/columns/133/From-The-House MP John Rafferty is the Member of Parliament for the Thunder Bay-Rainy River riding. Thu, 23 May 2013 04:34:19 GMT 5 http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/279377/From-The-House/Harper-boondoggles-starting-to-add-up Remember the former Liberal government’s infamous “billion dollar boondoggle” that engulfed the Human Resource and Skills Development file not so long ago?  It was one of more than a few boondoggles that exposed the Liberal Party’s false claim to being a fiscal responsible and accountable government. At the time, Stephen Harper was outraged at the lack of transparency and the Liberals unwillingness to accept responsibility for the mistakes they clearly made.  I wonder though; what would Mr. Harper say today if he was in opposition and read the most recent Auditor General’s report than found his government could not account for $3.1 billion of taxpayer money? The release of the Auditor General’s damning 2013 Spring Report last week has Mr. Harper singing a different tune now that the microscope has been placed on his government’s own financial record. Among other dubious findings the Auditor General was unable to account for $3.1 billion of the $12.9 billion designated to the Public Security and Anti-Terrorism Initiative. In Question Period, Mr. Harper attributed this gapping financial hole to “a lack of clarity” in the operations of his government.  No kidding.  Remarkably, the Treasury Board Secretary Tony Clement, who also splits his time as the Minister for all things gazebo, denied that any government spending was unaccounted for, but simultaneously tried to peg the blame for the non-missing money on the previous Liberal government.  Does that sound like something a fiscally responsible and accountable government would try to do? Another scandal that has engulfed the Harper government and has yet to be put to rest is the botched acquisition of 65 new F-35 fighters. In the 2011 election campaign, the Harper Conservatives assured Canadians that it would cost but $9 billion to purchase the new ‘stealth’ fighters and replace our aging fleet of CF-18’s. After ignoring repeated demands for supporting documentation for this claim by the Parliamentary Budget Officer it was eventually revealed that the acquisition and maintenance costs of the proposed F-35 purchase would reach a staggering $45 billion over the lifetime of the fighter – a full five times more than the Conservatives claimed.  Add to this the F-35 prototypes’ ongoing engine problems, its inability to operate in cold temperatures (ie: the arctic) and inability to fly at night, and well it ain’t pretty. The F-35 debacle is a very public one, but another looming boondoggle has largely gone under the radar – so far.  During the 2008-2009 financial crisis the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) under the direction of the Harper Conservatives made a decision, without consulting parliament, to purchase some of the riskiest bank-held mortgages in Canada – at a potential cost of $69 billion to Canadian taxpayers. According to statements made by Prime Minister Harper on US television news network CNBC in February of 2009, this taxpayer funded purchase was not a bailout, but merely a “market transaction with our banks to improve liquidity,” and would cost the government and taxpayers nothing. This mincing of words was echoed by the Canadian Bankers Association (CBA), who, at the time, attempted to explain to the public that these mortgage purchases did not fall under the Oxford dictionary’s definition of a bailout. In truth, that is exactly what this transaction was. Had this massive transaction gone through Parliament as the housing bailout went through Congress in the United States, this questionable decision would have had to face proper scrutiny.  More importantly, taxpayers would have been told up front that we were now on the hook for that $69 billion should the housing market face significant difficulties.  Pretty risky behaviour for a “fiscally conservative” and “responsible” government wouldn’t you say? I believe that the latest findings from the Auditor General are but a symptom of a greater illness that is plaguing the Harper Conservative government. Harper’s gang, the party which boasts about being fiscally responsible and accountable cannot account for a full $3.1 billion of our tax dollars. In fact, they can’t even provide Auditor General Michael Ferguson with the proper documentation so that he can search for it.  When we look at this report and recall the $45 billion F-35 scandal and the $69 billion bailout of our banks a picture of secrecy, incompetence, waste, and lack of accountability emerges.  New Democrats believe that you deserve better and we are prepared to offer you a truly transparent, accountable, fiscally responsible, and ethical alternative to the two tired old parties that we’ll share the ballot with in 2015. Tue, 14 May 2013 13:49:38 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/279377/From-The-House/Harper-boondoggles-starting-to-add-up http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/271851/From-The-House/Conservatives-driving-economy-over-cliff Last week the 2013-14 federal budget document was presented to Parliament.  I was not impressed by the budget, and while my staff and I are still studying the document we have already found many items that will hurt families and businesses and that we will oppose.  Let me highlight some of them here. Tax Increases Who can forget the HST move right?  Well, while campaigning (again) in 2011 as the ‘low tax party,’ the Harper Conservatives have raised our taxes again. You’ll recall that the Finance Minister Jim Flaherty contacted Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan to pitch the idea of “harmonizing” the Provincial Sales Tax (PST) with the federal Goods and Services Tax (GST) in 2010.  We were told it was good because business liked it, but the reality was that it raised the costs of basic goods and services – everything from gasoline to snowplowing to haircuts – while letting business off the hook. Well…here they go again. The 2013-14 federal increases taxes by $7.8 billion over the next five years. The annual increase in taxes starts at $500 million in 2013-14 and increases to $2.3 billion annually by 2017-18. We can also put these tax hikes into a broader perspective by including measures from Budget 2010, 2011, and 2012. Between 2010-2011 and 2017-18, Conservatives will have increased taxes on Canadians by $19.5 billion. Increased International Tariffs on Goods While they have handed out a few tax credits over their eight years in power for everything from hockey equipment to music lessons, the fact of the matter is that the prices of ordinary and essential goods and services have risen dramatically during this time thanks in large part to Conservative policies. This time around, the Conservatives are raising the prices on over 1,200 goods that Canada imports from over 70 countries by increasing tariffs by $333 million. Between 2014 and 2018, this tax hike will total nearly $1.1 billion – which of course will be passed on to consumers by the companies that are forced to pay them to get their goods into our country. Oh…and you’ll pay that extra HST on these items as well making them even more expensive. Small Business Tax Increases Budget 2013 also raises taxes on small business through its changes to the Dividend Tax Credit, which is funny (as in strange) given the Harper Conservatives reputation for helping corporations and cutting taxes.  Increasingly, this reputation is being proven false. Budget 2013-14 will take $2.3 billion out of the pockets of small businesses, their owners, and their employees through various small measures. Huh??? Don’t you hate digging into to your pocket to pay sky high parking fees at hospitals as you visit loved ones or tend to your own personal health needs?  The same probably goes for parking near schools and in municipal parking spaces I’m sure. Well get set to pay more. It’s true. You have Jim Flaherty and Stephen Harper’s Conservatives to thank too since the 2013-‘14 federal budget changes the tax laws so that the HST will now be applied to parking at hospitals, designated school areas, and municipal property.  The result?  Parking in these locations - which is extraordinarily expensive to begin with – is now set to increase by 13 per cent. What’s next??? As my staff continue to scan the 433-page behemoth that is this budget we will be elaborating, in this space, on the significant negative implications for credit unions and their customers, First Nations, for infrastructure and development in the Ring of Fire, and how some substantial funding cuts (10 to 17 per cent) are essentially neutering the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario (FedNor) and hurting families, businesses, and development in Northwestern Ontario. Oh…I almost forgot to add that the deficit this year is actually expected to rise in spite of all these tax hikes and fees to $18.7 billion next year - $2.2 billion higher than the Department of Finance predicted just last November. More to come…   Tue, 02 Apr 2013 10:54:39 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/271851/From-The-House/Conservatives-driving-economy-over-cliff http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/265635/From-The-House/The-union-advantage Lately labour and trade unions have been portrayed in a negative light by conservative media and business interests. Doing so may serve the interests of those casting the stones but the reality is that we owe unions our thanks for improving the economic and social well-being of working Canadians over the decades that they have been in existence. Labour and trade unions have been a fixture in Canada since the 1800s, but did not become prominent until the last century as they engaged in high profile battles for eight-hour work days and better pay for their members. Even if you are not currently represented by a union they are probably the reason that you enjoy a safe working environment, two day weekends, vacation pay, and protection from workplace harassment. The right to ‘collective bargaining,’ the process by which members of a union agree to pool their labour and negotiate as one with their employer(s), was first recognized in 1937 following a strike by the United Auto Workers at the General Motors Plant in Oshawa Ontario. Over the decades and through the collective bargaining process unions have raised the bar for all employees across Canada. They pushed for healthcare benefits which helped lead the way towards the establishment of our national public healthcare system, and forced various federal and provincial governments over the years to enact laws that protect worker’s health and safety. In the case that an individual loses their job, unions were also the first to push for the creation of unemployment benefits so that people could continue to support their families in the short term and between jobs. Today 4,562,800 Canadians belong to unions in all types of occupations from coast to coast to coast. The impact of labour and trade unions on a local economy is both significant and overwhelmingly positive. In terms of wages the average Canadian worker without union representation makes $21.39 an hour while those that are unionized make $26.50. The whole community can benefit from the additional $5.11 per hour that is earned by unionized workers since those workers also pay $793 million more a week to our country and our communities through taxes. When unionized workers, like non-unionized workers, spend their paycheck they support local business and help prop up the local tax base. Benefits like dental insurance and extended health care and prescription coverage that union workers receive also attract and support these industries locally. Union ‘locals’ also tend to collect and use money from the dues paid by their members to support local charities like food banks and others. For an example of the local impact of unions we need only look at the Thunder Bay area. According to the Canadian Labour Congress there were 22,300 union members living in and around Thunder Bay in 2011, which represents a full 41 per cent of all workers who earn more than $21 million per week which is more than half of the weekly income of the entire region. The average hourly wage for union workers in Thunder Bay is $26.49 compared to the $20.59 for those who are not members. The extra $5.90 per hour in wages earned by most union workers fuel our regional economy by adding $4.73 million per week in wages and economic activity. While making a significant contribution to the local economy we should also take pride in the in the high quality of the products and services produced by unions and their employers who make first class products such as subway and train cars and pulp and paper, and deliver first class services such as elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education and various types of medical services from home care to emergency care among many others. It may not be always apparent, especially if you tend consult large corporate media outlets or listen to our federal government members speak, but unions do in fact significantly strengthen our country and communities. They have raised the bar for working Canadians of all walks of life, unionized or not and have made our workplaces safer while increasing the economic and social benefits paid to all working Canadians, and giving back to our local economy and communities by propping up the tax base and donating their resources to social services for those most in need. I’m sure not all of you will agree with my assessment, but I do hope it provides some food for thought the next time you hear a stranger, friend, or member of the Harper Government dumping on unions for making life more difficult for Canadians. It really couldn’t be farther from the truth. Mon, 25 Feb 2013 16:15:14 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/265635/From-The-House/The-union-advantage http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/264394/From-The-House/More-senate-shenanigans   This week Canadians were reminded of something that we already knew; our Senate is a useless and unnecessary expense to taxpayers and should be abolished. The irrelevancy and expense of operating Canada’s unelected and unaccountable Senate is something that New Democrats and many people in Northwestern Ontario and Canada have been concerned about for some time. Some of the reasons are self-evident, but the most convincing arguments to get rid of the Senate are often provided by Senators themselves. Enter Senators Patrick Brazeau and Mike Duffy, two Conservatives each appointed by Prime Minister Harper until the ripe old age of 75. These two Senators, making $132,000 per year until they are forced to retire (just 37 years remaining for young Mr. Brazeau), and have access to a $21,000 expense account to offset their costs of residency in both Ottawa and at their “primary” home in the region they represent; Prince Edward Island for Duffy and Southwestern Quebec for Brazeau. The use of this expense account by these two Senators is now the subject of a third-party ethics investigation that is presently underway in Ottawa. Before being appointed as Conservative Senators by Mr. Harper both Duffy Brazeau held well-paying and long term jobs in Ottawa for many years. Mr. Duffy was a senior broadcast journalist with CTV in the national capital and Mr. Brazeau was Chief of the Congress of Aboriginal People. Both lived in the Ottawa region for more than a decade before becoming Senators yet, upon receiving their Senate appointments, they began filing housing expense claims for their “primary” residences in Prince Edward Island and Southwestern Quebec. Unfortunately, the “neighbours” of the two men’s “primary” residences say they almost never see them. Duffy’s “home” in Prince Edward has all the looks of a small Island cottage and Brazeau’s primary residence was actually that of his former father-in-law who claimed that the Senator had never actually lived there. And, we’re talking about serious sums of money here as Duffy alone has claimed more than $30,000 since September 2010 despite maintaining a health card for Ontario being eligible to vote in our provincial election. He holds neither a health card nor voting rights for Prince Edward Island, but still collects a hefty allowance to supposedly cover his primary housing costs in PEI while he serves in the Senate in Ottawa. We don’t even know if Brazeau has even visited his “primary” residence at this point in time. While the obvious solution is to abolish this partisan pork barrel of an institution it seems that Mr. Harper is not at all eager to fix the mess. In just the last month Mr. Harper has appointed five more Senators, bringing his total number of Senate appointments to 58 since becoming Prime Minister just over 7 years ago. It’s a bad record for someone who pledged to never appoint a Senator, but it’s a horrific record for someone who claims to respect taxpayer dollars and rejects the very notion of patronage appointments. The third party investigation of the housing residence claims by Duffy, Brazeau, and a third Senator (Mac Harb a Liberal from Ottawa) is being coordinated by the Senate itself, so MPs and the public may never actually know the real story behind the “primary” housing expense scandal when it is all said and done, but there are likely two outcomes. Either Harper’s appointed lapdogs are fraudulently bilking taxpayers for tens of thousands of dollars, or they are just following the rules and doing their jobs rubber stamping the Harper agenda at a cost of more than $90 million per year to taxpayers. Either way, New Democrats believe that the Senate should be abolished and all of this money returned to taxpayers. It’s the democratic and fiscally responsible thing to do. Fri, 15 Feb 2013 12:13:26 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/264394/From-The-House/More-senate-shenanigans http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/262433/From-The-House/Bad-government,-bad-choices In what may serve as the early political shocker of 2013, Alison Redford’s Conservative provincial government in Alberta announced last week that it would collect $6 billion less than expected this year from oil and gas royalties while running their fifth consecutive yearly budget deficit.    How can this happen to a province that has so much oil wealth?  The answer is simple -- bad government and bad choices. It is estimated that the Alberta oil sands hold at least 1 trillion barrels of crude bitumen oil (a mix of sand, oil, minerals, and water), but maybe as much as 2 trillion barrels according to some industry sources.  In 2007 it was estimated that extractive activity in the Alberta oil sands produced more than 700,000 barrels of oil each day and the total reserves in Alberta’s oil sands are thought to be equal to those in the rest of the world – combined. Royalties collected by the Alberta government, or taxes on the lease, sale and shipment of the oil from the province, generally amount to about 30 per cent of all government revenue in that province but the royalty haul  is tied to the price of the oil being sold.  The problem, at least this year, is that the Alberta government had projected their royalty revenue based on the price of oil being around $90 a barrel, but the price for oil sand bitumen has plummeted to just over $50 per barrel in the last year due to increased domestic production in the United States.  That leaves a big fiscal gap to say the least. If you’re scratching your head about this then you’re not alone.  How can a Canadian province of less than 4 million people and sits on the world’s largest known crude oil deposit be struggling financially?  It wasn’t easy, but it’s taken 42 years of Conservative rule and bad decisions to get to this point. The Constitution Act states that natural resources belong to the provinces and that it is their right and responsibility to maintain, develop, and profit from their presence as they fit.  While the normal federal taxes apply to transactions for oil like other goods and services Alberta is the only government that can collect royalties directly from the extraction and sale of each barrel.  The Government of Alberta alone, and lead by Conservatives for 42 consecutive years, must set the royalty rate and decide how to use that money – to spend it, give it away, or invest it as they see fit.  Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the Alberta Conservatives have made some terrible decisions. Generally speaking, the Alberta Conservatives have chosen to spend their royalty wealth mostly, which is why there is almost nothing left in the bank today.  While every provincial government in Canada must deliver the same essential services to the people they serve (ie: health care, education, infrastructure) the others must almost exclusively use tax revenue collected from individuals and corporations to pay their bills.  Alberta could do the same, but has chosen a different path.  Alberta’s Conservatives have made that province almost completely dependent on oil revenue to fund basic services by eliminating the provincial sales tax and reducing corporate and personal income rates to some of the lowest levels in North America.  It’s been an unnecessary and reckless gamble, and it is one that is now coming up ‘craps’ for Ms. Redford’s Conservatives. The opposite development approach, and a very ‘sustainable’ one, can be found in Norway.  The Norwegian government, with essentially the same power to regulate industry and collect royalties as the Alberta government and with just 2 million more people, has had no such difficulty in balancing their books.  Instead of lowering their tax rates to zero or as low as possible the Norwegian government has, since 1990, maintained moderate but competitive tax rates and saved most of their royalty in what is known as a ‘sovereign wealth fund’ that is invested in various assets around the world.  As of November 2012 the assets of this fund, known officially as the Government Pension Fund of Norway, totalled approximately $660 billion USD worldwide, and had a yield 4.7 per cent in the last quarter – returning $29.3 billion to the people of Norway in the July to September 2012 fiscal quarter alone.   By comparison, total program spending by Redford’s Conservative Alberta government on all goods and services such as health, education, and infrastructure was $41.1 billion – for all of 2012. So the questions for Albertans at this point in time, and for the rest of Canadians soon, is do we want to be stuck in endless Conservative ‘Made-In-Canada’ boom and bust cycles with low taxes, huge deficits, and no savings, or is something more like Norway’s more prudent and sustainable approach to natural resource development a better fit?  I think you know which approach New Democrats tend to favour.   Tue, 05 Feb 2013 10:56:07 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/262433/From-The-House/Bad-government,-bad-choices http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/261104/From-The-House/Helping-rebuild-our-legions For nearly a century veterans’ groups have been playing a historic role in the development of Canadian society. Unfortunately, in a long era of government expenditure reductions and shrinking membership Royal Canadian Legions are now muddling through difficult financial times.  I think the time has come for us to give something back to these institutions and these members who given us so much in the past. What were first intended to be safe havens for World War veterans have, over time, also came to be gathering places for all members of the public in the communities that they serve.  Since the establishment of the Great War Veterans Association in 1917, veteran organizations in Canada have undergone substantial changes over time in order to unify and accommodate the community. At their peak in the 1980s the Royal Canadian Legion had more than 6,800 ‘branches’ and 600,000 members. Today there are still more than 360,000 members and 1500 local branches spread across the country, including eight in Thunder Bay – Rainy River. Be it through fundraising campaigns to assist fellow veterans, or community service programs to support the public our Legions have become vital gathering places in the communities they serve.  As financially autonomous bodies, funding for individual branches is almost always limited to the public support received by their respective communities. Unfortunately the primary source of revenue, membership dues, has been steadily declining over the past 25 years and now only contributes marginally to the maintenance of these institutions.  Some of this is due to the structure of the organization itself as 90 per cent of a single membership fee is relinquished to Dominion and Provincial Command - the overseeing bodies, but other problems are also related to the changing nature of our economy, increased operating costs, and declining membership. Raising fees to counter this problem is a possibility, but it could also deter those interested from becoming members and for branches already facing a slump in membership it is simply not an option. Today, branches must obtain most of their funding through catering services, fundraising efforts made by the Ladies and Youth Auxiliaries, their bar sales, and by renting out their halls for special occasions. While this allows citizens to become increasingly involved with their Legion and builds a sense of community, individual branches are now forced to compete with restaurants, bars and banquet halls for money. For those struggling with finances much of the money they are able to raise simply keeps them afloat and leaves little room to invest in infrastructure upgrades or renewal.  As these facilities age and structures start to deteriorate fewer people will be inclined to rent these spaces for special occasions which can amplify the financial difficulties at many branches. Many Legions across Canada have fallen victim to these circumstances over the years. In tabling Motion-417 I called upon the Federal government to address this issue by creating a Royal Canadian Legion Infrastructure Renewal Fund. If implemented, it is my hope that any investment made by individual branches to preserve or enhance their physical infrastructure – such as heating or ventilation upgrades – would be eligible for matching funds by the Federal government. While the Harper Conservatives have provided some federal funding to non-profit community facilities through a Community Infrastructure Improvement Fund (CIIF), this worthwhile but temporary program is set to expire and legions are forced to compete with other organizations for these funds. Of the $150 million designated in the CIIF a total of $144,643 has been provided to four legion branches that have used the money to upgrade their kitchens, replace their roofs, and install new heating and air conditioning units among other fixes.  It’s a good idea, but I think we need a permanent standalone program for legions moving forward. In short I believe it is our turn to help out and give back, with equal enthusiasm, to an organization that has given us so much over the years. Whether it’s providing counseling for seniors, recreational activities for the youth or transition programs for veterans so that they can integrate back into civilian life the Royal Canadian Legion has always provided invaluable services to our communities. I think it’s time we answer the call of duty and lend a helping hand to the branches of the Royal Canadian Legion who need it so that they can continue to provide these important services to veterans and citizens alike moving forward.   Mon, 28 Jan 2013 12:43:08 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/261104/From-The-House/Helping-rebuild-our-legions http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/259565/From-The-House/Parliament-2013-preview Last week’s column reviewed many of the biggest federal political stories of 2012, so this week it’s time to look forward and see what may be in store for us in 2013. As 2012 came to a close the Idle No More movement was ramping up and Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence’s hunger strike continued. The Prime Minister and Governor General have met with many Chiefs to discuss important outstanding issues, including the protection of treaty rights, but the movement and the hunger strike continue today as no real progress has been made - yet.  Many questions on this file remain in 2013:  Will the Prime Minister do more window dressing as he always has on First Nation related issues, or will he actually commit to and carry out substantive action? Will the Idle No More movement wind down, or pick up steam if Mr. Harper chooses to or not to act on its key demands? The Prime Minister and Finance Minister also took great pains over the winter to emphasize that the Canadian economy is still in a “fragile” state. It seemed like a bit of understatement to me as GDP growth stalled for the final six months of 2012 while US economy growth continued to accelerate under President Obama’s leadership. So what does 2013 for the global and Canadian economies? Will the housing market collapse begin as many suggest, or will the bubble slowly deflate as others maintain? What will the 2012-13 federal deficit end up being after all the paperwork comes in? Let’s hope Mr. Flaherty can keep it under $25 billion as he has promised, but he has never hit his own deficit reduction targets on a year over year over basis so you’ll have to excuse if I am not as optimistic as he is. Associated with the weak Canadian economy the Conservatives will also be presenting their second majority budget sometime early in the 2013. We know the Conservatives are in a hurry to rewrite Canada’s laws under the guise of the federal budget legislation, but will that process accelerate this year, or have they learned their lesson from the growing public dissatisfaction with the use of so-called ‘omnibus’ legislation? With economic growth in Canada expected to be just 1.7 per cent in 2013 will there be more stimulus, or are the Conservatives betting on others to help the Canadian economy recover and catch up to the US? Early in the New Year the Liberals will also pick their new leader. It would be tempting, but also foolish, for New Democrats, Conservatives, and others to ignore the importance of the process that is currently underway in that party. The truth is that the choice of leader for the Liberals will have an impact on what happens in the next year, but also what choices are offered to voters in the 2015 election. Will the Liberals anoint the heir apparent?  Are there any surprises in store from the frontrunner or from one or more of the underdogs?  What new policies or innovations will come from the process? I have other questions, but I will be kind as the Liberals lick their wounds and re-organize for the next little while.  Finally, one thing that is always a sure bet is that something big will happen this year that will have a dramatic impact on Canadian politics and we likely won’t see it coming.  Last year it was the emergence of the Idle No More movement which caused the Prime Minister to stop his meetings with Nickleback and Quebec reality show winners and formally sit down and meet with Chiefs and representatives of many First Nations to establish a process for negotiations on treaty rights and other important issues facing their communities. The year before the NDP had our electoral breakthrough and became Official Opposition only a few months before losing Jack.  No one saw those events coming, so what’s in store this year. A retirement from the government benches? Maybe a key Supreme Court ruling? I don’t know what it will be, but I do know that events this year will surprise us, just as they have every year before. Parliament resumes sitting next week and I’m sure we’ll start to get some answers to the many questions posed above, and probably some we’ve never contemplated.  With all the ups and downs that are sure to come let’s hope that 2013 is as happy and prosperous as it can be for our community, our friends, and our families. On that I’m sure we can agree.       Mon, 21 Jan 2013 12:50:16 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/259565/From-The-House/Parliament-2013-preview http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/258089/From-The-House/A-look-back-at-2012 As this is my first column of 2013 I would like to wish everyone a healthy and happy new year.  Last year was a very eventful year in Canadian politics, so here’s a bit of recap before we take a look at the coming year in next week’s edition. At the start of 2012 the New Democratic Party found itself in the middle of a leadership campaign following the death of former Leader Jack Layton.  All told, nine candidates vied for the leadership of the Official Opposition in a thoroughly fair, respectful, and enlightening campaign.  After many debates, meetings, and more than 65,000 votes cast Thomas Mulcair was elected as the seventh Leader of Canada’s New Democrats. I think we made an excellent choice and Tom has done some outstanding work holding the Harper Government to account while preparing our caucus to govern in 2015 should you give us with that responsibility.  Unfortunately, Tom did not have much time to settle into the job as the Harper Conservatives continued their radical re-organization of Canadian society behind the guise of more ‘Omnibus’ legislation.  Striking down or altering dozens of laws that took decades to enact seems to be the sole agenda of this Conservative government.  It’s sad really that so much historical progress is being treated as nothing more than a nuisance to them in their first, and hopefully only, majority government. Under Tom’s leadership New Democrats lined up to oppose the 445-page Bill C-45, which negated or altered more than 60 separate pieces of existing legislation.   Despite coming off a long leadership campaign Tom’s team kept their energy up and proposed some straightforward ideas as to how parliament could pass the less contentious portions of C-45 while leaving time to debate the more controversial sections; such as Canada’s withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol and the removal of federal environmental protections for more than 2.5 million streams, lakes, and rivers that had been protected for more than 100 years under the Navigable Waters Protection Act.  Our proposals were well thought and very reasonable which is of course precisely why there were rejected by the Harper Conservatives who are doing their best to undermine 100 years of responsible government as quickly as possible. Another defining issue of 2012 is the continuing fiscal uncertainty that plagues governments of all levels in Canada and abroad.  With two sets of risks, those coming from abroad and those ‘Made in Canada,’ it was no doubt a difficult year for Finance Minister Jim Flaherty who ran his fifth consecutive budget deficit which came in at $26.2 billion for the 2011-12 fiscal year, or a cool $75 million per day.  Risks from abroad included depression and recession in many EU countries and the ‘fiscal cliff’ issue in the United States.  Domestically, the average debt of Canadian families came in at an all-time high of more than 165 per cent of yearly income and the housing market began to unwind a bit as prices stagnated or declined in most major markets during the last quarter of the year.  As a result, Canada’s economy stagnated in the final six months of the year. As 2012 came to a close unrest began to grow in many quarters of Canadian society and among First Nations the ‘Idle No More’ movement took hold.  The tipping point for many First Nation leaders and Chiefs came with the introduction of the omnibus Bill C-45 which, as mentioned earlier, eliminated federal environmental protections on literally millions of waterways including many traditional fishing grounds and bodies that run through or are located near reserve lands throughout Canada.  Faced with a clear and present threat to their traditional way of life and virtual negation of their Constitutional and treaty rights, Canada’s First People rose up in protest throughout Canada.  As 2012 came to a close, Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence began and continued a hunger strike on a small island in the Ottawa River behind parliament to draw more attention to the issues facing her people. These are just some of the more memorable developments in federal politics in 2012.  Each was quite significant and I expect they will continue to have a dramatic impact on our lives in 2013 as well.  Time will tell for sure, but next week we’ll look at some of the opportunities and challenges we face as a nation in the coming year.  Until then, have a great week. Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:46:13 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/258089/From-The-House/A-look-back-at-2012 http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/245845/From-The-House/Remember-the-sacrifices   I hope you will join me this Nov. 11 again to remember the sacrifices of the men and women of our armed forces, past and present, who have served in defence of our country.  If you see a Veteran or active personnel member please take a moment to thank them for their service and sacrifice. I hope that your household received our annual Remembrance Day mailing sometime in the last week or so.  I send this out each year with the words of Veterans attached to remind us of the ordeals they faced on our behalf.    I also include a copy of the poem In Flanders Fields, which was written by the great Canadian and Lt. Col. John McCrae on May 13, 1915. Unfortunately, some of the mailings this year contained a typo.  At the end of his poem on some versions, Lt. Col. McCrae’s rank is listed as ‘Cpl,’ which is short for Corporal.  Corporal is a lower rank that McCrae had achieved in his remarkable career, and although this was unintentional it does conflict with the idea or remembering the sacrifices of our Veterans.  So in honour of Lt. Col. McCrae I would like to use the rest of this space to bring to light some of the history behind his famous poem In Flanders Fields courtesy of Veterans Affairs Canada.  --- In Flanders Fields      On August 4, 1914, Britain declared war on Germany. Canada, as a member of the British Empire, was automatically at war, and its citizens from all across the land responded quickly. Within three weeks, 45,000 Canadians had rushed to join up. John McCrae was among them. He was appointed brigade-surgeon to the First Brigade of the Canadian Field Artillery with the rank of Major and second-in-command.      Just before his departure, he wrote to a friend: It is a terrible state of affairs, and I am going because I think every bachelor, especially if he has experience of war, ought to go. I am really rather afraid, but more afraid to stay at home with my conscience. (Prescott. In Flanders Fields: The Story of John McCrae, p. 77)      He took with him a horse named Bonfire, a gift from a friend. Later, John McCrae sent his young nieces and nephews letters supposedly written by Bonfire and signed with a hoof print. In April 1915, John McCrae was in the trenches near Ypres, Belgium, in the area traditionally called Flanders. Some of the heaviest fighting of the First World War took place there during that was known as the Second Battle of Ypres.      On April 22, the Germans used deadly chlorine gas against Allied troops in a desperate attempt to break the stalemate. Despite the debilitating effects of the gas, Canadian soldiers fought relentlessly and held the line for another 16 days.      In the trenches, John McCrae tended hundreds of wounded soldiers every day. He was surrounded by the dead and the dying. In a letter to his mother, he wrote of the Battle of Ypres.      The general impression in my mind is of a nightmare. We have been in the most bitter of fights. For seventeen days and seventeen nights none of us have had our clothes off, nor our boots even, except occasionally. In all that time while I was awake, gunfire and rifle fire never ceased for sixty seconds ..... And behind it all was the constant background of the sights of the dead, the wounded, the maimed, and a terrible anxiety lest the line should give way. (Prescott. In Flanders Fields: The Story of John McCrae, p. 98)      The day before he wrote his famous poem, one of McCrae's closest friends was killed in the fighting and buried in a makeshift grave with a simple wooden cross. Wild poppies were already beginning to bloom between the crosses marking the many graves. Unable to help his friend or any of the others who had died, John McCrae gave them a voice through his poem. It was the second last poem he was to write. http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/history/firstwar/mccrae/flanders --- Thank you again to our Veterans, active personnel, and their families for your sacrifices.  Thank you as well to Veterans Affairs Canada for preserving Lt. Col. McCrae’s story and our military history and for making it available to the public.   Lest we forget.   Mon, 05 Nov 2012 16:50:12 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/245845/From-The-House/Remember-the-sacrifices http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/243598/From-The-House/Another-'Frankenbill'-tabled It’s been about a week since the Harper Conservatives tabled their second 477-plus page omnibus budget bill, and we are just now starting to learn a bit about what is in this monstrous piece of legislation. The Harper Government has taken to concocting these enormous bills that deal with a wide range of unrelated federal issues and forcing parliament to examine, review, and vote on the proposals in a very short time frame.  I tend to refer these monstrous budget bills as ‘Frankenbills,’ as each could – and should – be broken down into several smaller bills, as they used to be.   Unfortunately, the Harper Conservatives have decided that the concept of ‘responsible government,’ a governing principle in Canada since our founding, must take a back seat to their own partisan interests and these Frankenbills are the perfect example of their contempt for democracy, transparency, and the public interest.   In their first Frankenbill tabled his past summer, Bill C-38, the Harper Conservatives made draconian cuts to our Old Age Security (OAS) program that will “save” the government $10 billion a year by 2020 because every Canadian under the age of 54 will have to work two years longer before receiving their retirement benefit.  C-38 also included several other significant provisions such as practically eliminating environmental oversight of infrastructure projects, reduced the budget and staffing at the Canadian Food Inspection by 5 per cent each, and extended several worthwhile tax breaks and exemptions for people who are struggling. When New Democrats voted against C-38 because of the massive pension cuts Harper’s gang went to great lengths in the media to claim that by voting against C-38 New Democrats were necessarily opposed the extension of the $1000 hiring credit for small businesses to encourage employment growth in Canada which was also in C-38.  The truth is that New Democrats fully support the hiring credit.  In fact, it was Jack Layton’s first campaign announcement in the 2011 election, but our caucus voted against C-38 because it would also cut the pension of every Canadian under the age of 54.  But that is how the Harper Conservative government chooses to operate.   And this brings us to the new Frankenbill before parliament.  So what is there to know about Bill C-45?  To begin with, it is 477 pages long, it changes or amends 64 different acts of parliament or regulations, and is scheduled to be debated and passed into law before December.   It’s impossible to say for sure, but if one were to have filed enough Private Members’ Bills to enact all of the changes in this one bill, then it would likely take at least 64 separate bills and require more than a year of debate. New Democrats, while needing much more time to debate the merits and shortcomings of C-45, have already proposed some changes.  Our  proposed changes would not delay the parts of C-45 that we oppose but fast-track those elements that we support.  Last week New Democrat Leader Tom Mulcair tabled a motion in the House of Commons that called for the immediate passage of more than 200 separate clauses in C-45 that our caucus will support without debate.  If adopted, our motion would allow for quick passage of the ‘good’ parts of the budget bill which nearly all parties and MPs would support and allow us some extra, though still not enough, time to debate the more contentious clauses of Bill C-45.  We think this is a more responsible way to deal with the issues contained in C-45. We’ll see what the Harper Conservatives’ say and do about Tom’s proposal, but I can tell you that these Conservative Frankenbills are an affront to both democracy and good government.  What I can tell you is that this experience will not be lost on New Democrats as we continue our work to restore your confidence in your elected officials and the democratic process. Fri, 26 Oct 2012 17:14:55 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/243598/From-The-House/Another-'Frankenbill'-tabled http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/239062/From-The-House/Taking-a-look-at-the-recall The largest recall of beef in Canadian history is underway and expanding.   At the time of writing this column no one, including Gerry Ritz the Harper Government’s Minister for Agriculture, knows when it will end, how many more products will be added, and when the actual problem will even be identified at the processing plant in question.  I think it’s prudent at this point to take a look at what has happened and what we know at this point. For those who may not know, the largest recall of beef products in Canadian history is currently under way due to the presence of E .coli bacteria being found in meat products that were processed at XL Foods in Alberta between Aug. 24 and Sept. 5.  The first flag in this outbreak came, not from Canadian officials, but American Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) staff who inspected the meat on September 4th as it crossed the border.  The next day an investigation was launched by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) which confirmed the presence of E. coli in some lots of beef products. Despite initial assurances from the CFIA and the Minister of Agriculture that no tainted meat reached Canadian store shelves, we know this is not the case and since their initial statements the crisis has intensified.  The Ministry of Health for Alberta notified the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) on Sept. 18 that 5 new cases of E. coli infection were discovered in that province, with four of the cases being linked to tainted meat purchased in an Edmonton Costco store.   The province of Saskatchewan is also investing 13 cases of E. coli poisoning that they suspect is linked to the XL plant at the centre of the crisis.  On Sept. 27, almost a full month after the original date of production for suspect products, the CFIA finally suspended XL Foods license until the source of the contamination could be identified and resolved.  The beef recall has so far been expanded seven times and may expand further as this particular XL Foods slaughterhouse is the second largest in Canada employing more than 2,200 people and processing up to 4,300 head of cattle a day. Since the source of the E. coli outbreak has not been found as of the writing of this column it is impossible to say what the immediate cause was and who should be held accountable if anyone.  However, we do know that the Harper Government has a checkered past, to be kind, when it comes to food safety.  The Listeriosis outbreak of 2008, which resulted in 57 confirmed cases and 23 deaths, also happened under the Harper Government’s watch.  At that time, Conservative Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz joked about the incident being a “death by a thousand cold cuts” for his government, but nonetheless pledged to toughen inspection measures.  We also must not forget that many of the Ministers sitting in Mr. Harper’s government were also Ministers in the Progressive Conservative government in Ontario during the Walkerton tragedy when 7 people lost their lives and 2,100 became ill during an E. coli contamination in that community. Taking the above information into consideration, we could be seeing the continuation of a dangerous pattern – Conservative government cuts to food and water inspectors followed by public outbreaks – but it’s simply too early to tell.  What we do know is that in the last federal budget, the 426-page ‘omnibus’ bill, the CFIA which is in charge of keeping our food supply safe is set to lose $46.6 million in funding, including $20 million directly from the ‘Food Safety Program’ envelope.  We also know that to reduce their operating budget in line with the Harper Government’s demands, that this vital agency has a strategic plan to cut 315 jobs in the next three years, including veterinarians and inspectors, which is approximately five percent of all staff.  Even before this latest outbreak, New Democrats believed that it was incredibly reckless and irresponsible for the Harper Government to cut millions from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Food Safety Program while blowing $27 billion on just 65 fighter planes that are unable to fly in the arctic and which are 300% over budget before receiving a single plane. I would like to urge readers who enjoy meat and may have purchased some in the last 45 days to check their freezer and to consult the health warning issued by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to see if their product is on the recall notice. I’ve used a special website to shorten the name of the web address, but the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) website has a master list of products that have been recalled by store can be found at: http://www.tinyurl.com/recallbystore .  Several local grocers and outlets are listed, so please do take a moment to consult this list and check your labels.    In the meantime, New Democrats will continue to demand answers from the government and ensure that someone is held accountable for this entirely preventable public health crisis. We also must not forget that many of the Ministers sitting in Mr. Harper’s government were also Ministers in the Progressive Conservative government in Ontario during the Walkerton tragedy when 7 people lost their lives and 2,100 became ill during an E. coli contamination in that community. Fri, 05 Oct 2012 11:11:22 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/239062/From-The-House/Taking-a-look-at-the-recall http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/238683/From-The-House/Electoral-district-shuffle This week I would like to share my submission to Federal Electoral Boundary Commission for Ontario regarding their redistribution proposal between Thunder Bay – Rainy River and Kenora. For those who have not heard, the Commission has made a proposal as follows: “The Commission proposes that the electoral district of Thunder Bay—Rainy River be comprised of the current electoral district, less the Township of Lake of the Woods, which has been added to the proposed electoral district of Kenora.”   I am opposed to these changes, and for those who are interested my reasons are outlined below. For more information on the process and proposed changes, please visit the Commission’s website at: http://www.redecoupage-federal-redistribution.ca/ --- Greetings. Please consider this message as a written request to address the Ontario Electoral Boundary Committee on October 10, 2012 regarding the proposed the changes to the boundary changes between the ridings of Thunder Bay – Rainy River and Kenora.  I wish to speak on behalf of the affected constituents in Thunder Bay – Rainy River whom the commission has proposed moving into the Kenora riding.  While conceding that the Commission’s rationale for this particular proposal, namely that the “community of interest is more closely tied to Kenora than to Thunder Bay,” is on its face true there are also other considerations that I believe should take precedence over this consideration.  One specific concern that I have is the reduced accessibility that the affected constituents will have to their Member of Parliament and his/her constituency services should the proposed changes be implemented.  This concern is the result of the increased travel that will be required by the affected constituents in order to receive the same level of in-person services from their new Member of Parliament.   Presently, an average affected constituent (say from Bergland Ontario) must travel approximately 107 kilometres (214 kilometres return trip) to receive in-person service in my Fort Frances office.   However, under the proposed boundary changes these same constituents will be required to travel 206 kilometres (412kilometres return trip) in order to receive the same service from their new Member of Parliament whose constituency office is located in Kenora.  What is currently an inconvenient 3 hour and 20 minute return trip by car will turn into a very long and impractical 6 hour and 45 minute day trip, which in some cases may require overnight accommodations in order to receive the same level of in-person service in their new constituency as in their current constituency.  The distance is even greater for constituents living in Morson and Big Grassy First Nation, and in other proposed areas.  For your information I have attached two maps, one for each return trip from Bergland as described above. While realizing that many constituents in ridings throughout Canada, and in the Kenora riding in particular, have much farther to travel to receive the same level of service from their federal representative, whenever such travel is even an option, I nonetheless oppose the proposed boundary changes between the Thunder Bay – Rainy and Kenora ridings because of the significant degradation in the accessibility to the services that could be provided by their proposed Member of Parliament should this proposal become a reality. Another factor that I would urge the Commission to take into consideration is rooted in the rationale for the proposed boundary change in this particular instance.  In as much that the Commission concluded that the proposed changes would be in the interest of the affected constituents because “their community of interest is more closely tied to Kenora than to Thunder Bay,” it must also be said that the affected constituents in fact hold a stronger tie to the Rainy River District than either Thunder Bar and Kenora.   This assertion is supported by the fact that the Rainy River District (including Fort Frances, Atikokan, and Lake of the Woods Township, and all affected areas) are presently part of the same Census Division, the Rainy River District, while Kenora and Thunder Bay are part their own separate divisions.  Given the very close geographic presence of the affected constituents to the Rainy River District, they are more likely to have shared culture, traditions, and common interests with the residents of the towns of Fort Frances and Rainy River, and townships of Atikokan, Morley, Chapple, and Emo than with the people of Kenora or Thunder Bay.  I would like to also take this opportunity to inform the Commission that I have spoken personally to my elected colleague and neighbour, the Member of Parliament for Kenora, and we are in agreement that the current boundaries should not be changed in order to ensure that the affected constituents have enjoy the greatest accessibility and receive the highest level of service as possible from their federally elected representative. In closing, I would like to thank the Commission for their work and welcome the opportunity to discuss this issue in person with the Commission in Thunder Bay on October 10th, 2012.     Sincerely, John Rafferty, MP. Wed, 03 Oct 2012 10:42:04 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/238683/From-The-House/Electoral-district-shuffle http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/235539/From-The-House/A-busy-week This week there were some rather important developments for many constituents in our riding.  The City of Thunder Bay has announced information sessions for flood disaster relief for affected citizens, and the Electoral Boundaries Commission has announced changes to our riding that could affect the services people receive in the west end of our riding around Lake of the Woods. Let’s begin with the information session in Thunder Bay since it is more time sensitive than the changes to our electoral boundaries.  The Thunder Bay Area Disaster Relief Fund for the City of Thunder Bay has organized several community clinics to assist residents of Thunder Bay, Oliver Paipoonge, and Conmee who were affected by the flooding of May 28.   The clinics are intended to help residents complete their applications for the Ontario Disaster Assistance Program and are scheduled for Tuesday nights from 6 to 8 p.m. for the months of September and October.  Below you will find the dates and locations of all future clinics. September 18 – Oliver Paipoonge Township Office Hall. September 25 – Minnesota Park, 820 Minnesota St. October 2 – Slovak Legion, 801 Atlantic Avenue. October 9 – Moose Hall, 434 Fort William Road. October 16 – Grandview Lodge Auditorium, 200 Lillie St. N. October 23 – Minnesota Park, 820 Minnesota St. October 30 – Slovak Legion, 801 Atlantic Avenue. If you plan on attending one of the clinics, the city has asked that you bring identification showing your address at the time of the flood as well as all supporting documentation required to be submitted with your claim - specifically any receipts, invoices, estimates, pictures etc.  Please contact Kari Chiappetta, the Disaster Relief Program Manager for Thunder Bay with questions or concerns about the application process.  She can be reached at (807) 625-2607 or kchiappetta@thunderbay.ca.  The other key development as it pertains to quality of public services received by constituents comes in the form of the new proposed boundary changes to tour riding.    The proposed changes, part of the ongoing federal electoral redistribution process, would see the following communities move from the Thunder Bay – Rainy River riding to the Kenora riding; Lake of the Woods Township (including Morson and Bergland), Big Grassy First Nation, Big Island First Nation, Saug-a-Gaw-Sing First Nation, and Sabaskong Bay First Nation.  While I do not personally oppose the idea of change, though I would be sad to lose these communities that I love to visit, my concern first and foremost is for the people who live in these communities.  If one consults the ever useful Google Maps they would find that it is approximately 127km (254km return) from Morson to my Fort Frances constituency office, or about three hours return if someone needs someone needs help with a CPP, disability, or other issue.  However, the trip to Kenora is a full 261km (521km return) to receive the same services from their new Member’s office in Kenora.  At this point, the boundary changes are merely proposed and there are public hearings scheduled in the area to hear from those who are affected.  The closest meeting to those who would be affected by these changes in our riding is in Kenora on Thursday October 6th at the Best Western Lakeside Inn (401 1st Ave. S. The unfortunate part of the hearing process is that anyone from the affected communities will have to make the 521km return trip to Kenora to have your voice heard.  If you wish to make a presentation at a hearing or submit a comment, you should inform the commission in writing as soon as possible but no later than October 1, 2012. Your written notice can be sent to the Commission Secretary at ontario@rfed-rcf.ca, or you can fill out a comment form online at: http://www.redecoupage-federal-redistribution.ca. Notice of presentation should include: - your name, address and contact information - the organization you represent (if any) - the date of the public hearing that you wish to attend - a short overview of the issues you intend to address - your official language of preference, and - any accommodation needs you may have I plan to attend these meetings and plan to voice my opposition to the proposed changes on the grounds that the current constituents of our riding who will become part of the Kenora riding will have severely degraded services and less accessibility to their Member of Parliament due to the location of their new MPs office.  Please do take the time to attend one of the ODRAP clinics in and around Thunder Bay if you require any assistance in completing your application, and the Kenora meeting on the new electoral boundaries if you are able to.   Fri, 14 Sep 2012 12:30:44 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/235539/From-The-House/A-busy-week http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/228623/From-The-House/Bad-news-for-Canada’s-economy Bad news for Canada’s economy This week Canada received some more bad news on the economic front with a significant number of job losses in July.   In the month of July the Canadian economy shed 30,000 jobs and the unemployment rate edged up to 7.3 per cent, which is the same level that it was at a year ago.  Economists were expecting a gain of about 6,000 jobs for the month and for the unemployment to remain steady.  The main industries suffering job losses in July were as follows; Wholesale and Retail Trade (-30,000), Professional, Scientific and Technical Services (-22,000), Public Administration (-17,000), and Natural Resources (-8,900).  Job gains occurred in the following sectors; Information, Culture, and Recreation (24,000), Finance, Insurance, Real Estate, and Leasing (19,000).  In Ontario, the job market remained stable, but the unemployment rate rose two-tenths to 7.9 per cent as more people began looking for work. It is never good practice to look at one or even a few month’s worth of data to draw concrete conclusions about the future.  It’s absolutely true that we must take a wider view of the world we live in over time so that we can develop a strategy or plan to help struggling Canadian industries and families cope during difficult times and to position themselves for the future.  However, monthly reports can serve as an indicator, and this month’s report is a big ‘red flag’ that something could be going wrong here. Canada is a trading country and the health of our export markets are quickly deteriorating.  Europe, China, and to a lesser degree the United States are all struggling to maintain growth.  Britain, Italy, Greece, and France have all entered the second half of a double-dip recession.  China is not immune either as their industrial production has been slowing dramatically.  The United States may actually be considered a bright spot in the global economy with economic growth and job growth outpacing Canada’s over the last year.  Challenges remain in the United States though as we’ve seen with yet another banking scandal at J.P. Morgan and continued weakness in the housing market. So where does this leave Canada moving forward?  It’s a fair question, but one that no one has the answer to at the moment.  However, I am certain that our prospects are somewhat dimmer than the official Harper Government line that our economy is “an island of stability in a troubled global economy.”  Remember, this is the same Conservative government that issued an ‘Economic Update’ to parliament in December 2008 that said Canada would never enter a recession or run a deficit under Stephen Harper’s leadership.  Unfortunately, at the time of that update Canada was already in recession and the Harper Government has gone on to record the four largest deficits in Canadian history. With the unemployment rate at the same level as twelve months ago it is clear that we need stronger job creation in order to keep wages rising, help us pay off our consumer debt, and to support our housing market.  We also must also prepare for the global economic downturn by not just helping businesses, but also families and local governments prepare for what could be another difficult few years.  Unfortunately, the Conservatives have already dropped the ball on one major policy issue. The decision by the Harper Government to make Employment Insurance (EI) benefits harder to obtain for displaced workers while the economy is losing jobs could backfire on us badly.  EI helps people looking for work, but also supports local economies when large local employers close or lay off some workers.  It also keeps those workers from seeking other forms of social assistance (i.e.: welfare, subsidized housing) that are provided by local and provincial governments which are heavily in debt.  Add the Harper’s government’s silence on the decline of the manufacturing and forestry sectors and recent severe agricultural difficulties caused by a long drought, and we could soon find ourselves with a ‘Made-In-Canada’ economic mess courtesy of the Harper Conservatives. This month’s bad jobs report is not the end of the world, but it should serve as a loud wake-up call for the Harper Conservatives.  New Democrats will be watching the Conservative government closely as we enter a new period of uncertainty, and we will hold them to account for their mistakes that hurt Canadian families.  In the meantime, let’s hope that next month’s job numbers are better.   Mon, 13 Aug 2012 10:58:54 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/228623/From-The-House/Bad-news-for-Canada’s-economy http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/225800/From-The-House/Things-You-May-Not-Know It may be quiet in Ottawa, but our crack New Democrat researchers have been hard at work.  While they are uncovering some information about key government programs, they have also put together some interesting facts about the outcome of the last federal election and the current parliament. Many critics believe that the introduction of televised House proceedings in 1977 had a negative impact on the conduct of Members during Question Period. In the 40th Parliament (Oct 2008 – March 2011), the conduct of Members (New Democrats included of course) reached an all-time low during Question Period as heckling and other disruptive behaviour became so bad that the Speaker routinely had to cut the last few questions off the list in order to conclude QP in the allotted 45-minutes.  When New Democrats became the Official Opposition in May 2011 we made a serious commitment to restoring decorum in the House. While some elements of the House continue the bad habits of old, the professionalism of most MPs in QP has improved dramatically in this parliament. In fact, since the beginning of the 41st parliament, the Speaker has virtually never had to cut questions from his QP list to finish in the allotted time. The dramatic results of the 2011 general election that established the current parliament broke some long standing records. It obviously changed our party by thrusting us into the role of Official Opposition for the first time, but it also changed the face of the House of Commons, making it more representative of Canada’s population than ever before.  Following the 2011 federal election, the number of women Members of Parliament reached an all-time high.  The 41st Parliament includes the largest percentage of women in Canadian history and exactly 24.6% of MPs in the House are women. New Democrats also broke the previous high-water marks for the most women elected by one party in a single election (40) and the most female candidates (124).  We still have a way to go, but progress was certainly made on this front in 2011. The 41st Parliament also benefits from the enthusiasm and energy of youthful MPs and records were broken in this area as well.  New Democrat Pierre-Luc Dusseault, elected in the riding of Sherbrooke at age 19, is the youngest MP ever elected to the House of Commons. He has shown that age is no barrier to success with his confident Chairing of the Ethics committee.  There was also a record number of MPs who were aged 30 and under on Election Day (5.8%).  Young people across Canada seem to be awakening to the fact that this country and the future is theirs. Another major first for New Democrats came early on in this Parliament. Because we now have a number of MPs serving as committee chairs, New Democrats have been called to answer questions in Question Period for the first time in our history.  Jean Crowder (Nanaimo Cowichen) had the honour of being the first New Democrat to rise in response to a question on November 2, 2011 about the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, which she chaired at the time.  Two other NDP MPs have since answered questions in the House of Commons: David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre) rose on May 29, 2012 and Pierre-Luc Dusseault (Sherbrooke) rose on June 21, 2012. The current Conservative government has also set a record, but one of a different sort. The Conservative Cabinet, elected largely on a commitment to “Change Ottawa,” has 39 members which equals the record for the largest Cabinet in Canadian history. Since 1867, the average Cabinet has had just 23 members.  I’m not sure if the Harper Conservatives are proud of that record, but I know my New Democrat colleagues are sure proud of ours. Thu, 02 Aug 2012 09:29:00 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/225800/From-The-House/Things-You-May-Not-Know http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/223548/From-The-House/Talking-about-cuts- This week I would like to offer an update on some more unpopular and unannounced federal cuts, and some great local events that I hope to attend across our riding our summer. The cuts keep on coming from the federal government, and it would appear that the reason we are not hearing announcements about them is because they are poorly thought out, unpopular, and strike at the heart of many essential services that we Canadians depend on. This past week for instance we learned of cuts to the Ministry of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, and specifically to the Joint Emergency Preparedness Program and the Police Officers Recruitment Fund.  The Joint Emergency Preparedness Program (JEPP) was established in October 1980 to “enhance the national capacity to respond to all types of emergencies and to enhance the resiliency of critical infrastructure.”  The JEPP contributes $6.5 million annually to support emergency services across Canada, including the country’s five Heavy Urban Search and Rescue (HUSAR) teams devoted to helping with disaster recovery efforts.  Most recently, the Toronto based HUSAR unit was deployed to Elliot Lake to help with the recovery efforts at the site of that community’s tragic mall collapse.  Unfortunately, as of 2013 though the JEPP will no longer exist and all funding for urban disaster relief will officially be the responsibility of cash strapped provinces and municipalities.  With more disasters than ever occurring across the country – from wildfires to flooding to major infrastructure failures – one would think that the federal government would have a larger role to play in recovery efforts, not a smaller one.  This past week we also learned of the elimination of the Police Officers Recruitment Fund which was a major federal program designed to help municipalities and provinces recruit police officers.  In a backgrounder on the program, Public Safety Canada and Emergency Preparedness Canada offers the following rationale; “The purpose of the Fund is to support the efforts of provinces and territories in recruiting additional front-line police officers nationwide who can target local crimes and make communities safer.”  Taking this information into account then, the cancellation of this important fund must therefore mean that the Harper Conservatives have made a conscious decision to eliminate their “support the efforts of front-line police officers nationwide in their work to target local crimes and make our communities safer.“   Seems like a strange decision for a Conservative Party that claims to be the most committed to upholding ‘law and order’ wouldn’t you say? While monitoring and opposing these reckless cuts and others has been added to my ‘to-do list’ for the fall session, I am happy to be able spend some quality time in our riding where there are a lot of great events that I hope to attend over the rest of the summer.  These are but only a few of the many great local events in my calendar, so I apologize in advance for any that I have missed: • Fort Frances Canadian Bass Championship (www.canadianbass.com), July 26 – 28, 2012. • Rainy River Valley Agricultural Fall Fair (www.emofair.com), August 16 -18, 2012. • Westfort Street Fair (http://my.tbaytel.net/westfortvillage/events.html), August 25, 2012. • Morson International Bass Tournament (http://morsonbass.com), August 25 - 26, 2012. • 100th Annual Hymers Fall Fair (www.hymersfair.com), September 2 – 3, 2012. • Slate River Plowing Match (www.slateriverplowingmatch.ca), September 9 – 10, 2012. If you have any local events that you would like to have mentioned in my columns or would like me attend over the summer, then please forward all relevant information to my office by email to (john.rafferty@parl.gc.ca) or call my office toll-free at 1-800-667-6186. Thanks again for reading and have a great week! For information on the Joint Emergency Preparedness Program, please visit: http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/prg/em/jepp/index-eng.aspx For more information on the Police Officers Recruitment Fund, please visit:  http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/media/nr/2008/nr20080314-2-eng.aspx Mon, 23 Jul 2012 12:23:26 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/223548/From-The-House/Talking-about-cuts- http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/219969/From-The-House/Forestry-jobs-down-for-sixth-straight-year This week I would like to offer up an update on the forestry industry in Canada and Ontario.  Unfortunately, new data shows that in 2011 employment in the forestry sector in both jurisdictions declined for the sixth consecutive year under the “leadership” of the Harper government.  According to Natural Resources Canada , the number of people employed in the forestry sector in Canada has declined each year from 2005 to 2011.  In 2005, 339,600 Canadians were directly employed in the forestry sector, but last year the number was just 233,900, which was down 5000 positions from 2010.  In Ontario, the number of people directly employed in the forestry sector was 84,500 in 2005, but just 53,500 in 2011, which is 3,500 fewer than in 2010.  The worst part is that these losses have occurred almost exclusively in the small 200 forestry dependent communities scattered through northern and rural Canada, and the figures only account for ‘direct’ job losses in the sector (ie: mill workers), excluding ‘secondary’ employment (ie: shippers, suppliers) and ‘tertiary’ spin-off jobs (ie: local restaurants). So what is causing all these job losses?  Some say it is because the ushering in of the digital age has meant a decline for pulp and paper products such as fine paper and newsprint. A decline in the housing market in the United States has also been cited by some as a potential reason for the decrease in demand for wood products that are used as building components (ie: studs, OSB, fibreboard).  These could best be described as ‘organic’ or ‘natural’ risks unique to the forestry sector and certainly contribute to the problem, but are there other types of challenges? The answer is ‘yes.’ The other challenges to faced by the forestry sector are either entirely preventable or can be dealt with by a government that chooses to support the forestry sector as it does for others such as the oil and gas and banking industries.  The two biggest and well documented ‘artificial’ problems faced by the Canadian forestry sector are unfair subsidies being dished out in foreign markets, and a soaring Canadian dollar fuelled by currency traders and an oil and gas boom.  I call them artificial because they are essentially ‘man-made’ problems and not what one would call part of the natural economic cycle.  On the first artificial problem, that of foreign subsidies to competing interests, the most infamous was the Black Liquor subsidy in the United States.  By the end of that program in 2009, the US government under George W. Bush had given more than $9 billion in cash directly to pulp and paper producers who then used this added “flexibility” to undercut Canadian producers on the open market by nearly 25 percent. On the second artificial problem, the high Canadian dollar, the problem has been identified by economists as the ‘Dutch Disease,’ which is a rapid appreciation of a national currency (our Dollar) due to intensive oil and gas production, which makes it more difficult to sell products abroad and results in a decline in other export sectors (manufacturing and forestry in this case).  A slew of studies, including a massive $250,000 report commissioned by Industry Canada, has found that the Canadian Dollar is overvalued by as much 25 percent because of this phenomenon which has directly resulted in tens of thousands job losses in the manufacturing and forestry sectors over the past six years.  Even Avrim Lazar, the head of the pro-business Forestry Products Association of Canada (FPAC), has said; “the obvious signs of Dutch disease have been in place in Canada for some time.”  What does all this mean?  Well, when one combines the effect of the US subsidies and inflated dollar it can be argued that Canadian pulp and paper producers have potentially been operating at a 50 per cent price disadvantage to their US competitors over the last six years – and during a time of sagging demand for their products to boot.   Other forestry product companies are operating at just a 25 percent disadvantage, but how can anyone sell a product that is 25 to 50 per cent more expensive than the identical product being sold next door?  They can’t obviously. With 106,000 forestry job losses across Canada and 31,000 in Ontario since the Harper Government came to power it is clear that a new approach is needed.  Unfortunately, the Harper Government is proving itself to be a ‘do-nothing’ government that has been a disaster for many parts of the economy, but forestry is right at the top.  Hopefully in 2015 my New Democrat colleagues and I will be able to implement a real federal forestry plan, one that addresses both natural and artificial threats, in order to save and create jobs in forestry dependent communities throughout Canada. Fri, 06 Jul 2012 13:50:33 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/219969/From-The-House/Forestry-jobs-down-for-sixth-straight-year http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/215326/From-The-House/Progress-being-made-in-flood-aftermath Progress being made in flood aftermath This past week saw important developments in both the riding and Ottawa.  Week 2 of the flooding crisis in and around Thunder Bay saw some progress on repairing the damage to public property, but less so on the private property side.  I spent the better part of Monday touring in and around the City of Thunder Bay, Oliver Paipoonge, Conmee, and Neebing.  Good progress has been made on repairing many damaged roadways, but clearly the sewer and drainage systems require further attention in some areas.  The private property of residents though is clearly another story.  Many homes are still waiting to be drained or remediated and the monetary damage is quickly adding up to families.  This is of course on top of the emotional damage which is also increasing despite the hard work of volunteers and neighbours.  Thankfully, the City of Thunder Bay and the Province of Ontario have now declared the area a disaster zone, which is crucial since financial aid can now begin to flow.  Should the provincial government begin gathering estimates and should it exceed $13 million, which it most clearly will, then federal assistance can be sought.  I have also urged the various townships and road boards in surrounding areas to include their damage with the City of Thunder Bay as one related weather event so that they can get access to federal funds. Following some extra days in the riding I headed back to Ottawa.  The recent announcement of the end of federal funding for the Experimental Lakes Area, and more word that the Harper Government has been wasting more of our money on needless travel expenses were on the agenda when I arrived. The cuts, except to the travel budgets of Ministers (more on that in a minute), keep coming from the Harper government and they are starting to put our future health at risk.  Take the funding cut to the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) near Kenora.  The ELA is a unique and internationally acclaimed freshwater research area that has made groundbreaking discoveries which reduced acid rain and mercury contamination from coal fire plant emissions, and lead to the banning of phosphorous in detergents among other findings.  The ELA has had a direct positive impact on our regional and national economy, environment, and the health and well-being of families, all of which made it a perfect target for the Harper Government’s spending cuts.  New Democrats, scientists from around the world, and citizens living in rural Northwestern Ontario have begun to fight the $2 million funding cut and impending closure of the ELA next year.  If you would like to lend your voice to our growing movement, then please visit www.saveela.org for more information. The other budget related news that greeted my arrival in the Capital this week was the disclosure of more abuses of taxpayer dollars by Ministers in the Harper Government.  A recent Access to Information request showed that International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda, the Conservative with a penchant for  five-star hotels and $16 glasses of orange juice, has been altering the financial information on file for several of her recent foreign trips.  If we give Ms. Oda the benefit of the doubt, then it would seem that the best case scenario was that she was paying taxpayers back for more questionable expenses, but then of course she would have had to misspend our money in the first place to be able to do so.  Unfortunately, Ms. Oda is not alone when it comes to such abuses.  In Davos Switzerland last year at the World Economic Forum meeting Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, then Industry Minister Tony Clement, then Trade Minister Peter Van Loan, and Prime Minister Harper racked up a $23,000 bill for limousines at the four day meeting.  The only problem is that the meeting was held in a small ski village in the Alps where one could easily walk between meetings.   The $23,000 limo expense seems to have been well wasted since the combined cost of gas for the four limousines, over four days, and including trips to and from the airport and idling time, came to just $123.50. Moving forward, I will be keeping an eye on the flood situation at home to make sure that when the call for federal assistance comes that the money soon follows.  I will also keep working in Ottawa to make sure that our health and well-being are not being put at risk by senseless budget cuts at home while the Harper Government jet-sets around the world blowing our money on five-star hotels and limos.   Fri, 15 Jun 2012 13:56:40 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/215326/From-The-House/Progress-being-made-in-flood-aftermath http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/211419/From-The-House/Talking-about-the-‘Dutch-disease’ New Democrats have never been shy about taking on difficult issues.   It would often be easier to deny that there was a problem and just carry on as is it didn’t exist, but we don’t.  Thus, given recent economic developments in our riding, region, and country though I think it’s time we talked about what is known in economic circles as the ‘Dutch disease’ and how it is affecting our standard of living. Technically speaking, Dutch disease is an economic term used to describe a reduction in a country’s export performance of manufactured goods as a result of an appreciation of the exchange rate following the discovery and exploitation of natural resource deposits (ie: natural gas, gold, oil, etc.).  Put differently, Dutch disease is a description of a series of related economic events that begins with the rise of a natural resource sector, continues with a rise in the value of a currency, and ends with the significant destabilization or decline of the manufacturing sector in a particular economy.  The term ‘Dutch disease’ was first used in an article in The Economist magazine in 1977 that chronicled the discovery and exploitation of natural gas in the Netherlands in 1959.  The discovery of that valuable resource subsequently lead to a rapid appreciation in the value of the Dutch Gilder versus the U.S. Dollar and caused the near extinction of the manufacturing sector, which could no longer sell its products abroad because the strong currency served as a competitive disadvantage to exporters.  Since the publication of that article, Dutch Disease has become a universally accepted economic term and has been used to describe a number of similar situations in economies around the world including; the discovery and export of gold and other resources from the America’s to Spain in the 1600’s, the Australian gold rush of the 19th century, and a dairy products boom in New Zealand in the 2000’s.  So the question being asked today by Tom Mulcair and Canada’s New Democrats is; ‘Does the Canadian economy presently suffer from what is known as Dutch Disease?’  We believe that it does, and our position is strongly supported by a number of prominent economists from across the political spectrum who have studied this question recently.  Where the Netherlands had a natural gas boom, Canada has had an ongoing oil boom thanks to the huge deposits found in the oil sands of Alberta.  Where the Dutch Gilder increased in value in the 1960’s against the U.S. Dollar, the Canadian Dollar has increased dramatically through the 1990’s – 2000’s (from just 63.11 cents U.S. in 1998 to as much as $1.10 U.S. in 2007).  Where Dutch manufacturing was nearly destroyed in the 1950’s -1960’s, Canada has lost more than 500,000 manufacturing jobs, and that sector’s share of the economy as a percentage of GDP has shrunk from around 24 per cent in the 1960’s to just 13 per cent in 2010 (including a full two percent decline since 2007). These similar economic circumstances alone, while compelling, do not provide us with conclusive evidence of Dutch disease in Canada, however, the theory is supported by the empirical and quantitative findings of several economists who have studied the question very thoroughly and very recently. In fact, three major studies over the last three years have found that Canada’s economy is suffering from Dutch disease.  The three studies, carried out by the ‘left’ leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), the ‘centre-right’ leaning Institute for Research in Public Policy (IRPP), and the Harper Conservative government’s own Ministry of Industry all came to very similar conclusions.  The IRPP report found that about 25 percent of the decline in the manufacturing sector can be attributed to the high dollar and concludes that we have a “mild” case of Dutch disease, which was also in line with the findings of the CCPA.  And what does the Harper Government’s own research indicate?  After more than a year of work and at a cost of $250,000 to taxpayers the report concludes that; “...between 33 and 39 per cent of the manufacturing employment loss that was due to exchange rate developments between 2002 and 2007 is related to the Dutch disease phenomenon.” In short, Dutch disease is a real economic phenomenon and it is afflicting the Canadian economy.  Saying that, we must acknowledge that Dutch Disease is a natural phenomenon but one that afflicts an economy instead of a living body.  Its occurrence is no one’s fault, but as with any untreated disease the symptoms can become worse if the illness is not properly treated when it is first diagnosed.  Over time, and while the Conservatives and Liberals continue to deny this increasingly obvious economic reality, Tom Mulcair and Canada’s New Democrats will be offering our prescription for helping our manufacturing sector overcome this case of the Dutch disease and for returning our economy to a more balanced and healthy state.   Fri, 25 May 2012 11:11:18 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/211419/From-The-House/Talking-about-the-‘Dutch-disease’ http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/205622/From-The-House/Eventful-week-even-without-parliament Even though parliament wasn’t sitting it was quite an eventful week in Ottawa with two new appointments for this Member of Parliament and a shadow cabinet announcement by New Democrat Leader Tom Mulcair. It was a great honour to learn that Tom Mulcair, the Leader of the New Democratic Party and the official opposition, has appointed me to be our caucus critic for the Northern Ontario Economic Development Initiative (FedNor).  Tom realizes that economic development in our region is the key to raising our standard of living, and I am excited about assuming this new responsibility for our region and our party.  My first priority as the Critic for FedNor will be to find out how the $5 million cut in economic development grants, $1.5 million cut in day to day operations, and 15 to 20 job cuts will affect the development of our region in what the Conservatives admit is a “fragile” economic recovery.  In addition to my new responsibilities as the critic for FedNor I have also been asked to sit on the Public Safety Committee.  Each committee in parliament examines federal government operations and legislation pertaining to specific Ministries, departments, and agencies.  The Public Safety Committee is no different and oversees work carried out by; Public Safety Canada, the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA), Correctional Service Canada, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) among others.  With three border crossings in our riding and a higher than average rate of violent crime in Thunder Bay compared to other jurisdictions you can be sure that I will have no shortage of issues to raise and questions to ask of this government during our committee meetings. Aside from my specific responsibilities I think Tom and his team have put together a very solid Shadow Cabinet that will hold the Harper Conservatives to account and show Canadians that we are ready to take this country forward.  Of particular note, Tom decided to elevate several of his leadership rivals to prominent positions, which was great to see. Nathan Cullen (Skeena-Bulkley Valley) charmed New Democrats and Canadians across the country during his leadership campaign.  I’ve known Nathan since 2008 and can tell you that he is a principled, honest, and hard-working family man.  Nathan has assumed the House Leader duties in this parliament which means that he will represent Tom and the New Democratic Party caucus in negotiations with the other parties pertaining to the tabling of legislation, debates, budgets and other procedural matters.  It is an important job, but Nathan is more than up to the task. Paul Dewar (Ottawa-Centre), Peggy Nash (Parkdale High Park) and Niki Ashton (Churchill) were also given prominent roles in the Shadow Cabinet; Foreign Affairs, Finance, and Women respectively.  If you watched our leadership debates or other campaign events, then you will know that this trio of New Democrats is a force to be reckoned with.  Each brings great intelligence, passion, and creativity to their new positions and I think they were excellent choices to fill these important positions. All in all it was a great week for our riding and New Democrats.  Tom, my colleagues, and I are ready to get back down to work and prove , day in and day out, that New Democrats are ready and can be trusted to govern Canada in 2015.   Fri, 27 Apr 2012 14:45:32 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/205622/From-The-House/Eventful-week-even-without-parliament http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/202573/From-The-House/Cuts-and-the-impact-on-services Is it possible for a government to cut $10 billion in spending and more than 19,000 jobs without affecting the quality of the services delivered to the public?  No.  In fact, no one would even argue it was possible except for the Harper government.  Let’s take a look at some of those spending and job cuts in this year’s budget to see whether the Conservatives are to be believed. As part of the service review ordered by the Treasury Board last year each government department was asked to suggest budget cuts at both the five per cent and 10 per cent level.  From there, the Conservatives would decide which cuts to enact. Details of the service cuts are still trickling out, but we are finally starting to learn where the cuts will take place.  Here are five areas where the Conservatives have decided to cut that will have a direct impact upon people living in Thunder Bay – Rainy River. Border Security With three border crossings in our riding and already long wait times during peak seasons further service reductions are to come.  The Canada Border Services Agency has been told to cut its budget by $143 million over the next three years and more than 1,000 employees, including 325 front line officers, have been given notice that their jobs are now on the line.   The head of the union representing CBSA agents, J.P. Fortin has said it is likely that, "more weapons, illegal drugs and child pornography will pass through our borders, not to mention terrorists and sexual predators and hardened criminals."   I am sure that at the very least we will see longer wait times at the border crossings in our riding, but it is also hard to argue that major offences such as those cited by the union will not increase at our newly underequipped and understaffed crossings as well. Food Inspectors We aren’t far removed from the Listeriosis crisis of a few years back, but the Conservatives have decided to cut the 100 additional inspectors that were added as a result of that incident.  Ensuring that our food is safe and our drinking water is clean are two of the most basic responsibilities of our governments.  Fewer inspections will necessarily mean more risk to Canadians and our food supply.  These cuts are really not well thought out, but then again many of the prominent Cabinet Ministers in the Harper Government also served in the Harris Government when Walkerton residents fell victim to an E-coli contamination of their drinking water supply.  A subsequent public inquiry found that the privatization of water quality monitoring by the Harris Government and cuts to the number of monitors was partly to blame for the crisis.  One would have hoped that Ministers Flaherty, Clement, and Baird would have learned something from the Walkerton tragedy, but it appears that they have not. FedNor Though mining activity has seen some resurgence of late, it’s not exactly as if the Northern Ontario economy is going gangbusters.  With 60,000 forestry job losses since the Conservatives came to power in 2006 and a tourism sector hurt by the sagging US economy and high Canadian dollar our region needs more investment in economic development.  That is what FedNor, the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario, is supposed to help with.  However, instead of injecting more money into economic development during a “fragile” economic recovery the Harper Government has cut $5 million in grants, another $1.5 million in operations, and at least 25 jobs in this small but very important agency in our region.  Cutting economic development during a recession or recovery makes zero economic sense, but especially so when that region is struggling to adapt to the new reality as Northern Ontario clearly is. As you can tell, I don’t believe that the Harper Government can be trusted on fiscal and economic matters.   It is simply irrational to argue that you can cut any government’s spending by five to 10 per cent without affecting the quality of services that are delivered to the public. For our country and Northern Ontario in particular the stakes are simply too high to be cutting our border services, food inspectors, and economic development initiatives.   New Democrats will continue to try to convince the Harper Conservatives to change their mind about these particular cuts and instead scrap their $25 billion F-35 boondoggle  to help balance our books.  It’s the more responsible thing to do. Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:03:33 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/202573/From-The-House/Cuts-and-the-impact-on-services http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/201316/From-The-House/AG-dishes-up-scathing-report Auditor General Michael Ferguson tabled a scathing report in Parliament this week. The report states the Conservatives did not conduct an open and fair selection process for replacing the aging F-18 fighters, that the government did not know how much the F-35 would cost when it was selected as the replacement, and that the government and the Department of National Defence have deliberately misled parliament and the Canadian people about the cost of the project.  In short, the auditor general has found that the $25 billion F-35 program is a massive boondoggle that is 25 times costlier than the Long Gun Registry. You can read the report for yourself online at (http://tinyurl.com/AGS2012, but the Harper government would rather you didn’t.  The report is merciless and finds that the Harper government has completely dropped the $25 billion ball on the F-35 project.  Here are some direct quotes from the Auditor General in his report; Paragraph 2.71: “We have a number of observations regarding the life-cycle costing for the F-35. First, costs have not been fully presented in relation to the life of the aircraft.” Paragraph 2.76: “We also have significant concerns about the completeness of cost information provided to parliamentarians…we observed that National Defence told parliamentarians that cost data provided by US authorities had been validated by US experts and partner countries, which was not accurate at the time. At the time of its response, National Defence knew the costs were likely to increase but did not so inform parliamentarians.” Paragraph 2.80: “National Defence did not exercise due diligence in managing the process to replace the CF-18 jets.” Paragraph 2.81: “PWGSC [Public Works and Government Services Canada] did not demonstrate due diligence in its role as the government’s procurement authority.” In responding to the Auditor General’s report, the Harper Government moved immediately to blame the military for misleading the Minister, but this is nothing more than a diversionary tactic.  New Democrat Leader Tom Mulcair, made a strong point in Question Period Tuesday when he asked;  “The key question to the Prime Minister is: How could he allow Parliament to be intentionally misled on the F-35’s? Either he knew, and it is unconscionable, or he did not know and it is incompetence. Which is it?”   Not surprisingly, Harper wouldn’t say whether he was a liar or just incompetent, but it is obvious to all that he is one or the other. The Conservative myths that they are good managers of the economy and the public purse have now been proven spectacularly false.  On the economic front, Canada has created just 600 net new jobs since August, while the United States has created more than 759,000 new positions.  On the growth front, Canada registered a small 0.4 per cent gain in the fourth quarter of 2011 and just 0.1 per cent in January 2012 while the United States was humming along at 3 per cent growth.  Regarding the public purse Stephen Harper continues to add to our national debt with a $25 billion deficit this year, the fourth monster deficit in a row.  And finally, in the same week that Mr. Harper told all Canadians under the age of 54 that they must work two years longer and lose $22,000 in Old Age Security payments because there is no money in piggy bank his government is caught in a $25 billion boondoggle that is 25 times costlier than the long gun registry.  The big question I have at this point is; ‘Can the Harper majority government get any worse?’  I sure hope not. Three years is a long time, to be sure, but New Democrats will continue to do our job as the Official Opposition and hold them to account while preparing to undo as much of this damage as possible beginning in 2015.   Thu, 05 Apr 2012 17:01:00 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/201316/From-The-House/AG-dishes-up-scathing-report http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/197491/From-The-House/Choosing-a-leader On Friday, March 24, more than 130,000 New Democrat members will vote for a new Leader of the Official Opposition.  We have seven strong candidates, but one stands above all others in my opinion and would make the best Prime Minister.  I will be casting my vote for Thomas Mulcair. When I say that we have a great slate of candidates, I mean it.  Our seven contenders are second to none.  I am certain each will be stronger than any who will stand for the Liberal Party when they get around to choosing their next leader, and as a group are stronger than Harper’s front bench by quite a margin.  New Democrats have every reason to be proud and optimistic about our future with so many excellent candidates ready to lead our movement and our country. While it is true that I believe we have the strongest possible slate of leadership candidates it is equally true that Thomas Mulcair is the strongest of the group with the best policies and credentials to become Canada’s first New Democrat Prime Minister.    I came to this conclusion early on after watching Tom perform day-in-day out as Deputy Leader since my election in 2008, and thankfully more and more people within our ranks are also coming to the same conclusion. Tom is an incredibly strong performer in the House of Commons and on the election trail. There are numerous clips on Youtube for anyone who is interested in watching him get the better of the Conservatives on everything from housing, pensions, our massive federal deficit, and pay equity and women’s rights.  Tom has excelled as a political organizer, but especially so since Jack made him his ‘Quebec Lieutenant’ back in 2007.  We all expected that our hard work would pay off at the polls, but Tom’s hard work in Quebec and a solid campaign message brought 58 new seats into the New Democrat family, which is more than the party had ever held nationally prior to the 2011 campaign. When it comes to issues confronting families in Northwestern Ontario, Tom again stands apart from the other candidates.  We have had several conversations, prior to and during this campaign, about the high cost of living, the need to balance resource development with environmental concerns, and to resolve First Nation land claims in a timely and cooperative manner and he has my complete confidence to lead our party and country on these issues.  In case you are wondering, I am not alone in believing that Tom is the best choice for Northern Ontario as former Ontario NDP Leader and Kenora MPP Howard Hampton his wife Shelley Martel the former MPP for Nickel Belt, former New Democrat MP for Thunder Bay – Nipigon Ernie Epp, and my current caucus colleague Glenn Thibeault the Member of Parliament for Sudbury are also strong supporters of Thomas’ candidacy as well. Perhaps the most important consideration for me though is Tom’s potential to unite Canadians behind a progressive political party and to make the defeat of Stephen Harper a reality in the next election.  Tom knows the issues of Quebec particularly well and will be able to hold the vast majority of the seats that we were able to seize from the separatist Bloc Quebecois in the last federal election.  He has also recognized, rightly, that the interests of Western Canada must be better appreciated and brought back into the New Democrat fold.  As Tom puts it, the New Democratic Party has lots of trees but no roots in Quebec, and deep roots but no trees in the Prairies.  In short, Tom is a proven leader who knows how to unite people from all walks of life and build a strong national presence for the New Democrat Party in every region of the country. Because of this I am confident that Tom will be able to balance of interests of all Canadians, lead New Democrats into government, and lead Canada to a more inclusive, cooperative, and prosperous future.     Mon, 19 Mar 2012 11:58:58 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/197491/From-The-House/Choosing-a-leader http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/193139/From-The-House/C-30-a-threat-to-privacy Do you ever worry about your privacy being violated?  You should.  Often our privacy is preyed upon, legally and illegally, by corporations and criminals in search of profit and personal gain.  Governments too have always posed a challenge to personal privacy, but the latest and perhaps greatest threat to the privacy of Canadians came last week with the introduction of the Harper government’s Bill C-30. Whenever I speak with people about their privacy concerns, three types of potential violators are usually mentioned; criminals, corporations, and governments.  The criminal threat is clear enough to identify and understand and usually involves perpetrators seeking money or power at the expense of the victim. Credit card scams, email hacking, and identity theft are generally the criminal behaviours that most people fear.  These types of threats are pretty black and white and governments of all political stripes have made combating such crimes a high priority in recent years. Corporations are also a huge threat to our privacy.  Websites like Google and Facebook actively track our internet behaviour, friendships and personal networks, physical location, and buying habits to a startling degree.  More traditional companies, such as large department stores and pharmacies, acquire and store our personal information via their loyalty rewards programs and credit cards and often sell our information to third parties.   All companies have the opportunity to misuse our personal information intentionally, but can also become victims themselves when their mountain of data is illegally accessed or stolen by others.  These types of privacy violations are a little harder to identify and protect against since many people fail to understand just how much corporations legally know about us and how great this threat to our privacy actually is. The third type of threat to our privacy that is most often mentioned to me is that posed by governments.  The term ‘Big Brother’ is often used to describe someone’s worst fears; a totalitarian or authoritarian government that constantly monitors and knows every detail of the personal lives of its citizens.  While expressing their concerns about intrusive government, people generally agree that our democratic governments need to know a good deal about us in order to protect and serve us better, but to a person agree that there must be a balance between public and private interests.  A free and democratic government should simply have no need to track every move, purchase, friendship, email, or thought of its citizens.  This, unfortunately, is where the Conservative government and Stephen Harper seem to have gone off the deep end.   In a clumsy effort to combat the manufacture and distribution of child pornography, the Harper government introduced Bill C-30 last week.  If C-30 passes, it would ensure that every move we make on the internet is tracked by our internet service provider – our physical location, who we email and what we say, which websites we visit, when we visit them, and for how long would all be meticulously tracked.  The federal government, public service, and local, provincial, and national police would all have access to this information as well if they are able to obtain a warrant, but in some ‘special’ cases they would be able to obtain it simply by asking the service provider for it.  Oh, and C-30 would cost taxpayers $80 million to help the internet providers collect this information, and for the privilege of being spied on by our own government. I’m sure you will agree that stopping the manufacture and distribution of child pornography and improving the health and well-being of our children is something that we must work towards on a daily basis.  But do we have to give up our basic rights and freedoms to do it?  Does the Harper government really need to know about our every move on the internet?  Will C-30 mean the end of child pornography?  I would argue the answer to all of these questions is a resounding no, and want to assure you that my New Democrat colleagues and I stand with you and your right to privacy and against all criminals, corporations, and governments who seek to violate it.   Thu, 01 Mar 2012 15:43:26 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/193139/From-The-House/C-30-a-threat-to-privacy http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/188532/From-The-House/Harper’s-planned-OAS-changes-clear-as-mud This past week in Ottawa was a busy one with continued uncertainty surrounding Harper’s plans to change Old Age Security (OAS), a key vote on the Long Gun Registry, and a meeting with my fellow New Democrat MPs from northern Ontario discuss the new riding redistribution scheme that is coming to Ontario in time for the next federal election in 2015. To say that the Harper government is sending out mixed messages about its plans to reduce, cut, or raise the qualifying age for Old Age Security would be and understatement.  Recall that Harper first slipped his plans to overhaul our retirement income system into a speech to foreign bankers in Switzerland, and then had his staff clarify that the plan would ‘probably’ just involve OAS and not the Canada Pension Plan.  He then said he ‘may’ introduce changes to the program, such as forcing us to work two years longer to collect our payments, when asked to clarify his position.  Clear as mud these guys are. My New Democrat colleagues and I have decided to not wait for the axe to come down on our retirement savings before moving to protect these cherished programs.  We’ve opposed Harper’s plan to roll the dice with his new pension plan in the stock market, and we want to protect the OAS which only goes to the poorest seniors in Canada.  Instead of Harper’s risky and irresponsible retirement scheme, New Democrats favour increasing both our individual contributions and entitlements for the CPP – which is still the most stable, well funded, and most effective pension plan in the entire world.  If you are interested in learning more about the retirement security issue and New Democrat proposals, we have launched two campaign sites recently – www.ndp.ca/retirement and www.ndp.ca/oas . Also this past week there was the second to last vote on bill C-19, the bill that will end the Long Gun Registry.   On this vote I again supported C-19 and the abolition of the Long Gun Registry.  A final vote is now set to occur when the government gets around to having two full days of debate on the final version of the bill.  Following those two days of debate, likely to occur next week, a final vote will be held at ‘Third Reading’ to ensure its passage and send C-19 to the Senate where it will receive Royal Ascent and become law in all likelihood sometime this spring.  I for one will be happy to get the final vote out of the way since I believe that there are far more important issues for parliament to focus on – job creation and pension protection to name two. My New Democrat colleagues from Northern Ontario, all seven of us, also met this past week to review the process by which Elections Canada will eventually redistribute ridings in Ontario before the next election.  Late last year, the Harper government passed a bill that will give Ontario another 13 seats in time for the next federal election.  As a result, Elections Canada will use a complex formula based on regional population patterns and geography to determine where the new seats will be located.  While it’s true that most of the population growth in Ontario has occurred in the southern portion of the province northern New Democrat MPs agreed this week to stand together to oppose the loss of seats from our region.  We believe that our northern voice needs to be heard loud and clear in Ottawa and we will not stand idly by if someone tries to diminish it. And so went the week in Ottawa. Old Age Security is seemingly still on Harper’s chopping block, while the Long Gun Registry moved another step closer to being abolished, and northern New Democrats vowing to fight for our regions fair representation in Ottawa.  Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:59:59 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/188532/From-The-House/Harper’s-planned-OAS-changes-clear-as-mud http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/187208/From-The-House/Why-cut-public-services? Word is that there are some steep cuts to public services and drastic changes to our pension system coming in the next federal budget.  The big question I have is ‘why?’ The talk about what may be in the federal budget always begins early each year, and 2012 is proving to be no exception.  Over the holidays, Treasury Board Secretary Tony Clement (the guy who blew $50 million beautifying his riding a three day G8 last year) was busy telling anyone who would listen that the government would be cutting back its spending from five to 10 per cent in each and every department next year.  This could result in the cutting of up to 22,000 jobs in Ottawa and tens of thousands elsewhere across the country with services cut for everything from Employment Insurance processing, border crossings, and highway maintenance. While Clement was busy on the talk-show circuit back home, the Prime Minister went to Davos Switzerland, supposedly to launch an attack on those irresponsible Europeans over the perils of debt.  He did attack them for a few seconds in a meandering speech, but then decided to drop a bomb on Canadian families while out of the country.  Harper told the assorted group of foreign bankers and heads of states that there would be ‘major’ changes to Canada’s retirement support programs – the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and Old Age Security (OAS).  When forced to clarify his remarks, his handlers said it would mostly be to OAS, which goes only to the poorest seniors who would not otherwise be able to survive on their CPP payments alone.   Classy move. I have no doubt that if it were necessary to save the federal government or the retirement income of every Canadian, then no Canadian would oppose reasonable and timely cuts to either program.  However, the problem is that these proposed cuts simply aren’t necessary.  The proposed drastic cuts to our services and pensions are not necessary for at least two reasons.  First, because the Harper government still maintains – in Canada, Switzerland, and elsewhere - that their spending and deficit reduction plans are ‘on track’ despite some economic risks on the horizon; and second, because there are many expensive and unnecessary programs that have been created by this government over the past five years that should be eliminated or at least reduced before they take an axe to our social programs and retirement income. The strongest argument that I have heard against the need for service and retirement cuts has been made by the very same Conservatives that are planning the cuts. Day in and day out, the Harper government maintains that they have everything under control economically and that our budget deficits will melt away naturally in a couple of years’ time.  This argument was after all, the crux of their election platform.   Now if this is true, then why make drastic cuts to our services and retirement income?  Something is wrong with this picture.  Either Mr. Harper is dying to attack hard-working Canadian families and our retirement security, or he is lying about the current state affairs with our economy and his deficits.  Simply put, if he is to be believed about the economy and his deficits, then the service and retirement cuts his government is floating simply aren’t necessary. Secondly, why start with cuts to Service Canada and Old Age Security when Harper could stop his own spending binge on many expensive items of questionable utility?  Like the $80 million of our money he spends advertising his federal budget each year, or the $9 billion in prisons he is building to reduce crime?  Building more prisons to reduce crime doesn’t make a lot of sense to begin with, because you know, you have to commit a crime to go to jail, but then again neither does spending $20-30 billion on F-35 fighter jets that can’t fly in the arctic, you know where we most need to defend our airspace.  Eliminating the advertising, needless prisons, and almost useless fighter jets would save us nearly $40 billion before the next election, so why do the Conservatives start by cutting essential services and retirement income for the poorest seniors? My New Democrat colleagues and I stand with you and your family, and if the cuts to our services and our retirement income in the next budget aren’t proven to be absolutely necessary or come while this government continues to waste billions on misguided and unnecessary programs then my New Democrat colleagues and I will oppose this budget.  It really is that simple. Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:51:52 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/187208/From-The-House/Why-cut-public-services? http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/183742/From-The-House/2012-met-with-uncertainty First off, I would like to extend my best wishes for a happy and safe new year for you, your friends, and your family.  With 2012 now well underway and another Christmas holiday season behind us we can look forward to what the year ahead may hold.  If 2012 is to be summed up in a word I think it would be ‘uncertainty.’  Uncertainty is not necessarily bad, but well … uncertain or unknown. No one can predict the future, but we usually have an idea where things are heading.  I’m not so sure the same can be said for 2012, but there are some potential developments to watch and important questions that will be answered as the year moves forward. This year will be the first full year of Stephen Harper’s majority mandate.  Elected largely because he convinced enough voters to trust him to manage the economy during tough economic times, it is now time to prove that he is capable of doing just that.  Will Canada still be the envy of the economic world in 2012?  Does Harper plan to use his new power to backtrack on our basic rights, freedoms, and laws that have been in place for decades such, as a the right marry someone of the same-sex and a women’s right to choose whether or not to have abortion as some have recently suggested he will?   What are his long term plans for funding healthcare, protecting the environment, and making the justice system more effective?  I suspect we will see these questions answered to some degree or another in 2012. The world is also becoming a more uncertain place.  With economic and political upheaval happening throughout the world in 2011, will the momentous change continue or will things return to a more normal and steady state?  Will the Euro survive the looming bankruptcy of Greece and other states?  Will Iran voluntarily halt its nuclear weapons program, or will Israel and the United States decide to halt it for them?  What will Canada do if it is the latter?  Will Syria’s dictatorial government collapse under the will and courage of the people?   This year will be a pivotal year in the international sphere and I have no doubt that the answers to these questions will shape the next decade. For Canada’s economy the future is also quite uncertain.  The Conservative government bragged throughout the spring 2011 election that Canada ‘weathered’ the economic crisis better than other countries and that only they could be trusted to find a way forward.  The first fiscal quarter after Harper was given his majority mandate the Canadian economy shrank and we became the first country in the world to be on the brink of a double-dip recession.  By the fall, the United States was surpassing Canada in both economic growth and job creation for the year.  Will Canada’s record of above average economic performance continue in 2012, or will Canada fall behind?  The Royal Bank recently ‘stress tested’ their assets to see if they could withstand a 25 per cent price correction in the housing market, but will such a correction actually happen or will home prices continue to rise?  What will the economic effects be either way?  We won’t know the answers to these questions until later in the year, but you can be certain of at least two things; 2012 will be a year remembered for its uncertainty, and Canada’s New Democrats will be monitoring the events closely and offering positive solutions to any problems that may arise as we move forward.   Mon, 16 Jan 2012 10:44:00 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/183742/From-The-House/2012-met-with-uncertainty http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/179669/From-The-House/Forestry-sector-still-in-crisis I was very sorry to learn of the shutdown at the Global Sticks plant and the five week layoff at the Resolute Mill in Fort Frances. These events, as well as the shutdown of the Terrace Bay mill and others across the province and country tell me that the forestry sector is still in a state of crisis and in need of assistance.  In response to these local events I tabled three forestry related motions in Ottawa this past week to raise awareness about the problems faced by the sector and offer some positive ideas for the federal government.  The three motions – titled M-298, M-299, and M-300 – together could constitute a national plan for the forestry sector. The first motion, M-298, is essentially the wish list that industry representatives have presented to the federal government to assist with this transformation from traditional activities, mainly logging, pulp, and newsprint, to more valuable products like bio-fuel, bio-chemicals, and bio-pharmaceuticals.  The motion is taken, almost verbatim, from a massive report published by the Forestry Products Association of Canada (FPAC) last year that said the industry requires among other forms of support; a made-in-Canada clean energy plan, a revolving fund to assist with capital investment in clean energy, a tax-credit to encourage private investment, expanding government assistance to help with the integration of new products, and more funding for research.   The second motion, M-299, is really a general call for a national forestry strategy.  The Conservative government, and to be fair the Liberal governments that preceded them, have never drafted and implemented a national strategy for the forestry sector.  Unfortunately, the results are now showing with more than 60,000 job losses in forestry communities across Canada over the last five years.  M-299 would see the federal government take a leadership role by convening a bi-annual forestry summit with the forestry industry, labour organizations, and municipalities among others to develop and see through a plan to help the sector prosper.  The emphasis would be on helping the forestry industry, communities, and families get through tough times and position themselves for a better future.  Coincidentally, such meetings have also been requested by the FPAC for several years running. The third motion, M-300, seeks to ensure a level playing field for Canadian producers on the international market.  This motion is born out of the experience of Canadian mills and operators who were decimated by the Black Liquor subsidy in the United States.  The Black Liquor regime pumped $9 to $12 billion in cash into the US forestry sector from 2006-2009 while Canadian producers received no support whatsoever from our government.  US producers then leveraged that extra money to slash the price of their goods and undercut Canadian producers on the open market.  When Canadian assistance finally came in 2010, it was just $1 billion and required an equal investment in clean energy technology from the mills, but by then many were closed or in bankruptcy and had no access to capital.  M-300 simply calls on the federal government to monitor the creation of new subsidies in other countries, when possible negotiate and end to those subsidies, and when necessary match them for Canadian producers to level the playing field. At the end of the day our forestry sector continues to struggle and it is hurting our local economy and families.  As our Member of Parliament it is my responsibility to represent our local interests in Ottawa, so tabling these motions and advocating for federal action to assist our forestry industry, communities, and families is something that I will continue to do on a regular basis as we move forward. Fri, 16 Dec 2011 13:40:11 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/179669/From-The-House/Forestry-sector-still-in-crisis http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/178260/From-The-House/Attawapiskat’s-disaster How do you know a disaster when you see one?  A pretty good sign is that the Red Cross is at the scene handing out food, blankets, clothing, and providing first aid.  This past week the Red Cross was in the Attawapiskat First Nations, which was much appreciated by the residents suffering through an early winter without adequate shelter and running water.  The question is, why are people in Canada living in third world conditions and relying on the Red Cross for disaster assistance while our federal government is AWL? I am not a cynical person, but if I was I would speculate that the lack of votes in this region and community is probably the main reason there are no representatives of the Conservative government on or near the Attawapiskat First Nations to assess the situation.  Since I am not a cynical person I am going to say that this is likely not the case.  Rather, it seems the federal government is failing First Nations at the public policy level by simply throwing money at individual problems without having a plan to help alleviate poverty and despair. Before going further with my personal thoughts on the situation it may be useful to provide a context and background for those of you who don’t know about Attawapiskat.  Attawapiskat is a first nation community located in central northern Ontario where the Attawapiskat River flows into the western side of James Bay. Between 1,200 and 2,000 people live in very difficult conditions in this remote northern community.    Many of the homes and public buildings in Attawapiskat are decades old and decaying, such as the local school which still sits on the site of an old 30,000 litre diesel fuel spill.  The deplorable situation at that school was the impetus behind the successful Shannen’s Dream project, which effectively shamed the Harper Conservatives into building a new school by 2013.  Attawapiskat is a community in need of not just government assistance, but also plan to end its decade’s long slide into despair. There is no doubt that the current disaster in Attawapiskat is a result of negligence on the part of the federal government.   As of writing this there are 122 families are living in condemned housing and 96 people are living in a large portable trailer. Many of the homes are without clean water, basic sanitation, or contained sources of heat.  As is the case in many poor communities in Canada, housing investment has not kept up with population growth and many children are sleeping on floors in Attawapiskat’s condemned homes, or in tents.  To make matters worse, winter came early in Attawapiskat where temperatures have already dipped to -30 degrees Celsius and there is two feet of snow on the ground.  Upon visiting the site last week the Red Cross quickly determined the community met the definition of a ‘disaster area’ by their standards.  This week the humanitarian crisis in Attawapiskat has become such a big story in the national and international media that the Harper Conservatives were finally forced to act.  Unfortunately, the first thing that Stephen Harper did was not to offer assistance, but to try to blame others for the problem.  Rather than saying help is on they way, Harper tried to blame the leadership in the community by claiming that there shouldn’t be a crisis in the community because it had received $92 million in federal money since 2006.  So why is there a housing crisis after then?  In short, families and children are still homeless in Attawapiskat because Stephen Harper simply wrote the community a cheque and tried to walk away from the problem.  No one from the federal government bothered to see if the money was enough to build the homes and schools, or meet the water and sanitation needs of the community.  While dishing out the blame and placing the community under ‘Third Party Management,’ whatever kind of political double-speak that is, Harper has still offered no concrete assistance in response to this made-in-Canada disaster. The end result? As of Thursday Dec. 2, 2011 – up to 2000 Canadians continue to live in Third World conditions, the Red Cross is on the ground helping homeless children stay warm, and the Harper Conservative government continues to offer nothing while blaming others for their own mismanagement.  I can assure you this never would have happened under a New Democrat government.  For those who are interested and able to help, financial donations may be made online at www.redcross.ca, by calling 1-800-418-1111 or through your local Canadian Red Cross office. Cheques should be made payable to the Canadian Red Cross, earmarked “Attawapiskat” and can also be mailed to the Canadian Red Cross, Ontario Zone, 5700 Cancross Court, Mississauga, ON, L5R 3E9.   Fri, 09 Dec 2011 12:44:52 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/178260/From-The-House/Attawapiskat’s-disaster http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/176109/From-The-House/Tory-pension-plan-lacking This past week saw the unveiling of the new Conservative plan for pensions in Canada.  As you can imagine, my New Democrat colleagues and I have something to say about this Conservative ‘plan’ and have a different view of what needs to be done to secure the retirement income of all Canadians moving forward. New Democrats have always believed that after a lifetime of hard work, you deserve to know you’ll be able to retire comfortably when the time comes.  It’s the way it should be, but increasingly it is the way it used to be.  Some 11 million working Canadians now have no workplace pension and as life gets more expensive most individuals and households can’t save enough to go it alone with stock purchases, RRSP’s, or other investments. Almost every day, I hear from another constituent who’s deeply worried about their future retirement. Yet Stephen Harper and his Conservatives are leaving families to face the retirement crisis alone – even with their ‘new’ plan.  Harper’s new policy does nothing more than double down on the same private investment funds that are already failing so many Canadians.  Harper’s ‘plan’ that was unveiled last week is being called the “Pooled Registered Pension Plan.” It’s like a group RRSP that employers may now offer instead of defined-benefit workplace pensions. In other words, Mr. Harper wants you to pump even more of your savings into risky private funds and stock markets and just when they are more volatile than ever before in our lifetime. If you’ve watched the value of your RRSP tumble, or heard about others whose savings plunged along with the stock market in recent years, then you know how risky this approach can be.  Private funds are also burdened by high management fees that make the fund managers wealthy but drain as much as 50 per cent of your contributions over a lifetime. In 2007 alone, before the recession hit, RRSP holders lost a whopping $25-billion – with a ‘b’ – to management fees.   Not bad at all…for the banks and fund managers that is. In times like these I don’t think that we should be looking to pay more fees and signing up for more risk while trying to secure our retirement.  We all deserve a secure retirement plan that offers peace of mind to your family—not just to fund managers. That’s why; instead of asking you to play roulette with your retirement, New Democrats have a plan to increase your guaranteed public pension.   It’s an old idea, but one that has served us well; we call it the Canada Pension Plan. Forty-five years ago, New Democrats helped launch the Canada Pension Plan (CPP).  It is rock-solid, low-cost and inflation-protected so that we don’t have to worry about management fees, the decline of the stock markets, or anything else.  You pay into the plan, the money is invested in stable and non-risky vehicles which are overseen by a Board of Directors whose only job is to make sure there is enough in the kitty to pay a set amount out to each Canadian each month after they retire.   No fees, little risk, and stable and predictable payouts. New Democrats are proposing a plan to double our CPP benefits gradually over time, to a maximum of $1,920 per month.  We all know that nothing is free, but a small increase in what we have taken off of our pay cheques each week will ensure the extra money is there when we retire – just as the standard CPP payment has always been.   We hardly notice the contribution we make from our paycheques now, so a small increase will continue to have little impact on our day to day income while providing for a safe, secure, and affordable retirement later. Look, we know the global economy is headed for rough waters and we also know that Canada is not immune from the problems being experienced abroad. With all this going on Stephen Harper thinks millions of Canadians should have to gamble their income to win the right to retire in dignity, while New Democrats are fighting for a plan that offers every Canadian guaranteed peace of mind.   When it comes to your retirement what would you rather do - gamble or take the sure bet?   Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:42:54 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/176109/From-The-House/Tory-pension-plan-lacking http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/174659/From-The-House/Committee-gets-hands-on-Long-gun-bill This week saw C-19 head to committee, some advancement of my work on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), and the launch of the recruitment campaigns for the Parliamentary Page and Parliamentary Guide programs.  Let me fill you in on these developments. Bill C-19, the bill to abolish the Long Gun Registry, was taken up at the Public Safety Committee this week where it was examined in closer detail by a panel of MPs and some invited guests.   The first hour of testimony fell to the Public Safety Minister, Vic Toews, and other guests included; the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, the Canadian Labour Congress, The Coalition for Gun Control, The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, and several individual police officers, lawyers, and advocates on both sides of the debate.  I appreciated these organizations and their representatives taking the time to share their views, but little new information was gleaned from their polished presentations.  Without diminishing the value of the testimony of the witness or arguing for an undemocratic legislative shortcut, I think it is safe to say that we all know the arguments for and against the registry by now.  The one questionable clause in C-19 which separates it from its predecessor bills is that it calls for the immediate disposal of all of the data that has been collected. It’s questionable because other laws would ensure that the records are purged in about three years anyhow, and some provinces (ie: Quebec) would like to inherit some of the data to create their own registry system.  Personally, I don’t care what the other provinces do, so I see no harm in allowing them accessing the data that has been collected on their own citizens. Nonetheless, the transfer of data is a non-starter for the majority Conservatives so let’s move and start to focus on the real issues facing our country.  The final vote on bill C-19 is likely to occur near the end of November or early December if the parliamentary schedule holds. I’m eager to move onto other more pressing issues. My staff has been working behind the scenes on a campaign to raise awareness about the occurrence and danger of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD).  I have one bill that calls for a national strategy on the issue (C-227), and another that is drafted and ready to go that would require warning labels to be applied on the packaging of alcoholic beverages.  What is encouraging is that we are finding widespread support for these initiatives from various interest groups, other MPs, and to my surprise and their credit the alcoholic beverages industry.  We will have much more to report on this issue in 2012, but I wanted to let everyone know that our work on this issue is ongoing if not always visible. I’d also like to take a moment to make people aware of the start of the 2012 recruitment process for Parliamentary Pages (assisting the Speaker inside of the House of Commons), and Parliamentary Guides (for tours of parliament). These programs are excellent opportunities for youth who want to experience life in the National Capital Region and gain some valuable life and career experience. Both opportunities come with good pay and look great on a resume.  The deadline for applying to the Page program is Dec. 22, 2011, and Jan. 13, 2012 for the Guide program.  For more information on both programs including requirements and the interview process please visit www.parl.gc.ca/hocpage for the Page program and www.parl.gc.ca/guides for the Guide program.  Good luck to everyone who applies, and please be sure to let my office know if you are accepted into either program. So that is but a quick recap of the past week which saw us get one week closer to a final vote on C-19, the continuation of our work on FASD, and the start of the recruitment campaign for the Parliamentary Page and Parliamentary Guide programs. All the best until next week.   Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:41:27 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/174659/From-The-House/Committee-gets-hands-on-Long-gun-bill http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/173646/From-The-House/Eager-for-next-long-gun-vote Before I begin this week’s column I would like to thank everyone who has taken the time to write, visit one of my offices, or speak with me about the long gun registry issue.  I was very encouraged by your support and believe that I have a clear mandate to vote to abolish the Long Gun Registry when I return to Ottawa. I am eager to cast a vote to abolish the long gun registry not just because an overwhelming majority of the constituents in our riding want it gone, but also because there are far more pressing issues that should be front and centre in Ottawa, namely the economy. If you think the Harper Government is the best positioned to run our economy, then you may want to reconsider this belief in light of recent evidence to the contrary.   In October, Canada shed 71,700 full time while the “struggling” US economy added 80,000.  If the scale of Canada’s job losses were increased to fit the size of the US economy, then Canada would have shed 717,000 jobs.  US media outlets would have rightly called a catastrophe. Delving a little into the jobs report we find some very discouraging details. Ontario alone lost 39,000 jobs, and our province’s unemployment rate rose by 0.5 per cent to hit 8.1 per cent.  The manufacturing sector in Canada shed a staggering 48,000 jobs while construction shed 20,000 jobs.  These losses are of particular concern because manufacturing and construction jobs are particularly well paying which means that spin-off losses in affected communities are likely to add up as that money is taken out of the economy in the coming months. These numbers are also eerily reminiscent of what happened on the eve of the 2009 recession that the Conservatives apparently “never saw coming.” Jobs aren’t the only problem confronting the Canadian economy though as growth is also lagging most other industrialized countries – contrary to Conservative talking points that say we are doing better than others during the recovery.  In fact, Canada was very nearly the first industrialized country to fall back into recession last month. A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. Over the last two quarters, Canada’s economic growth was found to be (-0.1), and 0.3 respectively.  A close call to be sure, but especially when no other industrialized country was even at risk.  It wasn't even a possibility in the US. Basically, the big problem is that the Harper Government is playing a game of bait and switch in Ottawa. The 'bait' in this case are Conservative talking points that say that Canada is better off than other countries when it comes to the economy and jobs – which the mainstream national media happily regurgitates without investigation or analysis.  The 'switch' then follows with a manufactured crisis of sorts on another subject, such as their decision to ram through a Long Gun Registry bill in a couple of weeks instead of a couple of months.  It certainly made for a good media circus and an awkward moment or two for the Official Opposition, but is that really what we should have been focusing on with huge job losses and the third largest economy in Europe on the verge of bankruptcy?   I don’t think so, but the mainstream national media fell for it hook, line, and sinker. In closing, I want to again thank everyone again for their support and for providing me with such a clear mandate on the Long Gun Registry issue.  I can’t wait until the final vote on that issue finally comes later in the month so we can get back to work on the most important issue facing Canadians – namely the stumbling economy and a do-nothing government that is failing to protect the jobs, pensions, and economic well-being of families across the country.   Fri, 11 Nov 2011 16:03:03 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/173646/From-The-House/Eager-for-next-long-gun-vote http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/172184/From-The-House/Looking-out-for-constituents Looking out for constituents think elected officials must look out for the interests for their constituents at all times, and that you don’t finish working until the job is done.  I’d like to think that these two beliefs have come together in a bill that I tabled this past week, Bill C-338 An Act to Amend the Bankruptcy Insolvency Act (termination and severance pay). Throughout my time meeting constituents, campaigning, and working in Ottawa over the last few years several important issues have come to my attention, but few where more heart-wrenching than the plight of the former employees of Buchanan Forest Products.  Hundreds of workers, some of them working for the same company for decades, lost everything when that company went bankrupt - their jobs, their pensions in some cases, and even their severance and termination pay.  At the same time, the workers at the two AbitibiBowater mills in our riding were losing some of their pensions in that company’s most recent restructuring.  In my first term I committed to helping workers get access to all money and benefits that they had earned after years of hard work, and as I begin my second term begins I am proud to renew that commitment in this session. In 2009 I decided to tackle the issue by tabling Bill C-501 to ensure that the loss of pensions, and severance and termination pay that was experienced by the former Buchanan and AbitibiBowater workers could not occur again.  Bill C-501 was a hefty bill that would have amended three different acts, and elevated pensions, severance, and termination pay to ‘secured’ or ‘super-priority’ creditor status.  Bill C-501 would have guaranteed that all employees would receive all that is owed to them from the estate of the bankrupt company because they were put at the front of the line and ahead of all other debts owed to other creditors (ie: banks). In the end, C-501 passed through two votes in the House of Commons, but was nullified because of the election of May 2.  During the legislative process for C-501 I learned a great deal about how things work in Ottawa. Even some of the most diehard Conservatives and Liberals agreed with the objectives of the bill and wanted to ensure that workers received what they were owed during the bankruptcy process.  I also learned that the more complicated a bill is the easier it is to defeat. Fast forward to after the election. When discussing the legislative process for the tabling a new bill in this parliament with a few of my New Democrat colleagues I made some important decisions. The first decision was to treat pensions and severance and termination pay as two different issues.  I approached my caucus colleague and New Democrat Critic for Seniors and Pensions Wayne Marston (Hamilton East – Stoney Creek) about tabling a standalone pension bill which would free me up to table a one-clause bill to protect severance and termination pay.  He agreed and tabled C-331 An Act to amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (pension plans) and I tabled C-338 An Act to Amend the Bankruptcy Insolvency Act (termination and severance pay).  Both bills are more moderate, simple, and clearer than C-501. This should make it more difficult to oppose which I hope gives them a fighting chance to pass, in some form in this majority parliament. For my part, I am happy to focus on C-338, which could secure a much greater portion of money for workers who are owed severance and termination pay as it would grant ‘preferred’ creditor status to all employees with outstanding claims on the estate of their former employer.  The old C-501 would have guaranteed severance and termination pay, but C-338 is somewhat different in that it will provide for a bigger payout in most cases because severance and termination pay would be prioritized as ‘preferred’ debt after what is owed to governments and banks, but ahead of other types of claims.  I believe that employees should be at the front of the line of creditors during bankruptcy, but in the end I decided to go with ‘preferred’ creditor because I believe that the Conservatives will find it to be more tolerable and supportable from their standpoint. In the end I am happy to have tabled C-338 this week and to again be able get to down to work to ensure that no other workers are forced to experience the injustice that fell upon the former Buchanan workers.  As always, I will keep you informed about the bill as it progresses through the legislative cycle. Wed, 02 Nov 2011 09:44:30 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/172184/From-The-House/Looking-out-for-constituents http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/170191/From-The-House/Shipbuilding,-Occupy-movements,-Gaddafi This week was a busy one in Canada and around the world with many events having long-term implications. Here is a recap of some of the events and my opinion on how this is likely to affect things moving forward. The first really big development, and I do mean big, was the announcement of Canada’s largest ever capital expenditure; the awarding of the $33 billion worth of shipbuilding contracts over the next 30 years. I would congratulate Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter and his New Democrat government on securing $25 billion worth of those contracts for their economy.  Mr. Dexter made securing these contracts a focus of much of his work over the past year as he worked very closely with Irving Shipyards on their bid.  He lobbied hard on behalf of their bid in Ottawa to make something happen and it did.  Hard work does pay off and will do so for 30 years, and I congratulate the people of Halifax for their great win. Also on the home front this week, the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protest blossomed into somewhat of a global movement with new sit-ins being organized in several thousand cities around the world.  With other protests and similar events occurring in the middle-east, Greece, and earlier this year in Britain it is safe to say that ‘the people’ now have the ear of the elites around the world.  Some may wonder what exactly the “Occupy” protests, including Occupy Thunder Bay, are asking for. It’s a valid question.  I am not affiliated with any of these protests or groups, but I have been following the events closely.  The narrative I have heard emerging from the leaders of these events essentially boils down to; ‘Our governments have failed us.  The gap between the rich and the poor has reached a tipping point where the richest one per cent own 20 percent of the wealth while the poorest 20 per cent owns one per cent.’  People around the world are waking up to this new reality, and it would seem that they are emphatically, but peacefully, demanding action from their governments.  I will be keeping an eye on these ‘Occupy’ protests and hope that anyone who has thoughts on the issue will get in touch, one way or way or another, to share them with me. Finally, the ‘Arab Spring’ movement also gathered momentum this week with the toppling of the Libyan government and the death of Muammar Gaddafi.  There was something strikingly ironic about Libyan rebels finding their billionaire despot leader hiding in a sewer pipe armed with a solid gold gun. Gaddafi’s life, from start to finish, will no doubt make for a compelling movie. While the outcome was forgone, I am still somewhat disturbed about the way it played out in the end. Footage has come to light that shows what appears to be Gaddafi’s execution, or at least near execution at the hands of the rebels.  Gaddafi was wounded in the fight, but once the rebels took him into custody he appeared to be abused.  He died a short time later of a wound suffered to the intestines according to the doctor who examined his body.  Nonetheless, I am very happy that better days are ahead for all Libyans and I congratulate them on their victory over the despot. This week may never be remembered in history books as a week that changed the world, but it was a week that changed the course of millions of lives and for the better in my opinion.    Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:34:55 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/170191/From-The-House/Shipbuilding,-Occupy-movements,-Gaddafi http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/168809/From-The-House/CBC-under-attack Having reached the lofty heights of 39 per cent of the popular vote in one election campaign the Conservative Party of Stephen Harper has now set out to dismantle several of our national institutions.  The latest, but certainly not last, institution to be attacked is the CBC.   Conservative media outlets, Conservative Party fundraisers, and backbench Conservative MPs have all taken shots at our national broadcaster in the first six months of Harper’s majority.  The question is why? Sun Media, which is now headed by Stephen Harper’s former Director of Communications and is famous for including  half-naked pictures of ‘Sun Girls’ in their print and online editions, has decided to attack the CBC because they say it is biased and lacks integrity.    I’ve always thought that ‘up-was-down and down-was-up’ with the Reform-Alliance-Conservative crowd but this campaign against the CBC is a new level of hypocrisy. But don’t get me wrong. I’m not dumping on Sun newspapers. They have great sport sections. Seriously good stuff there.  And who doesn’t appreciate having world events summed up in about 200 words?   Need a new truck or a cheap vacation?  Sun papers have your 30 pages of advertising, but good luck finding them among the 10 pages of news and 5 pages of opinion columns.   Anyhow, back to the campaign against the CBC.   It would seem that operating multiple radio stations, two national television channels, and delivering information services to almost every household in Canada in English, French, or one of eight aboriginal languages for the cost of just $33 per year per Canadian has really irked some well to do Conservatives.   After all, quality service at a reasonable price is a definite no-no with this crowd. The Prime Minister's former Director of Communications and Sun Media say that ‘left wing’ bias is really the big problem at the CBC. It must be, after all the CBC has been hiring outside consultants, Cormex Research, for years to do content analysis and ensure their “journalists” aren’t taking up any nasty liberal or socialist causes.  What a waste.  After all, the CBC should really be taking their cue from Sun Media which proved to the world that it was bias free when it pulled out of the Ontario Press Council this year because; “The editorial direction of our [Sun Media] newspapers, especially our urban tabloids, is incompatible with a politically correct mentality that informs OPC thinking.” For those that don’t know the Thought Police, er the Ontario Press Council investigates complaints concerning roughly 200 of the largest newspapers in Canada, including the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star.  According to the preamble of the Ontario Press Council, the council’s primary objective is to; “… call Ontario newspapers to account for unfair conduct such as invading privacy without justification, condemning people by innuendo or hearsay, ignoring commonly-accepted ethical standards, reporting conjecture as fact, distorting accounts of events, or failing to acknowledge error.”  As you can clearly see, this sort of non-enforceable oversight is in direct conflict with the “editorial direction” of Sun Media. Now in fairness, the owners and employees of Sun Media can easily be dismissed as overzealous competitors who want to get rid of the CBC so that they can gain both market share and revenue, but what about the Conservative Party and a number of Stephen Harper’s MPs?  Conservative Senator Irving Gerstein, who chairs the Conservative Party’s fundraising division when he is not busy defending himself in court against charges that he violated the Canada Elections Act, has been sending out fundraising letters with a Conservative membership survey asking if the CBC is a “good value.” Calgary Conservative MP Rob Anders, famous for once calling Nelson Mandela a terrorist, also sent out a survey in his riding to see if public funding for the CBC should be scrapped.  Anders has even started a petition to end public funding for the CBC in case you were wondering how he really felt. In majority governments, this sort of behavior by subordinates (ie: media allies, partisans, backbenchers) usually means that the leadership is trying to orchestrate something big, but knows that they don’t have the public support needed to pull it off - yet.  I believe in this case, that we are witnessing the start of a concerted campaign by the Conservative Party of Canada to dismantle the CBC with the only question remaining being, ‘will the Canadian public let them?’  My answer, and hopefully yours, will be, ‘not without a fight.’   Fri, 14 Oct 2011 13:05:33 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/168809/From-The-House/CBC-under-attack http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/166952/From-The-House/Amending-the-labour-code-for-injury-and-illness I don’t think it is right that when someone is diagnosed with a serious illness or is injured in an accident that they lose their jobs as well,  but that is often what happens in our “modern” economy.  As it stands now, a person cannot be fired for being sick or temporarily unable to work due to injury, but only for 12 weeks and then all bets are off. I don’t think this is right, so I have tabled a bill to change things. This past week I tabled Bill C-294 (An Act to Amend the Canada Labour Code - Injury and Illness).  C-294 is composed of a single clause and would extend the eligible period of recovery from 12 weeks to 52 weeks for people who are unable to work due to serious illness or injury.  Nothing else would change outside of the allowable recovery time.  Employers would still be free to hire a replacement worker or fill the position on a temporary basis, and the ill or injured worker would not get paid anything beyond what they are already entitled to today.  Like some of the best legislation I have seen this bill would enhance the rights of citizens without costing the government or private industry any money whatsoever.  Think of the cancer patient who must undergo four months or more of chemotherapy, or the car accident victim who must learn to walk again before returning to the office or factory floor.  Let’s also think of people who are struggling with depression or other mood disorders, who may need 6 months or more to receive a proper diagnosis and to begin a suitable treatment. These people are innocent victims of illness and injury so I cannot support making them victims twice over by allowing them to lose their jobs on top of everything else. It may be a reach, but I also believe this bill could have a positive effect on the recovery of these workers and on our economy as a whole.  Think about being treated for anxiety and having to worry about whether or not you will have a job when you have recovered.  The same goes for cancer.  Should people in physical rehabilitation be ‘hurrying’ to recover so they can get back to work? I don’t believe so.  A medically supervised complete recovery is not just in the interest of the worker, but the economy as a whole since a healthy workforce is essential for the efficient production and consistent consumption of goods and services.  What I think this bill, and other bills that I will be tabling in the near future, are about is fundamental fairness in our society. We can’t stop people from getting sick or being injured through no fault of their own, but we can take action to ensure that they are treated fairly afterwards. We can make sure that they don’t win their battle for their life only to find out they have lost their livelihood.   I don’t want my fellow Canadians – my family, friends, and neighbours – to suffer more than they have to during their recovery and I am betting that their employers and you feel the same way. I am not sure that Bill C-294 will ever be debated in parliament, but I do know that it needs to be on our parliamentary agenda.  It’s time the Conservative government was shown exactly how it can improve the lives of millions of Canadians without spending billions of dollars or running huge deficits, and I will continue to table affordable, responsible, and effective bills like this moving forward.  In short, I want to show Conservatives and Canadians what ‘common sense’ government really looks like.   Mon, 03 Oct 2011 16:17:18 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/166952/From-The-House/Amending-the-labour-code-for-injury-and-illness http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/162022/From-The-House/Moving-forward Last week was a sad week for New Democrats and Canadians.  Through the grief and the difficult questions though I would like thank everyone who took a moment to sign a book of condolence, attend one of the many memorial services, watch the funeral, or leave a kind remark on Facebook.  If he were here I think Jack would agree that last week was one for somber reflection, but this week is one for moving forward. The media, doing its job, is wondering aloud about the future of the New Democratic Party after our tremendous loss last week.  Can the party hold onto its gains without Jack?  Can we hold our support in Quebec while bringing the rest of Canada into the orange tent?  Who will lead the party and try to fill Jack’s enormous shoes?  These are all valid questions, but they won’t all be answered today, this week, or even this month.  Let me start with what I do know; the New Democratic Party and Canada are stronger today than a few weeks ago.  Not dwelling on the cruelty of losing Jack at the peak of his political career, we must look not just at what was accomplished under his leadership, but why he was able to lead our party to such enormous success in the most recent election.  Jack was a thoughtful, compassionate, determined, and optimistic person who saw the good in everyone.  This made him a very credible and effective leader and public figure.  People got to know Jack over the years and the more they saw of him the more they liked him.  As their affection grew, Canadians also began to listen what he was saying what values and policies he was promoting as the leader of our party.  Once his credibility as a messenger was established the message that he delivered – of positive, balanced, thoughtful, and responsible, and pragmatic leadership – created the Orange Wave for which he will be likely be most remembered most for. Take Jack’s letter to Canadians as one final example.  Here is an excerpt that I think sums up Jack as a Leader; “And finally, to all Canadians: Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world. We can be a better one – a country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity. We can build a prosperous economy and a society that shares its benefits more fairly. We can look after our seniors. We can offer better futures for our children. We can do our part to save the world’s environment. We can restore our good name in the world.”  This sums up what Jack always stood for, but this is also an excellent summary statement of what the New Democratic Party has always stood for.  The key difference in the last election is that people identified and liked Jack and were open to his, and our, positive message like they never were before.  They trusted him when he asked them to trust us. I think it will be commonplace in a few years time, if not sooner, that comparisons will be made between Jack and Tommy Douglas.    The similarities between the two are striking.  Obviously both were successful New Democrats, but both also dedicated their lives to social justice, equality, opportunity, promoted and practiced fiscally responsible governance, democracy, and transparency.  Each man also came to be truly appreciated by the majority of Canadians once they left, but both also left the New Democratic Party and the social democratic movement in Canada stronger in their absence.  In politics, and in life, the saying goes that we all ‘stand on the shoulders of giants.’  Without question this is true of the New Democratic Party today.  We stand not just on the shoulders of Tommy Douglas, but now Jack Layton.  Our values and ideas are stronger than ever, and supported by more Canadians than ever before with thousands of new, young, and determined volunteers inspired by the extraordinary words of our most successful leader.  They, like millions of Canadians truly believe that; “Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair.”  This has long been the belief of New Democrats, and because of Jack Layton it is now the belief of millions and millions of Canadians as well.   Fri, 02 Sep 2011 11:36:24 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/162022/From-The-House/Moving-forward http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/159016/From-The-House/Provincial-election-preview Since the end of the federal campaign on May 2 voters have begun to shift their attention to the provincial race set for Oct. 6. I would have expected some fatigue from people given the string of federal elections we’ve seen since 2004, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Voters in Northwestern Ontario seem engaged, almost excited, about the chance to vote and I think that is great for democracy.   Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals have a history of governing that can work both for and against them in this campaign. On one hand, they are experienced, but on the other hand you don’t get experience without your share of battle scars.  Voters will have to look at the Liberal’s governing record in terms of pros and cons, and will invariably have to ask and answer the questions: ‘Is my family and I better off today than the last time I voted, and can I reasonably expect to be better off for the next four years if I vote for the same Liberal government in 2011.’  Such is both the advantage and burden of incumbency.   For their part, the Progressive Conservatives, led by Tim Hudak, is modestly ahead in polls. But that gap is fragile and closing according to recent analyses from polling firms Ipsos-Reid and Angus Reid Strategies.  The PC’s will  no doubt try to take advantage of some of the anger that was sparked across the province by the HST, record deficits, and a still struggling economy.  However, the PC’s will also need to show that they have a moderate side.  Many will remember that Tim Hudak served in the Mike Harris regime that rigorously adopted a far-right-free-market ideology that saw our public services cut to the bone, and even if it meant putting our public health at risk such as it did in the Walkerton case.  So which tack will Hudak take – hard right or centrist?  A lot is riding on the answer to that question.   Andrea Horwath and my provincial cousins at the Ontario NDP are at about 24 per cent in the latest polls and face an uphill, but winnable, battle in this campaign.  Like Jack and our federal party, Andrea and her team have chosen to focus on helping families and individuals adapt to, and make ends meet in, the struggling economy.  Making life more affordable will be a key theme with a major plank being the removal the HST on home heating, electricity, and gasoline.  I expect Andrea to gather steam as people around the province get to know her better and hear about her vision for fiscal responsibility and social fairness.  The big handicap for the NDP is (always) the legacy of Bob Rae’s government, regardless of the fact he left for the Liberals more than a decade ago and most other NDP governments, particularly in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, have stellar fiscal records.   So what do I think will happen across the province in this campaign?  Well, I am (more than?) a little biased, but I think voters will opt for change versus more of the same in Ontario in 2011.  Having decided that they want change, I think voters will not trust McGuinty’s crew to deliver that change, nor will they support the slash-and-burn approach that Hudak and the PC’s favour.  After all, we’ve been there and done that and look where it has gotten us.  I think over the course of this campaign more and more Ontarians, especially in the Northwest, will come to support the fiscally balanced and socially responsible vision that is being put forward by Andrea Horwath and the Ontario NDP, and I am proud to say that I will be one of them.     Fri, 12 Aug 2011 16:14:44 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/159016/From-The-House/Provincial-election-preview http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/154991/From-The-House/The-consumer-debt-bubble As part of the second part of a three week spate of columns that are evaluating some financial and economic risks at play in our country, this week’s column will focus on the consumer debt bubble in Canada.   Many economists and analysts are beginning to warn households about our high levels of consumer debt because, like the emergence of a housing bubble, it can have some serious impacts on Canada’s medium-to-long term economic security.  The risks associated with a debt bubble, or what many call a credit bubble, are quite similar to those of a housing bubble. Before discussing some possible negative impacts though it would be a good idea to figure out what a consumer debt/credit bubble is and to see if we are fact in one.   The definition of a consumer debt/credit bubble is a little harder to come by than that of a housing bubble since there are different types of debt – consumer, mortgage, student loans, etc. –  which is held by more people, and with less identifiable trend lines over time.  Even BMO Nesbitt Burns, a respected investment branch of a major Canadian bank, which just last month cautioned against the “risk” of a possible bubble seemed to have difficulty defining what a debt bubble is.  It is safe to say that most analysts would agree that an economic bubble, whether it be an asset bubble like housing or a debt/credit bubble, involves overconsumption and behaviour that is “unhinged” from the reality of the market.    As for a consumer debt/credit bubble, analysts are unsure if we have entered a bubble period yet but they all seem to agree that the record amount of debt that our households are carrying is a potential threat to our economic well-being – especially if interest rates increase as is universally expected.  Analysts suggest we could in fact be in a bubble period because the level of consumer debt in Canada is at its highest level ever, because Canadian households are carrying more debt than those in just about any other country in the industrialized world, and because we are still borrowing and forcing our level of debt higher on a monthly basis.   At the end of the first fiscal quarter of 2011, Canadian household debt stood at $1.524 trillion dollars, or about 147 per cent of our disposable yearly income according to Statistics Canada.   Lenders take many things into consideration when extending credit, but your credit history, assets, and income relative to your existing debt are generally the most important.  Most of the time lenders will only lend money when they think they will get back plus a desired amount of interest.  The real problem emerges though when lenders become unsure that they will be able to recover the money that they’ve loaned.  Unfortunately for us, there are many events or situations well beyond the control of households which can cause this uncertainty to emerge.   So what could trigger the bursting of our consumer debt/credit bubble in Canada?  A mass default on sovereign or state credit (think Greece, Spain, or in the worst case scenario the United States) could cost large lenders enormous sums of money that they would have to recover from other debtors, a sudden plunge in employment may lead to hundreds or thousands of families simultaneously defaulting on their mortgages and loans, and soaring inflation could lead to higher interest rates causing credit to become scarce and more expensive to access.  This potential problem is more serious because our society is addicted to cheap and easy to access credit to fuel growth by helping us finance and furnish our homes, pay for our vacations, and fund our investments.  As such, less credit will necessarily mean less economic activity, less corporate profits, more jobs losses, and less economic growth.   I don’t mean to sound pessimistic about this (hopefully more of a realist), but if the bursting of a consumer debt/credit bubble coincides with the bursting of a housing bubble then we could be looking at an economic situation that is potentially worse than that faced by families the United States today.  Despite that eerie possibility though many analysts are starting to speak openly about possible housing and debt bubbles not just because they are concerned about a crisis, but also because there is still time for us to avoid crisis – we as individual consumers and households must voluntarily choose to moderate our borrowing and pay down our consumer debt which BMO Nesbitt Burns suggests we have already begun to do.  In the end, lower household debt will mean a more flexible and stronger economy that reflects reality and leads to a gradual deflation of debt and housing bubbles instead of their bursting.    There are some links below about consumer debt in Canada, as well as some very recent articles and analyses of some of the structural problems.   Next week I will offer my opinion on our Conservative government’s questionable fiscal behaviour and explain why it is creating further, and unnecessary, economic risk for us moving forward. Fri, 15 Jul 2011 14:37:25 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/154991/From-The-House/The-consumer-debt-bubble http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/152271/From-The-House/Sheila-Fraser's-final-report Outgoing Auditor General Sheila Fraser presented her final report to Parliament recently. The final report covered several topics, as is normally the case, but the most awaited chapter in this edition was the chapter that reported her findings on the G8-G20 fiasco last year. As usual, Ms. Fraser did not let us down.   On the G8-G20 spending, Fraser concluded that the main problem was that; “the government did not clearly or transparently identify the nature of the request for funding,” and that her staff “could not conclude on project selection because documentation was not available to show how projects were chosen.” In short, the main problem with the 72-hour, $1 billion G8-G20 boondoggle summit was a lack of transparency and accountability. This was not a huge surprise given that we are after all talking about the deficit riddled and hyper-secretive Harper Conservative government.   What was most troubling though from a local perspective was Ms. Fraser’s finding that the Conservatives funneled $83 million from the Border Infrastructure Fund, which was supposed to help alleviate congestion at our border crossings, to the G8 Legacy Fund, which was used to build all those beautiful gazebos and sidewalks hundreds of kilometres away from the summit site. The Harper Conservatives dumped all that money, which could have helped cut down wait times at our three border crossings, into one riding and to fund “beautification” projects that were nowhere near our border or the summit site.   If you operate a small business in our region, or even tried to cross one of our border crossings during peak tourism season, then you are probably as outraged as I am at this ridiculous waste of our tax dollars. In response to the findings of Ms. Fraser’s audit, I asked the government point-blank in question period if they would apologize to taxpayers in our region who need our wait times reduced, but the government was still in denial. In response to my question, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird rose and essentially said that I was wrong and that no such diversion of the funds occurred. I was unable to ask a follow-up question, but it would have been nice to have asked him whom he thought Canadians should trust – Tony Clement and John Baird, or our Auditor General Sheila Fraser.   If we are to bring to a close to this wasteful and dishonest episode, then we should try to learn from it. The first lesson is that this government is simply not fiscally conservative. The Conservatives are addicted to blowing our tax dollars, in this case more than $1 billion in 72 hours for two meetings, on frivolous things that offer little or no return on our investment.  Second, always trust the independent Officers of Parliament over the partisans. When they have been found to be in the wrong by our independent Officers of Parliament – the Parliamentary Budget Officer and Auditor General usually – the Conservatives simply enter denial mode and more or less challenge the integrity of those independent officials who have nothing gain from misleading the public.  When the time comes for a New Democrat government to host the next Canadian G8-G20 summit in 2018-2019 I can assure you that we will have learned from this boondoggle – we’ll respect your tax dollars, keep our books open and transparent, and use your tax dollars to improve your lives instead of those of our friends.  Lessons learned.         Mon, 27 Jun 2011 15:34:52 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/152271/From-The-House/Sheila-Fraser's-final-report http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/150905/From-The-House/All-about-the-budget- This week was the first week of the 41st Parliament and for many it had the same feel as that first day of school. Voters from across Canada chose a different group of people to represent them and there are many fresh faces now mixed in with the returning crowd. More than 100 new MPs to be precise.   With all these changes made by the Canadian people you might expect that the Conservative Government might think that it is time to try doing things differently. They had two great chances to do just that in this first week with the throne speech and the budget. Sadly though, the Conservatives failed to seize those opportunities and gave us more of the same that we have seen before.   Some of you reading this may think that I might be exaggerating, but I can’t help but point to Budget 2011 itself as the best example. This budget is almost the exact same budget that was introduced and rejected back in March. The budget document introduced by the Conservatives this week is precisely 22-pages longer than the 352-page long budget brought forward in March and contains only a couple of minor additions.   Like the March budget, this document fails to make life more affordable for Canadian families. It does not address the reasonable and affordable proposals made by the NDP before and during the election. There is nothing in this document to strengthen the Canada Pension Plan, nothing to provide relief for the family budget, nothing for the millions of Canadians without access to a family doctor and fails to lift seniors every out of poverty. To make matters worse, the Conservatives will be saddling the treasury with $15 billion a year in corporate tax giveaways that won’t guarantee one new job. With this budget they have shown that they won't budge on giving away billions to the most profitable corporations. Instead, to help pay for those corporate tax giveaways, they will cut $11 billion from the programs and services Canadians rely on, without telling Canadians where those cuts are going to be made.   All that being said there are some measures in the budget that I am happy to see. Items like the temporary restoration of the EcoEnergy Home retrofit program and the funding for the new Cyclotron in Thunder Bay are welcomed inclusions. While these are encouraging steps, they still fall short of what the people of our region need. These are only half measures and they do not outweigh the weaknesses in the budget before us.   While this carbon-copy budget is a disappointing start of this Parliament, I can’t say I’m feeling negative about what lays ahead over the next four years. I feel very positive about the effect of all my newly elected colleagues have had on the House of Commons so far. This first week in the House has been probably the most civil and respectful that I have witnessed in all my time here. Most of these new Members of Parliament have never worked in a place where heckling and insulting colleagues was acceptable, practices which have been typical in the House of Commons for many years. These new, young MPs are setting the example of how Parliamentarians should behave and they give me great hope for the 41st Parliament.  So despite the disappointing budget before us now, my new colleagues make me feel very positive about the year ahead of us. Fri, 17 Jun 2011 10:13:24 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/150905/From-The-House/All-about-the-budget- http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/150904/From-The-House/The-new-majority With the May 2 election behind us it is time to look forward to Canada’s new majority government. I would like to use this space over the next two weeks to inform you of some of the impacts that the election results will have on the functioning of parliament and how it may affect our lives over the next four years. This week, I would like to briefly recap the election results, address the new powers of the Harper government, and speculate as to the impact that the May 2 will have on our daily Question Period. The federal election resulted in the first Conservative majority government under Stephen Harper with the New Democratic Party forming the official opposition under the leadership of Jack Layton. The final seat total from this election as well as the percentage of the vote nationally and the change in that vote from the 2008 election are as follows; Conservatives 166 seats (39.62 per cent, up 1.97 per cent from 2008), New Democrats 103 seats (30.63 per cent, up 12.4 per cent from), Liberals, 34 seats (18.91 per cent, down 7.36 per cent from 2008), Bloc Quebecois 4 seats (6.04 pre cent, down 3.93 per cent from 2008) and 1 seat for the Greens (3.91 per cent, down 2.86 per cent from 2008). The first major difference in this parliament will be the institutional transition from a minority government to a majority government. If you don’t follow politics on a daily basis then this difference could sound somewhat insignificant, but the actual impact will be quite dramatic. It is true that Stephen Harper is still Prime Minister and the Conservatives are still the governing party, but their power in Ottawa has increased dramatically.   With a majority of seats in parliament now being occupied by Conservative MPs, the Prime Minister has the ability to introduce and pass any legislation that he chooses and whenever he chooses. For confidence votes such as the Throne Speech and Budget it means that there is little to no threat of the defeat of this government barring a revolt among at least 13 Conservative MPs.  It also means that the Conservatives can, for the most part and aside from established parliamentary traditions, dictate the schedule and business of the House of Commons.  It can introduce bills, schedule debates on those bills, and choose the sitting hours of parliament on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. On a daily basis the big changes in the House of Commons will be noticeable during Question Period since the order and quantity of questions and statements are based upon the partisan make-up of the House.  In the last parliament, the Liberals (as the Official Opposition) asked the first set of questions and received up to seven questions in each of the three rounds over the roughly one hour period. The Bloc were next and had between three and five questions per round, while my New Democrat colleagues and I had the remainder – between 1 and 3 per round.  In this parliament, the new results mean that New Democrats will lead off Question Period and have six-to-eight questions per round, followed by the Liberals with two-to-three questions with one question set aside for the Bloc, Green, or independent MP’s and another for a backbench Conservative. This will dramatically affect what issues are discussed in Ottawa and I would offer that New Democrats plan to hold the government to a much higher standard on issues ranging job creation, the economy, healthcare, and the soaring cost of living for families than the last official opposition. So this is the new reality in the House of Commons. The Conservatives will have more power, but the New Democrats will also have a much stronger voice to hold them to account.  The Liberals will also still have a voice in parliament, but I can assure you and them that they will face an uphill battle with fewer questions and statements each day in the House. Next week I would like to explain how the new majority government will also result in significant changes in our other democratic institutions, in particular to our parliamentary committees, the civil service, and the judiciary. Until then, take care. Fri, 17 Jun 2011 10:09:23 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/150904/From-The-House/The-new-majority http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/137750/From-The-House/Volunteers-are-special-commodities- In the Northwest we know the value of public services and appreciate the work of those deliver them.   We know how lucky we are to have dedicated people working for the common good of our communities and especially those charged with keeping us safe. In many though in smaller communities, many of these important services are provided by volunteers.   These volunteers, who put their lives on the line for the benefit of others, deserve a special status in our society and government support to make their work safer and more effective.   In our riding, the fire services in many communities are either fully provided or greatly enhanced by volunteers. Volunteer fire fighters serve communities like Atikokan, Rainy River, Upsala, Neebing, Lake of the Woods Township, Shebandowan, Emo, Oliver Paipoonge and a dozen more across Thunder Bay-Rainy River.  In Fort Frances volunteers to work alongside professional fire fighters to serve there, but all have two things in common – they are all volunteers and they are all lifesavers.   These departments not only fight fires, but they also respond to accidents along our highways.   In Northern Ontario, volunteers respond to 98 per cent of incidents that take place on the Highway 17 and Highway 11 corridors.  These departments deliver an important service, but because they serve small communities with even smaller municipal tax bases, they are continually forced to operate with less funding than they require.   The lack of funding to these volunteer fire departments has meant they must work with older equipment, with 39 per cent of their pumper trucks and 42 per cent of their tanker trucks being 15 years or older. Working with that older equipment unnecessarily increases the risk to these volunteers, and I believe that our federal government should help fix this problem.   I’ve brought forward a motion Parliament to try to help these departments gain access to more funding to upgrade their equipment and reduce the risks they face.  On Feb. 8 I tabled motion M-635, which calls on the government to work with our municipal and provincial partners to create new funding streams to help fund our volunteer fire departments. This motion, like others that I have introduced on pension protection, the HST and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, came from the concerns raised by constituents, and I want to thank Tim Beebe, Fire Chief of the Upsala Fire Department, in particular for bringing this concern to me and for working with my staff to develop this response.   Mon, 21 Mar 2011 10:52:36 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/137750/From-The-House/Volunteers-are-special-commodities- http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/136079/From-The-House/HST-on-heating-bills-sting Spring is around the corner, and so is everything the season brings.  Unfortunately, spring is also bringing our families pain throughout Northwestern Ontario as we are getting hit hard by rising energy costs, at home and at the pumps, and the rising cost of the HST on those energy products.   All winter long we have been forced to pay more for heating our homes, but the reality is just now beginning to set in as our bills arrive for the December-January period.  For the hardest hit among us, including seniors, the imposition of the HST on the already rising cost of home heating has forced them to make choices that no Canadian should ever be faced with. My New Democrat colleagues and I have continually called on the government to remove the federal portion of the HST on home heating.  Unfortunately, the government has chosen to turn its back on this request.   Over the past few weeks we’ve not only suffered through rising home heating costs, but also a big run up in the price of gas at the pumps.  For the past month the price of oil has been on the rise worldwide. Adding insult to injury, the price at the pump is pushed even higher by the addition of the HST.  Because the HST is a percentage based tax the amount collected per litre increases along with the price.  This of course poses several problems for consumers.   Since the implementation of the HST last July, the effect of the tax has been hard to calculate, but the effect on gas prices is the exception to that rule.  Since the GST never applied to the price of gas prior to harmonization, we know that the HST will raise the price of gas by five per cent and that this money will go directly into federal coffers.  The math then is as follows – for $1 per litre gas, the federal government is collecting an extra five cents per litre.  With the recent run up in gas prices, topping $1.34 in Atikokan and Thunder Bay, the federal government is collecting an extra 6.6 cents per litre.  Should prices hit $1.50 this year, which is likely if the problems in the Middle East continue, then we will be paying the federal government 7.5 cents more per litre.  Sounds like a rip-off to me and far from revenue neutral.   So what does this amount to?  In a nutshell, pain for families and gain for government.  The QMI media organization sifted through government data and found the increase in gas prices over just the last two months alone is taking $6.7 million per week out of our pockets and putting that directly into the pockets of the federal government.     All of this means that families across our region will continue to have a harder time getting by and will be paying more to maintain a decent standard of living.   We know that driving is not a luxury in our region. We need our cars and trucks to get to work, get our kids to hockey practice and travel long distances to important medical appointments. That’s all part of the cost of living in Northwestern Ontario, and the HST flies in the face of that reality and continues to punish our families. Thu, 10 Mar 2011 15:32:04 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/136079/From-The-House/HST-on-heating-bills-sting http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/131843/From-The-House/Motion-killed,-Bill-alive-and-well With the new session of Parliament in full swing, I’d like to give an update on Bill C-501, which is still making its way through the legislative cycle.  There have been some recent developments in regard to the bill and the way forward has become clearer in recent days. Despite some erroneous media reports, Bill C-501 is in fact alive and well and is continuing its journey through Parliament.  On occasion, the parliamentary process can be quite complex and it would seem that a few media outlets have misunderstood the impact of some recent developments.  I just wanted to clarify first, and above all else, that C-501 will in fact be heading back to the House for a final vote sometime this spring. Some of the confusion about the status of C-501 came with the defeat of a motion in the House of Commons that related to the bill.  I realized that there was still some opposition among primarily Conservative, but also Liberal, MPs to the idea of putting pension plans ahead of banks and large financial institutions. So I put forward a motion that could have enabled a compromise amendment to be negotiated between our parties.  In short, I asked the House of Commons for permission to amend C-501 at the Industry Committee so pensions and severance pay would be placed in the middle of the list of creditors during restructuring and bankruptcy proceedings instead of at the front. This motion was defeated but the bill itself remains alive and has not been impacted.   The type of motion that I tabled is known as a motion of instruction and it required the unanimous consent of the House of Commons in order to pass. The motion itself would have only allowed the negotiation process on C-501 to begin and empowered the Industry Committee to make a compromise amendment if it so desired.   Putting pensions behind banks but ahead of all other creditors seemed like a common sense compromise and could have made it easier for many Conservative MPs to support the bill since it would have shielded the big banks from any and all fallout that could occur as a result of them being bumped down a notch in the list of creditors and being placed behind pension plans.  However, instead of allowing a compromise to be negotiated in the Industry Committee, the Conservatives refused to grant their approval to the negotiation process and rejected the idea of working together on the issue.  This regrettable decision was not shocking, but was disappointing. While my efforts to work with the other parties to reach a compromise on C-501 were essentially killed, the bill itself is alive. As I write this column, C-501 is presently scheduled to be examined for a final time at the Industry, Science, and Technology Committee on Tuesday Feb. 15.  There will be some minor amendments made to the bill to clear up some language issues, but I am not expecting any significant changes to be made to its content. Once this last committee meeting is over with and the final version of C-501 is returned to the House there must two further hours of debate and then a final vote for third reading.  The two hours of debate are likely to occur in March or early April and the final vote is expected in early-to-mid April.  In this final vote the support of the Liberals will be crucial to getting C-501 passed and moved into the Senate.  If the Liberals show up and support this bill and agree to put the interests of pension plans and retirees ahead of banks and primary lenders, then the bill will move into the Senate where a new battle begins against those unelected and unaccountable Conservative senators; but we’ll cross that bridge when it comes. So that is where C-501 is at presently – alive and well and moving forward.  We now know that the bill will emerge from the Industry Committee sometime in the next week, and be back into the House in its final form for debate and a vote in the next 60 days.  Had the Conservatives simply shown a willingness to cooperate on the bill and create a more moderate and workable version then its speedy passage could likely have been guaranteed.  With that being said, there is still a lot of support among MPs for putting pensions and retirees ahead of banks, so my staff and I will be working hard in Ottawa to get the Liberals and Bloc on board and to ensure the bill makes it into the Senate.  After that anything is possible.   Fri, 11 Feb 2011 11:04:33 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/131843/From-The-House/Motion-killed,-Bill-alive-and-well http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/129357/From-The-House/Groundhog-Day-on-the-Hill There has been a lot of important news coming out of Ottawa that has reminded me of Groundhog Day.   Not Wiarton Willie, but the motion picture from the early 1990s starring Bill Murray.  In the movie Murray plays a TV weatherman sent to cover the big events of Groundhog Day only to wake the next morning to relive the same day over and over and over again.   The news that brought those images to my mind came from the most recent report from Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page.  As you might remember, Mr. Page was appointed by Prime Minister Harper in order to bring truth to budgeting as a part of their supposed accountability agenda. But as I have written in this space before, that's not how Mr. Page's experience as a Parliamentary watchdog has worked out. He is constantly faced with Conservative roadblocks, has crucial information withheld from him, and is then attacked publicly and called “incompetent” by various cabinet ministers.  The cycle repeats itself with each of Mr. Page’s reports.   Last week, Mr. Page released a report on the government's plan for cutting the size of federal bureaucracy.  In the report he states there is little evidence the plans of federal departments will meet the government's attrition plans for the public service.   As part of their plan to eliminate their $56 billion deficit, the Harper Conservatives promised to control the size of the federal government, which according to media reports has grown by a record 14 per cent since the Conservatives came to office.  In other words, the Conservatives have no plan to reduce public sector costs, which they once claimed was a central part of their plan to reduce the deficit.   When Mr. Page requested some basic information about what cuts the government was planning to make in the civil service, the Conservatives cited cabinet confidentiality.  It’s true that some cabinet discussions need to be kept secret, but the broad strokes of the government’s plan to slay a deficit should not be treated as something only 38 people in Canada should know about.   With little to no assistance from the government, Mr. Page approached each government department separately and asked them what staffing changes they were planning over the next year.  When the various departments reported back saying that no discussions have been had about staff reductions, retirement rates, or otherwise downsizing, Mr. Page was left but with one conclusion – the departments are not planning to reduce their size. If there was a plan, then certainly senior management in the departments would have been asked what efficiencies could be found and what staffing changes could help the government reduce the size of the bureaucracy.  The departments weren’t asked, so Mr. Page concluded that there probably was no plan in place.   This same story of government obstruction seems to repeat itself over and over.  All the while the Conservatives continue to proclaim themselves as the guardians of transparency.  Ever since creating this position and appointing Mr. Page, the government has done everything in its power to undermine and discredit him. It’s a pattern that seems to repeat itself quarterly.   To the Conservative government, the words accountability and transparency are simply buzzwords with no actual meaning once the campaign ends.  If they did have meaning and if they were truly priorities of this government then Mr. Harper and his ministers would support, assist and promote the good work of watchdogs like Mr. Page instead of publicly attacking them.       Fri, 28 Jan 2011 14:49:45 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/129357/From-The-House/Groundhog-Day-on-the-Hill http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/121033/From-The-House/Pension-bill-faces-committee- This week was a week of mixed results and emotions in Ottawa. First came a moment of progress and pride as my pension protection bill C-501 had two hours of hearings before the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology. Unfortunately, a few hours later disappointment sent in when the Conservative government used their majority in the unelected and unaccountable Senate to kill a bill that was passed by a majority of MPs in the democratically elected House of Commons. The best four hours of the week by a wide margin came during the pair of Industry Committee hearings on C-501. During two separate two-hour meetings the assembled committee of parliamentarians heard from witnesses ranging from pensioners to economists, and bankruptcy experts about the effects of the my bill. I believe the most effective witnesses were those pensioners and workers who travelled from across Canada to testify about why this bill is so needed. A witness from our riding, Joe Hanlon of the United Steelworkers Local 2693, which represents many former Buchanan workers, was particularly effective in his testimony. He pointed out that C-501 will ensure that termination and severance pay would also be secured as well as pensions, which many MPs tend to forget. All in all, it was a great week for C-501 and I look forward to the final two hours of testimony next week. But while I was happy to see C-501 moving forward, I have to admit to being greatly disappointed by the morally bankrupt actions of the Conservative dominated Senate just a few hours later. For those that don’t already know, Tuesday evening the Conservative dominated majority in the Senate voted down Bill C-311 without even so much as a debate or committee hearings. C-311 known as the Climate Change Accountability Act was tabled by my electoral neighbor and New Democrat colleague Bruce Hyer and passed by a majority of MPs in the elected House of Commons back in May. Unfortunately, bill C-311 was brought to a snap vote by a Conservative Senator and defeated 43-32 with all Conservative senators opposed. Regardless of how you feel about climate change or C-311, you surely agree that the unelected Senate – stacked with failed Conservative and Liberal Party candidates, fundraisers, and personal friends of prime ministers – should never overturn a bill passed by a majority in the elected House of Commons. Once upon a time the Senate was supposed to provide a "sober second thought" and compliment the work of the House of Commons which has traditionally meant that Senators examine bills in greater detail and recommend minor changes to be voted on in the House. The defeat of C-311 in the Senate on a snap vote and without any debate whatsoever may have been the first such time in our country’s history that such an act has occurred. Researchers are looking, but have yet to find such an affront to democracy in our country’s history. Over the years, Mr. Harper and his Conservatives have spent a great deal of time complaining that the unelected Liberal Senate was holding up their agenda. In fact, not so long ago Stephen Harper was quoted as saying that he would never appoint unelected and unaccountable Senators as prime minister. Unfortunately, since winning power Mr. Harper has made 35 such appointments – just enough to give him a majority in the senate chamber. What would Mr. Harper have said three years ago if those darn Liberal senators actually defeated one of his bills like his Senators did to C-311? Congratulations Mr. Harper; on the issue of the senate reform. You are now officially worse than the Liberals. Not an easy feat, but you did it. So as you can see it an was interesting week in Ottawa. I hope in the coming weeks we can continue to make more progress on C-501 in committee and that Mr. Harper can give his head a shake and try to find out what has happened to those values of accountability and democracy that he used to hold so dear.     Mon, 22 Nov 2010 11:57:32 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/121033/From-The-House/Pension-bill-faces-committee- http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/119447/From-The-House/Lest-We-Forget Lest We Forget: these three words holds so much meaning for all Canadians from all walks of life, but especially at this time of year during this time of Remembrance. On the 11 th day, of the 11 th month, around the 11 th hour, we gather to remember. We gather at the Legion and the cenotaphs, in schools and churches. We come together to remember the sacrifices made by those brave men and women who have served our country with pride and distinction, and those who have paid the ultimate price for that service. This Remembrance Day in particular marks a watershed moment in the history of Canada’s Armed Forces and for our proud veterans of all Canadian conflicts. This will be the first Remembrance Day in history in which no Canadian veteran from the First World War is still with us on this Earth. You may remember that back on February 18 th of this year, Canada’s last living First World War veteran, John Babcock, passed away at the age of 109. With his passing, we lost our last participant and witness to the carnage and valour that marked the war that was supposed to end all wars. This year also marks the 100 th anniversary of Canadian Navy. After some intense and heated debate amongst the parliamentarians of the day, on May 4, 1910 the Naval Services Act was passed and the Canadian Navy was born. Since that time this branch of Canada’s Armed Forces has grown from the "tin pot navy", as opponents of its creation dubbed it at the time, to a strong force that has sent to sea no less than 850 warships under a naval ensign. There are 26 Naval Reserve divisions all across Canada, including Northern Ontario’s only division. HMCS Griffon was established at the beginning of the Second World War in Port Arthur, operating out of a leased garage before a proper barracks were built in 1943. Throughout the Second World War, the division recruited and trained volunteers enlisted in the Canadian Navy.  Shipyards in the city would build thirty corvettes and minesweepers for the Royal Canadian Navy and Royal Navy over the course of the war and HMCS Griffon became home to the commissioning crews for these ships.  More than 2400 officers and non-commissioned members enlisted into the Canadian Navy through HMCS Griffon . Our proud naval tradition continues today, as our Navy operates all around the World in many different capacities. Abroad in dangerous areas or close to home in Canadian water, working with our partner nations or alone, the members of Canada’s Navy are serving us today with distinction and valour. Every day they are showing the World the best of what we are as Canadians. This Thursday, I invite you to join in the many ceremonies all around the riding of Thunder Bay – Rainy River. I invite you to gather with your friends, family and neighbours, to remember those who have made that sacrifice in the name of our country, to thank those who are still with us for their service to Canada and to thank those who continue to serve Canada with distinction. Fri, 12 Nov 2010 11:13:02 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/119447/From-The-House/Lest-We-Forget http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/117256/From-The-House/Economic-update-delivered-to-safe-audience Just over a week ago Jim Flaherty delivered his fall economic update to a room of Toronto elites at the Albany Club. The polite applause he received was probably the reason he chose to deliver that speech to his friends rather than to the democratically elected MPs in the House of Commons where he would face serious questions about his abilities and the fact that the Bank of Canada is saying the economy is slowing under his watch. Upon reading the minister’s remarks three things stood out for me. Mr. Flaherty is now saying that his deficit last year was officially the largest on record, that this year’s deficit will be larger than he predicted just six months ago, and that he will run deficits through 2015 – one year longer than we were told in the March budget. What’s worse is that the finance minister still refuses to accept responsibility for the mess we are in. A deficit is the negative balance that exists between what a government takes in through taxes and the amount it spends on programs and services. Sometimes these imbalances are caused by governments that overspend, but other times they are caused by governments that excessively cut taxes. No one will argue that the last recession was global in nature, and that the struggling U.S. economy was a drag on ours, but this finance minister manufactured our record deficits by recklessly cutting taxes, and corporate taxes in particular, to the bone. I think most people will agree that tax cutting is not a bad thing generally speaking, but most would also agree that this should be done only so long as we can afford them in the short, medium, and long term. However, this government cut corporate taxes by a staggering $60 billion over just five years. The fact that last year’s deficit came in at about $56 billion tells me that this fiscal imbalance would likely not exist, or would have at least been several magnitudes smaller, if it were not for the misguided and reckless corporate tax cuts enacted by this Finance Minister. Mr. Flaherty’s economic update also acknowledged that this year’s deficit would be larger than he calculated just six short months ago, and that his timetable for the elimination of deficits was being pushed back by one year. Mr. Flaherty has never been correct about such matters, so that was not so surprising. What was shocking though was his admission was that the deficit this year is higher than he anticipated because of the transfer payments the Harper Conservatives doled out to Ontario and British Columbia to implement the HST. That’s right. Not only did the Conservatives urge the provincial governments to increase our sales tax and give them $6 billion to follow through with it they also had to borrow that $6 billion and are forcing us to pay interest on that money every year moving forward. So Jim Flaherty can’t see the deepest recession in a generation coming until it actually hits, is running the largest deficits in Canadian history because he has cut corporate taxes to the bone, and is making those record deficits larger still by borrowing money to increase our sales tax. Does that sound like sound fiscal policy to you?  With the Bank of Canada sounding some alarm bells last week and suggesting that Canada is headed into more ‘uncertain’ economic times my simple advice to the Finance Minister is to pick up the phone and call the New Democrat government of Manitoba to ask them for guidance. That government has found a responsible way to phase out and eliminate entirely the income tax for small businesses while balancing the books for eleven straight years, and avoiding a recession when Canada and the rest of the world fell into one. Clearly this is the kind of responsible government we need in Ottawa. Fri, 12 Nov 2010 11:04:37 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/117256/From-The-House/Economic-update-delivered-to-safe-audience http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/111171/From-The-House/Bills-up-for-debate The first week back in Ottawa was a busy one. Before it gets too far along, I want to use the column this week to tell you about some relevant bills and motions coming up for debate. In each session of Parliament a number of government bills are put forward for debate as well as numerous private members’ bills and motions. This Conservative government tends to hold its cards close to its chest, so we get little notice about the bills they put forth. Private members’ bills though must go through a long and drawn out process, so we know what is coming far ahead of time. For that reason I will focus on three of those bills and motions. The first and probably highest profile PMB of the session was C-391. That bill was tabled by Conservative MP Candace Hoeppner and would have abolished the long-gun registry had it passed two more votes this month. In the end, C-391 was defeated on the first of those votes by 153-151.  My opposition to the long-gun registry is fairly well known throughout our riding, but the single most important factor that determined my vote on C-391 was your collective opinion on the subject. The people of our riding made their opinion on C-391 clear through a riding-wide survey that I conducted during the March to May period of 2009.  During that period of time my office sent out more than 35,000 surveys to households in our riding.  When the responses were tallied a full 96 per cent of the respondents supported abolishing the long gun registry, and it was because of that result that I cast my vote in favour of C-391 and in support of the abolition of the long gun registry in that final vote. Unfortunately, the majority of the House of Commons did not agree with our shared position, so the long gun registry remains a part of our lives for the time being. With the end of the debate on C-391 my attention is now shifting to other important bills and motion before the House. One such motion comes from the representative of our electoral neighbours to the north. Greg Rickford, the MP from Kenora, tabled motion M-519 pertaining to the environmental and ecological status of the Lake of the Woods. The actual wording of M-519 is too long to include in this space, but this non-binding and non-enforceable motion would indicate that it is the will of Parliament to refer the matter of the ecological and environmental health of the Lake of the Woods to the International Joint Commission so that it could provide examination, reporting, and recommendations about the health of the body to the Canadian and U.S. governments. The IJC is bi-national body established by Canada and the United States more than 100 years ago to work on the preservation and maintenance of watersheds that are shared by the two countries such as the Great Lakes.  The effectiveness of Mr. Rickford’s non-binding M-519 is symbolic since agreements to refer watersheds to the IJC require the formal support of both federal governments and every affected state and province.  In the case of the Lake of the Woods, this process had been ongoing for more than a decade and Minnesota, Ontario, and the United States have already signed on to the agreement. Late as it is though, Mr. Rickford’s non-binding motion should add some symbolic support to the process, and I expect that it will pass when it does finally come to a vote. Finally, my own bill C-501 is set to be examined at the industry, science and technology committee later this fall. My staff and I are in the process of drumming up public support for the bill, especially in Liberal and Conservative held ridings, formulating a witness list for those hearings, and generating media awareness and coverage of the bill. These are just three of the bills and motions that I have identified as priorities for my work this fall session.  There will of course be others, especially as the federal government moves forward with its own legislative agenda, so I will you keep you informed and let you know how things are proceeding on both of these bills as they move forward. Tue, 28 Sep 2010 16:44:04 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/111171/From-The-House/Bills-up-for-debate http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/109104/From-The-House/A-tribute-to-Mr.-Page- The House of Commons will resume sitting in just more than a week, and MPs will again be debating the important issues of the day in our nation’s Capital. The economy and the state of our massive budget deficit will certainly be on my mind and the minds of many others. For these important debates, the information supplied by our Parliamentary Budget Officer will prove essential. Unfortunately Kevin Page, who has done a tremendous job in that post, has recently announced he will not be seeking another mandate when his term expires in 2013. Therefore, I would like to use this week's column to pay tribute to Mr. Page and all that he has done as Canada’s first PBO. It’s a little known fact to many around here, but Kevin was born and raised in Thunder Bay where he attended Fort William Collegiate Institute and studied economics at Lakehead University before obtaining a Masters degree at Queen’s.  He made his mark in the Finance Department in the 1990s where he was seen as a rising star while working through some of the most challenging economic conditions this country has faced. When the time came for the Harper government to appoint Canada’s first PBO in 2008 Kevin was a natural choice. As the first independent Parliamentary Budget Officer in Canadian history, Kevin’s responsibilities have included providing independent analysis of the state of our economy and the government's expenditure plans including the costing of the federal budget. In short, he is the unbiased and non-political authority when it comes to finding out the real cost of government programs and promises. Since becoming our PBO Kevin has helped Parliament and public alike understand the true costs of the Afghanistan war, various Conservative spending commitments on the justice file, and has tried his best to track the Harper government’s stimulus spending. I say ‘tried’ in the latter case because when he asked for information to help him do his job, the government initially refused before eventually dropping an unmarked cardboard box full or random documents and incomplete files on Kevin’s desk one afternoon. As a true professional, Kevin did not complain and simply went about his work. Time after time, Kevin’s numbers have proven to be more accurate than those put forward by the government, which has made him a constant target for that gang in the media. In January when Kevin tabled a report that showed he was running a structural deficit, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty smugly replied that Mr. Page was merely "speculating." Again in March when the Minister was faced with Kevin’s assertions that the government hadn’t been prudent in their budget forecasting, he replied that Kevin is "usually wrong." As if being one of Canada’s foremost economic minds wouldn’t give him comfort, Kevin should always remember that it was Mr. Flaherty who denied a recession was even possible during the 2008 election – while we were already in one – and then made the infamous claim that he would "never" table a deficit budget before running the largest series of deficits in Canadian history. Mr. Page has proven to be one of the most insightful and articulate fixtures in Ottawa during the short time he has served as Canada’s first Parliamentary Budget Officer. Providing accurate and reliable data during one of the worst recessions in Canadian history has surely been no easy job, but Canadians should all be thankful that it was Kevin who was charged with this task. While I regret that he will not be seeking a second mandate when his term ends in 2013, I take great pride in the fact that a Lakehead educated Northwestern Ontario boy has made history and carried out his duties with such distinction. Thank you Kevin, and keep up the good work. Tue, 14 Sep 2010 14:02:16 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/109104/From-The-House/A-tribute-to-Mr.-Page- http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/108023/From-The-House/National-strategy-for-FASD-needed There is a lot of misinformation out there about the cause and prevalence of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) in our society. I would like to use my column space this week to address this issue, provide some information about this disorder, and explain what I am doing to reduce the prevalence of FASD in our society. Most people I speak with in our riding and in Ottawa have heard and know about FASD to some degree or another, but for those who have not; FASD is a disorder that encompasses a range of disabilities including Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS), Alcohol Related Neurodevelopmental Disorder (ARND), and Alcohol Related Birth Defects (ARBD). The sole cause of FASD is the consumption of alcohol during pregnancy by an expectant mother. As such FASD, while serious, is entirely preventable. FASD affects approximately 1% of people living in Canada which means that there are more than 300,000 Canadians and their families that suffer from this serious public health issue. Children and adults suffering from FASD may have difficulty learning and controlling their behaviour. They may appear to learn how do to a new task one day, and not remember the next. Other common problems include having trouble adding or subtracting, handling money, thinking things through and reasoning properly, learning from experience, and understanding consequences of their actions. When I talk with people from all walks of life about this issue many are quick to offer their support for any efforts aimed at preventing FASD, but many are also quick to claim that the problem is only limited to expectant single mothers living in poverty. Almost everyone is surprised to learn that this belief is completely unsupported by the facts. In the United States, the Center for Disease Control has found that pregnant women most likely to report any alcohol use were: 35-44 years of age (17.7%), College graduates (14.4%), employed (13.7%), and unmarried (13.4%). This of course does not mean that women in other categories don’t drink while pregnant, but it does show that the problem is more widespread than most would believe, that the dangers of drinking while pregnant are not clearly known by a large segment of our population, and it is not confined to one or two of the demographic subgroups. Studies have shown that exposure to three different messages (warning posters in restaurants and bars, warning labels on alcohol products, and mass media campaigns) among 18- to 40-year-old women led to more conversations about drinking during pregnancy and reduction in alcohol consumption. Taking these findings and what we know about the prevention of FASD into consideration, I have drafted two bills to help address this public health crisis. Bill C-532 has already been tabled in the House of Commons and would require that all alcohol packaging include a warning label that reads; "The Public Health Agency of Canada advises that there is no safe amount of alcohol to drink during pregnancy and that consuming alcohol during pregnancy may cause brain damage in the developing child." The second bill, which will be introduced once the House resumes sitting in September, will direct the Federal Government to develop a comprehensive national strategy for the prevention and treatment of FASD. If the two bills were to become law I am confident that they would successfully reduce the prevalence of FASD in our society. While these bills will not be debated or voted on before the next election I believe they still have value in our battle against FASD. First, they literally put FASD on the federal government’s agenda, and should help raise awareness about this very preventable disorder among lawmakers and the general public alike. Second, other MPs could copy either bill and table their own version to use in their spot – which I fully encourage. And finally, the federal government may choose to copy or embrace certain aspects of either bill should they feel public pressure to do so. Any of these outcomes would be positive in my opinion, and I hope that one or more come to be. For more information about FASD, please consult the following websites where there is a wealth of information about this misunderstood but serious public health problem. Public Health Agency of Canada – Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/fasd-etcaf/index-eng.php US Center for Disease Control and Prevention - FASD http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/fasd/data.html http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/fasd/monitor_table2008.html FASD Research Paper - Promoting Alcohol Abstinence among Pregnant Women: Potential Social Change Strategies http://www.uleth.ca/dspace/bitstream/10133/410/1/FAS-HMQ-2005.pdf Until next week, John Rafferty, MP. www.johnrafferty.ndp.ca Fri, 03 Sep 2010 11:14:03 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/108023/From-The-House/National-strategy-for-FASD-needed http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/105965/From-The-House/Getting-pension-security-on-the-agenda I spent most of this past week in Ottawa taking care of a few housekeeping items and tying up some loose ends. Among the business I was taking care of was conducting some outreach on my pension security bill C-501. As part of these outreach efforts I drafted and sent a letter to each of my colleagues in the House of Commons asking for their feedback on the bill, launched a Facebook group, and held a national press conference to put the issue on the public agenda as widely as possible across Canada. Overall, the week went quite well. For the column this week I will share with you the letter that I wrote to my fellow MPs on C-501. In the letter, I was trying to strike a non-partisan, non-confrontational, and constructive tone because this is the sort of issue that should bring people together instead of drive them apart. I hope many of my colleagues will take up my invitation to meet at some point as I think we all of us recognize that something needs to be done to protect the pensions and retirement income of all Canadians. PS – if you are a Facebook user and would like to support C-501 online then you can join our group, download a petition and other materials, and stay in touch by logging into your account and clicking this link: http://tinyurl.com/C501-Facebook . Tuesday August 3, 2010. Members of Parliament House of Commons Ottawa, ON. K1A 0A6 Dear Colleague, As you are aware, Canadian families and businesses are struggling through some of the worst economic conditions in recent memory. Many companies have entered various stages of bankruptcy or restructuring and thousands of hard-working Canadians continue to lose their jobs and pensions as a result. The retirement income of millions of hardworking Canadians at companies like Nortel and AbitibiBowater has been lost or is at risk through no fault of their own, and only because our federal bankruptcy and insolvency laws permit such an injustice to occur. As elected representatives of the people we can, and must, correct this injustice. On March 30, 2010 I introduced Private Members’ Bill C-501, which would grant ‘secured’ status to pension funds during restructuring, bankruptcy, and liquidation proceedings. If passed into law, this bill would assist millions of workers across Canada by ensuring that the vast majority receive the retirement income that is owed to them in full and regardless of the fate of their employer. I am happy to report that with the help and support of MPs from every caucus C-501 passed at second reading on May 26th and is now in the hands of the Industry Science and Technology committee. I am grateful that the bill received such widespread support, but I am also keenly aware that many of you still believe that this bill has some flaws and that it can be improved. Regardless of how you voted or would have voted at second reading I invite you to share your thoughts and opinions on C-501, and in particular changes that you think could be made to improve the bill and secure its passage at third reading. I hope you will accept this letter as an open-ended invitation to meet and discuss the future of this important piece of legislation at your earliest convenience. I believe that this bill is long overdue and that we are in a unique position as MPs to secure the pension and retirement income of thousands of workers in each of our ridings throughout the country. I am certain that you will agree that hard-working Canadians deserve better than to lose their retirement income because of outdated bankruptcy and insolvency laws, and that it is in fact the role of our federal government to correct such injustices once they become apparent. I hope you will join me in this effort. In closing, I thank you again for your consideration of this bill and I sincerely hope that you will accept my invitation to meet to discuss how we can improve C-501 and work together to secure the retirement income of more than 6 million Canadian families moving forward. Sincerely, John Rafferty, MP Thunder Bay – Rainy River Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:37:06 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/105965/From-The-House/Getting-pension-security-on-the-agenda http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/103625/From-The-House/Forestry-by-the-numbers In the long summer months it’s easy to get caught up in all the excitement that our great local events have to offer. From barbecues, to Powwows, baseball tournaments and fishing derbies it’s easy to relax and take one’s eye off the bigger issues of the day. While I greatly enjoy spending time at these events throughout the riding, my staff and I are also keeping a close watch on several national and international issues. This week I’d like to report on the newly released forestry statistics for 2009 that were published by Natural Resources Canada. First I would like to commend Natural Resources Canada for its well constructed website and the significant effort put into helping the public understand what has been happening in the forestry sector over the past several years. Among the many features on the website is a range of in depth and sortable statistics. Recently, NRCAN posted statistics for 2009, which can be found at http://canadaforests.nrcan.gc.ca/statsprofile . These numbers track everything from industry productivity, trade, type of production, and jobs both in Canada and in each of the provinces. While the disclosure of this information is valuable and appreciated from a public policy perspective, I must concern myself with the details and for 2009 they are, in a word, ‘catastrophic.’ According to Natural Resources Canada the forestry industry accounted for 1.7 per cent of Canada’s overall GDP in 2009, down from 1.8 per cent in 2008, 2.2 per cent in 2007, and 2.5 per cent in 2006 – the first full year of Mr. Harper’s Conservative government. In dollar figures, the forestry sector contributed $19.8 billion to Canada’s overall GDP in 2009 compared to $30.1 billion in 2006 – a net loss of nearly $11 billion per year. There are of course plenty of reasons that the forestry sector is struggling, some beyond the control of the federal government and others not, but there is no question that the Harper government has utterly failed to pause, stop, or reverse the steep decline of the forestry sector since coming to power. The fine print statistics also illustrate how this affects Canada’s labour market and our local forestry dependent economies. In 2009, forestry related economic activity directly employed 195,320 Canadians which was down from 231,452 in 2008 and 272,029 in 2006. In Ontario, there were just 40,698 direct jobs in the forestry sector in 2009, which was down from 53,585 in 2008 and 65,725 in 2006. So since the Harper government has come to power Canada has lost 76,000 plus jobs in the forestry sector, and more than 25,000 forestry jobs in Ontario alone – most of which were in small towns throughout Northwestern Ontario. Our federal government must own up to the fact that it was asleep at the switch as mill after mill in our small forestry towns closed, and companies like Fraser Papers, Buchanan Forestry Products, and AbitibiBowater were forced into various stages of bankruptcy under their watch. I will have a further update on the US Biomass Crop Assistance Program in a future edition of this column, but I wanted to share with you the severity of the crisis that we are still experiencing in the forestry industry as evidenced by these newly released statistics for 2009. My New Democrat colleagues and I understand that we need to diversify our economy in Northwestern Ontario, but we also believe that we must defend our existing forestry operations form unfair US subsidies and make smart investments to help the industry modernize and stay operational in order to protect the 40,000 plus families that still depend on the forestry sector in our small towns across Northwestern Ontario. Mon, 16 Aug 2010 10:36:01 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/103625/From-The-House/Forestry-by-the-numbers http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/103292/From-The-House/Long-form-census-makes-sense I am sure getting rid of the census sounded like a good idea. After all, getting rid of the mandatory requirement to fill out the long-form of the census would save us all from the prying eyes of government by eliminating an annoying and intrusive infringement on our freedom. Well after taking a serious look at things and hearing from statisticians, economists, bankers, and many others it’s becoming obvious that the Harper government has made a mistake. For those who don’t know, the census is the government survey that is used to collect information and analyze trends in our society over time. The first census in what in what is now Canada took place in 1655 and they have always provided our governments, businesses, researchers, and charities with a snapshot of our society and help them carry out their work. Every five years the census is sent to homes throughout the country in order to count the number of people, families and average number of family members, find out what types of housing we are choosing to live in, the languages we speak and where we speak them, and to find out more about immigration and migration patterns in Canada and between our provinces and regions among many other things. There are other ways to gather this sort of information, but none that are as cost-effective, accurate, and effective as the census. For some reason the Conservatives decided they don’t need to know much about our country. It is bizarre. Mr. Harper simply decided Health Canada no longer needs to know where the aging population is living in our country or how many of our elderly are living with caregivers. I guess the Conservatives will just hold a lottery to see who gets health-care funding, or throw some darts at a map instead of relying on all that scientific gobbledegook. So why should we keep the long form then? For starters, the data that is collected is an enormous help to governments actually interested in spending tax dollars wisely. I know there are only a few such governments left nowadays, but this information enables them to provide us with better public services, avoid wasting our tax dollars on programs and services that aren’t needed, and identify positive trends (ie: greater number of people graduating high school and college) and negative trends (ie: declining birth rates) over time so that they can craft policies to improve our standard of living. Businesses and charities also rely heavily on the census data to tell them where certain types of customers and donors are located so they can save, invest, and raise money as needed. While I support keeping the long form I also support keeping the completion of the census as a mandatory requirement for Canadian citizens. Like anyone else I am concerned about privacy, but we’ve got to be rational about this concern. Our federal governments have conducted some form of the census for more than 350 years and – shockingly – we continue to live freely in a democratic society. I’m also comforted by the fact that the ‘data’ is only useful at the group level and that the responses of individual households are of absolutely no concern or value to the analysts at Statistics Canada. I see completing the census once every five years – and the long form version about once in a lifetime - as a civic duty akin to paying taxes or serving on a jury. Completing the forms takes just 30 minutes of our time and collects less personal information than is gathered by credit card companies, banks, and even some websites nowadays. Completing the census is an important public service that helps increase our overall standard of living and makes our government more efficient. In short, I think the Harper Conservatives are becoming increasingly paranoid and inept and should be able to recognize that they have made a serious mistake by scrapping the long-form version of the census. I support the census in its entirety and the legal requirement to fill out the forms because the data is crucial to helping our governments, businesses, charities serve us better while saving our dwindling tax dollars and increasing efficiency throughout many facets of our society. Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:28:55 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/103292/From-The-House/Long-form-census-makes-sense http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/101251/From-The-House/HST-wallops-motorists This week I want share some of my observations about how the HST is already hitting our wallets and also address concerns regarding a national news story that my offices have received some calls about. As expected, the HST arrived at our gas pumps with a giant thud last week. Like many in our neck of the woods I filled up June 30 to avoid as much of the damage as possible, but eventually I had to hit the pumps again on July 1. In one day, the price of gas in Upsala went from $1.179 a litre to $1.259 a litre. For those of you on Facebook who don’t believe me you can see a picture at the following address: http://tinyurl.com/HSTonGas-July1-2010 . Needless to say, anger was the emotion I saw most on people’s faces as they filled up in Upsala. Unfortunately, the gas price increase is just the leading edge of the HST sword of consequences. The first hit is $4 per tank of gas (more for truck owners), but the next phase is for lack of a better expression the "hydro and haircut" phase. Sometime in the next two-to-four weeks many of us will be visiting the barber or hairstylist and receiving a hydro, cable, or internet bill in the mail. This next phase could also be called the "death by a thousand cuts" phase since many of the goods and services we purchase each month will being take more and more of our hard earned dollars in drips and drabs. We can expect to feel some frustration when see these relatively small increases on a large number of items, but confusion when we reach the end of the month and we have a lot less money in our wallets and bank accounts than we are used to. At any rate, the HST appears to be here to stay thanks to the Harper Conservatives and the McGuinty Liberals who collaborated to run up record federal and provincial deficits and then levy this unfair tax on our families to repair the damage they caused. The implementation of the HST by the federal Conservatives and provincial Liberals may leave you wondering ‘who do these people think they work for?’ With New Democrats you should never have such worries, which leads us nicely into the second topic of the column this week. Last week it was reported that many MPs continue to have side jobs, own businesses, and collect other income while serving in office. Here is a quote from one of our local stories on the issue; "151 of Canada's 308 MPs are either receiving income outside of their MPs salaries or have an ownership stake in a private business." I am one of those MPs and was named in the story, so I would like to take a moment here to clarify things on this matter. I am an owner of a small business called Rafferty Communications which specialized in writing and doing voiceovers for different clients in the media and education industries. This business has not operated since 2008. When you elected me as your MP my time became too restricted for many things, including operating a small business, so the operations of Rafferty Communications were put on hold indefinitely and will remain so until I cease being your Member of Parliament. The national media found a news story here because MPs are required to disclose any potential conflicts to the independent Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner and the disclosures for 2010 were recently posted online. You can review my own full disclosure here :. Given the interest this news story has generated I would like to make the following statement; since you elected me as your Member of Parliament I have never performed any paid or unpaid work related to Rafferty Communications, and the operations of that company have been put on hold indefinitely while I serve as your Member of Parliament. In closing this week’s column I regret that New Democrats did not have enough MPs or MPPs to stop the passage and implementation of the HST and I share your frustration with the hit we are taking at the pumps and in our wallets. Conservatives and Liberals have forgotten who they really work for, but Canada’s New Democrats have not. That is why I have disclosed my ownership of Rafferty Communications and why the operations of that company have been suspended for as long as you elect me to serve as your Member of Parliament. I am honoured that you elected me to serve as your MP and I will continue to put my full energy into representing your interests -and your interests alone- while I am in Ottawa. Thu, 15 Jul 2010 10:31:23 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/101251/From-The-House/HST-wallops-motorists http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/98404/From-The-House/Highs-and-lows-of-another-session-of-Parliament With the spring session behind us it is as good a time as any to take a look back at some of the high and lows of the last several months in Ottawa. One of the low points, not just for this session of Parliament but for democracy in Canada, was the short sighted and partisan tactic of ‘prorogation’ that was used so inappropriately by the prime minister in December. Mr. Harper is without question a fine partisan tactician, but he crossed the line when closed down Parliament for three months to avoid answering some tough questions. His extended winter vacation allowed the prime minister to duck the responsibilities of his job, while kicking back and watch the Olympics as most Canadians were working or busy trying to find work. Following the end of the prorogation period MPs headed back to Ottawa to deal with the important matters of the day. Despite his best efforts to hide documents regarding the Afghan detainee issue and duck accountability, the prime minister eventually lost a ruling in the House as the Speaker upheld centuries of Parliamentary tradition by ruling that MPs are supreme in our democratic political system. For me, this was a high point as the ruling reaffirmed that our democratic system. Another huge low for the people of Northern Ontario came in the March federal budget. The $65 billion deficit was certainly bad news in the broader sense and further proof that the Conservatives are simply incapable of managing our finances, but something worse lurked in the details of that bill for our region. Nearly every regional development agency in Canada received additional funding in the 2010-2011 budget, with the lone exception being the Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario (FedNor).  This deliberate snub by the Conservatives is something we should all be angry about in our region, and I hope the Conservatives are forced to pay for their actions in the next election. By far highest point of the session from my perspective came with the introduction, debate, and passage of my Private Members’ Bill C-501 (An Act to Amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and Other Acts) at second reading. I tabled this bill after listening to the concerns of AbitibiBowater workers at one of our forestry townhalls last year and it could, if passed, secure the pensions of more than 5 million Canadians should their companies enter bankruptcy or restructuring. A final kick in the pants near the end of the session came when the Conservative government confirmed that it was spending $1.1 billion of our hard earned tax dollars on a pair of three day meetings. The price tag of hosting the G8 and G20 summits this week is going to be at least 60 percent more than any other post-9/11 meetings of the same kind. From the lows of prorogation, the budget that forgot Northern Ontario and the billion dollar G8-G20 boondoggle, to the highs of having the power of the people reaffirmed and the passage of my bill at second reading it has certainly has been one parliamentary session to remember. Needless to say I am happy to be home and look forward to catching up with friends and families throughout our riding over the summer. Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:56:42 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/98404/From-The-House/Highs-and-lows-of-another-session-of-Parliament http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/95925/From-The-House/Agreement-welcomed I hope you will join me in welcoming an agreement that was reached between the Government of Canada and the leadership of the Couchiching First Nation which resolves a serious public health issue on the reserve and ended a 12 day long toll booth protest on June 1. It was a great relief to hear the federal government finally stepped up, after a bit of arm-twisting, to resolve the toxic land issue that is threatening the health of several families living on a small part of the reserve that used to be home to a sawmill. No family should have to live on contaminated soil and go to sleep each night worried about their personal safety and that of their family. Their health and safety was my number one concern throughout this dispute, and I am very grateful that Minister Strahl has agreed to help them relocate to a safe and clean location. While I am satisfied that the public health hazard faced by these families on the Couchiching reserve has been resolved, I am very disappointed that an agreement was only struck after public action was taken by the Couchiching leadership. It is my understanding that the federal government paid $1.7 million for two engineering reports that were completed several years ago and showed that dangerous chemicals were present. I’m thankful these families will finally be relocated, but the burning question that I still have is what took so long? While I am disappointed with the pace of the federal government’s response, I am somewhat heartened by the response of the majority of the area residents to what was without doubt a trying situation. Ninety-nine percent of people on both sides of the issue generally respected the position and circumstances of those on the other side - even if they did not necessarily agree with them. Despite this, I am disappointed that there were still a very few unreasonable individuals on both sides who seemed to want to manufacture a conflict. They were disinterested or even intolerant of the circumstances and concerns of those on the other side of the issue. Thankfully, these people were a very small minority and unable to prevent a rational agreement from being reached between the government and the leadership of the reserve on this matter. Overall, I have to say it is good to know that the families on the Couchiching reserve will be relocated and that the toll booth has been removed. Will there be some scars in our communities from this action? Has the level of mistrust increased between the groups? The answer to both questions is ‘probably’ but we must remember that the situation would have been much worse had it not been for the understanding, tolerance, and patience demonstrated by the ninety-nine percent majority on both sides of the dispute. I am hopeful that both the Ministry of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada and the Couchiching leadership have learned a great deal from this experience and have come to the conclusion that engaging in constructive and ongoing dialogue with one and other on major issues is the best way to resolve any disputes that may arise. Thu, 10 Jun 2010 13:51:58 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/95925/From-The-House/Agreement-welcomed http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/94207/From-The-House/Passing-the-pension-bill I returned to Ottawa last week for the final stretch of parliamentary sitting days before the summer break, and what a great week it was. My private members’ bill, Bill C-501, came up for its first test in the House, and I am pleased to report that it passed with flying colours (144-111). For those who do not know, C-501 could secure the pensions of all Canadians whose employers have undertaken restructuring, entered bankruptcy protection, or have collapsed entirely and had their assets sold off. This bill should ensure that the pensions of more than 6 million Canadians will be there when they need them. This week’s vote at ‘second reading’ for C-501 followed two hours of debate and numerous conversations with other MPs. After the debate and meetings ended the positions of the other parties became somewhat clearer. The Bloc would support the bill, as would many Liberals, but the Conservatives suggested that most would not be supportive. Many Conservative MPs spoke out in opposition while others raised seemingly small points about the bill’s wording. The overall message was clear – Conservatives plan to challenge C-501 at all stages. Instead of siding with hard-working Canadian men and women who have earned their wages, pensions and a dignified retirement, most of the Conservatives caucus decided to take the side of the ‘vulture capitalists’ who specialize in generating profits from bankrupt companies and shadowy backroom financiers like those who used to work at Lehman Brothers. As it stands now, pension funds are actually behind junk bond traders when it comes to who gets their money back first when a company goes under, and by and large the Conservatives seem to like it that way. While much of the opposition to my bill is coming from the government, I must give some credit to the 12 Conservative MPs who seem to ‘get-it’ when it comes to the need to reform the pension and bankruptcy laws in Canada. Their support was crucial to getting this bill passed its first vote. I will be calling each of them to thank them and find out ways to improve the bill so that all of their Conservative colleagues can feel comfortable in supporting C-501 in committee and voting for it when it returns to the House and Senate later this year. So where does that leave us? Well, C-501 is now headed to the industry committee, where there will be some testimony from experts, citizens, and other stakeholders. We will also be making some amendments to the bill to make it easier to support for those skittish Conservative MPs who seem to be misinformed and unaware of why this bill is needed. I hope that the rest of the Conservative caucus in Ottawa will see the light when it comes to pension protection and work with me to make C-501 the law as quickly as possible. As always, I will be sure to keep you informed as our bill moves forward. Mon, 31 May 2010 11:45:05 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/94207/From-The-House/Passing-the-pension-bill http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/92269/From-The-House/Giving-students-summer-opportunities With the May long weekend nearly upon us it is safe to say that summer is just around the corner. For some, that time will come sooner. I’m talking about our students who, after a long winter of studying and working toward their careers, are looking to recharge their batteries, gain some experience and earn some money to help pay for their increasingly expensive studies. The good news is that help is on the way for them. As I am sure you know, the job market is tight and there are few opportunities for students to find decent work. For those who chose to stay close to home to study at local institutions like Lakehead University or Confederation College there are few options to work in the same field in which they are studying. The poor job market in Northwestern Ontario also means that students who are pursuing an education elsewhere have incentive to stay in those communities for the summer. Thankfully the Canada Summer Jobs Program will again be investing locally to create new work opportunities for students from our region. There’s no question that the key to the future economic development of our region is to retain our best and brightest youth and to give them the chance to study, work and reach for their dreams here at home. I was happy to recently announce this year’s Canada Summer Jobs allotment of more than $279,000 for the riding of Thunder Bay – Rainy River. For those who are unfamiliar with the program, Canada Summer Jobs is a long standing federal government program that funds the creation of summer jobs with community groups, small businesses, organizations and municipalities for full-time students between the ages of 15-30. With this year’s funding for the riding, more than 100 jobs will be created in 60 different projects across our riding. Many projects in large communities like Thunder Bay, Atikokan, Fort Frances, and Rainy River will receive funding, but several new jobs will also be created and in smaller communities like Emo, Stratton, Morson, Barwick, Upsala, Neebing, Oliver Paipoonge and Kakabeka Falls among others. I am happy to see that so many communities, large and small, will receive funding and have the chance to give their youth the opportunity to stay or return home, gain professional experience, and earn money to help further their studies. I want to thank the staff of Service Canada for all their hard work and care in administering this program. Thanks to their work more than 100 students in the riding will have a chance to further their studies and real life work experience. I wish all students a great summer and next year I look forward to helping create more opportunities for more students across Northwestern Ontario For more information on the Canada Summer Jobs please visit: http://tinyurl.com/CanadaSummerJobs2010 Fri, 14 May 2010 14:59:08 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/92269/From-The-House/Giving-students-summer-opportunities http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/91391/From-The-House/Ignatieff-visit-offers-old-promise With the weather warming and summer just around the corner, more people are starting to come to Northwestern Ontario to for a visit. This week though, we had a visitor of a different kind grace us with his presence. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff visited the region last week to release the last piece of his rural platform. That final plank was a promise to ensure access to high-speed Internet for all Canadians within three years. Ignatieff even went so far as to criticize the government for not having done this to date, declaring; "Conservatives have just not done it." I was in Ottawa working, sadly missing this event, but when I read the report of his visit I couldn’t believe that the Liberal leader was calling out the Conservatives for not helping our region secure broadband access. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who had a sense of déjà vu upon reading or hearing of this announcement. Ignatieff is no less than the fourth Liberal to make this promise in the last decade. The idea of universal access to broadband was first put on the agenda by the National Broadband Task Force, which was appointed by then Industry Minister Brian Tobin in 2001. The report of the task force contained the very recommendation that Mr. Ignatieff was pedalling to us last week. A simple question I would have liked to ask him had I not been in Ottawa working would have been, "why didn’t Mr. Chretien or Mr. Martin fulfil this Liberal promise 10 years ago?’ When the Liberals ended their 13 year reign, this promise of broadband Internet access for all Canadians joined a long list of promises that went unfulfilled. Who can forget the promise to scrap the GST? What about a public daycare system that was first promised in the 1993 Liberal Red Book? It’s almost insulting that Mr. Ignatieff strolls into to town to re-announce a promise his party first made 10 years ago while they were in government. The truth is that it is both Liberal and Conservative inaction on files like this that have left Northwestern Ontario behind. We need look no further than across the border to our friends in Minnesota to see that areas just as remote and rural as ours can be provided with these high quality services – if it is made a priority. If Mr. Ignatieff’s predecessors atop the Liberal Party had simply followed through on their past promises, then we would already be enjoying many high quality services that have been available to other Canadians for years and would have a dramatically higher standard of living. In the end, I was actually glad to hear that rural Canada finally made an appearance on Michael Ignatieff’s electoral radar. It’s too bad that his local candidates failed to inform him that many of the struggles we face today in Northwestern Ontario are the direct result of 13 years of broken promises by Liberal governments. Fri, 07 May 2010 14:33:48 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/91391/From-The-House/Ignatieff-visit-offers-old-promise http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/91242/From-The-House/Reading-into-the-budget’s-fine-print- Each year the budget process at the federal level consists of two different parts – the budget speech, and the budget bill. One is the propaganda and one is the nuts and bolts. We’ve already heard the propaganda portion, and we are now debating the nuts and bolts – Bill C-9. As we move from examining the propaganda to the nuts and bolts, we see that the Conservative government continues to sell out our long-term interests for questionable short-term gains. I was not surprised to see many items in Bill C-9; the HST payment to McGuinty’s Liberals, a freeze in MP salaries and office budgets, and huge corporate tax cuts were all there. But buried deep in the 904 pages of legal jargon there are provisions that eliminate the need for environmental assessments for stimulus projects, enable the sale of Crown assets like Atomic Energy Canada Limited (AECL), and increases the export tariff penalty for Canadian forestry producers. Given we are blessed with a beautiful and relatively pristine natural environment in Northwestern Ontario, I am concerned that environmental assessments will no longer need to be completed before infrastructure stimulus projects get underway. While the Canadian economy is in desperate need of public investment, I would rather have a month or two delay in these projects to ensure they comply with existing environmental regulations. It also makes little sense to sell off profitable Crown assets when we are facing many years of large fiscal deficits. In the case of AECL, Bill C-9 lays the groundwork for the selling off of particular assets or of the company as a whole, even though the company is one of the world’s largest producers of nuclear technology and brings in millions of dollars each yea. Wouldn’t it make more sense to halt the $100 million ad campaign the Conservatives are using to promote their budget or reduce the $60 billion in corporate tax cuts before selling off a proven long term money-maker? Perhaps the most troubling "detail" contained in bill C-9 is the acceptance and enforcement of a London Court of International Arbitration Tribunal ruling that said Canadian forestry companies owe $68 million to their US counterpart due to an unintentional violation of the Softwood Lumber Agreement. To comply with this ruling the Conservative government included a provision in that increases the export tariff on softwood lumber products from Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba or Saskatchewan by 10 per cent effective immediately. When one subtracts the paltry $25 million in new forestry sector investment that is also contained in the budget, then Canada’s forestry sector will actually be forced to payout $43 million in new taxes and tariffs this year. Bill C-9 will surely go down as one of the most short-sighted and misguided budget documents ever brought before the House of Commons. Should the Liberals and Conservative band together to pass this bill as they did with the HST, then both parties must share the blame for the substantial damage it is likely to cause to the long term economic and environmental interests of our region. Thu, 06 May 2010 14:10:27 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/91242/From-The-House/Reading-into-the-budget’s-fine-print- http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/86466/From-The-House/Pension-bill-likely-to-pass This past week I was happy to table a new Private Members’ Bill that will help secure the pensions of workers at companies that enter bankruptcy proceedings or undertake supervised restructuring. Bill C-501, An Act to amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and other Acts, has the potential to secure tens of thousands of pensions across Canada and I am optimistic that it will pass. When AbitibiBowater filed for bankruptcy protection last year, many hard working employees were left to wonder what would come of their jobs and their pensions. In townhall meetings that I hosted throughout the riding last year I began to hear from workers about a rumour that there was financial shortfall in their pension plan. Sure enough, when the books were finally opened in the fall it was found that the pension plan was significantly underfunded and that the workers stood to lose up to 40 percent of their pension and retirement income. At about the same time of the discovery of the pension plan shortfall at AbitibiBowater, my New Democrat caucus colleague Wayne Marston (Hamilton East – Stoney Creek) was in the process of tabling a pension protection bill (C-476) to assist the former employees of Nortel. I approached Wayne to see if his bill could also help secure the pensions of workers at AbitibiBowater, and he indicated that this was in fact the case. However, C-476 would not be eligible for debate until late 2011. It was agreed that I would table a shorter version of his bill so it could be debated and voted on sooner. The early consideration of one of my bills is a result of sheer luck, as I drew a lower number than Wayne (66 to 195) in the lottery that determined the order of consideration for Private Members’ bills. I have been notified that my turn will come up in mid-April. As it stands now, pension plans are pretty much at the back of the line when it comes to settling debts and dividing assets among the various creditors of insolvent companies. Pension plans are behind the government, unpaid suppliers, banks, and other lenders in the pecking order. To correct this problem, C-501 would move pension plans from the back of the line of creditors to the middle; somewhere ahead of the banks and just behind government and the suppliers of goods of services who have not yet been paid. In nearly every bankruptcy case in recent memory, C-501 would have eliminated pension plan shortfalls when the assets of insolvent companies were sold off and divvied up among creditors. While C-501 will be voted upon before the end of the year, I am optimistic that this timeline could be shortened with the support of the other parties. The Liberals and Bloc have already indicated in the Finance Committee that they are likely to support it, and more than one Conservative has said in private that they don’t see anything that would stop them from doing the same. If all parties agree to support the bill early on, then it could be ‘fast-tracked’ through the House debates and right into the Industry Committee, or right into the Senate if things go well. Since I first heard from those AbitibiBowater workers at the townhall meetings last year, a tentative settlement has been reached between the creditors of that company that would eliminate the $1.3 billion pension plan shortfall. This is of course great news, but I want to assure those workers that I heard their concerns and am doing everything in my power as their Member of Parliament to secure their pensions in case this deal falls through or their company faces similar difficulties in the future. Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:37:48 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/86466/From-The-House/Pension-bill-likely-to-pass http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/85954/From-The-House/Assist-the-struggling,-not-the-prosperous When the earnings reports were released for Canadian banks on the same day that the federal budget was presented to Parliament, I had only one question; how much is too much? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to see some Canadian companies are doing well during this downturn, but I have to wonder if we should be handing them $60 billion in corporate tax cuts when money can be put to better use helping struggling sectors, assisting the unemployed, or protecting pension plans. I’ve heard some say that New Democrats are too critical of banks and oil companies, or suggest that we are jealous and just complaining about the success of others. Nothing could be further from the truth. We want Canadian businesses to succeed, but the problem we have today with banks and oil companies is that their success often comes at a huge cost to the greater good – sometimes their shareholders get wealthy by depleting a key resource and polluting our natural environment, other times they do so by gouging families on credit-card interest rates or charging heavy fees to access their own savings. Far from opposing the banking and energy sectors of the economy, New Democrats simply feel that there should be more balance since these industries tend to take from our society more than they can possibly deliver. Now, before we look at how our Conservative government is spending and wasting our tax dollars on corporate tax cuts, let’s look at how the banking sector in particular performed last year during the deepest recession since the 1930s. Total yearly profits – fiscal year 2009-2010 for the ‘Big Five’ Canadian banks: TD Bank: $5.6 billion Bank of Montreal: $1.8 billion Royal Bank: $3.8 billion Scotiabank: $3.5 billion CIBC: $1.2 billion TOTAL PROFITS : $15.9 billion Now, looking at those figures I think you’ll agree that when compared to the manufacturing, forestry, mining, fisheries, agriculture, and tourism sectors, that the banking sector is doing just fine. So if the banks are doing so well why does our federal government continue to heap money upon that industry, while ignoring the needs and failing to help those that are struggling? The answer to that question is that this Conservative government, like the Liberal ones before it, simply have the wrong priorities and have made the wrong choices. Now, contrary to Conservative folklore, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) confirms that, when taking provincial and federal corporate tax rates together, Canada has a lower corporate tax rate than the United States. Despite having this tax advantage the Conservative government continues to cut the corporate tax rate and has given away a full $60 billion from the federal treasury to profitable corporations in just five years. By design, these massive income tax cuts only assist corporations that make money and must pay taxes on that income; the greater the profit, then the greater the taxes, and the greater the benefits that are realized from these tax cuts. Canada’s most profitable industries get the lion’s share of this $60 billion and unprofitable and insolvent companies get nothing. I happen to believe that if an industry is doing well enough, then you leave well enough alone. What we have here though is a government that only helps companies that are raking in profits and putting the interests of foreign shareholders ahead of Canadians. New Democrats don’t oppose helping banks if they need it, but we believe today that our federal tax dollars should be put to better use. Life and government are about choices, and it is obvious that the Conservatives and Liberals continue to stand with hugely profitable banks and their wealthy foreign shareholders, while Canada’s New Democrats choose to stand with you. Now that is something you can bank on. Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:02:17 GMT http://www.tbnewswatch.com/Columns/133/85954/From-The-House/Assist-the-struggling,-not-the-prosperous