Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, that was a funny question. That question was thrown at us about the signed agreement between the Government of Canada and Kashechewan. I sat there with deputy ministers from all the major departments and watched an agreement being signed between the Government of Canada and the people of Kashechewan.

Business of Supply  Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to stand in the House tonight, especially given the fact that it is the Speaker's 55th birthday. As a fellow Scot, I understand how emotive and physical the Scots are, so I could go up and give the Speaker a hug now or maybe he could give me two or three extra minutes in my speech.

Mining Industry  Mr. Speaker, it is pretty clear the only thing more toothless than our foreign investment review act is the minister when it comes to standing up for Canadian mining and smelting jobs. Let us paint a picture here. These are national resources and the government is sitting back while they are picked off by some company set up in an unaccountable Swiss canton.

Questions on the Order Paper  With regard to the recent General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) negotiations in Geneva: (a) what bilateral, multilateral, and plurilateral proposals, requests and offers was Canada a signatory to; (b) what were the responses to and results of these proposals; (c) what proposals, requests and offers were made to Canada; (d) what were the responses to and results of these proposals; (e) what new agreements have been signed onto by Canada; (f) were changes made to Canada’s policy on the foreign ownership restrictions in telecommunications and audio-visual industries before the conference and, if so, what were they; (g) did consultations take place between the departments of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Industry Canada and Canadian Heritage with respect to these policies; (h) what provisional agreements or agreements in principle were signed by Canada; and (i) when is the next formal negotiation conference planned?

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, I share my hon. colleague's frustration that someone is missing from this room, someone who could give us answers on whether this deal is on the up and up or whether this deal should be turned down. There is someone who is making decisions who is unelected and unaccountable.

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, once again I will rise to say how surreal I find this discussion, coming from an area along the James Bay coast where I have 21 people living in houses on the first nations. We cannot make any kind of moves or any first nations development without tender process after tender process, capital study after capital study.

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, representing, as I do, a large northern region with high levels of unemployment, it is hard for me to agree with the principle that 75% of the jobs stay in Ottawa and 25% of the jobs are on the other side of the river when I am looking at regions that have almost no federal presence.

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, I did read that. I found that during the election and I also spent a great deal of time when the budget came down trying to find culture. I even looked it up under K, but it was not there in the budget either. The question in terms of a commitment to a public broadcaster is meaningless, unless we are talking about a commitment in financing.

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, with respect to television as opposed to radio, the public broadcaster has two roles. One is entertainment and one is to create a sense of cultural identity. What we see with private broadcasters is the role to entertain, period. The problem we are facing is that CBC does not have the resources to adequately provide the entertainment value.

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, I did try to pay very close attention to the minister's whirlwind tour through committee, which seemed to be over before it started, and I did not hear it at committee. What I did hear from the minister when she was the heritage critic was that during the lockout she mused out loud that she did not know if anybody missed English CBC.

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to speak to this motion today. Members are asking why it has come before the House? I think it is important that it is before the House because decisions are being made in terms of the future of broadcasting, the future of telecommunications, and in fact the future of the CBC outside the purview of Parliament.

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague's dissertation. He knows the cultural file very well and I would like to ask him his opinion. We are hearing from the parliamentary secretary that we spend too much time at the heritage committee wondering and worrying about the future of television and broadcast when so many issues are coming before us.

Committees of the House  Mr. Speaker, the New Democratic Party definitely has been supporting a review of CBC for some time, because we have to be honest when we are discussing CBC and we have to say that it is not working nearly as well as it could. There have been years of underfunding. It has had problems in terms of a loss of regional programming and a loss of markets that CBC once had and no longer has.

National Defence  Mr. Speaker, we are talking about 50,000 tonnes of military sludge sitting on the Winisk River. Thousands more barrels have already floated downriver. I asked the former Liberal defence minister to help the people of our region and he could not run fast enough from his obligations, so now I am asking the government.

National Defence  Mr. Speaker, this government talks about sovereignty for the north. However, the James Bay Cree continue to suffer as a result of contamination from abandoned radar bases. National Defence has abandoned these toxic disasters and the citizens of the north. When will National Defence return to James Bay and assume responsibility for 50,000 barrels of PCBs at the bottom of northern rivers?