open in dairy than are the Americans, and far, far more open than are the Europeans.

However, with respect to the current motion before the House, with milk protein able to come in through other ways, we as an industry cannot really know how much of that market is going to be displaced or how much of the product is going to require disposal through the skim milk powder disposal system. It jeopardizes that supply management system.

That is why this motion, put forward in concurrence with what the committee did the other day, is so very important.

As for allowing this situation to continue, let us go back to when supply management first was brought in. We were not technologically advanced then. Milk was milk was milk. The quota system basically was based on butterfat. Now the technology is there to break milk down into various components. The industry breaks it down into various components and ingredients. Violating the intent of the system, it is imported and basically it is remanufactured it into cheese or ice cream or whatever. This has an impact on the original design of the supply management system.

Basically the system is one that I think we should be presenting to the rest of the world as a rural development policy. It is a system that makes sense for sensitive products, and every country has sensitive products. It is a system that provides reasonable returns for efficient producers and a high quality product to consumers at reasonable prices. Let us look at our prices for dairy products in Canada. Sometimes they are a little higher than those in the United States, but on average they are lower. As a result, our producers are able to invest capital in their industry because they know that if they are efficient they are going to have reasonable returns.

Why do we think Canada is recognized as having among the best breeding stock in the world in terms of the dairy industry? Because for decades dairy producers have been able to invest in the genetics and the breeding stock to build that herd, that is why. They knew they would make reasonable returns on the sale of their milk, so as a result, we built one of the best and high quality genetic breeding stocks in the world. That stock is in demand.

There is a problem with the United States at the moment, in that it will not take cattle over 30 months. The government has failed absolutely to address that problem with the U.S. Farmers are suffering as a result of that border restriction.

On the mad cow situation, the Americans said long ago that they would abide by the science, but then there was another animal with the disease found in B.C., just as there have been more animals with the disease found in the U.S. Then Congress puts a little pressure on the administration and it goes against the basic agreement that it would allow live cattle over 30 months in by June. As a result, Canadian dairy, beef and breeding stock producers suffer again and the government opposite sits on its hands because it does not want to challenge its good friend, George Bush. Who suffers? Producers suffer.

How important is the supply management sector? Supply management generates over $7 billion in farm cash receipts a year, accounting for 20% of Canada's total agriculture receipts. With an average age of 47, dairy, poultry and egg producers can see a future that allows them to raise their families and make a living in rural Canada.

The stability of supply management allows producers with young families to contribute to rural development. Canadian dairy, poultry and egg producers use over $3.1 billion worth of feed per year. Milk, chickens, turkeys and eggs produced in Canada support jobs in over 1,100 processing plants.

Again, the pressure from our trading partners is to move Canada further away from these institutional structures that have benefited consumers and producers to those that favour unfettered trade. We have seen the kind of money that we have had to put out as government in the last number of years to those commodities that trade in a so-called unfettered market, and it is anything but unfettered.

The fact of the matter is that producers in Canada are competitive and they are efficient, but they cannot compete against the treasuries of the United States and the European Community. It is very difficult to compete against trade law that allows Brazil and Argentina and other countries to use low wages, poor environmental standards and poor land policy in the production of their products.

The whole system at the WTO needs to be revamped, but it needs to go further than what is currently on the table, because if we really are going to have a level playing field, then we have to include labour, labour standards, safety of workers, environment and land use. If we had that and no competition in international subsidies from some of our trading partners, then there is no question about it, Canadian producers would be at the top of the line.

Recent surveys found that close to 90% of Canadians surveyed believe that we as a country should be producing food domestically to meet Canadian needs. The assumption by some is that to continue supporting supply management the consequences are that Canada prevents imports and prevents access to Canadian markets. I want to make a point on that. The fact of the matter is that this argument that Canada does not allow imports in its supply management sector is very, very faulty. I know that the government opposite has fallen for that argument. It believes that supply management is protectionist.

Let me read some figures for the members. Canada imports 6% of its market in dairy products, 5% for eggs and turkey, 7.5% for chicken and 21% in hatching eggs. The United States, as I said earlier, allows only 2.75% access for dairy. Europe allows only 0.5% for poultry. When we figure it out, if all countries provided the 5% access that we do, overall trade in the global community would increase by these figures: a 77.5% increase in cheese, a 114% increase in pork, a 152% increase in poultry, a 50% increase in wheat, and a 92% increase in beef.

The problem is not Canada and Canada's supply management system, even though some perceive it to be. It is not the problem. This clearly shows that the position the previous government had taken in negotiating a sensitive products category made absolute sense, because other countries have sensitive products.

As for the Conservative government, we wonder what it is doing. The parliamentary secretary said earlier today that the Conservatives are really standing on the fence. They are trying to leave the impression that they are doing something when they really are not doing much at all.

In testimony before the Senate agriculture committee on May 11, the president of UPA made the following observation with respect to the Canadian Wheat Board and the future of supply management. Mr. Pellerin said:

If you attack the Canadian Wheat Board, in the end you will attack those types of central selling desks. That is the final objective of the free marketers....

I make that statement because we know very well what this is all about. In fact, I believe the parliamentary secretary said that the Minister of Agriculture is going before the agriculture committee tomorrow to talk about why he wants to destroy the Canadian Wheat Board. That is what it is all about.

The Conservatives talk about dual marketing but there is no such thing as dual marketing when it comes to single desk selling. We either have single desk selling or we do not. If we do not have single desk selling then the Canadian Wheat Board will not have the opportunity to maximize returns back to the primary producers.

In response to a question in the House on the government's position at the WTO on state trading enterprises and the Canadian Wheat Board, the Minister of Agriculture gave a very confusing answer and left unclear what its real position was. I mention that because if the government is sincere about the supply management system, which is what the motion is about, it should show us its unequivocal support for the motion and then we will see what happens at the end of the day. When we look at some of the other positions it is taking it is not really all that strongly on side.

Consumers have also consistently maintained a serious concern with respect to the quality of their food. A recent survey for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada found that 38% of consumers were concerned about the presence of GMOs in their food and that 49% were concerned about the presence of hormones in their food. An effort by the pharmaceutical company, Monsanto, in the mid-1990s to introduce the growth hormone RBST for use in dairy cattle to increase milk production was opposed by the dairy industry, and with good reason. One survey found at the time that if this hormone were introduced into Canada, 34% of consumers would lessen their purchases of milk and dairy products.

The point I am raising is the whole strategy at that time was to increase milk production when we did not need to increase milk production. We were meeting our domestic demand. The dairy industry strongly opposed it and the dairy industry, along with ourselves, won the day and prevented that system from coming forward. It shows the kind of support I think there is for the supply management system.

Support for the supply management system was again demonstrated in November 2005 with the unanimous passage of a motion in the House of Commons supporting the current supply management system at the WTO.

A prominent United States agriculture economist has found in a recent study,“Rethinking U.S. agriculture policy”, reported by the Agriculture Policy Analysis Centre in 2003 at page 15, that:

The traditional role of the federal government was to do for agriculture what it could not do for itself: manage productive capacity to provide sustainable and stable prices and incomes. Supply management policies have historically prevented chronic over production and depressed prices.

What that statement clearly shows is that many people understand that the supply management system prevents the manipulation of producers and countries one against the other. It empowers farmers to manage their own industry by matching supply to meet demand. The supply management system is under such attack at the WTO because the multinationals do not like that system. They want to be able to manipulate, manoeuvre and abuse and to buy cheap and sell high.

What worries me about the government's waffling on this motion and the fact that it is not taking a very clear stand at the WTO is that it will open up our supply management system to problems in this country and the ultimate losers will be our supply management producers and Canadians as a whole.

If we could gain the support of the government for the motion, although it would not be absolute that it is solid at the WTO in terms of its discussions and that it is absolutely solid in support of supply management, it would be an indication that it is moving ahead a wee bit.

[Committees of the House, June 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to the parliamentary secretary's remarks. If I have ever seen a government try to straddle a barbed wired fence, this is certainly it. As the member from the Bloc Québécois said, the Conservatives are really straddling the fence and trying to talk from both sides of their mouth at the same time.

The parliamentary secretary went to great lengths to leave the impression that all other countries are opposed to Canada's position. The member knows that is not the case. The member knows that not all countries are opposed. There may be somewhere around 20 opposed to our position. However, the great majority of the countries are not opposed nor are they in favour. They are just not taking a position. For that, roughly 100 countries or so, the government should be working to bring them onside to explain how supply management would be good for them.

Will the parliamentary secretary tell us just what is the government's strategy in trying to gain a sensitive products category at the WTO, like the previous minister was trying to negotiate? And gaining good favour in doing it, by the way. Will the member outline the strategy in that regard, so that we can in fact win the round at the WTO and maintain that good system that we have in Canada that should be a model of rural development for the rest of the world?

[Committees of the House, June 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased with the remarks by the member for Richmond—Arthabaska, but I am concerned about what the member for Selkirk—Interlake had to say. He leaves the impression that as a representative of the governing party he is more concerned about the irritants toward other countries than he is toward the very substantial irritant to our supply management system and how that in fact is undermining the supply management system.

The member spoke a bit about the balanced position that Canada has at the negotiations in terms of supporting our export oriented commodities and also in supporting our supply management system and allowing it the vehicle, under WTO, to operate.

My question for the member is about the fact that there seems to be a view held by some of the exporters and some in the industry that through our supply management system we do not allow imports. In fact, we do. We allow substantial imports. I just wanted to mention that. The fact is that right now Canada imports, under dairy, 6% of the market, 5% in terms of the eggs and turkey industry, 7.5% in terms of chicken, and 21% in terms of hatching eggs. The United States, on the other hand, which everybody believes is a free trader, allows only 2.75% access for dairy.

Therefore, we are in fact working within the rules in allowing imports, and if other countries would allow even 5% imports, it would really open up the market for cheese, by about 77.5% worldwide. We are doing our part within the supply management industry.

As for my question, with these milk proteins, what is happening is that industry is importing in other ways, getting above and beyond the 6% of market and having an impact on our dairy industry. I wonder what the member's thoughts are on that.

[Criminal Code, June 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, if there is any member in the House with whom I am absolutely surprised, it is the member for Winnipeg Centre. He continually compromises his principles to get in bed with the Conservative Party of Canada. There are mandatory minimum sentences right now in terms of gun crimes. He knows it, but he wants to stay in bed with those folks over there.

If you would go out there and tell your constituents about those mandatory minimums and the deterrents, then he would be doing something. He abolished the principles of the NDP Party long ago to get in bed with the Conservatives.

Tell the public the facts on Bill C-10. Do not misrepresent them like the member for Winnipeg Centre is doing.

[Criminal Code, June 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, as I said during my remarks, when we, as members of Parliament, try to debate a bill to get the best legislation possible and put in place a bill that would achieve the intended results, then there a legitimate basis for doing that. We have supported mandatory minimums in place. In some instances, we have brought them in.

Under Bill C-10, the government is extending those mandatory minimums to unreasonable levels. The result at the end of the day will not be what it intended to achieve. I think it will cost the system more money. As a result, we will not have the money to put the human resources in the streets to deal with crime. The government will not have the money to do the kind of crime prevention that needs to be done.

Because we are opposing the bill for a better approach, the member is saying that we are soft on crime. We are not. We believe there is a better way of doing things than the approach taken by the government, which is Americanizing the Canadian justice system, a system that has proven not to work as effectively as the Canadian justice system.

[Criminal Code, June 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-10. I will begin by saying that I believe all members and all political parties are concerned about crime. In fact, the Liberal Party takes the safety and security of Canadians very seriously.

We introduced legislation in the last Parliament to address some of the current concerns. We increased spending on policing and especially on the broader issues related to terrorism over the last number of years. We set up procedures for various police jurisdictions in Canada and across our borders internationally to work better together.

Through the development of the Department of Public Security, we ensured that all the security, the police and the border related agencies, came together for better protection of public security and improved coordination between those various agencies.

I gave that little bit of background to reinforce the fact that as a party we believe strenuously in fighting crime and utilizing all the best tools and approaches available to do so. I will be opposing the bill. With this bill I expect some government members, probably many, will say that those who oppose the bill are soft on crime. However, that is not the case at all.

Those of us who are opposed to Bill C-10 want to have an evidence based approach to changing the justice system and to ensure at the end of the day that we have better results. I just do not believe that Bill C-10, the way it is currently drafted, really cuts it.

The question really is whether Bill C-10 is the step forward that the Minister of Justice claims it can be. I sincerely think not.

As with so much that the new government has brought forward, the intent of Bill C-10 may be fine but the design of the legislation is such that it would not achieve the intended results. I think it could make things more difficult by ending up at the end of the day spending more money on building more prisons, more infrastructure and not dealing effectively with policing, rehabilitation and crime prevention.

I believe the government has taken a very simplistic approach to a very complex problem. There is an old saying, “don't let the facts get in the way of a good story”. I think that is what is happening with the approach that the Minister of Justice is taking with Bill C-10, and that does worry me.

Legislation should be evidence based. The Minister of Justice has failed to bring forward evidence on this bill in a comprehensive way that would lead at least myself and, I think, many others to support the bill. The Minister of Justice seems more intent on having the language sound right than on designing the legislation in a way that would lead to those intended results.

The legislation caters to the view that there is a massive increase in crime when actually the evidence, the statistics, would show otherwise. That is not to say that there is not serious crime in the country, there is. We could all pick an instance, blow it out proportion and almost make it into a movie. Those people affected by crimes feel very aggrieved, and rightly so. We have a responsibility as a country to see that justice is done, but would Bill C-10 deal comprehensively with the concern of those crimes? I most definitely think not.

In Bill C-9 and Bill C-10 we see a certain amount of Americanization of the Canadian justice system. I have had the opportunity to see both systems and our justice system is vastly improved over the one south of the border. We have less crime in Canada. We have greater rehabilitation and far fewer jails per capita. We have fewer repeat crimes and there is greater safety on our streets. We can ask any citizen which cities they could walk into and feel relatively secure and they would say Canadian cities. Our system of justice is far less costly than the system south of the border.

Does Canada's approach to crime need to be improved? I would say that it certainly does, but Bill C-10 is not the answer, at least not in whole. I could support some parts of the bill but I believe overall the bill is seriously flawed.

Do mandatory minimums have a place? Many critiques over the last 50 years would say no and many would say they do not. Personally, I believe they do in some instances but not with the kind of simplistic blanket treatment that the bill proposes.

The issue can be dealt with in other ways. I can give an example of where I think judges were lax and where the justice system is currently soft, and that relates to the marijuana grow operations in British Columbia. Police officers and the RCMP will tell us about going into marijuana grow operations, taking them down, putting their lives on the line to deal with the problem and that before they go to the office the next morning the people they charged are out on the street. That is wrong and it should not happen.

I know we are not supposed to criticize judges but I did this while I was in the position of solicitor general and I maintain to this day that in too many instances in the province of B.C. the judges are soft on marijuana grow operations. However, there other ways of dealing with the issue than mandatory minimum sentences. In those instances in British Columbia where it relates to marijuana grow operations, the intent of the law is not quite being followed. There is too much softness. The judge would have to explain his or her reasons for not imposing the maximum sentence that is in the law.

The bill is terribly flawed. I had hoped to quote the member for Mount Royal when he said that Bill C-10 was not evidence based legislation but I see I am out of time. I would refer members to the remarks by the member for Mount Royal in which he gave a very good legalistic argument in terms of why Bill C-10 cannot be supported as it is currently drafted.

[Witness Protection Program Act, June 8th, 2006]

I hear chirping from the House leader on the other side but that is not unusual in this place. The House leader and the Conservative Party do not like to face constructive criticism and that is what we are offering here.

We have said that the intent is fine, but the government tends to do everything through the criminal justice system whereas social programming works better and prevention works better.

I recognize it is a private member's bill and it will be really interesting when it comes time, whether the government will allow a free vote. The Conservatives talked about free votes, but we have not seen a free vote yet in the House. Maybe this one will entice them because I know for a fact that the justice department cannot be recommending that the government support the bill, but we will see what happens as we go down the road.

The fact of the matter is that the bill, while good in terms of its intent, can be approached differently. The witness protection program is not designed to deal with the problems that the bill is addressing. I believe that at the end of the day it would create more problems than it would solve.

The member has not put a cost on this and that needs to be looked at. What would be the total cost of the program? What would its impact be on policing? What would its impact be on the witness protection program itself? There are better ways to do this through social programming by a government that would have a social agenda rather than the kind of strict justice agenda we see being pursued by the government opposite.