2014-01-31

Government Orders
Combating Counterfeit Products Act[Stage Direction]
The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-8, An Act to amend the Copyright Act and the Trade-marks Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, as reported (with amendments) from the committee.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Barry Devolin): There being no motions at report stage the House will now proceed without debate to the putting of the question on the motion to concur in the bill at report stage.
Ms. Candice Bergen:  moved that the bill be concurred in.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Barry Devolin): Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
[Intervention]
Some hon. members:  Agreed.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Barry Devolin): (Motion agreed to)
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Barry Devolin): When shall the bill be read the third time? By leave, now? 
[Intervention]
Some hon. members:  Agreed.
Candice Bergen:  moved that the bill be read the third time and passed.
Hon. Mike Lake (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry, CPC): Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to rise today to speak to Bill C-8, the combating counterfeit products act. I am happy to say that the bill passed through the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology with all-party support. The committee heard many witnesses and introduced a number of amendments that improve this important piece of legislation. 
However, before I speak to the particulars of Bill C-8, allow me to remind the House of the important measures that our government has already taken and will continue to take to support Canadian consumers. In the recent Speech from the Throne, the government committed to taking strong action to protect consumers and families that is aimed at lowering prices, enhancing access and choice, and ensuring fair treatment. 
The modernization of our intellectual property laws has also brought real benefits to consumers. Last year, Canada's long-standing copyright laws were updated and brought into the 21st century through the Copyright Modernization Act. The amended copyright act allows for legitimate and commonplace actions by Canadian consumers to be protected under copyright law. Canadians no longer have to be concerned about the legalities of time shifting television programs on their personal video recorders, transferring music from their CD collection to their MP3 player, or remixing music or videos for non-commercial purposes and sharing it on social media. By enacting the Copyright Modernization Act, the government listened to the concerns of Canadian consumers and provided them with legitimate protection for their actions. Canada now has a modern copyright regime that will play a critical role in protecting and creating jobs in Canada's digital economy. 
It is the resolve of our government to continue to bring forward legislation that empowers Canadian consumers and instills confidence in the marketplace.
It is in this spirit that I will speak to Bill C-8, which addresses the real need for protection against allowing counterfeit goods to enter Canada. By reducing the trade in counterfeit goods, the bill would help protect our economy, support innovation, and benefit both businesses and consumers. For years, Canadian stakeholders in the business community have been seeking improvements to our intellectual property laws in order to better tackle the problem of counterfeiting and piracy. They have told us repeatedly that Canadian brands and works are being copied and taken advantage of, causing hardship not only to legitimate businesses but also to Canadian consumers.
 Let me reiterate: counterfeit trademark goods are not only harmful to the economy, but they are often made without regard to Canadian health and safety standards which could harm consumers and their families. How so? Consumers could inadvertently buy counterfeit products that look like the real thing but could cause significant harm. For example, witness testimony at the industry committee mentioned several dangerous products. The CSA group talked about counterfeit circuit breakers found in a hospital in Quebec that were supplying power to life support equipment. Committee members were shown a video of a counterfeit circuit actually exploding under conditions that simulated normal electrical use. The International Trademark Association mentioned counterfeit food, medicines, and automotive parts. Canada Goose explained that the stuffing in counterfeit versions of their jackets are, at best, of very low quality, and at worst, not sanitary. 
It is easy to see how these types of goods could present serious health and safety issues for anyone who would encounter them. Canadians who spend their hard-earned dollars to buy what they believe are high-quality products backed by a brand name are furious when they learn that they have been deceived.
Bill C-8 is our government's response to this problem. It amends the Trade-marks Act and the Copyright Act to provide new tools for rights holders, border officers, and law enforcement to better fight this issue. Most importantly, it puts in place strong measures to protect Canadian consumers and their families from the threat of counterfeiting. 
Allow me to explain how the bill would provide for a stronger border regime, new civil causes of action, and new criminal offences. First, the bill gives copyright and trademark owners additional tools to protect their intellectual property rights at the border. Importantly, Bill C-8 provides border agents with the authority to temporarily detain suspected shipments and the ability to verify their suspicion with rights holders. Under the new system, rights holders would be able to file a request for assistance with the Canada Border Services Agency, asking for border officers' help in detaining suspected counterfeit or pirated goods. Allowing trademark and copyright owners to exercise their rights at the border means fewer shipments of counterfeit and pirated goods into the Canadian market, to the benefit of businesses, consumers, and their families.
Second, with regard to civil infringements, Bill C-8 adds a series of activities to the existing civil causes of action in the Trade-marks Act. Currently, trademark owners can only pursue a civil action against a counterfeiter when a good is being sold. 
Bill C-8 fills important gaps by making it a civil infringement to manufacture, possess, import, export, or attempt to export counterfeit goods for commercial purposes. By targeting activities that occur earlier in the supply chain, the bill helps rights holders keep counterfeit goods out of the Canadian market and out of the hands of unsuspecting Canadian consumers.
Not only does this bill add new civil causes for activities prior to sale, it also targets the practice of shipping labels separately from goods in order to avoid detection. Bill C-8 adds specific provisions against manufacturing, possessing, importing, exporting, and attempting to export labels or packaging that are destined to be associated with counterfeit goods. This measure protects consumers from counterfeiters who may apply counterfeit labels to goods here in Canada in an attempt to avoid getting caught.
To summarize the civil measures, Bill C-8 equips rights holders with improved tools to assert their trademark and copyright in a civil context.
In recognition of the fact that counterfeiting is an unlawful act, the bill adds new offences to the Trade-marks Act for selling, manufacturing, causing to be manufactured, possessing, importing, exporting, or attempting to export counterfeit goods on a commercial scale. The new criminal offences also cover services, labelling, and packaging. This is important because law enforcement knows that criminal groups are involved in the production and distribution of counterfeit goods. These groups forego safety regulations, certifications, and quality controls in order to maximize profits. They simply do not care about the health and safety of consumers. For these groups, counterfeiting is just another profitable line of business. The new criminal offences will give law enforcement agencies additional important tools to fight against serious and organized crime. They will help us keep those goods off the market and help protect Canadian families.
All of the measures I have just outlined pertain to sale for commercial purposes. That is the focus of Bill C-8 and of law enforcement authorities. In this way, Bill C-8 will protect consumers and their families from the threat of counterfeit goods by reducing the presence of these goods in the Canadian market.
In addition, Bill C-8 provides a specific exception at the border for individuals importing or exporting counterfeit or pirated goods intended for personal use when these goods are in their possession or personal luggage. Simply put, Canadians may cross the border with counterfeit goods or pirated copies for personal use. However, let me be clear. Every person who supports counterfeiting at any level hurts the Canadian economy and risks his or her health and safety.
As I mentioned earlier, there is also a possibility that counterfeit goods and pirated copies are connected with organized crime, which often profits from the sale of counterfeit goods.
The measures in this bill are designed to help federal agencies and rights holders target their efforts to confronting criminals who gain commercially from the sale of these goods. This is the balance that the government has achieved with this bill. If we want to target those who profit from counterfeiting and piracy, we have to put our efforts into stopping commercial activities relating to counterfeiting and piracy, not in stopping individual Canadians who may inadvertently carry a counterfeit good in their luggage.
Another area where this bill achieves the right balance is with regard to the respective roles of the state and rights holders in the fight against counterfeiting and piracy. Trademarks and copyrights are private rights. We believe that the trademark and copyright owners have an important role to play in defending these private rights. That said, the government also plays a key role in keeping unsafe products out of the Canadian market and in stopping serious and organized crime.
With Bill C-8, the government puts in place a framework that allows trademark and copyright owners to protect their rights more efficiently at the border and within the country. For example, rights holders will have the ability to file a request for assistance with the Canada Border Services Agency. This will allow rights holders to receive information from border officers about shipments suspected of containing counterfeit or pirated goods, allowing them to pursue remedies under the Trade-marks Act or the Copyright Act. 
Rights holders who choose to file a request for assistance will be asked to assume the costs of storage and destruction of counterfeit and pirated goods. For its part, the government will continue to play a leading role in stopping goods that present health and safety issues or that are linked to criminal activities. Border officers will continue to refer these goods to the RCMP and Health Canada as appropriate.
In my introduction I mentioned the work of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, as we reviewed Bill C-8 for several weeks. In particular, I would like to highlight a number of substantive amendments that were adopted by the committee that will clarify and improve the application of Bill C-8, while keeping with the balance I alluded to earlier to help better achieve outcomes for Canadians.
First, the bill was amended to clarify that rights holders can use information obtained from border officers about suspected shipments to seek out-of-court settlements. Such settlements are part of the process of pursuing remedies under the act. They would enable rights holders to assert their rights in a cost-effective manner.
Second, the knowledge requirements of the new criminal offences introduced in the Trade-marks Act were found to be unnecessarily high, which in turn meant a low probability of successful prosecution.
If we want the bill to provide an effective deterrent for counterfeiters, we have to make sure that criminal offences can be prosecuted. The amendments introduced at the committee achieve this goal by requiring the crown to prove that the accused knew that he was copying a trademark and that he did not have the consent of the trademark owner to do so. The criminal offences will continue to apply only to activities on a commercial scale and only to registered trademarks.
The third amendment introduced at the committee stage concerns the definition of “distinctive” in the Trade-marks Act. Some witnesses expressed concerns about changes in the wording of the definition. These changes were meant only to modernize the language, and there was no intention of changing the meaning of “distinctive”.
The committee moved to replace the expression “inherently capable of distinguishing” with the expression “adapted so to distinguish”, which is currently found in the Trade-marks Act. This amendment alleviates the concerns of stakeholders and removes any risk of costly and unnecessary litigation associated with the reinterpretation of the new definition.
The final amendment I would like to mention concerns the new civil causes of action in the Trade-marks Act. Originally, the bill's new civil causes of action for manufacturing, possessing, importing, exporting, and attempting to export only applied to the goods and services for which the trademark was registered. In contrast, the existing causes of action for selling or distributing apply to all goods and services that could be confused with a registered trademark, whether or not the goods and services are on the trademark register. The committee's amendment ensures that both the existing and the new civil causes of action have the same scope of application.
Bill C-8, as amended by the industry committee, is further proof that our government is focused on protecting consumers and their families. By keeping unsafe products out of the hands of unsuspecting consumers, it would enhance consumer confidence in the marketplace and would help legitimate businesses in the fight against counterfeiting and piracy. 
I would urge all members of the House to support the bill and refer it to the Senate as soon as possible to ensure that Canadian rights holders, customs officers, and law enforcement have the tools they need to fight counterfeiting and piracy domestically and at our borders.
Mr. Philip Toone (Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for such an interesting speech. The discussions in committee really helped improve this bill. The governing party even put forward amendments to its own bill, which goes to show that there were improvements to be made.
Since over 1,000 Canada border services employees have been fired, it will be difficult to implement these changes. There are fewer and fewer border guards, who are Canada's first line of defence.
How can this bill be implemented if there are not enough people to do it?
[Interjection]
Mike Lake: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member referred to the work of the industry committee. Of course, members from all parties on that committee work very well together. Actually, it is one of the better committees I have had the chance to be on in my time. As we go through the committee process, the questions that are asked to get information from the witnesses lead us, as a government, sometimes to look at some of the things in the legislation, and important changes are made. That is an important part of the process.
In relation to his question, I do not agree with the assertion he made about the numbers. Second, any piece of legislation like this is made in close consultation with the experts. Of course, the experts at CBSA are consulted on a piece of legislation like this.
The bill would give new tools to the officers to do their job and to attack an important problem, something they recognize as an important challenge. We have done that with this piece of legislation. It will be up to the experts, the CBSA, to determine how best to use this new tool we have given them to do the important job they do to protect Canadians.
As we look at the budget that is coming up, for example, I hope that the hon. member will support the government's efforts to be one of the only countries in the developed world to have a balanced budget by 2015. Having that budget balanced by 2015 will enable us to continue to support the important work of both the CBSA and all the other excellent public servants who work so hard for this country.
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Winnipeg North, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I will save my comments regarding the balanced budget and how the government took a multibillion dollar Liberal surplus, converted into a deficit, and is now hoping to get it balanced, for the budget debate.
Having said that, the issue of fraudulent and counterfeit goods has had a fairly significant impact on the Canadian economy. The member makes reference to safety issues. It is very important for us to recognize the impact they have.
The question I have for the member is not necessarily related to enforcement as much as it is about ensuring that the issue is being best addressed. For example, does he see a role for the consumer, and if so, to what degree?
The member made reference to our borders. Our border control officers do a phenomenal job given the resources they have.
How does the government see us addressing this issue going forward in terms of the involvement of consumers and others? Is this something that was talked about at committee? I for one was not at the committee, so maybe he could provide some comment on that.
[Interjection]
Mike Lake: Mr. Speaker, of course, there was wide consultation on this issue. Obviously, consumers have a role to play, as do Canadian businesses, importers, exporters, and border services officials. Certainly all were consulted.
With regard to the consumer, it is an interesting question, because obviously, the primary focus of this legislation is to protect Canadian consumers. At the end of the day, though, consumers also have a role to play. As I mentioned in the middle of my speech, we are not targeting an individual who buys a counterfeit purse or something similar in another country and brings it back home. That is still wrong. It is still wrong to support counterfeit products, and there is a danger in doing that. It obviously hurts business. 
However, the bigger concern is that with some of these products, not so much purses but some other counterfeit products, there may actually be a personal danger. Of course, we want Canadian consumers to be aware of that, and people need to take responsibility when they consider what it is they are purchasing.
Mr. Scott Armstrong (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Employment and Social Development, CPC): Mr. Speaker, I was wondering if the parliamentary secretary could elaborate on some of the health concerns we face in Canada due to counterfeit products. He mentioned in his speech that we have issues with the feathers that fill coats that come in from other countries in an illegal way. He talked about some electrical devices that exploded because they were counterfeit.
 I had not thought a lot about the actual health concerns before today. I wonder if he could elaborate on some of the health concerns this bill would address.
[Interjection]
Mike Lake: Mr. Speaker, this is a really important point. Again, we heard this over and over again at committee. It was a real eye-opener for the committee members on all sides to see the example of the circuit breaker, for instance. We do not really think about these things. When we think about counterfeit products, we think more about clothing, accessories, and those things we more typically see. 
In a case like the Canada Goose example, we saw a strong example of a product we would think would be harmless in the counterfeit version, but I cannot even get into the wide range of things they found in these jackets that were completely unsanitary.
Look at the possibility of counterfeiting medicines and creating medicines that people are taking because they think they will make them better, but those medicines have not gone through the same standards and safety controls a medicine would go through here. They may not contain anything that will actually help a person.
These are real and serious problems in relation to this issue. People think about counterfeiting oftentimes more from a business standpoint, but in the interest of protecting Canadian consumers, safety, as we heard at the committee, is a major issue.
Mr. Dan Harris (Scarborough Southwest, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his speech. We sat on the committee together when we were doing a lot of the studies prior to the bill. The things that were being found in those jackets were reprehensible. They were absolutely disgusting. Many of us did not want to even touch the counterfeit jackets, and of course, there were the electrical products.
During that study, we talked a lot about the 2007 committee report that recommended ex officio powers. I am pleased to see that in the bill now. It also recommended a reporting system for counterfeit goods. 
Most of the data the government has is anecdotal. We do not actually have a system in place to determine how large the problem is. Of course, the OECD has made it clear that there is a need for better data when it comes to counterfeiting.
 I would like to ask the member what is in the bill that would seek to address that concern so that we can actually measure the size and scope of the problem so we know how big it is and what kinds of resources to put in to tackle it. 
I would say that cutting $143 million from CBSA will make it more challenging. Adding ex officio powers would mean more training requirements and more work on that side. 
How would that be measured and balanced to make sure that the resources are there so that we can properly tackle the counterfeit goods coming in?
[Interjection]
Mike Lake: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member. When he was on the committee, I always enjoyed his lively style of intervention.
Both NDP questions today centred on spending more money, as they generally do in this place. It does not matter what we are debating, the NDP's questions are centre on spending more money. 
In this government, we are looking at the amount of money that is spent on behalf of taxpayers of this country. We are saying that we can do better with that money. We can get that budget balanced and still take important steps like this to give tools to our border officers.
As we have the debate we are about to have on the budget coming up, I would ask the NDP members to first read the budget before they actually engage in the debate, which is always a good idea, and to second consider actually supporting our measures to get the budget in balance so we can continue to move forward with these important initiatives to the benefit of Canadians.
Ms. Anne Minh-Thu Quach (Beauharnois—Salaberry, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I seek the unanimous consent of the House to share my time.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Barry Devolin): Does the hon. member have unanimous consent to share her time?
[Intervention]
Some hon. members:  Agreed.
[Interjection]
Anne Minh-Thu Quach: Mr. Speaker, I would like to specify that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Terrebonne—Blainville.
Before I begin my speech, I would like to wish everyone a Happy Vietnamese New Year. Tet is the start of a new year and, according to the lunar calendar, this is the year of the horse. In Vietnamese, we say, “chúc mung nam moi”.
Now back to Bill C-8. Counterfeiting is a crime that harms legitimate trade. It puts the health and safety of Canadians at risk, as we have just heard. Counterfeiting is when a recognized trademark is put on a fake product in the hopes of fooling clients and businesses.
In recent years, counterfeit products have caused serious injuries. There were batteries that exploded and caused burns, drugs that had very dangerous side effects, and toys that injured children. In addition, there are clothes that are made with materials that are dangerous to our health and substandard coat linings that cause skin disease, for example.
The proportion of counterfeit products that are dangerous to our health is on the rise. In 2005, the proportion was 11%; however, it is now 26%. Canadians should not have to take risks when buying imported products.
Counterfeiting also has a devastating effect on businesses, especially small and medium-sized businesses. Our small and medium-sized businesses invest their creativity and their resources in the development of unique, reliable and competitive products. When counterfeit goods enter the Canadian market, they cause serious damage to businesses, and small and medium-sized businesses do not always have the means to take the counterfeiters to court.
The value of counterfeit goods seized by the RCMP has risen from $7 million to $38 million over the past seven years. The OECD estimates that the value of counterfeiting worldwide is approximately $250 billion a year. China is the main source of counterfeit goods. In 2011, 80% of counterfeit goods came from China, and that trend is on the rise. The United States is the second-largest source.
We hope that Bill C-8 will help reduce the amount of counterfeit goods in Canada. The bill basically aims to strengthen the fight against counterfeiting by amending the Copyright Act and the Trade-marks Act. In fact, the bill will add two new criminal offences under the Copyright Act for possession and exportation of counterfeit goods. Furthermore, it also creates offences for selling or offering counterfeit goods on a commercial scale. It also prohibits the importing of counterfeit goods, while creating two exceptions: the first exception is products imported for personal use, given that people do not always know when something they buy outside Canada is counterfeit, and the second has to do with items in transit control, that is, goods that are passing through Canada on their way to their final destination.
Bill C-8 also gives border officials new powers to intercept infringing copies. Thus, they will no longer have to wait for a court order, which makes a lot more sense. The Canada Border Services Agency and the Minister of Public Safety will also be able to share information on detained goods with copyright holders. These tools will help fight counterfeiting.
However, it is of the utmost importance that we have the resources to enforce the law. The Conservative government has made major cuts to border services. Contrary to what the parliamentary secretary said earlier, approximately $143 million in cuts will be made, resulting in the loss of 549 full-time jobs between now and 2015. That is quite significant given that the border between Canada and the United States is almost 9,000 km long.
The Franklin border crossing in my riding was closed in 2011. Border guards and RCMP officers came to see me immediately to tell me how concerned they were because the smuggling of tobacco, drugs and weapons across the border is a major problem. Now that the RCMP and border services have fewer resources, it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to keep Canadians safe. Border guards and RCMP officers are being given more responsibilities and fewer resources, making it even harder for them to protect Canadians from counterfeiting and maintain border security.
Let us not forget that Bill C-8 will require customs officers to analyze the products entering and leaving the country to determine whether they are counterfeit copies and whether they fall under one of the exemptions. In the case of counterfeit goods, customs officers will have to detain the goods, store them and contact the rights owners. They will have to take care of all that in addition to doing their regular duties.
One has to wonder whether the Canada Border Services Agency will have the means to implement the law without compromising its other responsibilities, which are to protect Canada's borders and keep our country safe.
The president of the Customs and Immigration Union, Jean-Pierre Fortin, had this to say about the cuts to the Canada Border Services Agency:
 These proposed budget cuts would have a direct and real impact on Canadians and our communities across the country: more child pornography entering the country, more weapons and illegal drugs will pass through our borders, not to mention terrorists, sexual predators and hardened criminals. 
Experienced people are concerned. How can the government ensure that all of the measures proposed in Bill C-8 are funded without affecting other surveillance services? The government refuses to comment on this, despite all of the questions we asked about it in committee.
The other major issue is the lack of data on counterfeiting in Canada. We do not know the magnitude of the problem. All we have are statistics on actual seizures. We do not have any information about what type of goods are being counterfeited and where they come from. We do not have any information on all of the counterfeit goods that are on the market. 
The Canadian Intellectual Property Council believes that the Canadian system does not have the tools to track cases detected and report them to the authorities. European border authorities must publish statistics but, in Canada, the Border Services Agency is not mandated to report infringements of intellectual property rights.
In committee, when we asked the RCMP whether they had an idea of the number of Canadian manufacturers charged with importing or exporting counterfeit goods, the federal policing superintendent replied that he did not have any statistics in that regard.
In fact, the RCMP's police information retrieval system does not track enough information to provide a clear picture of the number of counterfeit goods imported or exported.
In 2007, a report by the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology recommended that the government establish a reporting system that would track investigations. It is difficult to tackle this problem without the facts and the exact figures.
How can we measure progress after we implement this law without a baseline? Let us be realistic. Without funding for tracking counterfeiting and without a team of experts to manage border measures, the legislation will have very mixed results.
The NDP attached a dissenting opinion to the committee's report on its study of the bill. We are calling on the government to consult with consumer associations and industry. We would also like customs officers to have the powers they need to do their jobs while ensuring compliance with civil liberties and usual procedures. We are also asking that the agency be provided with sufficient funding, it goes without saying, to fight counterfeiting and continue doing the work it does every day. 
In conclusion, the NDP supports the fight against counterfeiting. Our approach respects both copyright holders and citizens. We are also pragmatic. We know that if we pass a law but do not allocate the necessary resources to enforce it, the outcome will be poor. Fighting counterfeiting effectively without taking away from other border control activities means providing the appropriate resources to the relevant authorities.
The government must also stop cutting front-line officer positions. The number of full-time jobs has been reduced by 549.
We have also taken a very close look at Bill C-8 in committee, and we believe that it does not compromise Canadians' basic rights. The bill does not include censorship, does not criminalize travellers, and does not cover goods in transit.
However, there must be conclusive evidence and follow-up on analyses. Most importantly, the government must provide adequate human and financial resources to our border services and RCMP officers.
Kevin Lamoureux: Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up on the safety issue. We know and understand that there is a great deal of importation in different forms, things such as electrical components and medical products. Medical issues are something I am most concerned about. When different types of medicines are brought in proclaiming to replace other types of medicines that have gone through a process of certification, it is very dangerous. There are electrical components brought in with substantial price differences from the real thing and, again, they pose a safety issue for Canadians.
My question to the member is this. Just focusing on the issue of safety, does the member see other opportunities that we can, as legislators, move toward to enhance consumer awareness on these issues? For example, the Government of Canada will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on wasteful ads when, in fact, we could be spending more on consumer advisory-type information ads. I ask her to comment.
[Interjection]
Anne Minh-Thu Quach: Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Winnipeg North for his question.
The Conservative government is spending its money in a pretty ideological way and paying for ads about programs that are not all that useful to people in terms of raising awareness of fraud and counterfeit goods that could pose a risk to health, the economy and the ability of our businesses to compete.
Counterfeit medicines are certainly extremely dangerous to people's health since Health Canada has not evaluated them. They can have really serious side effects that could be terrible for people's health. The government should spend money raising people's awareness about the quality of goods and where they come from.
There should also be resources for producing reports, which is what the NDP asked for in committee. We asked for an annual report to be produced to follow up on analysis of these goods. Unfortunately, the Conservatives rejected our amendment in committee. 
Mr. Pierre Nantel (Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech, which was very well researched. The member's riding is home to a large cluster of the border crossings in the Montérégie area, between Dundee and Hemmingford, I believe.
In my past life, before I was elected in 2011, I had the opportunity to be around many border officers. They told me how much their everyday tasks had changed. When my colleague was studying this bill, did she get the impression that the realities faced by border officers had been heard or understood?
[Interjection]
Anne Minh-Thu Quach: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher for his very practical question.
We had border officers come to testify in committee. People also wrote to us to say that resources were very limited on the ground. As a result of the Conservatives' $143 million in cuts in the 2012 budget, resources will be even more limited, even though the officers' responsibilities continue to increase.
Along the border between Dundee and Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle, in my riding, there is a huge amount of arms, cigarette and drug trafficking. Since there are fewer and fewer border crossings, people can cross the border without being stopped. They are obviously crossing the border illegally. How can we effectively monitor counterfeit goods? It is completely unrealistic and it is very difficult for them to do everything properly.
Ms. Charmaine Borg (Terrebonne—Blainville, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the members of the House for giving their unanimous consent to allow me to speak this morning. It is greatly appreciated. I would also like to commend my colleague on her very intelligent and well-presented comments.
I want to speak to Bill C-8 today because it is an important measure for combating counterfeit products in Canada. I will begin by saying that we intend to support the bill at this stage because we believe it will greatly benefit Canada in terms of combating counterfeiting and piracy. 
As my colleague mentioned, according to the OECD, the estimated cost of counterfeiting is $250 billion. That is a lot of money. It is quite troubling to know that all that money is going into the hands of people with questionable practices. When we talk about counterfeit products we immediately think of fake Louis Vuitton bags because they are everywhere. I see them every day. However, counterfeiting is much more than that.
Prescription drugs can be counterfeit and pose a serious risk to the health of Canadians. Electronic devices can also cause problems, especially small devices used on airplanes, for example. If a counterfeit device is used on a plane, it can cause serious problems and put the lives of Canadians in jeopardy. This is quite troubling.
I want to say a few words about a company in my riding that tests electronic components to see if they are counterfeit. I had the opportunity to visit that company roughly a year ago and I learned a lot of things, including that there are a lot counterfeit components. Honestly, I was surprised to see to what extent the components we buy from other countries are not always authentic. The people at this company explained to me the procedure they follow to test these components. It is quite an involved process and not something that everyone could do. I commend them for their work, which is essential. Thanks to them, a number of companies in Canada and in the United States can be 100% certain that the component they purchased is authentic and will work properly, especially when we are talking about aircraft equipment. Their work is quite impressive. I just wanted to take a bit of time to talk about a personal experience.
Back to Bill C-8, which proposes a number of different things that I would like to discuss in detail. 
The bill adds two new criminal offences under the Copyright Act for possessing or exporting counterfeit copies and creates offences for selling counterfeit goods or offering them for sale on a commercial scale. It prohibits the import or export of counterfeit copies and counterfeit goods and ensures a balanced approach to this prohibition by creating two exceptions: personal use and copies in customs transit control.
The bill also gives customs officers new powers to detain counterfeit goods and copies. It gives the Minister of Public Safety and border authorities new powers enabling them to share information relating to the detained goods with rights owners. Lastly, it expands the scope of what can be registered as a trade-mark, as described within the broader definition of a certain term. 
Basically, these are good measures, and the NDP supports them. However, there is one big problem, and I believe my colleagues talked about it. CBSA's funding has been reduced by $143 million. Officers are being asked to get more training and spend more of their time fighting counterfeiting. In principle, that is a good thing, but given the budget cuts, it is hard to imagine that they will be able to perform those additional duties.
We are seriously questioning the idea of giving our border agents more responsibility when we do not necessarily have the financial means to do so.
In that regard, I would like to quote Jean-Pierre Fortin, national president of the Customs and Immigration Union, who commented on the budget cuts as follows:
 These proposed budget cuts would have a direct and real impact on Canadians and our communities across the country: more child pornography entering the country, more weapons and illegal drugs will pass through our borders, not to mention terrorists, sexual predators and hardened criminals. 
Clearly, these budget cuts could have serious repercussions. The government should seriously consider that when asking border agents to take on more responsibilities as part of their job.
I would like to make another point. I asked this question during question period when the bill was introduced in the House. Does Bill C-8 signify that the government is planning on ratifying ACTA in its entirety? That is a very important question. ACTA has attracted widespread criticism on the international stage. The European Union rejected many clauses in the agreement, and I would like to take a few moments to highlight the most problematic ones.
For example, there are clauses that would criminalize certain individuals. There were concerns about the use of shell corporations, the role of Internet service providers, and potential interruptions in the generic drug supply. Those clauses were rejected by the international community.
I would like to reassure those who are fighting for an open Internet environment and who are speaking out against the idea of the government being able to block websites, that this bill does not seem to include those troubling clauses.
I want to congratulate the government on that, because introducing those clauses here in Canada could cause problems regarding Canadians' access to an open Internet environment.
Obviously, we will have more to say, but this seems to be relatively balanced in terms of our intention to ratify ACTA. I would encourage the government to think twice—or even three or four times—before it proposes such measures, if it intends to do so in the future, because this comes with a great deal of risk.
I want to support another aspect of this bill, and that is the exception for personal use. Naturally, when we see a bill on counterfeiting, certain questions come to mind. Will someone crossing the border who bought a knock-off of a Louis Vuitton bag be arrested? Will her bag be seized? That would be going a little too far, so I am glad an exception has been included for personal use, to avoid those kinds of situations.
We can also consider people who go through customs with a laptop and would be forced to turn it on to determine whether there are any pirated programs or illegally downloaded songs on it. Having to go through all of someone's software could cause a problem. I am therefore happy to see the exception for personal use, but that provision needs to be examined further to make sure that it will not cause any such problems.
Since my time is almost up, I would just like to reiterate our support for this bill. Fighting counterfeiting is an issue that is very important to the NDP. We are prepared to work with the government in order to find ways to strike a balance between the law, copyright holders and consumers. That is what really matters.
Kevin Lamoureux: Mr. Speaker, the member was talking about the personal items that individuals might have in their possession, whether crossing a border, or another means for which they would acquire something for personal use. There is a significant difference that needs to be highlighted. Those who would reproduce an item with the idea of selling it for profit, with a huge criminal element to that component, and those who will consume products, knowing full well they are knock-off products, in particular if they are bringing those items into Canada from outside.
 I believe the member was commenting on that aspect of it, and I am interested in hearing more from her about her party's position. She used the example of someone being abroad and purchasing a knock-off purse or another item, and I am interested in hearing more comments on that particular issue. 
[Interjection]
Charmaine Borg: Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. Liberal colleague for giving me the opportunity to speak to this issue a little more, since I had so little time left.
Yes, I talked about the exception for personal use. As with all things, a balance must be found. Does someone crossing the border with a counterfeit purse really pose a risk? Most people would say no, that it was that individual who has been duped. However, if someone has purchased a medication that could be harmful to their health, they need to know that. There has to be balance. When someone crosses the border with dozens of counterfeit purses, it is more likely that that person plans to sell them for a profit. That poses a risk.
It is important to keep the exception for personal use, in order to prevent abuses.
Hon. Geoff Regan (Halifax West, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's comments.
Last year, I was a member of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology and I listened to a number of corporate representatives talk about the problems created by counterfeit goods. I was not on the committee for very long or when it studied the bill, but I was told that many amendments were suggested by members of both opposition parties and all of them were rejected by the Conservatives. Apparently, they were not the least bit interested in listening to the arguments for some of the amendments that, in my opinion, were necessary.
I would like to hear what my colleague has to say about how the Conservatives listen only to the Prime Minister's Office and never to sound reasoning.
[Interjection]
Charmaine Borg: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
In fact, that happens often. All MPs agree that we have to fight counterfeiting in Canada. However, when committee members work together on such an important report or issue—I did not work on this bill—it is very disappointing to have the Conservatives reject all the arguments put forward by the other parties. When we co-operate, we can bring together all the best ideas and find a solution that will be in Canadians' best interests. 
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Barry Devolin): Resuming debate, with three minutes before statements by members, the hon. member for Halifax West.
Geoff Regan: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today, even if it is for the three minutes remaining before we begin statements by members and question period. However, I obviously will have an opportunity to finish my remarks after question period, and I look forward to that. 
I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-8, which is an important piece of legislation. I think it could have been improved at committee, and it is unfortunate that the Conservative government did not accept any amendments that were brought forward. This seems to be a pattern that we have seen over and over in committee. Rather than consider, discuss, and have a collaborative process when it comes to possible amendments that could improve a bill, the Conservative MPs on committees unfortunately seem determined not to consider them, or perhaps they are cowed and afraid of the PMO or the minister's office and do whatever the minister's office tells them and simply vote to defeat all amendments. 
That is unfortunate, because this is an important bill. It is a bill that could be better. It could have improvements to make it a stronger piece of legislation to serve our country better. It could better serve our businesses that are so concerned about this issue of counterfeit goods. 
I sat on the industry committee last year before that. As my hon. colleague the parliamentary secretary was saying earlier, we heard from various companies that expressed grave concern about the impact of the increasing amount of counterfeit goods coming into the country. When we consider the kinds of goods we are talking about here, it should be of concern to all Canadians. 
We are not talking just about things like hockey jerseys, for example, that really take away revenues from the teams that own those brands. That has an impact on those teams. Normally, people think NHL teams are wealthy and the players are wealthy, so they are not worried about them. However, if we think about it, with the dollar below 90¢ these days, we are going to hear more about the challenges that presents to NHL teams operating in Canada, because they pay their players in U.S. dollars, so that is a concern for them. 
We also hear about things like pharmaceuticals or electrical components. We can imagine a counterfeit electrical component in a house. That counterfeit electrical component might lead to a fire. We need to be concerned about all these things. 
I know my time before question period is coming to an end, Mr. Speaker, so I will pause and let you take over. I look forward to resuming my comments later. 
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Barry Devolin): Yes, I regret to interrupt the member for Halifax West. He will have 17 minutes remaining when this matter returns before the House.

Statements By Members
Margaret FultonMs. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP): Mr. Speaker, this is one of those occasions when I wish an S. O. 31 was more than 60 seconds as I try to sum up of the life an extraordinary woman who had an extraordinary life. I was proud to know her as a friend and a colleague. 
Margaret Fulton passed away at the age of 91 on January 22, earlier this month, peacefully at home on Salt Spring Island.
However, the impact of her life started when she was a young woman on a farm in Manitoba, where she was born in 1922. She went on to be, at first, a schoolteacher in a one-room schoolhouse. 
Through her life and career, she became a champion for women's studies, for feminism, for confronting sexism and patriarchy and male power wherever she found it, for centralization of systems. She was an iconoclast. She was a pioneer. She achieved 15 honorary doctorates, was an Officer of the Order of Canada, and achieved numerous goals in education, including being president of Mount Saint Vincent for two terms, that being the first university to bring in a program for women's studies.
We will all miss her, especially her 17 nephews, her seven nieces, and her sister, Eva Robinson. I will miss you, Margaret. 
Events in Saskatoon—Rosetown—BiggarMrs. Kelly Block (Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, CPC): Mr. Speaker, our time in our ridings over the past seven weeks was a great opportunity to reconnect with family, friends, and constituents. Prior to the Christmas holiday, I had the pleasure of hosting Christmas open houses in Saskatoon, Rosetown, and Biggar.
After a great Christmas and New Year's celebration with family, I started my annual New Year tour of the riding. I met with folks in Rosetown, Fiske, Ruthilda, Biggar, Sonningdale, Harris, Delisle, and Saskatoon, and, after weather delays, met with folks in Grandora, Asquith, Vanscoy, Sovereign, Stranraer, and Herschel.
It was good to see so many constituents and to catch up on what is happening in these great communities.
I also had the pleasure of making two announcements on behalf our hard-working Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food providing important funding for research that will benefit Canada's livestock and crop sectors.
It is truly an honour to represent the constituents of Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar.
EmploymentMr. Mathieu Ravignat (Pontiac, NDP): Mr. Speaker, my riding of Pontiac has been abandoned by the Conservative government. Just think of the forestry industry, which has received no assistance; employment insurance reform, which has impoverished seasonal workers; the appeals to the municipal infrastructure fund, which have been turned down; the cuts to the public service, which are making families insecure; the protection of lakes and rivers, which has been sabotaged; the recent cuts to Canada Post; and the list goes on, Mr. Speaker. 
My constituents are proud people and are not asking for charity. They just want to work. What is the federal government doing to stimulate my region's economy? Nothing. It would rather spend $14 million on bogus advertising to justify its lack of action. The NDP has a real jobs plan. We will provide tax breaks to businesses and create jobs by modernizing infrastructure. In Pontiac, jobs are disappearing and wages are declining. We need solid leadership, and that is what the NDP's job creation plan offers to all Canadians.
Olympic Winter GamesMr. Ray Boughen (Palliser, CPC): Mr. Speaker, seven days from now, Canadians will be filled with patriotism as they tune in to watch the 2014 Olympic Winter Games.
Four-time Olympic medallist Hayley Wickenheiser has the honour of leading the team into the stadium as Canada's flag-bearer. I am proud to add that she is from my home province of Saskatchewan and is an excellent role model for young athletes.
Our athletes may be across the world in Sochi, but they can be confident that all Canadians are with them as they strive to own the podium. I know they will do us proud, with the whole country behind them.
I call upon all members of the house to join with me with a “Go, Canada, go”.
Are we ready?
Go Canada, go!
Canal ClassicHon. John McKay (Scarborough—Guildwood, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, yesterday, we witnessed several miracles on ice at the Canal Classic. Some miracles were expected; some were not.
As expected, the members for Barrie and Wetaskiwin demonstrated their dazzling speed. 
As expected, the member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel missed an open breakaway that any four-year-old could have scored on.
One media member who claims to be both tough and fair was neither tough nor fair nor present, spending the entire game on the fringes, presumably worried about his makeup.
An unexpected miracle occurred when former Liberal senator Jim Munson tied the game in the last few seconds. He appears to relish his new-found freedom to be out of a position at the perfect time.
With the game tied and at the end of regulation play, the member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel redeemed himself and miraculously won the game in a shootout. Equally miraculously, the NDP, the Conservatives, and the Liberals co-operated to beat back the media hordes. Even the former minister of defence and his former critic of a similar name were civil to each other.
However, the most satisfying miracle was to raise funds for JumpStart. We thank Canadian Tire for making all of these miracles, both big and small, possible.
Olympic Winter GamesMr. Peter Braid (Kitchener—Waterloo, CPC): Mr. Speaker, one week from today the world will be watching as Canada's best compete at the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi.
Kitchener—Waterloo will be well represented with five of our own going for gold. Kitchener-Waterloo Skating Club members Kirsten Moore-Towers and Dylan Moscovitch will be competing in the pairs figure skating event, while Kaitlyn Weaver and Andrew Poje will represent Canada in ice dancing and Kitchener native Jenna Blasman will be competing in the first-ever Olympic slopestyle event as a member of Canada's snowboard team.
I encourage all members and all Canadians to join me in cheering on our Olympic athletes as they make us proud in Sochi. Go, Canada, go.
Canada PostMs. Laurin Liu (Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, NDP): Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives are continuing down their path of destruction, and this time they are attacking Canada Post. They are cutting home delivery service in urban areas, increasing rates and eliminating 6,000 to 8,000 jobs. Now I find out that effective March 4, the Saint-Eustache post office will become a postal service centre and that the number of client service employees will be cut.
In short, people are being asked to pay more for less service. However, the postal service has been profitable for 16 of the past 17 years. The only year the corporation posted a deficit was 2011, the year employees were locked out.
It is time for real consultations on Canada Post. Seniors, people with reduced mobility, the municipalities and SMEs have to be heard.
Shared ParentingMr. Maurice Vellacott (Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, CPC): Mr. Speaker, I have had a difficult decision to make. I have four items on the order paper, and all of them are of great importance.
One is a democratic reform initiative, two are explicitly pro-life measures, and the one bill I have on the order paper is for the sake of the children. They all deserve to proceed in this place, but regrettably I can only choose one at this time.
I have selected Bill C-560 to move forward to second reading debate in this chamber. It is my bill to amend the Divorce Act to make equal shared parenting a rebuttable presumption in cases of marital breakup involving children.
 Aside from proven abuse or neglect, over three-quarters of Canadians want equal shared parenting to be the presumption in our courts when marriages unfortunately break down. Research clearly demonstrates that equal shared parenting is in the best interests of children.
 Also, based on conversations I have been a part of, I have good reason to believe that the other three items I have on the order paper will be picked up in due course by other good MPs who have spine and foresight. For that I am also truly grateful.
Status of WomenMrs. Susan Truppe (London North Centre, CPC): Mr. Speaker, Canada's economic action plan 2013 contained measures to increase the participation of under-represented groups in certain sectors of the labour market, including women.
Our economy needs skilled workers, and to meet that demand, we need women working in all occupations, especially in those where they are under-represented.
I was pleased to host round tables across Canada about this issue. I was honoured to begin the round tables at Fanshawe College in London, Ontario.
I am pleased with the recent announcement by the Minister of Status of Women of $2.8 million supporting 14 Ontario-based projects to advance women's opportunities in non-traditional occupations, increase economic options for women, and improve prosperity for immigrant women.
This demonstrates our government's focus on ensuring jobs, growth, and long-term prosperity for all Canadians. That vision starts in communities with women and men who are empowered to fulfill their potential and contribute to the Canadian economy.
The BudgetMs. Françoise Boivin (Gatineau, NDP): Mr. Speaker, in my riding of Gatineau, we have the same priorities in 2014 that we had in 2013. Everyone is telling me that they are having a hard time making ends meet. The priorities for the people of Gatineau are health care, retirement benefits, well-paying jobs, Canada Post, and respect for the public service, seniors and our veterans.
As we approach the tabling of the budget, these master economists, who have been running deficit budgets year after year since they came to power, will be adding to the national debt, which they have already increased by $123.5 billion. I would be very surprised to find a single Canadian, aside from a Conservative MP, who thinks that this government is working for Canadians. The Conservatives hope that if they table their budget in the middle of the Olympics, everyone will forget about their incompetence. In 2015, Gatineau will remember that our region has been abandoned by the Conservatives. Gatineau will fight with me and my NDP colleagues to turf this government and finally put people first.
HealthMs. Eve Adams (Mississauga—Brampton South, CPC): Mr. Speaker, our government understands that each and every one of our citizens deserves the best health care available. We are leading the way by providing the highest health care transfer dollars ever to provinces and territories. These are set to reach $40 billion by the end of the decade.
In a speech to the Economic Club of Canada yesterday, the Minister of Health made it clear that we are also focused on innovation to ensure that the system is sustainable.
We are supporting innovate partnerships with the private sector, provinces, and territories. Such initiatives include funding for the Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement, which will improve patient care and reduce costs. Our government is also the single largest investor in health care and science research. Through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, our government invests roughly a billion dollars each and every year into world-class research.
With the leadership of our great Minister of Health, our government will continue to leverage the expertise of all Canadians to improve the quality of care and make our health care system sustainable.
Winter OlympicsPierre Nantel: Mr. Speaker, with the opening of the Sochi Winter Olympics right around the corner, now is a good time to remember that 30 years ago, a member of the greater Longueuil community, Gaétan Boucher, won three medals, one bronze and two gold, in his sport at the Sarajevo Olympics, thereby making an indelible mark in the history of those games.
The citizens of Longueuil can look back with pride, knowing why a boulevard, school and athletic centre in Longueuil are all named after him. 
Thank you, Gaétan Boucher. May your success bring good luck to our new speed skating hopeful, Charles Cournoyer, a young rising star from Boucherville at 22 years of age.
On behalf of everyone in Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, good luck Charles. We are all behind you.
Consumer ProtectionMr. James Lunney (Nanaimo—Alberni, CPC): Mr. Speaker, Canadian families work hard for their money and every dollar counts. On this side of the House, we have taken decisive action to put Canadian families first by cutting taxes an incredible 160 times. That amounts to over $3,200 more every year for the average Canadian family because of our Conservative government's initiatives.
We have consistently put consumers and families at the core of our decisions. We will continue to do so by reducing wireless costs, increasing choice for television packages, and increasing high-speed Internet access for rural Canadians. We know that Canadians want more choice and lower prices, whether for their cellphone plan or TV package at home. That is why we welcome the Competition Bureau's action this week to defend consumers against skyrocketing roaming fees that increase wireless prices and lead to less wireless choice.
While the opposition continues to call for job-killing carbon taxes and legalizing marijuana, we will continue to put Canadian families first.
L'Isle-VerteMr. Emmanuel Dubourg (Bourassa, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, in the early hours of January 23, tragedy struck L'Isle-Verte. A terrible fire destroyed the Résidence du Havre, leaving 32 people dead or unaccounted for.
In the face of such tragedy, there are no words to express our grief and our compassion. I would nevertheless like to offer my most sincere condolences to the families of the dead and missing.
I would also like to salute the dedicated efforts of the teams of first responders who, despite very difficult conditions, have been tirelessly sifting through the rubble so that bereaved families can grieve in peace. 
Tomorrow, the community will share its grief with the whole province and bid farewell to those who were lost during a ceremony at the L'Isle-Verte church. I invite my colleagues, the constituents of my riding, Bourassa, and the Haitian community to join me in expressing our support for this community that has suffered so much. 
Public SafetyMs. Roxanne James (Scarborough Centre, CPC): Mr. Speaker, our Conservative government is committed to keeping our streets and communities safe. We have passed numerous laws to keep dangerous and violent criminals behind bars where they belong, including new penalties for child exploitation as well as ending the ability of child molesters to get criminal record suspensions.
We did all of this without a massive expansion of the prison population, contrary to the dire predictions of the NDP. How is this possible? When we lock up criminals, they are not out committing more crimes.
Contrast this with the Liberals whose leader has said that they would not rule out ending mandatory sentences for anyone.
When it comes to keeping our streets and communities safe, Canadians know that they can count on our Conservative government.
The SenateDan Harris: Mr. Speaker, the Liberal leader's bold new policy has amounted to Liberal senators becoming “Senate Liberals”. Not one senator changed party affiliation or swore off partisan activity. The standings in the Senate remain the same: 57 unelected and unaccountable Conservatives, opposite 32 unelected, unaccountable Liberals.
The member for Markham—Unionville bizarrely claimed that the fact the Liberal caucus will now meet in separate rooms made him as proud as when Canada stayed out of the war in Iraq.
Canadians are now realizing that the Liberal leader did not do his homework and is yet again crafting policy on the back of a napkin. Of course, he could have come to us. We have done the homework. Remember, just a couple of months ago the motion to take partisanship out of the Senate, the one that every single Liberal voted against.
Canadians deserve better. They deserve an end to the unelected, unaccountable, and unnecessary Senate.
Canadian Broadcasting CorporationMr. Paul Calandra (Oak Ridges—Markham, CPC): Mr. Speaker, last night the CBC aired a misleading report on Canada's signals intelligence agency, the Communications Security Establishment Canada. The documents cited were stolen by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and sold to the CBC by Glenn Greenwald. Canada's signals intelligence agency has been clear that the CBC story is incorrect, yet the CBC went ahead and published it anyway.
Here are the facts: before the story aired, CSEC made it clear that nothing in the stolen documents showed that Canadians' communications were targeted, collected, or used, nor that travellers' movements were tracked. In addition, CSEC's activities are regularly reviewed by an independent watchdog who has consistently found it has followed the law.
Why is furthering porn-spy Glenn Greenwald's agenda and lining his Brazilian bank account more important than maintaining the public broadcaster's journalistic integrity?

Oral Questions
Veterans AffairsMr. Nathan Cullen (Skeena—Bulkley Valley, NDP): Mr. Speaker, today the Conservative government is closing eight Veterans Affairs offices. These offices provide specialized services to thousands of our veterans. They are being replaced by computers and a 1-800 number. Inexperienced staff from other departments do not have the training or the experience to deal with these complex health issues.
Veterans are rightly furious with the government. Why are the Conservatives just steamrolling ahead with cuts that are reducing services to the brave men and women of this country?
Mr. Parm Gill (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Veterans Affairs, CPC): Mr. Speaker, our government has created 600 new points of service across the country to assist Canada's veterans.
A critically injured veteran does not have to drive to a district office. We will send a registered nurse or a case manager to them in the comfort of their own home to assist them where the service is required. Veterans who are seriously injured can count on our government to shovel their driveways, cut their grass, and prepare their meals in their homes.
Nathan Cullen: Mr. Speaker, after all the broken Conservative promises to our veterans, that is another one they will not believe. Veterans are not fearmongering, they are worried. They will lose the long-term relationships they have built with staff at their regional offices. These brave men and women have complex mental and physical health issues. 
Meanwhile, the Conservative cabinet has doubled spending on its own regional offices. Are veterans really in less need of help than some travelling Conservative minister?
Parm Gill: Mr. Speaker, since coming to office, our government has invested almost $5 billion in additional funding to help veterans and to provide services and benefits. 
Regarding the offices that are being merged with Service Canada, we will make sure that each of the eight offices has a fully trained Veterans Affairs Canada employee to provide the necessary assistance.
National DefenceNathan Cullen: Mr. Speaker, under Canadian law, it is illegal for Communications Security Establishment Canada to target and spy on Canadians or anyone inside Canada's borders. This is an agency directly under the control of the Minister of National Defence. 
Can the government tell Canadians why this agency was tracking and spying on Canadians in our airports?
Hon. Rob Nicholson (Minister of National Defence, CPC): Mr. Speaker, it is my understanding that CSEC made it clear to the CBC that nothing in the documents they had obtained showed that Canadian communications were targeted, collected or used, nor that travellers' movements were tracked.
Françoise Boivin: Mr. Speaker, on November 28, the Minister of National Defence said in the House:
 ...the Communications Security Establishment Canada—CSEC—must abide by Canadian law. It is prohibited from targeting Canadians. 
My question is for the Minister of National Defence. Can he tell us how monitoring Canadians' activities through Wi-Fi networks and airports is not the same as targeting Canadians?
Rob Nicholson: Mr. Speaker, my previous answer addressed this particular question, but I can let the hon. member know, and she may be aware, that the activities of CSEC are reviewed by an independent commissioner, who has repeatedly indicated that CSEC respects the privacy and the laws of this country.
Françoise Boivin: Mr. Speaker, now I know why Canadian airports provide free access to their Wi-Fi networks.
The Minister of National Defence is responsible for Communications Security Establishment Canada. He must take responsibility for this serious violation of the law, and he must explain why the spying pilot project was extended and why the information taken from Canadian Wi-Fi networks is now being shared with foreign countries.
Did the minister ask CSEC for an explanation, and how does he justify this violation of the law?
Rob Nicholson: Mr. Speaker, as I indicated, CSEC made it clear to the CBC that nothing in the documents it had obtained showed that Canadian communications were targeted, collected or used, nor that travellers' movements were tracked. I am sure that will reassure the hon. member.
VeteransHon. Dominic LeBlanc (Beauséjour, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, as if closing service centres were not enough, now we find out that the government has just closed centres for treating veterans with PTSD. One of those centres was in Chicoutimi. Hundreds of people there with PTSD will now have to cross Saguenay park in the middle of winter to get services in Quebec.
How can the government ignore the suffering of our veterans in such a cavalier way?
Parm Gill: Mr. Speaker, this is a provincial facility that has nothing to do with the district offices. The Province of Quebec is in the midst of contract negotiations with the service provider and that process should run its course.
The fact remains, our government financially supports this and many other front-line facilities. In this case, we expect these services to continue well into the future.
Dominic LeBlanc: Mr. Speaker, they will continue, hundreds of kilometres away.
Today, the Conservatives are closing Veterans Affairs offices while opening and expanding palatial regional offices for themselves and their bloated staff.
 Even worse, the Conservative MP for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke is now blaming the veterans themselves, saying that the problem is just a stigma in their own heads.
Why are the Conservatives showing such contempt for our brave veterans?
Parm Gill: Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned earlier, there will be 650 points of service for veterans to access service. 
These offices will be in areas where district offices did not exist. Now there will be Service Canada offices in areas as Durham, Sault Ste. Marie, and many others, so all veterans have access to the services they deserve.
Geoff Regan: Mr. Speaker, today in Sydney and seven other location across Canada it is black Friday, because the Conservatives are closing offices that provide vital services to our veterans.
At the same time, they are spending millions to open posh new offices for, wait for it, their ministers. 
Do the Conservatives not think there might be a scintilla of a chance they got their priorities wrong?
Parm Gill: Mr. Speaker, the facts are as follows. As I mentioned, there are 650 new points of service for veterans where they can access these services.
Let me give some examples of how far the offices being merged with Service Canada are from district offices. For example, in Brandon, Manitoba, it is in the same building. In Saskatoon, it is the same building. In Kelowna, B.C., it is the same building. In Corner Brook, Newfoundland, it is the same building. In Charlottetown, P.E.I., it is across the street.
National DefenceMr. David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre, NDP): Mr. Speaker, section 273 of the National Defence Act states that the activities of the Communications Security Establishment shall “...not be directed at Canadians or any person in Canada”.
Could the minister tell this House how tracking the activities of average, law-abiding Canadians could ever be considered lawful?
Rob Nicholson: Mr. Speaker, there are legislative measures in place to protect the privacy of Canadians and CSEC must adhere to those.
I can tell the hon. member what the independent CSEC Commissioner said:
 CSEC’s Chiefs…have spared no effort to instill within CSEC a culture of respect for the law and for the privacy of Canadians. 
 I can say with pride and confidence that CSEC is truly being watched. 
I am sure that will satisfy the hon. member.
David Christopherson: Mr. Speaker, let me quote Ontario's Privacy Commissioner to the minister:
 It is really unbelievable that CSEC would engage in that kind of surveillance of Canadians. Of us. 
Will the minister acknowledge that tracking the locations of Canadians by CSEC is against the law? Will he at least acknowledge it is wrong?
Rob Nicholson: Mr. Speaker, the Privacy Commissioner is wrong; it is unbelievable. I have made that very clear.
Again, CSEC is overseen by an independent commissioner, and I accept the report of the independent commissioner.
Charmaine Borg: Mr. Speaker, Communications Security Establishment Canada collected metadata on the location of Canadians, the duration and location of their communications and how they use data.
Is the government really claiming that gathering this information is not the same as illegally monitoring Canadians?
Rob Nicholson: Mr. Speaker, as I indicated in an earlier answer, CSEC has made it clear to the CBC that there was nothing in the documents that had been obtained that showed that Canadians' communications were targeted, collected, or used, nor that travellers' movements were tracked.
Charmaine Borg: Mr. Speaker, was the former Minister of National Defence, the hon. member for Central Nova, aware that the agency was collecting information on hundreds of thousands of Canadians and sharing it with foreign countries?
Rob Nicholson: Mr. Speaker, I should have pointed out that the independent commissioner who oversees the activities of CSEC has given a favourable report concerning CSEC's activities and its compliance with the law, but it is not just for this past year or so, it goes back to the years that my colleague was also the Minister of National Defence.
VeteransMs. Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe (Pierrefonds—Dollard, NDP): Mr. Speaker, they are insulting veterans and spying on Canadians. What a great week for the Conservatives.
Is it not pathetic to see the Minister of Veterans Affairs rise in the House to say that veterans' discontent is a vast union conspiracy? It is just as ridiculous as his claim that no cuts are being made to his department. Really? Why then do the financial documents from his department show the opposite?
If the Conservatives are not making any cuts, then why are they closing eight service centres before the end of the day today?
Parm Gill: Mr. Speaker, our government has a strong record when it comes to providing services and benefits to our veterans, our men and women in uniform, and we will continue to do. However, the opposition, especially the NDP, tries to pander to the unions and are more than willing to speak their talking points.
 I would like to point out the fact that every single initiative that we have introduced to help our veterans, the NDP has voted against almost every single one of them.
Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe: Mr. Speaker, it is funny that the member does not seem willing to contradict the minister and refuses to say whether or not cuts are being made to this department.
Let us look at the Department of Veterans Affairs' most recent report on plans and priorities. On page 13 of the report, it states in black and white that the department is making cuts of $105 million in 2014-15 and $132 million in 2015-16. 
Did the minister read his own department's report on plans and priorities? Will he continue to claim that no cuts are being made in his department?
Parm Gill: Mr. Speaker, let me repeat for the member, maybe in slow motion. Since coming to office, our government, the Conservative government, has invested almost $5 billion in additional funding to help veterans. 
We will continue to stand up for veterans on this side of the House. Only the NDP and the Liberals can call 650 points of service a cut. That is not a cut, it is providing more services, more--
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Barry Devolin): The hon. member for Beauharnois—Salaberry.
Anne Minh-Thu Quach: Mr. Speaker, a condescending attitude does not make the Conservatives more competent.
The reality is that they will not be able to offer the same services with fewer service centres. The other sad reality is that some veterans have said that they will be less comfortable accessing the less personalized services proposed by the Conservatives. What the Conservatives are actually doing is dissuading veterans from getting the help they need.
Does the Minister of Veterans Affairs really think that veterans will be just as comfortable confiding in a computer as in a professional they have known and trusted for a long time?
Parm Gill: Mr. Speaker, it seems like it is only the NDP that would like to see Canada's veterans drive downtown and drive to the district office to obtain services. Whereas this government is committed to provide them service in the comfort of their own home.
 We will continue to cut their lawn. We will continue to shovel their snow. We will continue to prepare meals in the comfort of their home or deliver those meals to them. 
Ms. Francine Raynault (Joliette, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I do not expect to get a different answer than the one that has already been given, but I will ask my question anyway.
The Conservatives are closing veterans' service centres that provide mental health support, crisis intervention and the assistance elderly veterans need to live independently. Is the minister saying that these are not essential services? How does he think he is going to be able to offer the same services once he closes these offices?
Parm Gill: Mr. Speaker, there will be 650 points of service, 600 additional. Maybe the NDP do not get the math and do not understand how it works. When 600 points of access are added for our veterans, they go toward helping veterans. There are many, many cities and towns in this country that currently do not have a district office, that do not get the service, and will now get that service.
Mr. Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre, NDP): Mr. Speaker, members will know that Brandon, Manitoba, is a huge military town with thousands of veterans, yet they are going to lose their Veterans Affairs office. Veterans in Thunder Bay will have to drive to North Bay, a 13-hour drive, to get basic service. 
The Conservatives love to trot out veterans for self-serving photo ops, but they turn their backs on them when it comes to meeting their basic needs.
It might be the 11th hour, but it is never too late to do the right thing. 
For the sake of those who have served, will the Conservative government reconsider this appalling, disgraceful decision to close these Veterans Affairs offices?
Parm Gill: Mr. Speaker, honestly, it is beyond my understanding as to why NDP members would like to see our veterans drive to these district offices.
The member opposite mentioned Brandon, Manitoba. The Service Canada office where the services are being merged is in the same building. What does the member not get? I have a difficult time understanding.
We are providing more services, more points of service, across the country so that veterans do not have to drive. We will send a registered nurse. We will send a case manager—
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Barry Devolin): Order. The hon. member for Bourassa.
National DefenceEmmanuel Dubourg: Mr. Speaker, Communications Security Establishment Canada allegedly spied on Canadians through the free Internet service at one of our major airports. The purpose of this operation was not to protect Canadians. It was a test that was requested by the U.S. National Security Agency. This is illegal, according to experts.
Does the government think it is acceptable for a Canadian agency to illegally spy on Canadians at the request of the U.S.?
Rob Nicholson: Mr. Speaker, I notice the hon. member used the term allegedly. As I already indicated, CSEC made it clear to CBC that nothing in the documents it had obtained show that Canadian communications were targeted, collected, or used, nor that travellers' movements were being tracked.
That being said, there is an independent oversight of CSEC through an independent commissioner, and that commissioner has consistently said that CSEC respects the law and respects the privacy of Canadians.
Hon. Scott Brison (Kings—Hants, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, the chief of CSEC is on the record, telling us that “...we do not target Canadians at home or abroad in our foreign intelligence activities, nor do we target anyone in Canada. In fact, it's prohibited by law.” But now there are reports that CSEC was secretly tracking airline passengers in Canada who use Wi-Fi in airports.
Canadians deserve to know. Is the government breaking the law by spying on, or allowing spying on, law-abiding citizens? Has the minister initiated an investigation to reassure Canadians?
Rob Nicholson: Mr. Speaker, as I indicated, CSEC has already indicated to CBC that that is completely incorrect, that there is complete compliance with Canadian law. 
As I have pointed out, for years now there has been an independent commissioner who looks at all the issues surrounding CSEC. He has concluded that CSEC complies with the law and respects the privacy of Canadians.
Scott Brison: Mr. Speaker, members of Parliament spend a lot of time in Canadian airports, travelling throughout the country, and while travelling they use Wi-Fi to stay connected and to continue working. Potential spying on MPs at airports could involve emails with personal information on constituents.
Will the government notify any members of Parliament or Canadians who have been caught up in this data sweep? Will the minister initiate his own investigation into CSEC's activities, to reassure Canadians that their privacy has not been violated?
Rob Nicholson: Mr. Speaker, the independent commissioner, a former justice, has a look at the activities in CSEC and has, on a regular basis, through his reports, indicated that CSEC complies with Canadian law, that there is a culture of respect within CSEC, and that CSEC respects the privacy of Canadians.
Science and TechnologyLaurin Liu: Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives' attacks on science and knowledge are now targeting libraries.
Since 2012, dozens of departmental libraries have been closed down. Scientists, public servants and Canadians are losing access to very important documents. Canada has become a laughingstock around the world as a result of this unacceptable destruction of information.
Will the Conservatives stop preventing Canadians and scientists from accessing books and knowledge?
Mike Lake: Mr. Speaker, this is a puzzling question. Last I checked, this is 2014. The hon. member who just asked the question, I am guessing, is of the generation that uses computers and the Internet from time to time and would understand that it is an age in which we are digitizing information. The information for which we used to go to libraries and search books—libraries the size of this chamber—we can now carry around with us. We can access it from anywhere. This is a good thing and, of course, the government will continue to move in that direction.
Laurin Liu: Mr. Speaker, the member might skate around the question, but the fact remains that the Conservative government's disdain for knowledge has reached new lows. It turns out that not only did it shut down seven world-class libraries at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans but also it made taxpayers foot the bill for tens of thousands of dollars in costs to destroy valuable material.
Why are the Conservatives in such a rush to destroy Canada's scientific heritage?
Mr. Randy Kamp (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, CPC): Mr. Speaker, as my colleague has said, we are committed to updating government with 21st century technology in order to be more responsible to the taxpayer. This is exactly what was happening with the Fisheries and Oceans library. Users were asking for digital information. In fact, most of our libraries average about five to twelve visits per year. We are doing the right thing here and being responsible for what Canadians want.
Library and Archives CanadaPierre Nantel: Mr. Speaker, I want to stick with the topic of libraries, knowledge and vitality. 
The Conservatives continue to treat Library and Archives Canada as a second-class organization. LAC has been without a head librarian and archivist for eight months now. The legislation is clear: the position cannot remain vacant for a period of more than six months. If that deadline passes, the Conservatives are abusing the spirit of the act. Meanwhile, the files are piling up.
When will they start to treat our archival heritage with respect and appoint someone competent to run LAC?
Paul Calandra: Mr. Speaker, there is a process under way, and I am sure a decision will be made in the fullness of time.
National DefenceDavid Christopherson: Mr. Speaker, the defence minister today has taken great pains to refer to the report in question and say that it does not show that Canadians have been electronically tracked. My question is: Will the minister, then, therefore, stand up and categorically state that under no conditions have innocent, law-abiding Canadians been electronically tracked by CSEC, yes or no?
Rob Nicholson: Mr. Speaker, we rely on the independent commissioner for that assessment, who has indicated that CSEC has spared no efforts to instill within CSEC a culture of respect for the law and for the privacy of Canadians. I can say with pride and confidence that CSEC is truly being watched. That is the independent commissioner.
Natural ResourcesMr. Richard Harris (Cariboo—Prince George, CPC): Mr. Speaker, our government knows that the Keystone XL pipeline will create jobs and economic growth in Canada and the United States. Furthermore, the pipeline will enhance North American energy security by displacing foreign oil. While the NDP puts ideology before the facts again and again, our Conservative government is focused on ensuring working families have good-paying, long-lasting jobs.
Can the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources tell the House how the Keystone XL pipeline will support Canadian workers?
Kelly Block: Mr. Speaker, this pipeline will create tens of thousands of jobs in Canada and the United States. The New Democrats have turned their backs on workers. Just listen to the International Union of Operating Engineers, who said, “We are disappointed that the NDP has chosen to completely ignore the benefit of pipeline construction to working Canadians...”.
It is time for the NDP to stand up for Canadian workers.
The EnvironmentMs. Ruth Ellen Brosseau (Berthier—Maskinongé, NDP): Mr. Speaker, last September, Health Canada published a document entitled “Action to Protect Bees from Exposure to Neonicotinoid Pesticides”.
This document clearly shows that these pesticides negatively affect bees. An increasing number of studies, such as the one by Health Canada, show that there are clear links between neonicotinoids and the declining bee population.
Why are the Conservatives not taking real action to stop the decline in Canada's bee population?
Eve Adams: Mr. Speaker, when concerns were identified with this pesticide, our department took immediate steps to re-evaluate the information and to work with our international partners. Based on the best science that is currently available, we have brought in new rules and regulations for the 2014 growing season. We are taking this issue very seriously.
Ruth Ellen Brosseau: Mr. Speaker, people are concerned that the current government is not doing enough to protect our pollinators and that we need a rigorous series of risk-based assessments and scientific study, not just gambling with the livelihoods of farmers. Other jurisdictions are taking clear and decisive action to protect bee populations. 
Why are the Conservatives risking the livelihoods of farmers, and why are they not taking this issue seriously?
Eve Adams: Mr. Speaker, as I just indicated, we are working with our international partners and we have brought in new rules and regulations for the 2014 growing season.
Just to reassure the members opposite, though, over 200 types of scientific studies must be submitted before a pesticide is approved in our nation.
Rail TransportationMathieu Ravignat: Mr. Speaker, the railway is vital for the economic development of the Pontiac RCM. Nonetheless, CN has started lifting the tracks. It took an injunction to force CN to keep the line intact. The community's concerns are clear.
Will the Minister of Transport finally intervene in order to find a solution, listen to the community and guarantee the future of this section of rail line, and especially the economic future of the region?
Mr. Jeff Watson (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the member will know that there is a regulatory process for the discontinuance of railways, and that process is being followed.
Mr. Yvon Godin (Acadie—Bathurst, NDP): Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives said that they do not intend to invest in the rail line linking Bathurst to Miramichi, which allows VIA Rail to transport passengers in Acadia.
The Conservatives are killing VIA Rail service in eastern New Brunswick and eastern Canada, and the Conservative members for Miramichi and Madawaska—Restigouche have not said a word.
Will New Brunswick's Conservative MPs show some backbone and oppose their government's decision?
New Brunswick has eight Conservative MPs, and they are not working on behalf of the province of New Brunswick.
Jeff Watson: Mr. Speaker, the member will know, with respect to the Newcastle subdivision, that this was a business decision made by a private company. There is a regulatory process in place, which the company is following. While the discontinuance process is under way, CN is responsible for maintaining its track infrastructure. As previously indicated, the federal government has no interest in acquiring this rail line through the discontinuance process.
Aboriginal AffairsHon. Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul's, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, improving the relationships and partnerships with the aboriginal people of Canada is an actual pre-condition to unlocking the natural resource and energy wealth in Canada. Instead, the government is actually gutting the capacity of indigenous people to engage in a meaningful way.
This week, the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations was forced to lay off almost its entire workforce, 66 people, to cope with the $2 million cuts imposed by the current government. How can the government build the needed trust and partnerships with aboriginal peoples while systematically robbing them of their voice?
Mr. Mark Strahl (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, CPC): Mr. Speaker, we are focusing our funding on projects that generate tangible results while respecting taxpayer dollars.
The objective is to ensure that funding is directed at priorities, such as initiatives that contribute to economic development and education, and to also eliminate the duplication of projects.
 Resources will be focused on projects that result in concrete and positive impacts on the aboriginal people, as they are intended. For example, in our last budget we indicated a four-year investment of $241 million to help first nations youth ensure they got the skills they need to get a job.
International TradeJohn McKay: Mr. Speaker, the Government of South Korea employs a number of non-tariff techniques in order to circumvent free trade deals.
In its rush to sign deals, the Conservative government appears to be prepared to throw Ontario's auto industry under the bus.
Will the minister specifically contact the Ontario government and address the concerns raised by the Ontario government that it get the same deal that the U.S. demanded and received for Michigan?
Mr. Erin O'Toole (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Trade, CPC): Mr. Speaker, as the member knows, negotiations are under way, and the government will only sign a trade agreement that is in the best interests of Canada.
It is also critical to know—and the Ontario government knows well—that the European Union, Australia, and the United States have signed deals with South Korea. Since the U.S. signed in 2012, we have lost $1.5 billion in exports to that country.
We are here to ensure that a free trade agreement with South Korea will level the playing field and ensure Canadian exporters have opportunities and more jobs for Canadians.
Aboriginal AffairsMs. Mylène Freeman (Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, NDP): Mr. Speaker, the work of the Special Committee on Violence Against Indigenous Women is coming to an end, and the conclusion is obvious: we need to take action to avoid having to start over and produce another report that will simply gather dust.
The NDP has taken action by moving a motion calling for a concrete action plan to put an end to violence against women.
Will the government support our plan?
Hon. Peter MacKay (Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, CPC): Mr. Speaker, we can all agree that this is an appalling situation.
Violence against aboriginal women and violence against children, in particular, remains an enormous problem in this country, which is why, as a government, we have taken decisive action. We have, in fact, made a number of changes within the Criminal Code that put more emphasis on holding offenders accountable.
We have established and invested more than $25 million specifically on an initiative aimed at attacking this issue. We have established a National Centre for Missing Persons, enhanced the Canadian Police Information Centre database, and given police more resources.
We hope this member and her party will support this.
Mylène Freeman: Mr. Speaker, it is not enough, and it is time for more than just words.
Many groups have spoken out at the committee about the flaws. We have seen no change from the Conservatives. It is clear that aboriginal women deserve more than just another report that is going to gather dust. They deserve answers.
 When will the government agree to an inquiry and to concrete steps to end violence against aboriginal women?
Peter MacKay: Mr. Speaker, let me continue with the numerous concrete, substantive financial investments and measures taken by the government, and very often opposed by the member and her party.
We have in fact supported development of school and community pilot projects aimed specifically at reducing violence among young aboriginal women. We have supported the development and adaptation of victim services so that people are culturally aware, culturally tuned in to what aboriginal first nations need, and developed a comprehensive list of best practices to help communities and law enforcement and justice partners in future work.
We have worked with the aboriginal communities to develop their own safety on-reserve plans. We have, of course, changed to give matrimonial property act provisions—
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Barry Devolin): The hon. member for Elgin—Middlesex—London.
Small BusinessMr. Joe Preston (Elgin—Middlesex—London, CPC): Mr. Speaker, small business owners in my riding have been telling me how happy they are that our government is standing up for them by legislating on the one-for-one rule.
I understand that the rule has been in place less formally for the past year. I hope that the parliamentary secretary can give us some examples of how the rule has worked for us in this past year.
Mr. Dan Albas (Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board, CPC): Mr. Speaker, it is a great question and I am happy to answer for the hon. member. 
On this side of the House, we are proud to have heard and listened to the calls of Canadian business owners. Here is a concrete example of how we have helped. The one-for-one rule has resulted in allowing pharmacy technicians to transfer drugs to other pharmacies, a practice previously restricted only to pharmacists. This has enabled pharmacists to spend more time providing service and advice to customers while saving them $15 million.
Contrast that to the Liberal leader. It seems that the only drug transfers that he would make more effective are the ones sold by dangerous—
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Barry Devolin): Order, please.
The hon. member for Lac-Saint-Louis.
HealthMr. Francis Scarpaleggia (Lac-Saint-Louis, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, drug compounding companies are not federally regulated like drug manufacturers, nor provincially regulated like pharmacies. In the Marchese case, an error by a compounder resulted in cancer patients receiving diluted doses of a chemotherapy drug. The Obama administration has brought compounders under federal law, treating these companies more like drug manufacturers. Will the government apply federal standards for drug manufacturers to compounding companies to avoid a balkanized regulatory regime that varies from province to province?
Eve Adams: Mr. Speaker, our government understands that Canadian families need access to high quality and safe medications. Health Canada scientists review all drugs approved for sale in Canada based on a rigorous review, to ensure health, safety, and efficacy. 
Canada PostMr. Marc-André Morin (Laurentides—Labelle, NDP): Mr. Speaker, in my riding of Laurentides—Labelle, the communities of Lac-du-Cerf, Sainte-Anne-du-Lac, Saint-Faustin-Lac-Carré, Rivière-Rouge, Amherst and Chute-Saint-Philippe are concerned about the closure of Canada Post offices. Six municipalities have already passed resolutions demanding that postal services continue.
Will the government listen to the people and elected officials in Laurentides—Labelle and work to find solutions instead of taking an axe to public services?
Jeff Watson: Mr. Speaker, as the member will know, Canada Post delivered one billion fewer individually addressed letters in 2012 than it did in 2006. The Conference Board of Canada, in its report, projected that Canada Post could lose roughly $1 billion a year by 2020. 
The member will also know, though, that Canada Post, as an arm's-length crown corporation, is responsible for its operations, including business and financial decisions. It is their five-point plan. 
Agriculture and Agri-FoodMr. Gary Schellenberger (Perth—Wellington, CPC): Mr. Speaker, last week, porcine epidemic diarrhea was detected in southern Ontario. Although this disease poses no risk to human health, it could have serious repercussions for Canada's pork sector. In addition to the already stringent inspections at the border, could the Minister of State for Agriculture please update the House on what else our government is doing to help industry combat this disease?
Hon. Maxime Bernier (Minister of State (Small Business and Tourism, and Agriculture), CPC): Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for the question but most importantly for his hard work on this file. 
Yesterday the Minister of Agriculture announced emergency access to a vaccine to respond to the threat posed by porcine epidemic diarrhea. It will be available to pork producers in Canada for use under veterinary supervision as a precautionary measure against the virus. I would like to assure my colleagues that our government is continuing to work with the pork industry as a whole.
Government ServicesMr. Claude Patry (Jonquière—Alma, BQ): Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Infrastructure, Communities and Intergovernmental Affairs has a poor attitude when it comes to Quebec's economy, and his own government is cutting services and relocating them far away from people.
Eliminating home mail delivery in urban areas, closing the passport office in Jonquière and closing the Service Canada office in Kénogami will hurt the economic development of these Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean communities.
When will the minister intervene and prevent the government from taking away the services that the people of Jonquière and Kénogami appreciate having nearby?
Mr. Jacques Gourde (Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, for Official Languages and for the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the Economic Development Agency of Canada is working in all regions of Quebec to develop the Quebec economy. This is one of our government's priorities, and it should be a priority for all MPs from Quebec.
EthicsElizabeth May: Mr. Speaker, Canadians will remember the sorry tale, the scandal of Dr. Arthur Porter who once held the sensitive position of chair of the Canadian Security Intelligence Review Committee. As we all know, he is now in jail in Panama and fighting extradition to Canada. Appallingly, he is still a member of the Privy Council. He is a Privy Council officer. To be removed from that position, all the Prime Minister has to do is ask the Governor General to remove him. Why has this step not been taken?
Paul Calandra: Mr. Speaker, I will take the member's comments under advisement and get back to her.
Elizabeth May: Mr. Speaker, I certainly thank the hon. parliamentary secretary; that is a very encouraging response. 
Perhaps we can have a government and an administration that styles itself as tough on crime but appears to be soft on its friends.
I am wondering if the parliamentary secretary could also take a message to the Prime Minister from one of my constituents, who would appreciate if the Prime Minister would urge his friend the mayor of Toronto to resign because it is an embarrassment to Canada to have someone with these charges against him—
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Barry Devolin): Order. The question clearly goes beyond the administrative responsibilities of the Government of Canada and concludes question period for today.
The hon. member for Medicine Hat is rising on a point of order.
Point of OrderMr. LaVar Payne (Medicine Hat, CPC): Mr. Speaker, I am rising on a point of order. The member for Winnipeg Centre used very unparliamentary language towards me and our colleagues in the House. He also gave me the not-so-famous Pierre Elliott Trudeau salute. I expect a full apology, to me as well as to my colleagues here in the House. That is not acceptable in this place.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Barry Devolin): The Chair will take this on advisement, and I am sure this matter will come back before the House.

Routine Proceedings
Foreign AffairsMr. Tom Lukiwski (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, CPC): Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and pursuant to Standing Order 32(2), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the following documents. The first of two reports is entitled “Report on Exports of Military Goods from Canada, 2010-11”; and, second, the 2011-12 progress report, “Canada's Action Plan for the Implementation of the United Nations Security Council Resolutions on Women, Peace and Security”.
Furthermore, I have two treaties that I wish to table, entitled, one, “Acts of the 25th Congress of the Universal Postal Union” done at Doha on October 11, 2012; and finally, the exchange of notes between the Government of Canada and the Government of the United States of America constituting an agreement amending chapter 4 of annex 4 of the treaty between the Government of Canada and the Government of the United States of America concerning Pacific salmon, which was done in Washington on December 13 and 23, 2013. An explanatory memorandum is included with each treaty.
Hon. Mauril Bélanger (Ottawa—Vanier, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 34(1), I have the honour to present to the House, in both official languages, the report of the Canadian delegation of the Canada-Africa Parliamentary Association respecting its bilateral mission to Cameroon concerning the creation of a senate in Cameroon, held from November 13 to 17, 2012. 
The report was delayed because we were waiting to see the results of our delegation. Those results are described in our report.
PetitionsMr. Alex Atamanenko (British Columbia Southern Interior, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions. The first one is from residents of Nelson, Castlegar, Trail, Rossland, Crescent Valley, Winlaw, Salmo, New Denver and Cranbrook, who are upset over the cuts to Environment Canada. They call upon Parliament to undertake a thorough assessment of the needs and priorities of Environment Canada's mandate, taking into account regional differences and specifics, and also to have Environment Canada conduct an assessment of the risks and impacts on environment and human health that may arise from these decisions. 
Alex Atamanenko: Mr. Speaker, on the second petition most of the 250 names are from my community of Castlegar. The petitioners would like the Government of Canada to instruct Canada Post to keep and expand public post offices instead of opening privately run offices or franchises, which seems to be the trend. 
Hon. Michael Chong (Wellington—Halton Hills, CPC): Mr. Speaker, I present a petition from 70 or so constituents in my riding of Wellington—Halton Hills, mostly from the Rockwood area, who petition the government to put a moratorium on genetically modified alfalfa.
Elizabeth May: Mr. Speaker, I rise to present two petitions today. The first is from residents of Salt Spring Island within my riding, as well as many from Vancouver. They call on the government to live up to the commitments that were made in a bill passed by the House of Commons but disgracefully defeated in the Senate without having a single day of hearings. It calls for meaningful reductions of greenhouse gases to 25% below 1990 levels by 2020.
Elizabeth May: Mr. Speaker, the second petition is from residents from Pender Island within my riding, calling on the government to ensure that the risky pipeline and tanker scheme proposed by Enbridge is not approved and that the islands and the coastline of British Columbia can be protected from tankers loaded with raw bitumen.
Anne Minh-Thu Quach: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition to present regarding the protection of navigable waters.
As part of one of its omnibus bills, the government managed to ensure that nearly all the waterways in Canada are no longer protected, apart from 62 rivers, 97 lakes and three oceans, which together represent less than 2% all of waterways.
The petitioners are calling on the government to guarantee permanent navigation rights on all lakes and, above all, to restore the former environmental assessment process. 
Now, citizens are the ones having to ensure that our waters are protected, and at their own expense. Approximately 50 people have signed this petition.
Hon. Irwin Cotler (Mount Royal, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition from Canadians concerned about harsh and degrading working conditions in the resource and extraction industry around the world, particularly with respect to what have been described as conflict minerals used in electronic equipment such as cellphones.
The petitioners call on the government to impose standards for identifying the source of these component materials so that Canadians can be confident that when they buy electronics, they are supporting safe and humane business practices.
Joe Preston: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition from some 40 members from St. Thomas and the area around it regarding the actions of Canadian mining companies.
Mylène Freeman: Mr. Speaker, these petitioners are calling on the Government of Canada to cover the cost of repairing and restoring the shoreline and retaining walls of the Grenville Canal in my riding.
Even though it is considered a national historic site, the canal was forced to close in 2008 because of its decrepit state. For the past four years, elected officials and members of the local community have been joining forces to call on the federal government to preserve this historic canal, which is so important to the region.
I want my constituents to know that I fully support them in their efforts. It is time to demand symbolic recognition for this important canal.
Questions on the Order PaperTom Lukiwski: Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Barry Devolin): Is that agreed?
[Intervention]
Some hon. members:  Agreed.

Government Orders
Combating Counterfeit Products Act[Stage Direction]
 The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-8, An Act to amend the Copyright Act and the Trade-marks Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the third time and passed. 
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Barry Devolin): When this matter was last before the House, the hon. member for Halifax West had the floor, and he has 17 minutes remaining in his speech.
The hon. member for Halifax West.
Geoff Regan: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise again to resume my comments on Bill C-8. I would like to speak a bit about what is in the bill.
Bill C-8 amends the Copyright Act and the Trade-marks Act to add new civil and criminal remedies and new border measures in both acts, in order to strengthen the enforcement of copyright and trademark rights and to curtail commercial activity involving infringing copies and counterfeit trademarked goods.
More specifically, the bill creates new civil causes of action with respect to activities that sustain commercial activity in infringing copies and counterfeit trademarked goods. It creates new criminal offences for trademark counterfeiting that are analogous to existing offences in the Copyright Act. It also creates new criminal offences prohibiting the possession or export of infringing copies or counterfeit trademarked goods, packaging or labels.
The bill enacts new border enforcement measures enabling customs officers to detain goods that they suspect infringe copyright or trademark rights. I think my colleagues in the House obviously agree that it is important to protect copyrights and trademarks. It is important to protect Canadians' jobs. This is how they earn their living.
The bill also allows customs officers to share information relating to the detained goods with rights owners who have filed a request for assistance, in order to give the rights owners a reasonable opportunity to pursue a remedy in court. The bill exempts the importation and exportation of copies and goods by an individual for their personal use from the application of the border measures. This is important to consider.
The bill also adds the offences set out in the Copyright Act and the Trade-marks Act to the list of offences set out in the Criminal Code for the investigation of which police may seek judicial authorization to use a wiretap. Obviously, in this situation, it would be illegal to use a wiretap. We are already hearing about illegal wiretaps that the government has done.
Bill C-8 also amends the Trade-marks Act to, among other things, expand the scope of what can be registered as a trade-mark and allow the Registrar of Trade-marks to correct errors that appear in the trade-mark register. That is important.
Personally, I hope that, in the future, the government will introduce a bill ensuring that these provisions apply not only to trade-marks but also to official marks. I think that significant changes must be made to official marks legislation and to how we correct past mistakes.
Finally, the bill streamlines and modernizes the trade-mark application and opposition process. 
Now that I have given a bit of a review of what is in the bill, let us talk about what happened after the bill passed second reading and went to committee, where a variety of proposals for amendments were brought forward.
The fact is that this is unfortunately a case, another case, of the Conservative government using its majority to ram through a flawed piece of legislation that could have done a much better job of protecting Canadian business interests and Canadian consumers.
We are supporting the bill, because it is important to have some measures to protect these interests and to try to stop this enormous flow we are seeing of counterfeit goods into Canada.
Nevertheless, it does not mean the bill could not be better. We certainly would have liked to have seen it made better.
Every single amendment we brought forward and that the NDP brought forward at committee was torpedoed by the Conservatives there. The Conservatives followed orders. When the minister appeared, he stated that he wanted the bill passed by committee quickly and that he would allow no more than four days of hearings. To no one's surprise, that is exactly what happened.
When we talk about having less partisanship around here, about having more collaboration around here, this is what we are talking about. I hope that the changes we are proposing to the Senate make it a less partisan place and a more collaborative place. If we succeed in having a less partisan Senate, a Senate that is appointed in a non-partisan way, we would actually have to have more collaboration between the members of this House and members of the other chamber. That might even influence this chamber to become more collaborative and non-partisan. Hopefully it will be less hyperpartisan than it has been in the past eight years under the Conservative government.
What a shame that there were not more days of hearings and the consideration of amendments during the committee stage. This could have been a really strong piece of legislation, but no one on that side was interested in anything other than bowing down to the minister and the PMO.
The committee heard from many witnesses who testified about the serious problems and serious shortcomings in Bill C-8. They are flaws that could have been addressed through amendments.
Now, everyone agrees that this is a step forward. Some would go as far as to say that this is a good step to bring us in line with the international community.
In fact, when I was on the committee and when I was previously the Liberal critic for industry, I actually met with the Mechanical Contractors Association of Canada and with the Canadian Institution of Plumbing &amp; Heating. Both these groups were among those that were very concerned about counterfeit products coming into Canada. If we are talking about things that involve the plumbing and heating in our houses and in buildings where we work, the last thing we want are products that we think are up to Canadian standards but that are, in fact, counterfeit and have been brought in illegally and, unbeknownst to whoever brought them into Canada, are not the quality they are supposed to be.
That could create serious problems. It could lead to flooding. It could lead to fires. It could lead to serious dangers for Canadians.
 I have not even talked about the issue of pharmaceutical drugs. When those come in and are counterfeit, we can imagine the concerns.
My colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry, the member for Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, was talking earlier about Canada Goose. I was on the committee last year when we heard from companies like Canada Goose about the kinds of outrageous things that are put into counterfeit jackets and other products that come into this country. We ought to be concerned about this.
It has also been said that the way the bill is, it is a bit like providing bread crumbs to a starving man. The impact of counterfeit goods in Canada is growing. In 2005, the value of seized counterfeit items, which are the items our Canadian Border Services Agency was able to stop and identify at the border and seize, was $7.6 million. That is quite a bit. However, by 2012, that number had grown to $38 million. I think we can all agree that it has probably grown significantly since then.
This ought to be a matter of serious concern to us, because it means that those counterfeit products are replacing products produced by Canadians, and it is taking jobs and work away from Canadians. We ought to be very concerned about that.
The fact of the matter is that both Liberal and NDP members of the committee brought forward reasonable amendments in good faith in an effort to improve Bill C-8 because they do recognize it is an important piece of legislation. However, instead of a strong bill that the Conservatives could be proud of, that all of us in the House of Commons could be proud of, we are left with the minister's determination that it be just the minister alone required to make us compliant under global treaties. We do not how that will work, so the bill needed to be amended.
The government failed to address the really big issues and to make meaningful change. This, I suppose, is not surprising from this crowd. The Conservatives are driven by their ideology and the optics of things, as we have seen so often. They seem to care less whether they really stand up for the real interests of Canadian businesses and Canadian consumers.
Many witnesses pointed out that this legislation is all punitive, but the Conservatives did not really want to hear that and why it could be problematic, and even rejected the measures we proposed to help small businesses. Many small businesses simply cannot afford to go through the courts, which is a very costly exercise, to protect their brands. In some cases, this does not help them.
We could have helped those businesses, who provide the jobs we all want for Canadians, if the government had been willing to listen to witnesses and accept amendments to Bill C-8. When the opposition proposed a simplified approach that would have made it easier for small businesses, the Conservatives shut it down. I should not be too harsh on Conservative committee members; after all, they are just doing what they have been ordered to do by the minister or the folks over at the PMO. 
One of the more disturbing things that will happen with the legislation is that it will give our enforcement agencies a lot more work at a time when they are struggling because of short-sighted funding cuts. The RCMP and Canada Border Services Agency need the proper resources to do their job and to enforce legislation like Bill C-8, but they are not getting them from the government. 
In the 2012 budget, the government cut $142 million from Canada Border Services Agency. My colleague says it was $143 million. Whatever it is, it is in that range. It is a bit like the fact that the Conservatives are talking about all of this stuff they will do for veterans, but failing to mention that they have cut 781 people from Veterans Affairs Canada. That is 22% of the workforce, yet they expect people across Canada to believe this will improve their service to veterans. It does not wash. I am frankly astonished that the Conservatives would do this. Why they have not been listening to veterans and hearing the concerns about these office closures and cuts to services, and pretending they will get better service, I do not really comprehend. It does not make sense for the government to do this, but it is not the first time I have seen something from the government that does not make sense. 
When I speak of the bill, it is sad to see an opportunity to bring in a real strong piece of legislation squandered by the Conservative government. Nevertheless, the Liberal Party recognizes the need to provide new enforcement tools to help strengthen Canada's existing enforcement regime for counterfeit goods. 
We believe that Canadian businesses and industry associations must be protected to ensure the well-being of domestic businesses; the health and safety of Canadians, including in regard to the items in our homes I spoke earlier about, such as electrical components and pharmaceutical products; as well as the integrity of the Canadian economy as a whole. This is important for those reasons.
We would like to see public education regarding possession, production and distribution addressed in Bill C-8. We see nothing coming forward from the government to do that. 
We would like to investigate and further study how e-commerce may provide a loophole to the seizure and the reduction of the presence of counterfeit products. We see no interest in such a study from the government.
With the current government deficit, as well as the recent cuts to the budget of the Canada Border Services Agency, we question how the Conservatives will fund the new prevention and investigative system. How on earth will we improve services at our borders when they are cutting the funding dramatically? 
Border officers, who are by no means copyright experts, will be given new and increased powers that are not overseen by courts, which may lead to illegitimate seizures and violations of the Charter of Rights. We have to be concerned about that. Why would we want to put the Border Services agents in that position? We should not be doing that to them.
There are several further areas in which concerns have been raised. With an increased number of seizures due to increased powers being given to border officers and the RCMP, how will the government fund such extensive investigative and legal operations? Should genuine or non-counterfeit products be seized and destroyed and, in that case, how will the government compensate companies and individuals? Moreover, how will the government protect the information of legitimate importers from potential misuse of the request for assistance mechanism? These are important questions. How will the government determine whether importers of counterfeit production are aware that products are counterfeit? Why are there no provisions for counterfeit goods being transshipped through Canada?
While Bill C-8 certainly does not accomplish everything that it might, it does mark a step forward in the fight against the deeply damaging practice of counterfeiting and moves Canada closer, if only slightly, toward a modernized intellectual property regime.
Mr. François Choquette (Drummond, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech and say that, like him, I believe it is very important to protect consumers from counterfeiting.
Unfortunately, we know that, in its 2012 budget, this government made $143 million in cuts to the CBSA, which undermines the capability of implementing this legislation. Again in 2012, the government cut the RCMP's funding by $195 million over three years.
Given these drastic cuts to security how can the bill be implemented effectively so that we can crack down on counterfeiting and make sure that Canadian consumers are protected?
[Interjection]
Geoff Regan: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. NDP colleague for his question.
First of all, I mentioned the cuts that the 2012 budget made to the Canada Border Services Agency, but I appreciate the fact that he also brought up the cuts made to the RCMP.
As I said, I do not understand how the government can think that cutting services is going to improve them. No doubt there will be fewer border officials and RCMP officers to protect our jobs in Canada and to ensure that counterfeit goods do not enter the country.
Anne Minh-Thu Quach: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Halifax West for his speech.
His speech falls in line with what we are saying, namely that this is a step in the right direction, but there are not enough resources and data to allow border services officers and the RCMP to do their jobs in the best possible conditions.
However, when the Liberal Party was in power between 1993 and 2005, it did not adequately fund the fight against counterfeit products. In a report by the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology published in 2007, the RCMP stated that in 2005, it laid over 700 charges for intellectual property crimes. However, the RCMP said that it only had enough resources to investigate a small fraction of the cases brought to its attention.
Why did the Liberals refuse to adequately fund this area of enforcement, and are now calling on the Conservatives to do so?
[Interjection]
Geoff Regan: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for the question.
I am sure she listened to my speech, but perhaps she missed the part where I mentioned the figures for 2005 and 2012, when there was a significant increase in the number of counterfeit products entering Canada. Before 2005-06, the number was much lower. The issue has evolved considerably.
The hon. member is saying that the previous government, which has not been in power for eight years, could have taken measures to combat counterfeiting. I agree that we must always try to find ways to combat counterfeiting. At the same time, does the hon. member truly remember that before 2006, there were a lot of comments and concerns in the country about counterfeiting, the way there is now in companies for example? I do not think so.
Laurin Liu: Mr. Speaker, my colleague raised the issue of the lack of data, which is required to crack down on counterfeiting. Then there is my Liberal Party colleague, who said that the problem did not exist when his party was in power. 
An OECD report published in 1998 concluded that it was difficult to measure the scope of counterfeiting and imitation merchandise in Canada. Since this has been an issue since 1998, it is completely false to say that it did not exist when the Liberal Party was in power.
Why did his party not do more to address this issue when it was in power?
[Interjection]
Geoff Regan: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for her question.
I remember the time period she is referring to. The Liberal government came to power after the Conservatives left a $42 billion deficit, and we introduced several measures to address that issue. Unfortunately, the NDP did not support any of those measures.
Many of the measures were implemented and worked well. For example, they improved Canada's economy and lowered interest rates.
To respond to her specific question, I do not remember people telling me or other members that it was a serious problem. Perhaps there were international reports, such as the one my colleague mentioned, but they did not deal with the type of problem we have now.
The fact is that counterfeit products were worth $7.6 million in 2005, and that rose to $38 million in 2012. I imagine that they are worth more like $45 million or $55 million today. That increase is what we should be focusing on.
Philip Toone: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank our colleague for his presentation because he has provided some interesting information.
Counterfeit goods can seem authentic and have the right logo, but we do not always know which country they come from. That is the case for Coke cans, for example.
With this bill, there will be fewer officers at the borders. Does my colleague believe that we have the resources we need to properly protect Canada's borders? Has the bill been sufficiently improved?
[Interjection]
Geoff Regan: Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question.
These improvements are necessary, but we could do more. We must improve the bill and, as he said, also provide the resources our officers need under this legislation to protect our country from counterfeiting. 
Peter Braid: Mr. Speaker, it is certainly a privilege for me to rise today and speak in support of Bill C-8, the combatting counterfeit products bill. I will begin by indicating that I will be splitting my time with the member for Durham.
Counterfeit products are a threat to all Canadians. They undermine the success of Canadian businesses by stealing the good reputation of a business in order to sell knock-off goods. The inferior nature of these knock-off goods then serves to tarnish the reputation of quality that the real Canadian business has worked so hard to establish. 
However, counterfeit products are not simply a threat to Canadian businesses. Counterfeit automobile parts, counterfeit circuit breakers, counterfeit drugs, and many more dangerous counterfeit products also pose a threat to the health and safety of Canadians. The government has reintroduced the combatting counterfeit products act because we are committed to ensuring that the hard-earned reputations of Canadian businesses are maintained and that all Canadians are protected from the dangers posed by counterfeit products.
 I would like to take this opportunity to focus on one of the key elements of Bill C-8. New provisions introduced in this bill would provide businesses and rights holders with better tools to stop those who form a part of the supply chain for counterfeit goods and to obtain compensation from them . These supply chains are essential to the spread of counterfeit products and are directly responsible for counterfeit products entering the Canadian marketplace.
Under the current Trade-marks Act, it is prohibited to sell, offer to sell, distribute, or advertise counterfeit products or services. What this means is that any person found to be selling, distributing, or advertising counterfeit products can be sued by the rightful owner of the trademark that the counterfeit products are attempting to imitate. For example, if someone is selling counterfeit jackets out of the back of a van, the legitimate company, under the current law, is able to sue that individual, both to stop him or her from selling and as a means of getting compensation for the damage done by the counterfeiter. Similarly, that company would also be able to sue an individual who is advertising counterfeit jackets or an individual who is found to be distributing counterfeit jackets to others for the purpose of sale.
However, the problem with this current system is that it does nothing to target those individuals who are part of the supply chain that enables the sale of counterfeit products. Under the current law, the rightful trademark owner has no means of stopping those who produce, import, export, or store counterfeit products prior to a distributor or seller actually selling the counterfeit goods. To illustrate the problem, allow me to give some examples.
Let us imagine that a manufacturer of car parts finds a production line for counterfeit car parts operating somewhere in Canada. Under the current Trade-marks Act, despite knowing that car parts with another person's trademark on them are being produced, the owner of the trademark would be unable to ask a court to stop the production line. Until those individuals producing fake car parts attempted to make a sale or began to advertise their counterfeit products, the owner of the trademark would have no legal recourse to stop them or obtain compensation for damages.
In another case, let us imagine that a brand-name hockey manufacturer finds a series of storage units full of hockey jerseys bearing a counterfeit trademark. Under the current Trade-marks Act, the legitimate manufacturer would have no grounds to seize the counterfeit jerseys, even if the manufacturer was certain that they were indeed counterfeit. Until the legitimate manufacturer could produce evidence of the sale, attempted sale, or advertising of these counterfeit jerseys, he or she would not be able to seize the jerseys. Imagine if this was one's favourite hockey team.
Again, imagine that a legitimate electronics company has grounds to believe that an importer is bringing thousands of fake smart phones into the Canadian market. As members can appreciate, this would be a concern for me as the member of Parliament for Waterloo, for obvious reasons. 
Under the current law, they would be unable to go to court to get an order preventing that importer from bringing those counterfeit smart phones into Canada. Unfortunately, once the counterfeit phones arrive in Canada, it is much more difficult to ensure that they are not released into the Canadian market, where unsuspecting Canadian consumers may be tricked into purchasing them.
Clearly, there are gaps in our current laws that need to be filled in order to better combat counterfeiting. Our legislation needs to be updated to ensure rights holders can protect their rights and that Canadian consumers can have confidence that they are purchasing the goods they intend to.
Part of what the combatting counterfeit products bill proposes to do is to fix these loopholes in the law. It would do so by adding new civil provisions to the Trade-marks Act that would tackle all parts of the counterfeit supply chain, not just point of sale.
 Specifically, the Trade-marks Act would be amended so that along with selling, distributing, or advertising, individuals who are found to be manufacturing, causing to be manufactured, possessing, importing, exporting, or attempting to export counterfeit products could also be stopped and sued for damages by rights holders. These are overdue provisions.
Under the proposed changes contained in the combatting counterfeit products bill, a legitimate car parts manufacturer would be able to stop the manufacturers of counterfeit car parts under the new manufacturing provision. A legitimate hockey equipment company would be able to seize the storage units full of fake hockey jerseys under the new possessing provision. Under the new importing provision, a legitimate electronics company would be able to prevent an importer from bringing counterfeit smart phones into Canada.
These new provisions will serve to better protect the interests of rights holders by giving them the ability to ask a court to halt the actions of members of the supply chain for counterfeit products. The new provisions will also create a much-needed deterrent to those counterfeiters who, up until this point, had been able to participate in the supply networks critical to counterfeit operations with little risk that they could be targeted by the law.
To sum up, we need the expanded civil provisions contained in the combatting counterfeit products bill to effectively combat counterfeit products that pose serious risks to Canadian businesses and to Canadian consumers. I urge my fellow members of this House to swiftly pass the combatting counterfeit products bill.
Pierre Nantel: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech. He is quite right because protecting patents and intellectual property, as well as ensuring the safety of Canadians, is something to be enthusiastic about. 
However, I would like to know his thoughts on whether what is being required of border services is realistic. Can he say whether any projections have been made in that regard?
[Interjection]
Peter Braid: Mr. Speaker, in fact CBSA and our border agents want the provisions contained in this particular bill.
In many cases, they actually see and witness counterfeit products crossing the border, but they are powerless to do anything. CBSA has underscored to us very clearly that they want these provisions and that they have the resources to apply these important new authorities and powers, and once they are provided, Canadians will be safer and our borders will be more secure.
Dan Harris: Mr. Speaker, I was in the committee when we were doing the study on intellectual property. Certainly CBSA would be happy to have these new powers, but they also want the resources to go along with them so that they can actually get the training they need to identify counterfeit and other goods and the staff to be able to do searches and seizures.
I also want to ask the member, because he was part of the committee, why the government refused to agree to the NDP's amendment that there should be reports back to Parliament on this issue. 
Earlier I raised with the parliamentary secretary the other issue, which is that we do not adequately measure what is actually being counterfeited and what has come in. We have anecdotal evidence, but we do not have research-based data to track the quantities of counterfeit goods. 
Why is it that the member himself voted against reporting back to Parliament on this bill?
[Interjection]
Peter Braid: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's question. I did enjoy the opportunity to work with him while at the industry committee.
My colleague mentioned the study on intellectual property. It was actually my motion that triggered that important and very comprehensive study of intellectual property at the industry committee, where we had the opportunity to hear from many Canadians and Canadian businesses and manufacturers about the importance of updating our copyright and combatting counterfeiting legislation in this country.
CBSA has indicated that it very much wants to have these additional powers and will have the resources to do so. We look forward to increased opportunities and the ability to deal with this important issue and to track this information.
Philip Toone: Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the speech by my colleague on the government side.
This is definitely a step in the right direction, and we are always delighted when the government goes in the right direction, but there are still not enough resources. This government seems to have a great deal of difficulty understanding that resources are needed to make improvements. Every time the government takes a step forward, it insists on taking a step backwards. For example, when it passes one regulation, it abolishes another. This government seems to go in opposite directions at the same time.
The Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure and Communities says that the required resources will be available to implement what is being proposed by Bill C-8 today. Even the union is wondering where these resources will come from. Exactly what resources is he talking about?
[Interjection]
Peter Braid: Mr. Speaker, it is clear that Groundhog Day must be coming, because the NDP uses two or three different members to ask the same question.
In any event, I will give the answer, which is this: CBSA resources, specifically border guards, have increased by 26% under our government. The CBSA has clearly indicated that it has the resources to apply these new powers within the current envelope. This is long overdue, and we look forward to getting it done on behalf of Canadian businesses and consumers.
Erin O'Toole: Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to rise today in the House to speak, for the second occasion, on our important work to update our intellectual property regime and, more specifically, to combat counterfeit products, Bill C-8. 
This is not just a modernization of our IP regime here in Canada but a bill that would have major impacts on public safety, on economic activity and revenues, and on jobs, because counterfeit products not only lead to risk for Canadians but lead to job losses. 
Our present legal framework for intellectual property is also incredibly out of date. Like many areas, our government is moving on important issues of public policy, while other previous governments preferred to kick the can down the road. In fact, the Trade-marks Act was last amended in the 1950s and is out of date. That is before many members of the House were born. Also, with respect to trademarks, it does not even recognize the current state of intellectual property.
A few years ago, I had the good fortune to have a column in Marketing magazine, and in 2012 I wrote a column on the emergence of sound trademarks in Canada. It might interest the House, especially on a Friday, to know that in the U.S. sounds have been trademarked for some time. We are all familiar with the NBC TV broadcast chime that started with radio and is on television. We all know the MGM lion roar. Well, the MGM lion roar is now a sound mark. In 2012, the Canadian intellectual property office allowed, for the first time, a sound mark. A lot of our big companies and big brands will use a sound to associate a connection with that brand. In the marketplace it is called a sound mark or a sting. 
Even the language of the act would be modernized from using the old term “wares” to using the more broad and modern term “goods”.
The landscape has changed. Sounds, colours, three-dimensional shapes, textures, and even taste are a critical part of a brand's identity. Companies, employers in Canada, spend millions of dollars securing these brands and this intellectual property.
Speaking of colours being associated with brands, I cannot resist to note that the colour blue is widely known to associate with strength and trust, while the colour red is considered boisterous and flashy. I think these differences between blue and red illustrate the differences between the Conservative leader and Liberal leader perfectly.
Bill C-8 would also enable IP rights holders to stop counterfeit goods at every step in the process: ports, distribution, and retail. As I mentioned the first time I rose to speak on this subject many years ago, for five years I was in-house corporate counsel at Procter &amp; Gamble in Canada. In 2006, I was confronted with the ugly face of counterfeit goods in my job as a lawyer for the company. I assembled a brand protection team, with the support of the company president, Tim Penner; my general counsel, Eric Glass; our head of security, a proud OPP veteran working for P&amp;G, Rick Kotwa; and a regulatory scientist, Jennifer Cazabon, who was in the gallery earlier today with her daughter, Maya. We put together a team to investigate and stamp out counterfeit goods that were affecting that company. They were not only affecting its revenues, its investments in Canada, and its jobs but potentially the safety of people who buy products because they trust the brand. They trust the logo, the trademark. 
Bill C-8 would allow rights holders, like Procter &amp; Gamble and other companies, to stop counterfeit goods throughout the criminal activity used to bring them to consumers' homes. The bill would provide better tools to investigate commercial counterfeiting and help reduce trade and counterfeit goods by promoting new enforcement tools to strengthen our current enforcement regime. The bill would provide new criminal offences that criminalize the commercial possession, manufacture, or trafficking of counterfeit goods or trademarked counterfeit goods. 
It would also create new offences for trademark counterfeiting and equip law enforcement and prosecutors with the right tools to stamp out this problem. 
The act would also give border officials, the CBSA, the authority to detain suspected shipments and contact the intellectual property rights holders about their brands and their rights being attacked. It would allow Canadian businesses to file a request for assistance with the Canada Border Services Agency, in turn enabling border officials to share that information with the rights holders regarding suspect shipments.
This bill is yet another example of our government consulting widely with employers and key stakeholders, and listening. These changes, protections, and new enforcement mechanisms are what industry and rights holders have been demanding for over a decade. Increasingly, our well-trained and professional workers at CBSA have also been asking for these tools to do their job better and more efficiently.
It is also important to note, on the subject of counterfeit goods, that criminal networks around the world are feeding on counterfeiting as a highly lucrative profit to help fuel other enterprises. We know that these international criminal networks throughout the world bring tremendous harm and oppression, not just here in Canada but around the world, and the proceeds from these IP crimes fuel that. In 2005, the RCMP declared organized crime to be the primary actor in this area of malfeasance. Stamping out counterfeit products and IP crimes starves these criminal networks of funding and the ability to hurt. 
The public safety elements of Bill C-8 are also very important and deserve highlighting. The bill would give border officers additional tools to work with their government partners at Health Canada and the RCMP. This would ensure that unsafe or unsanitary products that could harm Canadians are pulled from the market.
In my case, Procter &amp; Gamble found that law enforcement officers could tell it that they knew there was a suspicious activity regarding one of its brands, but there could be no tracking and no proper investigation. There would be no prosecution because the tools were not there; so law enforcement, busy as it was, would have other priorities that were more likely to lead to criminal charges and jail time.
I hope we can move ahead quickly with the passage of this bill. By protecting consumers and families and by encouraging businesses through innovation, protecting their brands, and encouraging them to invest in Canada, these amendments would not only promote innovation and creativity; they would help stimulate job growth.
In my situation, while I was at Procter &amp; Gamble, this one employer in eastern Ontario was the largest private sector employer in the communities of Belleville and Brockville, making important investments in manufacturing jobs in an area of our province that has chronic unemployment. Large companies around the world estimate losses in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars due to the theft of the goodwill surrounding their brands. 
The Canadian Anti-Counterfeiting Network, leading Canadian employers, brands, and academics have all been asking for us to update our intellectual property regime in Canada and provide law enforcement with the tools to stamp out these products, which will not only lead to job losses but will fuel crime and pose health risks to Canadians across the country. I truly hope that all my friends in the House will recognize that there has been a decade of asking for this. With our government, we are delivering.
Anne Minh-Thu Quach: Mr. Speaker, I agree with the parliamentary secretary opposite that Bill C-8 is a step in the right direction and that certain tools will be made available to the Canada Border Services Agency. However, could the member tell us what additional financial and human resources will be allocated to CBSA officers? The national president of the Customs and Immigration Union commented on the CBSA cuts, which amounted to about $143 million. He said that these cuts could make it harder for border officers to ensure the safety of the public, to fight crime, and to crack down on the trafficking of arms, drugs and child pornography. 
What financial resources will be made available? We did not manage to get an answer in committee, so I hope that the member opposite will be able to share some information with us.
[Interjection]
Erin O'Toole: Mr. Speaker, having worked in the private sector on this for one of the largest brand owners in the world, my perspective is that industry has been working with law enforcement and border officials on training and on preparing to have this registry and these rights. This is an area where active participation in partnership with IP rights holders will save money over time because it is the expertise of the people who own the marks, make the texture, or make sound, who are training and working with our professionals at CBSA in a way that would make its operations more efficient and give it the tools to move quickly. This is a terrific case where CBSA will get the tools it is asking for and partner with IP rights holders who are affected to save Canadians from the risks of counterfeit goods, while also making it more efficient and saving money.
Eve Adams: Mr. Speaker, I hail from the western GTA. My neighbours work in communities like Oakville, Burlington, Mississauga, and Brampton. They are primarily concerned with good-paying jobs that will pay for the mortgage and allow them to provide benefits to their family. Perhaps the hon. parliamentary secretary can tell us specifically how this legislation would improve the lives of working Canadians in the GTA.
[Interjection]
Erin O'Toole: Mr. Speaker, this bill is for job and economic promotion in Canada. In the parliamentary secretary's area of the province of Ontario, in particular that larger area of Mississauga and Brampton, is the highest concentration of headquarters of Fortune 500 companies in Canada. These companies invest in our country by manufacturing, distributing, and selling goods here. Their intellectual property rights have been robbed for years.
 Over eight years ago, Canada was identified by the U.S. trade representative as a country that is not equipping its borders and does not have the IP regime to stamp out this crime. We were on a list with countries in the Middle East and in other parts of the world that do not recognize IP. This would bring it up and ensure that these companies and brands that invest in Mississauga and the GTA keep their investments flowing and keep jobs being created.
Mr. Don Davies (Vancouver Kingsway, NDP): Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to stand today and speak to Bill C-8, An Act to amend the Copyright Act and the Trade-marks Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts. 
It is also a particular pleasure to stand in the House when parties are in general agreement about a piece of legislation. We on this side of the House feel it is our constitutional responsibility and our political duty to provide a rigorous opposition to government. The flip side of that, though, as typified by our late leader Jack Layton, who was always looking for ways to work together in the House, is that it is incumbent upon us to congratulate the government when it does bring in a piece of legislation that would advance the legislative agenda in Canada. I think we would do that with this piece of legislation.
We are dealing with copyright and trademarks. I am wondering if the NDP should now trademark our policies and positions against the incursions that the Liberal Party continues to make.
The Liberal leader is getting kudos in the news right now for removing Liberal senators from partisanship by removing them from caucus. New Democrats put forth a motion in the House, in October, that called on the House to request exactly that. It called on the parties to remove senators in the Senate from their caucuses. The Liberal leader voted against that just three months ago, which leads to questions of hypocrisy. In terms of taking ideas that are not really owned by them, it is quite timely that we are talking about that here today. I am wondering if political parties should start taking advantage of it.
The official opposition New Democrats are going to support this legislation at report stage, and a brief summary of our position on this issue is as follows.
We New Democrats believe that dealing with counterfeiting and infringement is important for both Canadian businesses and consumers, especially where counterfeit goods may put the health or safety of Canadians at risk.
Intellectual property requires an approach that strikes a balance between the interests of rights holders and the interests of users and consumers. Again, I want to congratulate the Conservative government for tabling a bill that largely strikes that balance because it is a difficult area. I do not think the bill is perfect, but I am looking forward to seeing improvements and hearing from Canadians and interest groups at committee to hopefully find out where the bill can be improved and honed. I encourage the government to be open to those ideas because that can only make the legislation better.
Bill C-8 would amend the Copyright Act and the Trade-marks Act. Its purpose is to “strengthen the enforcement of copyright and trade-mark rights and to curtail commercial activity involving infringing copies and counterfeit trade-marked goods”. 
This legislation would add two new criminal offences under the Copyright Act for possession and exportation of infringing copies and would create offences for selling or offering counterfeit goods on a commercial scale. The bill would create a prohibition against importing or exporting infringing copies and counterfeit goods and introduces some balance to that prohibition by creating two exceptions: first, for personal use, items in one's possession or baggage; and, second, for items in transit control.
The bill would grant new powers to border officials to detain infringing copies or counterfeit goods. This is a significant policy shift, as until now border officials required these private rights holders to obtain a court order before being able to seize infringing copies or goods.
Bill C-8 would grant powers to the Minister of Public Safety and border officials to share information on detained goods with rights holders and would widen the scope of what can be trademarked to the features found in the broad definition of “sign”.
I will stop here and pause for a moment to talk about the health implications of copyright or trademark infringement.
Many of us think of copyright infringement as the archetypical issue of buying a knock-off Prada bag. When a consumer travels to Asia and buys goods for personal use that are not the real item, that is a problem. That is a serious infringement of the rights holder's rights and the creator's rights, and that is something that nobody can countenance.
However, that is not the worst aspect of this type of issue. I went to the U.S. embassy in Ottawa about six months ago, where a presentation was put on by U.S. officials that was frankly nothing short of shocking. They gave us information and showed us material that indicated that counterfeiting is going on with things like automobile airbags and prescription medication. In other words, there are places in this world that are making knock-off airbags and selling them to Canadian autobody shops, which then will install in Canadians' cars what they think are factory-authorized airbags. They may pay the price for that mistake with injury or death when the bag does not function as it is supposed to. 
Canadians are always facing issues with prescription medication costs. That is another idea that I hope other parties in the House will come to agree with New Democrats about, to finally get a national pharmacare program in this country so we can deal with the very real problem of people being able to afford their medications. Why would any Canadian want to buy knock-off or non-authorized medications? It is because medications are too expensive, and that should never be the case. There are other ways to get at an issue like that. However, in the meantime, when there are producers selling false medications, not only in Canada but the United States and Mexico, that presents a serious problem to Canadians' health.
I want to talk a bit about the background to this situation. Measuring the problem of counterfeit goods and copies in Canada, and its corresponding impact on our economy, is very difficult. Nevertheless, New Democrats support dealing with counterfeiting even if we are not able to fully quantify the extent of the problem. We know it is real and that it exists. However, it remains unclear as to how the Canada Border Services Agency would implement enforcement measures in the face of cuts that originated in budget 2012. Our analysis of the budget information shows that the current government has slashed $143 million in funding to CBSA, which has further reduced front-line officers and harms our ability to monitor our borders. I will be giving more numbers on that in a few moments.
I think it is fair to say that the government previous to the current one has long been aware of the difficulties that exist with respect to counterfeiting copies and goods in Canada. That was a challenge that was identified first in a 1998 OECD report on the economic impact of counterfeiting. The reason that there is difficulty in getting a firm handle on the extent of the problem is because of the clandestine nature of counterfeiting. By the very nature of the issue it is done underground and in secret, and the parties involved are trying to skirt and avoid scrutiny.
Therefore, much of the data we have is estimated based on actual seizures, anecdotal evidence, or from industry itself, in which case the collection methods may be unavailable to assess. Nevertheless, the 2007 industry committee report on counterfeiting recommended that the government establish a reporting system that would track investigation, charges, and seizures for infringing copies and counterfeit goods as a means of collecting some data. The recent 2013 report notes that it is difficult to obtain a precise estimate of the market for counterfeit or pirated products in Canada. I would repeat: as a piece of good policy in this country and good regulatory control, we should be looking for ways to collect actual data to monitor and track the extent of it. That would be so we not only know the extent of the problem we are dealing with, but also as a means of measuring the efficacy and success of our attempts to deal with it, such as is the goal of this bill.
Much of the information in Canada comes from statistics from actual seizures, as I mentioned. Industry Canada notes that the retail value of counterfeit goods seized by the RCMP increased from $7.6 million in 2005, to $38 million in 2012. In 2009, the OECD estimated that international trade in counterfeit goods and infringing copies could be valued at up to U.S. $250 billion worldwide.
Again, we know anecdotally that counterfeit products can pose risks to the health and safety of consumers, whether we are talking about the issues I mentioned, airbags and medicine, or even counterfeit electrical components or unsanitary stuffing in the clothing that our children wear.
I have noticed reports that counterfeit batteries have actually exploded while in the custody of police officers, and there are at least eight cases of children in Canada being burned by counterfeit batteries, things that seem innocuous. People may ask, “What is the problem if people pick up a couple of batteries? They are cheaper than the real ones, and there is no harm being done.” Well, there is and there can be serious harm done by counterfeit goods. It is not just about economics.
I want to talk about the cuts to the CBSA. New Democrats believe that dealing with counterfeiting is important both for Canadian businesses and for consumers. As we said, we are not going to make much progress on this file if we do not start getting a good handle on what the extent of the problem is so that we can measure and track the success of our efforts to combat it, as well as provide the resources and tools to those we ask to enforce the principles of this bill, our Canada Border Services Agency staff. They are the men and women in this country who every day go to work and put their lives on the line to defend our borders, but who also have an incredibly important responsibility to protect our borders in every aspect, which includes ensuring that illicit goods do not come into our country.
In budget 2012, the Conservatives imposed $143 million in cuts to the CBSA. That reduced the number of front-line officers and reduced our ability to monitor our borders. This year, the CBSA report on plans and priorities alone indicates a loss of 549 full-time employees between now and 2015. 
What is more, under Bill C-8 customs officers would be asked to make highly complicated assessments as to whether goods entering or exiting our country infringe upon copyright or trademark rights. Such an assessment for infringing copies could include, for example, considerations of whether any of the exceptions under the Copyright Act apply. That is something that even our courts have difficulty with. For this reason, New Democrats believe and want the CBSA officers to be adequately funded to implement the bill without compromising the other important responsibility of protecting Canadians and our border.
The United States, our major trading partner and the country with which we have so much trade and goods going back and forth every day, has wanted stronger enforcement measures in Canada for counterfeit and pirated goods for years. In fact, I believe that is why I, as the official opposition trade critic, was invited to the U.S. embassy last year to work with United States officials and hear their concerns.
In its 2012 Special 301 Watch Report, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative stated that the U.S. continues to urge Canada to strengthen its border enforcement efforts, including by providing customs officials with authority to take action against the importation, exportation, and transshipment of pirated and counterfeit goods.
In its June 2012 report on counterfeiting in the Canadian market, the Canadian Intellectual Property Council identified counterfeiting as a barrier to competitiveness and specifically recommended that customs officials have powers, that Canadian law be amended to bring criminal and civil sanctions for counterfeiting and piracy, and that enforcement officials have the power to seek and implement strong remedies for infringements.
In terms of trade, this piece of legislation effecting well-thought-out and well-resourced remedies to deal with this issue is important to Canada. In a speech I gave earlier this week, I mentioned that Canada is a trading nation, and exporting and importing are extremely important parts of our economic development. Therefore, I think any piece of legislation that would assist our competitiveness and help us protect Canadian businesses and rights holders is a good thing in terms of promoting trade.
A 2007 study conducted by the industry committee produced a report called “Counterfeiting and Piracy are Theft”.
This report shows the importance Canadians need to attach to what is often considered to be simply a minor commercial crime. It is something that hurts the rights holders. It hurts businesses and companies that invest in research and development and go to great lengths to produce goods and services in the market. We have to be respectful of their ability to derive an economic benefit from their hard work and research. 
At the same time, we have to balance interests. New Democrats recognize that legislation in this area must balance the interests of copyright and trademark holders with those of consumers and users.
 Bill C-8 contains some of the less controversial provisions in ACTA, and the NDP has publicly questioned whether Bill C-8 signals the government's intent to ratify it. ACTA, which Canada has signed but not yet ratified, contains copyright provisions that have been heavily criticized for failing to achieve this necessary balance.
ACTA refers to the piece of legislation the European Parliament rejected after an unprecedented outcry in Europe. The European Parliament was urged to reject that agreement because the benefits were far outweighed by the threats to civil liberties. It is an example of a piece of legislation that failed to achieve the balance the New Democrats are calling for in this legislation.
The European Parliament rejected ACTA because of the risk of criminalizing individuals and because of concerns about the definition of commercial scale, the role of Internet service providers, and the possible interruption of the transit of generic medicines.
New Democrats have taken those concerns to heart, and we have applied the same concerns very rigorously in our analysis of the bill before us today. We support Bill C-8, because in our estimation, the bill is much narrower than ACTA, and it contains a number of provisions that do offer balance. There are important personal-use exceptions and exceptions for goods that are in transit. The bill does not specifically address Internet service providers.
New Democrats do, however, continue to be concerned about the broader provisions in ACTA and will continue to speak out against any legislation that we believe infringes unnecessarily on civil liberties or digital rights in a digital world.
New Democrats want effective legal and policy tools to deal with counterfeiting and infringement that can negatively affect Canadian businesses and consumers, especially where the health or safety of Canadians is at risk. We want legislation that requires an approach that strikes a balance between the interests of rights holders and the interests of users and consumers. 
New Democrats are calling for better information and data on counterfeiting. We want safeguards in place to ensure the appropriate use of any new enforcement powers for border officials, and we want to make sure that our border officials have the resources they need to carry out this important task.
I have already mentioned that budget 2012 included $143 million in cuts to CBSA over three years. That was $31.3 million in 2012-13, $72.3 million in 2013-14, and $143 million by 2014-15. 
The government minimized the loss of full-time employees by saying that the numbers would be around 200. It was then 250 in a more recent order paper question, Question No. 846. That means that those budget cuts, according to the government's own admission, resulted in the loss of 250 border guards and border officials. However, this year's CBSA report on plans and priorities indicates a loss of 549 FTEs between now and 2015. 
New Democrats find it very difficult to see how a bill like this would be implemented in practice in the face of that. We are asking our border officials to take on additional, onerous requirements in a very important area with fewer staff. On this side of the House, we are going to continue to pressure the government and urge it to make sure that we have the tools and resources necessary to carry this out.
It is one thing to be tough on crime. It is another thing to come up with smart policies and to put the resources there that would actually make a meaningful dent in that problem.
Again, I congratulate the government in bringing forth a thoughtful bill. The New Democrats will support it at second stage and at committee, and we hope we can work together to make this good bill an even better one for the benefit of all Canadians.
Erin O'Toole: Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague and friend from the trade committee for this thoughtful speech in the House on this important subject.
I would note one question. Both the member and members of his caucus have suggested yet another round of study or audits and consultation, when he knows that there are goods that pose risks now to Canadians. He knows well that for the last decade, industry has been asking for these safeguards. Would the member not tell this House that it is better to move quickly than to suggest further rounds of committee study and audits?
[Interjection]
Don Davies: Mr. Speaker, I want to take this chance to tell the hon. member that it is a pleasure to work with him at committee. 
What is really important in this case is to make sure that we start collecting meaningful data not only to make sure that we understand the scope of the problem but to track our progress.
According to RCMP Superintendent Ken Hansen, the former co-chair of INTERPOL's intellectual property crime action group, the RCMP can only investigate 25% of the goods the CBSA Toronto office flags as being fake. Only one-quarter of RCMP investigations and seizures of counterfeit products were potentially harmful to consumers in 2011, but that proportion has steadily risen from 11% in 2005. That tells us that we are seeing more counterfeit products. We are indicting them, but we are unable, with the resources we have, to actually fully investigate them. Those products are becoming more and more harmful to the Canadian public.
I agree with my hon. friend that we do not need to hear anymore about the existence of the problem. We know it exists. However, obtaining data so that we can more clearly understand what is happening and put resources in the right places to address that problem is simply smart implementation of policy.
Françoise Boivin: Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Vancouver Kingsway. I learn so much every time he speaks in the House. I appreciate that, since it helps me understand the bill and understand why we will support it. It also helps me understand the limitations of the bill.
The member spoke about something that worries me a great deal, which is that we are missing a lot of data. This government is not really concerned with that. Ever since it eliminated the long form census, it has been hard to keep track of things. We are less and less knowledgeable about what is going on. The member referred to that in his response to the question from the member for Durham.
Organizations like the OECD have clearly stated that there is a need for better data on counterfeiting. It is not just the RCMP that is calling for this information.
Could my colleague tell me why the government has not managed to gather better data on this issue or to propose some kind of plan to more effectively collect data? The Conservatives want to pass the bill as quickly as possible, but we need to know what we are dealing with. We need to know what this will entail and who will be affected.
[Interjection]
Don Davies: Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the member for the wonderful job she has been doing representing the justice file in this country and for helping to build a progressive, responsible justice policy for us. I was going to joke and say that every time I rise in the House, I learn something new too, often by accident.
My hon. friend raises the issue of what the OECD has said. Here is what the Canadian Chamber of Commerce Canadian Intellectual Property Council has said:
 ...the Canadian system has no tools to track and report on the instances of counterfeiting that are actually detected in this country. According to European Commission regulation 1891/2004, customs authorities in all EU member states are obliged to report statistics on customs seizures.... the CBSA does not have a mandate for reporting...crimes at the border.... 
In other words, the position of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce is that the CBSA, in addition to the RCMP, should and must include the combatting of intellectual property crime as part of its mandate. I think that is a very wise suggestion by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and I would urge the government to pay attention to that, because the New Democrats will certainly be pushing for that kind of data collection.
Before I sit down, I would say that we often hear politicians talk about red tape and creating regulations. Certainly there are cases when there are regulations that are unnecessary that ought to be reviewed, but regulation is also at the heart of enforcing good policy. The best policy in the world is not worth much if we do not have the resources to actually meaningfully track and deal with the problems. That is the difference between wise regulation, effective regulation, and red tape. I urge all members of the House not to lose sight of that distinction.
Pierre Nantel: Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend my colleague on his speech. Knowing his good intentions and his hope for a better country, I cannot help but notice that he raised the good work done by the committee and validity of the bill.
I have a question for him. Does he believe that the righteous attitude by all the parties will carry over into the implementation, more specifically with regard to financial support for the Canada Border Services Agency?
[Interjection]
Don Davies: Mr. Speaker, hope springs eternal. We on this side of the House believe in a well-financed government. We think Canadians see an important role for government to play, particularly when it comes to enforcing basic rights and freedoms in our country.
The ability of businesses in this country to make money and to protect their intellectual property rights, and the wishes of Canadians as consumers to protect their rights and their health and safety are things that require us as politicians to make the investments.
Unlike people on the other side of the House, who view government expenditures as unnecessary costs, I view them, and I think the NDP views them, as investments in our country. We will continue to urge having a well-financed federal government. The government has gone on quite a cutting splurge, and I think we need to be aware that cuts to these areas are not going to be a way to implement policy.
I cannot say that I am optimistic, given what I have heard about the government's budget intentions. We are seeing cuts across the board, across departments. We are seeing the closure of veterans' offices and coast guard services and cuts in the number of CBSA officers. I think that is regrettable. New Democrats will stand against those cuts that put Canadians at risk.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Barry Devolin): It being 1:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper. 

Private Members' Business
Transparency of Payments Made by Mining, Oil and Gas Corporations to Foreign Governments ActJohn McKay:  moved that Bill C-474, An Act respecting the promotion of financial transparency, improved accountability and long-term economic sustainability through the public reporting of payments made by mining, oil and gas corporations to foreign governments, be read the second time and referred to a committee. 
Mr. Speaker, that is an exceedingly long name for a bill. Possibly, the name might even be longer than the bill itself. I have been referring to it as “the sunshine bill” because the notion is clearly that payments made by the extractive sector to various entities, that the light of sunshine be shone upon them so that all can see what is happening, but also that it acts as a disinfectant to what is the pernicious problem of corruption.
There is a broad consensus among civil society, NGOs, and the industry, and some governments that there has to be something done about the payments and the corruption involved in a variety of enterprises, particularly involving the extractive sector: that we need to have increased transparency and to curb corruption.
Indeed, recently PDAC, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada; MAC, the Mining Association of Canada; Revenue Watch Institute; and Publish What You Pay came together to say the following, as stated by Pierre Gratton, Mining Association of Canada's president and CEO:
 The Canadian mining industry is fully committed to improving transparency in a way that aligns with global standards. Today's launch of the draft framework, which was developed hand-in-hand with our civil society partners, is an important step forward to help reduce corruption and build governance capacity, while showcasing the positive contributions we make to the countries where we operate. 
Clearly, among governments, the United States has been the lead government through the Cardin-Lugar amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill. It is a very dramatic amendment because it says that every year within six months of a corporation's year-end, the corporation must file a statement saying whom it paid, how much it paid, the currency it paid, et cetera. If it fails to file, then it will be de-listed from U.S. stock exchanges. It is a very draconian sanction, and it shows the seriousness with which the United States takes the issue of corruption.
The European Union has passed similar legislation. The United Kingdom is in the final stages of drafting a bill. Prime Minister Cameron made it a central issue of the last G8 meeting in Ireland. He and his fellow summit leaders were even able to get our Prime Minister to say that he is in favour of transparency, “empowering people to hold governments and companies to account”; indeed, “progress towards common global reporting standards to make extractive industry payments more transparent”. 
That was a commitment signed by all G8 leaders, and this, frankly, is a big change from the last G8 summit when our Prime Minister refused to endorse a similar communiqué.
 So we take progress, however incremental, and we take some encouragement from that, even though the former president of Revenue Watch Institute, Karin Lissakers, said publicly that Canada was out of step with other countries on upping their game.
It is trite but true that Canada is the most important mining country in the world. We have something like 8,000 interests in a variety of properties in a variety of countries, something like 100 of them. That is 8,000 mining sites, or mining sites that are in the process of being developed. Yet, the government continues to dig in its heels. It was only last December that the public service launched a review of corporate social responsibility strategy for the extractive sector. A review is not a commitment to a legislation. A review is not draft legislation or regulation.
The United States is out of the blocks. Their legislation came into place as of September this past year. The first filing period will be September 2014. Also out of the blocks is the European Union, and the United Kingdom and others are following suit. 
We, on the other hand, have a review, and maybe in the fullness of time before the end of this Parliament, we will have a bill to look at in this Parliament. However, Mr. Speaker, you and I know that legislation sometimes has a tortuous path, particularly prior to the dissolution of a Parliament, and it is not realistic or likely that a bill, such as what we see in the United States, would be put forward by the government for Parliament to debate.
Industry, on the other hand, is frankly a million miles ahead of the government. Pierre Gratton, again of the Mining Association, has said:
 There was a little bit of a surprise that industry is asking for more regulation. But there are business reasons for doing this, and sometimes additional regulations is actually good for business. 
Business can only carry the load so far. The best companies operate at the highest ethical standards, but they are frankly helpless when less ethical companies bribe their way into lucrative concessions. Regulation and legislation are not for those who wish to be transparent. Regulation and legislation are for companies that wish not to be transparent or to be less transparent. It frustrates the CEOs who want to do the right thing. It makes him or her unnecessarily vulnerable and, frankly, it trashes Canada's reputation.
I want to take the opportunity to relate a conversation I had with one of our Conservative colleagues, whom I quite like and respect. He had just returned from Africa and was commenting on the endemic corruption he had witnessed. However, he said that he would not support my bill because “...corruption is a way of life there, and frankly there is nothing you can do about it, so why bother?”. He did not add, but I will add, that if Canadian companies do not bribe, they will lose business, and that I am just being naive.
There are two sides to corruption: the demand side and the supply side. I do not expect that Bill C-474, the sunshine bill or any other bill, frankly, will stem the demand side. That would be naive. However, we could possibly just slow down the supply side of corruption, because every CEO and every project manager would know that their company would have to file sworn statements that this money was paid for this concession to this government or entity on this day in a particular currency, and failure to file would be an offence. In my proposal in Bill C-474, it would be a finable offence, and on the U.S. side, it would be a delisting offence.
Maybe SNC Lavalin would not be in the mess it is in today if something like the sunshine bill had existed. Maybe their executives would not be facing criminal charges. Maybe their stock prices would not have been hammered, as they have been in the last year. Maybe SNC Lavalin and their related companies would not have been cut out of World Bank business for the next 10 years, and maybe we would not see the headline that we saw on The Huffington Post and the Financial Post this morning, which said:
 Canada has the dubious honour of being home for the largest number of firms on a World Bank blacklist of corrupt companies. 
I want to point out that this is one occasion where I think a headline is misleading. The article goes on to say “Of the more than 600 companies now listed as barred from doing business with the World Bank over corruption, 117 are Canadian, the most of any one country”. However, further down in the article, it states that 115 of those 117 are related to SNC-Lavalin in some manner or another.
Therefore, this is a case of the headline of an article being misleading. Nevertheless, if people live in a fantasy world and believe that Canada is as pure driven as the snow, then I would ask them to take another look at that.
If we had legislation in place, maybe Griffiths Energy would not have been fined $10 million. If we had legislation in place, then Niko Resources would not have been fined $9.5 million. I am not so naive as to believe that Bill C-474 would have ended all of these problems, but I do know that legions of lawyers will be reminding their bosses of their filing requirements under the bill.
I commend the government for its initiatives on S-14, an act to amend the corruption of foreign public officials act. It was a good idea. It has put resources behind prosecution, which is a good initiative. It is a good idea to beef up the Criminal Code and its anti-corruption measures. When it comes back to the House, we will support it.
However, when a prosecution is launched, it means that the horse is already out of the barn and that a crown attorney has concluded that he or she has a reasonable chance of a successful criminal prosecution. I would suggest that it is much better to put resources toward keeping the horse in the barn. That is what Bill C-474 does.
The government has also taken other CSR initiatives, such as $25 million for the CSR centre in Vancouver. That is good. There is nothing wrong with that. It is not clear to me what it has accomplished at this point, but I think it is a good initiative on the part of the government.
The initiative that has been an unmitigated disaster is the CSR counsellor. It was a mandate that was designed to fail, and it did. I believe it was in 2009 that Counsellor Marketa Evans initiated two or three files. Last October or November, she resigned. It cost millions of dollars and there is no longer a head of the office itself.
Here we are with a modest regulatory initiative with which the House could put Canada back in the game. It is a simple bill, with a clear aim to promote transparency. It is largely a photocopy of the U.S. legislation. In the various times I have been speaking with industry, I proposed that if it has a filing with the Securities Exchange Commission of the U.S., to photocopy it and send it to us. I do not intend or want to have an increased regulatory burden on the industry. However, I have some sense that this would not be well received by the government. Unfortunately, we are the huge hole in the international fence. The United States has stepped up to the plate and is the leader. The U.K. is following, and the EU and Australia are already there. We are the largest hole in the international fence because this is where the action is as far as worldwide mining is concerned. 
I appreciate the time and attention of the House. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this initiative. We do not want to see the headlines that we saw, as misleading as they might be, in the The Huffington Post and the  Financial Post this morning.
Erin O'Toole: Mr. Speaker, I am somewhat concerned that my friend appears, once again, to be launching on his perverse crusade. I find it particularly interesting, as he represents a GTA riding. The GTA is serviced by two world-class industries: the financial services industry and the mining, finance, and exploration industries, which employ thousands of people in Toronto. These organizations, through the prospectors and developers of Canada, through our CSR programs, and through the work by Dr. Marketa Evans, who he referenced in his remarks, have been making huge strides on working well here at home and overseas.
I would like this member to comment particularly on whether he has looked at the financial impact of the burdens and the detriment he is causing to that industry, and how many job losses it would lead to in his own riding.
[Interjection]
John McKay: Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague has given a perverse illustration of my entire speech. Good regulation is good for business. That is the point.
Yes, he is right that the mining industry is very important to the GTA. It is the industry that is calling for regulation. I do not know whether he listened to my quotes from Pierre Gratton, the Mining Association of Canada's president and CEO. The association wants the government to get into the game, but the problem is that the government is not in the game. The industry is in the game, the NGOs are in the game, civil society is in the game, some provinces are in the game, and some international companies are in the game. 
The consequence is that, if the government is not in the game, all of that industry will migrate to jurisdictions where there is a responsible attitude toward corporate social responsibility, rather than the "three blind mice" approach that the Conservative government exemplifies and my hon. colleague's question exemplifies.
Philip Toone: Mr. Speaker, I listened attentively to the speech and I agree with the member for Scarborough—Guildwood that the Conservative government seems to want to bring forward poisoned chalices to industry all the time. When industry asks for help, the government should be there at the plate, offering the help it needs.
The people on this side of the House are proposing reasonable regulation to be able to support our industries so that they can go forward and develop their industries, secure in the knowledge of the respectful reputation they have around the world.
This is an industry in which, around the world, there have always been some difficulties. Many countries have seen a lot of difficulties with mineral extraction and oil extraction. In many countries, the companies that are involved in this are involved in very dubious and very questionable practices.
We want to make sure that companies in this country have the full support of the Canadian people because we know they are transparent and they will be acting honourably. This bill could go a long way to that, and it absolutely deserves support so we can debate it at second reading.
When the Liberals were in power for 13 years, they could have brought this forward when they formed a majority. I do not know why they did not. Why are we asking now, in a private members' bill, which as the member suggested, is probably going to be defeated by the government, whether the Liberals are serious about this bill? If we go back to the last time this member brought a very similar bill forward in the last Parliament in Bill C-300, we see it was defeated in large numbers because there was an absence of Liberal members in the House to vote in favour of it.
Are the Liberals actually supporting this bill?
[Interjection]
John McKay: Mr. Speaker, I can certainly give my hon. colleague that assurance. I would point out that we left government in 2006 and the round table report was tabled in the early part of 2007 and has never actually been acted on by the Conservative government. That is rather unfortunate, because it would actually put us at the beginning of the game, as opposed to the end of the game.
We are playing catch-up, and I do not even know if the government wishes to be in the game at all. That is my indication.
My colleague asked how much it would cost our riding. All I know is that, with the interest we might have in Griffiths Energy, we are not paying a $10 million fine. It is the same with Niko. We would not be paying the $9.5 million fine. How much do members think it has cost SNC-Lavalin over the last number of years? It has cost millions and millions of dollars. That is everybody's bottom line, including my colleague from Durham.
Kelly Block: Mr. Speaker, it truly is my pleasure to participate in the debate on Bill C-474. Our government believes that responsible resource development includes financial transparency and accountability for Canadian companies. This transparency aims to prevent bribery and other illicit payments that lead to corruption. It will help to ensure that any payments made by Canadian extractive industries to foreign governments clearly benefit their citizens. 
Canadians understand the importance of transparency, and that is why we take this issue seriously. I know that all members of the House would agree that this type of transparency is good both for developing nations and industry. That is why we are doing our part to achieve these goals.
Canada is the second largest contributor to the extractive industries transparency initiative, which puts in place reporting mechanisms in developing countries to ensure transparency.
 We have also introduced a corporate social responsibility strategy that encourages Canadian extractive industries to operate responsibly and transparently worldwide. However, we are doing even more to address transparency and accountability. Our government strongly supports actions that will enable the citizens of developing countries to benefit fully from their nation's resource development. Unlike the NDP, which would rather resources remain in the ground and the economic health benefits ignored, our government is focused on a balanced approach to economic resource development. That is why we have tough rules for companies operating at home and abroad. While the member for Scarborough—Guildwood may intend that this be the overall objective of Bill C-474, the proposed legislation contains serious shortcomings, and our government is currently taking action to create an improved reporting scheme. For this reason, we oppose Bill C-474.
Unlike the member for Scarborough—Guildwood, our government is working with our provincial counterparts, industry, and the international community. This cooperation will allow for the implementation of a robust reporting regime that will demonstrate Canada's international leadership with respect to good governance of natural resources. 
Members will recall that this past June, in the lead-up to the 2013 G8 leaders summit, the Prime Minister announced our government's commitment to establish mandatory reporting standards. These standards would require Canadian extractive companies to report on the payments they make to both foreign and domestic governments. Our Prime Minister's continued leadership on this issue is respected on the world stage and contributes to Canada's positive international brand. Our commitment to mandatory international and domestic reporting contributes to an emerging international standard for transparency and accountability in the extractive industries that includes the United States, with its Dodd-Frank Act, and the E.U., with its transparency directive.
The new mandatory reporting regime, announced by the Prime Minister, will focus on the following: improving transparency, ensuring that Canada's framework is consistent with existing international standards and aligns with other G8 countries, ensuring a level playing field for companies operating domestically and abroad, enhancing investment certainty, helping reinforce the integrity of Canadian extractive companies, and helping to ensure that citizens around the world benefit from the natural resources in their countries.
Canada already has a well-established financial recording system that ensures transparency and good governance of Canada's substantial natural resource revenues. The new reporting system will complement existing reporting requirements and will reinforce Canada's role as a strong supporter of transparency and accountability. This initiative will help ensure that the Canadian brand in the extractive sector stays strong. It will reinforce investor confidence in Canadian extractive companies and will have benefits for local communities, which will be able to track payments from local projects to their governments. 
Canada is in a strong position to implement positive change globally. Nearly 60% of the world's publicly listed mining companies list on the TSX or the Toronto Venture Exchange, and 70% of the global mining equity capital in 2012 was raised on these two exchanges. 
Canadian mining companies have mining interests worth nearly $150 billion invested in more than 8,000 properties in 100 countries. Canada has a strong record, both domestically and internationally, of supporting transparency and accountability in the extractive sector. Since 2007, Canada has supported international efforts through the World Bank's extractive industries transparency initiative. Canada has contributed more than $12 million to the World Bank'S EITI multi-donor trust fund and $10 million to the Extractive Industries Technical Advisory Facility. 
Since 2009, the Government of Canada has had a corporate social responsibility strategy in place for Canadian extractive companies operating abroad. Canada has demonstrated its commitment to transparency and good government through its support of such initiatives as the African Union's mining vision, the extractive industries transparency initiative, the Canadian international institute for extractive industries and development, and new strategic partnerships with Peru and Tanzania, designed to help strengthen transparency in their oil, gas, and mining industries, which were announced in June of last year.
Canada's efforts and the recent changes to mandatory reporting standards in the extractive sector demonstrate the Canadian government's support for transparency and accountability. They are also part of a broader effort in which Canada is helping developing countries harness the potential of their natural resources to achieve sustainable economic growth and lift millions out of poverty.
The development of natural resources is an important driver of sustainable economic growth both in Canada and in developing countries. Done right, such development regularly creates jobs, contributes to poverty reduction, and provides governments with revenues to improve the quality of life for their citizens. That is why our government continues to place such a high priority on the related issues of transparency, accountability, and good governance in the extractive sector. Once established, Canada's mandatory reporting regime for the extractive sector will be a powerful tool in addition to many other existing initiatives to realize these objectives.
Laurin Liu: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today in support of the principle of Bill C-474. It would require Canadian mining, oil and gas corporations to submit annual transparency reports that disclose all payments provided by them or their subsidiaries to a foreign government for the purpose of furthering mining, oil or gas industry activities.
Under the bill, any corporation that fails to comply with this requirement is guilty of an offence and is liable to a fine of anywhere between $20,000 and $5 million.
This is essentially about ensuring that Canadian corporations are held accountable for any payments made for doing business abroad and that foreign governments can be held accountable, in the court of public opinion, for the money they receive.
In the late 1990s, a number of economists and observers focused on the resource curse phenomenon. They tried to understand the paradox of why two-thirds of the world's poorest people live in countries that are rich in natural resources.
For example, Jeffrey Sachs, Joseph Stiglitz, Terry Lynn Karl and Paul Collier, to name a few, noted that many countries with an abundance of natural resources, oil, gas and mines, were not realizing their full potential. There are a few exceptions, but many countries rich in energy resources are very corrupt and lack transparency.
These researchers noted that the revenues from extractive industries are often managed by a few elites, a small minority of individuals who control the country's resources.
The multinational companies that are competing for access to natural resources are often complicit in maintaining the rules established by these elites and help them to stay in power. They are reluctant to give information on their profits and the share they give to the elites. If people knew how much their government got from the extraction of their country's natural resources, it would be easier to monitor how that revenue is being spent.
The researchers I mentioned earlier proposed a series of complex and sometimes contradictory measures to ensure that local populations benefit as much as possible from natural resources. However, they all agreed that transparency is needed to put an end to what is called the resource curse. 
The writings of these researchers resulted in an array of initiatives. Just think about the work that Oxfam and Human Rights Watch have done in this regard. There is also the initiative on the Caspian region's petrodollars and the Publish What You Pay campaign on the poor management of oil in Angola, led by George Soros' Revenue Watch Institute. 
Then, in October 2002, at the world summit on sustainable development in Johannesburg, Tony Blair spoke about these campaigns by civil society. The next year, the extractive industries transparency initiative was born to ensure transparency of payments made and revenues generated by extractive industries and to make that information accessible to civil society and the general public, thereby promoting the proper use of these resources. For now, the standard is voluntary, but it is garnering more and more support.
Calls for greater transparency began just over a decade ago, and existing initiatives are part of a global trend fuelled by the global financial crisis and the need to manage the corporate world's conduct, particularly when it comes to fiscal agreements and the fight against corruption.
In 2012, the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States introduced new rules under the Dodd-Frank Act requiring American companies to disclose payments made to a foreign government for mining, oil and gas development activities.
The European Parliament and many other democracies subsequently implemented similar rules. Unfortunately, Canada is lagging behind.
The question is, why target resource extraction companies? First, as I explained earlier, natural resource royalties are easier for corrupt governments to divert than fiscal revenues, which are overseen by a large number of public officials. 
Second, according to Transparency International's 2011 Bribe Payers Index, oil and gas and mining companies rank fourth and fifth, respectively, as the most likely industries to pay bribes. Companies in the mining and oil and gas sectors are second and third most likely to engage in grand corruption targeting high-level public officials and politicians.
It remains to be seen whether the new disclosure requirements will affect Canadian companies' ability to compete with companies that are not required to disclose. Opponents to mandatory reporting, including the Conservative members of the House, have complained about the effect of releasing what they consider to be sensitive information to rivals, making competition one of the cornerstones of their arguments against implementing new standards.
However, since the United States and the European Union are pursuing mandatory disclosure, about 90% of the world's largest mining and oil companies will be covered, according to Transparency International. This includes companies such as U.S.-listed PetroChina, London-listed Russian company Rosneft, and Brazilian mining company Vale, also listed on a U.S. stock exchange. 
Furthermore, most of the Canadian giants, like Barrick Gold, will have to comply with the American rules. It will be hard for them to argue that the Canadian rules cause them more problems than the American rules. Furthermore, the executive director of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada does not expect any new legislation to erode the competitive environment for Canadian firms abroad, given the large number of companies that will have to reveal payments:
 The biggest problem is going to be setting up and adjusting to any new accounting system. The challenge is to develop a framework where resource companies don’t have to duplicate information for various jurisdictions. 
However, beyond the issue of competition, I think Canadians expect Canadian companies to have impeccable business practices and to lead by example.
In June 2013, in London, the Prime Minister announced that the Government of Canada was establishing new mandatory reporting standards for Canadian extractive companies in order to increase transparency regarding the payments that these companies make to foreign governments.
I must say, I am somewhat skeptical, because this government is always reluctant to regulate private companies. The Conservatives prefer to champion self-regulation and deregulation. Let us not forget, for instance, how they axed environmental assessments to please the big oil companies.
The government has announced consultations with the industry and the provinces. I hope the government will open up those consultations to the public. How ironic it would be, to say the least, if those consultations on transparency were to take place behind closed doors.
In closing, I am pleased to support Bill C-474, which has three objectives: first, to ensure transparency around the payments made and revenues generated by the extractive industries; second, to make this information available to civil society and the general public; and third, to promote the proper use of this wealth. Some people will say that the bill does not go far enough, but at least it is a step in the right direction.
I urge all of my colleagues in the House to support this bill so that it can be studied in committee.
Irwin Cotler: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to address Bill C-474, the transparency of payments made by mining, oil, and gas corporations to foreign governments act.
I would like to start by commending the sponsor of this bill, the hon. member for Scarborough—Guildwood, for his persistent pursuit of this important legislation over the past several years.
Bill C-474, which my colleague has properly characterized as a sunshine bill, would compel Canadian extractive corporations operating abroad to submit an annual audited transparency report to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Natural Resources. The reporting requirement would mandate the disclosure of all payments provided by a corporation or its subsidiaries to a foreign government for the purpose of furthering its mining, oil, or gas industry activities and to publish this report on the company's website. A company that fails to comply with these disclosure requirements would be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine of not less than $20,000 and not more than $5,000,000.
Canada's international standing respecting our promotion and protection of human rights is something in which many of us take pride. Accordingly, our relationships with local populations and environments, and the foreign policy values we represent and exercise as a nation, have become bound up with our global mining footprint.
Indeed, 75% of the world's mining companies are based in Canada, and the approximately 1,300 Canadian extractive corporations invest hundreds of billions of dollars in more than 100 countries around the globe. Certainly, many of these companies respect human rights and the rule of law and thus engage in responsible resource development. However, the regrettable reality is that many do not, as my colleague from Scarborough—Guildwood has demonstrated. 
Given our position as a world leader in the extractive industry, we have a moral responsibility to implement rules that will ensure the transparency and accountability of Canadian firms operating abroad.
I am therefore supporting Bill C-474 and urge all members in this place to do the same for two compelling reasons: first, because the bill would buttress the current criminal law regime by ensuring its enforceability; and second, because this bill would prevent Canadian corporate complicity in the human rights abuses of foreign governments by exposing their financial relationships with foreign governments to proper public scrutiny.
I turn first to the issue of criminal enforcement.
The current legal regime addressing the issue of illicit payments by Canadian companies to foreign governments is the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act. Bill C-474 would in fact enhance this act by providing prosecutors with sufficient evidence to meet the high burden of proof required in criminal prosecutions.
 The difficulties of enforcing this act are apparent when one considers that the conviction obtained this past August in the Regina v. Karigar case was the first trial ever to have occurred under the Canadian Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act and only the fourth conviction obtained in the act's 14-year history.
Indeed, according to Jamie Kneen, a spokesperson for the Ottawa-based non-profit organization Mining Watch Canada, the RCMP has stated that it simply cannot keep tabs on corporate bribery and corruption in the extractive industry.
Simply put, what we are seeing here is an accountability and transparency gap that must be addressed by mandatory disclosure. As long as Canadian extractive companies are able to hide the details of their financial relationships with foreign governments, prosecutions—and in particular, effective prosecutions—under the CFPOA will remain few and far between.
The importance of the bill goes far beyond the question of criminal enforcement, however important that alone remains. Indeed, mandatory disclosure is inextricably intertwined with the question of Canada's reputation abroad as a defender of human rights and as a responsible global citizen.
 In this regard, I refer to the Prime Minister himself, who expressed this very sentiment when he announced in June that he would be “...establishing new mandatory reporting standards for Canadian companies operating in [the extractive] sector” and further acknowledged that such standards would result in the enhancement of Canada's reputation as “...a world leader in promoting transparency and accountability...” both at home and abroad.
I am encouraged that the Prime Minister expressed this sentiment, and I am sure that we all agree with the proposition that we must effectively guard Canada's hard-earned but at-risk reputation as a defender of human rights. This bill would afford us an opportunity to take real action to further the rule of law in the international arena while enhancing our global reputation in this regard, and thus I am hopeful that all members of the House will join in this cause.
 By passing Bill C-474 and implementing mandatory disclosure requirements, our message to Canadians and to the world will be clear: What is good for human rights is also good for business, that Canada is a global leader not only with regard to innovation and development but also with regard to the integration of human rights with economic development; that we will not waiver in our demand that multinational corporations and the governments with which they do business cannot simply disregard international human rights laws and norms with impunity, or under the cover of Canadian law.
Certainly, as I mentioned, criminal prosecutions alone are not enough to ensure responsible corporate citizenship based on respect for the rule of law and human rights. But by providing for transparency and accountability across the board, we will encourage Canadian companies to operate ethically and with the utmost respect for human rights. Yet, one might hope that such laws would not be needed for the simple reason that companies should seek, as it were, to do the right thing regardless of the content of statutes.
I recall the testimony last November before the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of Cliff Davis, president and CEO of Nevsun Resources, a Canadian-based mining company that operates one of the highest grade open pit base metal deposits in the world at the Bisha mine in Eritrea.
When I questioned Mr. Davis as to his company's response to reports from the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, and other major human rights organization that describe systematic Eritrean patterns of detention, torture, forced conscription, and the wholesale denial of freedom of religions and freedom of expression, he pleaded ignorance. 
When I questioned him as to what, if any, steps his company had taken to bring these human rights violations to the attention of the Eritrean government, he replied that it was “not in [his] purview as president and CEO of [his] company”.
Mr. Davis' testimony illustrates the importance of the bill before us today. Indeed, this very “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” mentality is precisely what Bill C-474 seeks to address. If Mr. Davis does not consider the systematic human rights abuses perpetrated by the government with which he does business to be within his purview, at the very least he should be required to disclose the nature of his dealings with human rights abusing regimes so that Canadians can judge for themselves.
The issue here is that transparency leads to accountability, which we must all seek.
In conclusion, Bill C-474 affirms that as Canadians we expect our corporations to appreciate and respond to the human rights realities in the countries where they operate and to engage with these issues in the context of their operations abroad. This is the meaning of good corporate citizenship, which must be firmly rooted in the principles of transparency, accountability, and the promotion and protection of human rights and the rule of law. 
Accordingly, I support Bill C-474 because I strongly believe that it will discourage Canadian-based corporations from profiting from, or facilitating, human rights atrocities in foreign countries and will reinforce in the minds of Canadians, including in the minds of investors and shareholders, that human rights are good for business and good for the rule of law. Indeed, Canada's reputation as a human rights defender is at stake in this regard.
I trust that the House will give its full support to the bill.
Mr. Ryan Leef (Yukon, CPC): Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise today to speak about Bill C-474. I did assure the member for Scarborough—Guildwood that I would say nice things, and I can assure him that I will certainly say nice things about our government's efforts to date and about our Canadian companies. If he stays tuned for this entire speech, he will hear a lot of nice things.
This government has moved forward on this issue. The net result has been that the proposals our government has advanced will overtake many of the proposals outlined in the bill, and therefore make the bill unnecessary.
On June 12, 2013, ahead of the G8, the Prime Minister  announced that Canada is establishing a mandatory reporting regime that will guide global efforts toward greater transparency by the extractive industry in reporting payments made to governments. Canada will continue to develop and implement this over the next two years.
As my colleague across the way was asking when that will be, I hope that answered that for him.
The extractive sector of oil, mining, and natural gas remains an important sector for the Canadian economy. It directly represented over 13% of nominal GDP and translated to over 950,000 jobs in 2012. Other sectors are impacted by this success and indirectly represent almost another 5% of nominal GDP and 850,000 jobs. Together, the natural resources sectors directly and indirectly account for over 18% of GDP and 1.8 million jobs.
Because of these successes, Canada is a major player internationally. We can be proud of our leadership toward sound management in general, preventing natural resource exploitation that can lead to increased corruption, poor development results, and possibly the fuelling of armed conflict or illicit trafficking.
Responsible resource governance fosters positive results for governments, communities, and corporations, including prosperity, sustainable economic growth, poverty alleviation, and improved investment environments.
This government stands firm that transparency of payments from companies to governments is a critical part of improving governance. It improves public trust and confidence in governments, and in particular it leads to accountability of how revenues are spent. This responsible practice will also enhance the brand of Canada's extractive companies internationally.
It is for these reasons that the Canadian government is establishing mandatory reporting in the extractive sector regime.
Since the G8 announcement, the government has already moved forward in the following three ways. Number one, the Minister of Natural Resources has been leading work on options for the policy and mechanisms for the regime; two, consultations have started with provincial and territorial counterparts, aboriginal groups, industry, and civil society organizations, and these have been met with broad support; three, a review of the government's corporate social responsibility strategy is under way as a broader approach to promote responsible business conduct.
Canada is situated as a leader on mandatory reporting because of consistent strong support and promotion of responsible business conduct by Canadian extractive sector companies. Canadian companies operate overall in a socially responsible manner, creating jobs and prosperity, not only in Canada but around the world. Canadian companies are often instrumental in improving the lives of people and the communities in which they operate.
I would like to remind members of our commitments.
Our government has made a $25-million contribution for the creation of the Canadian centre for extractive industries and development. This institution would be jointly operated by the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University and would advance best practices in extractive sector technology and management to reduce poverty and protect the environment.
Canada supports the extractive industries transparency initiative, also known as the EITI. This initiative helps governments, business, and civil society agree on a reporting system that ensures transparency on what revenues governments receive from the extractive sector.
Today Canada is the second-largest funder of the EITI Multi-Donor Trust Fund, as well as the largest funder of the World Bank's Extractive Industries Technical Advisory Facility.
Canada hosts the Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals and Sustainable Development, which convenes developing countries, trading partners, and donors to discuss and advance issues of mutual concern, such as international standards and best practices in extractive sector management and governance.
As well, let us not forget the Prime Minister's announcement in 2012 of $15.3 million in new funding for the African Minerals Development Centre. The AMDC will deliver guidance and policy advice to African countries on how to manage their extractive sectors responsibly and sustainably.
These government initiatives, in consultation with industry and civil society, continue to demonstrate solutions that work for Canadians and indeed the global community. Bill C-474 is not required.
I conclude our opposition for this private member's bill with a reminder to all Canadians of our leadership in natural resource governance and our corporate social responsibility strategy. Canada's natural resource governance programs promote responsible resource governance that includes transparency and accountability for governments, companies, and communities. Canada's CSR strategy promotes high standards for company conduct and a stable investment environment. It also provides assistance to foreign countries to achieve better resource governance for win-win outcomes for all of our stakeholders.
The government believes in approaches that work for Canada, for Canadians, and for the world, approaches that advance transparency and accountability while also ensuring economic growth and long-term prosperity for all stakeholders involved.
Mr. Jonathan Genest-Jourdain (Manicouagan, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I think it is important for me to take a stand in this House on the principles set out in Bill C-474, which seeks to promote financial transparency, improved accountability and long-term economic sustainability through the public reporting of payments made by mining, oil and gas corporations to foreign governments. 
I like to think that everything happens for a reason. This is a subject that is relevant to my own riding of Manicouagan, although the legislative measure before us today deals with the realities of developing countries overseas. The same type of reasoning could be applied to remote regions, particularly to the realities of Indian reserves and land claims negotiations, which I will be talking about in this speech.
The spirit of the proposed legislative measure shows that the expectations of Canadians and the government are changing when it comes to public disclosure and the financial considerations given to governments by proponents of the extractive sector. 
This is still relevant today because the federal government directed questions at a mining development promoter in my riding. Information was recently disclosed to the public about a substantial payment that the promoter made to a body of government, a band council. It seems as though $100,000 was handed over—and that number was recorded—in order to look at land claims. This all happened anonymously and behind closed doors.
It is clear why the Bribe Payers Index ranks oil, gas and industrial companies as the 4th and 5th likeliest to pay bribes. Bribes are paid behind closed doors, and that is what is happening in my riding because it is remote and people are not well educated. Influence peddling, insider trading and embezzlement are common in many remote communities and regions.
In light of the current political narrative, which is quick to recognize government-to-government relations, the same type of reasoning can apply to aboriginal matters because the bill before us concerns Canadian promoters who give bribes to foreign governments. However, when we apply this reasoning to nation-to-nation relations and government-to-government relations involving aboriginal peoples, it is obvious that the same type of reasoning can apply locally, here in Canada. Therefore, it is a very worrisome problem at the local and regional levels.
The literature points to an emerging concept, namely, the phenomenon of the curse of resources associated with the lack of transparency in payments made to governments by extractive sector companies. It has been shown that local populations have difficulty holding their government to account when information about the sources and the revenue earned from resources are hidden and, when, from the start, there is no financial incentive for the government to be accountable.
We have talked about this in the House. Transparency within band councils is a timely issue, but too often, the entire population in Manicouagan, and not just the Innu and Naskapi, is left out of these decisions. The deals, the negotiations and the payment of financial compensation are inevitably done quietly. That is why I wanted to speak to this issue today and share everything.
Resource extraction initiatives such as the ones under way right now in Manicouagan raise some serious concerns. That is why I plan to focus on this area in the coming months and the next year. This very clear bill is a step in the right direction in order to expose any wrongdoing, as well as the ins and outs of any bribery of the authorities.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Barry Devolin): The time provided for the consideration of private members' business has now expired and the order is dropped to the bottom of the order of precedence on the order paper.
It being 2:30 p.m. the House stands adjourned until next Monday at 11 a.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).
(The House adjourned at 2:30 p.m.)