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Results: 1 - 15 of 22
View Philip Toone Profile
NDP (QC)
Mr. Speaker, the Kempt Road Interpretation Center exhibit, the result of the hard work of Héritage Chemin Kempt, enables visitors to learn about this little-known aspect of Gaspé history.
Kempt Road, which was completed in 1833 and connects Grand-Métis, on the banks of the St. Lawrence, and Pointe-à-la-Croix, in Chaleur Bay, was built as an alternative to the Chemin du Portage, which passed too close to the United States. It was after the War of 1812 that it became necessary to move the road connecting Quebec and St. John, New Brunswick.
Originally used by the aboriginal peoples, Kempt Road helped with the colonization of the Gaspé, allowing colonies like Sainte-Marguerite-Marie and Saint-Fidèle-de-Restigouche to be founded in the area.
I encourage people to come visit the Kempt Road Interpretation Center to see the photos, documents and period artifacts. Visitors can also walk the road and visit a number of points of interest. The road is a real pilgrimage for walkers who allow themselves to be transported to the Gaspé of the past.
View Philip Toone Profile
NDP (QC)
Mr. Speaker, it is just as we thought. The Conservatives do not have any consideration for unemployed workers.
The chair of the regional conference of elected officials in my region, the Gaspé, said that 80% of that region's economy depends on seasonal workers.
What does the minister's reform involve? Is she suggesting that fishers from Rivière-au-Renard fish all year? There are not enough fish in the sea to fish that long.
She is attacking restaurant owners in Percé. Should they stay open all year too? There are no tourists in Percé in the winter.
She is attacking forestry workers in Chandler. These people will have no choice but to leave the area.
Why are the Conservatives going after the Gaspé?
View Yvon Godin Profile
NDP (NB)
View Yvon Godin Profile
2012-05-28 14:36 [p.8400]
Mr. Speaker, 60% of unemployed people do not qualify for employment insurance. That is the real problem.
The Conservatives apparently decided that their biases and their irresponsible ideology would win out over reason.
They are now waging open war on seasonal workers, the Atlantic provinces, the Gaspé and millions of Canadians who need the employment insurance fund, their fund.
Meanwhile, the government is making changes to boards of referees to ensure that there will be no possibility of appeal.
Why is this government going after workers and targeting the economy of Atlantic Canada and the Gaspé? I might add that it cut $18 billion from ACOA—
View Diane Finley Profile
CPC (ON)
View Diane Finley Profile
2012-05-28 14:37 [p.8400]
Mr. Speaker, I must correct what the hon. member said.
The fact is that nearly 85% of workers who have paid into the employment insurance fund have access to benefits when they lose their job through no fault of their own. We are proud of that fact.
Our government is making changes to help these people find another job.
There is a shortage of workers in Canada, and we would rather help our unemployed workers find jobs.
View Mike Sullivan Profile
NDP (ON)
View Mike Sullivan Profile
2012-05-01 15:07 [p.7417]
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to continue my discourse on Bill S-4.
As I suggested earlier, the new Bill S-4 contains some amendments to the environmental protection portion of the bill which would give more power to the minister to enforce environmental protection. As I started to say earlier, one of the things that gives residents in urban areas, and in particular in Toronto, significant worry is the exhaust from diesel trains.
New York City is 104 years ahead of Canada because it banned fossil fuel-burning trains from Manhattan Island in 1908. Since that time, only electric vehicles have been permitted to operate in Manhattan, to the point where engines actually have to be changed on the way in. That has resulted in a much cleaner and more manageable environment in the city of Manhattan.
The citizens of Toronto would like the same courtesy. As such, they are pushing GO Transit in particular but ultimately all the other train operators, CN, CP and VIA, to use electric vehicles wherever possible.
I note that environmental regulations are currently stronger in the United States than they are here and I hope the minister will make Canadian railroads adopt tier 4 standards for all their engines in 2015, as is the case in the United States.
The other piece of safety worry for residents in the city of Toronto is derailments. One only has to witness the kind of destruction that takes place in adjacent areas when there are derailments.
In the city of Toronto rail corridors traverse significant residential populations. The rail industry requested that this bill be amended to allow it to have some say over how close houses can be built to the rail corridor.
In Toronto the rail corridor is being moved closer to homes by the rail company itself. It beggars belief that it would actually do this, but that is happening. In one case, CP Rail expropriated the backyards of several homes in order to move its rails 20 feet closer to the homes. If a derailment occurs in that piece of my riding, the devastation will be unimaginable.
Therefore, what does the rail company do? It is now building a crash barrier for protection, but it will not protect the homes. The crash barrier will be between two sets of rail corridors so if a crash happens, CP freights will not damage CN and VIA rails, but nothing has been built to protect the homes. The bill should provide the minister with the power to look into this. Why are we protecting against a crash if the crash happens toward the rail corridor rather than toward the homes?
A school is right on that rail corridor. The play yard is literally five feet from the rails. When that was criticized, the rail company said that people should not build schools so close to a rail corridor. The trouble was the school was there first and the rail company just did not know that.
One cannot talk about rail safety without saying something about the deteriorating infrastructure of our railway system. My colleagues in the NDP from coast to coast see rail service being closed for safety reasons as a result of deteriorating tracks and a lack of adequate maintenance. Clearly, track maintenance is an issue in rail safety. Significant investment needs to be made in rail infrastructure across Canada, not only to improve rail safety but to continue to provide, and hopefully expand, rail service both in terms of passenger service as well as freight service.
Passenger and freight services were closed recently in the Gaspé and on Vancouver Island as a result of deteriorating rail infrastructure. These services were handed to the local authorities by the big rail companies in what was almost an unfit state. The local authorities do not have the funds to keep them up the way the rail companies did. Therefore, we need federal action to create rail safety on these and other such rail corridors.
View Philip Toone Profile
NDP (QC)
Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate my colleague’s words. I particularly appreciate the last thing he said, when he spoke about something that is of enormous concern to people in my riding: the fact that the railway has deteriorated to the point that it no longer offers its services. The train no longer goes to Gaspé, and that is of enormous concern to us. The federal government is not stepping up to provide us with the assistance and improvements that are needed to get the railway back in service.
I would like to ask my colleague what the government could do and how the bill that is before us could be improved so there would be significant improvement in terms of the deterioration of railway services everywhere in Canada.
View Mike Sullivan Profile
NDP (ON)
View Mike Sullivan Profile
2012-05-01 15:13 [p.7418]
Mr. Speaker, the Railway Safety Act on its own would merely determine that a railroad had become unsafe, but that having been determined, I think it is incumbent upon the federal government to determine the best mechanism for reinvigorating it or making that section of rail useful again to the public
. In the case of the Gaspé and in the case of the Vancouver Island passenger rail service, both of those corridors are now owned by small local community groups. They are not owned by the big powerful rail companies, which handed them off knowing that they were in a deteriorating state. The federal government needs to assist with the maintenance of these rail corridors financially. I am not suggesting that it needs to pay all of it, but when a rail corridor is owned by small local municipalities, there needs to be a sharing of that responsibility federally, provincially and locally, and there needs to be some recognition by the government that those infrastructure improvements are for the good of Canada and for the good of those communities.
View Philip Toone Profile
NDP (QC)
Mr. Speaker, thank you for your intervention, which I found very fair.
With respect to Bill S-4 and rail safety in Canada, this bill is certainly of interest to my constituents. We have a railway that is over 100 years old. It has an unusual history that I will share with my colleagues in a moment or two.
On the one hand, the government says that it wants to improve rail safety in Canada, but on the other, it wants to privatize Canadian railways. I do not know how the government can square those two objectives without considering the fact that Canadians railways have been neglected and have deteriorated to the point that rail service to some of the regions has been cancelled.
We have been waiting quite some time for a bill of this scope that can improve rail safety. However, we must also work together to ensure that our railways do not deteriorate. A railway's safety cannot be assured if the rail line itself has deteriorated to the point where trains can no longer travel on it.
In Canada, for instance, two railways have deteriorated to such an extent that trains no longer use them. I am referring to the Malahat railway on Vancouver Island and the Baie-des-Chaleurs railway, which no longer travel on the rail lines. This is precisely because the railways were left to deteriorate to the point where passenger safety could no longer be guaranteed and commercial goods could no longer be transported on these rail lines.
Some communities are now in a precarious situation because they depended on the railway, the tourism it created and the goods it transported. These communities no longer have access to the railway because the government drags its heels when it comes time to ensure the safety of the railway. The communities affected by these deteriorations are now in dire straits. They are no longer able to do what the Conservative government is proposing that they do and that is to take over. Remote communities are told not to worry because they can restore the railway themselves. There are also told that legislation will be passed once they have finished restoring the railway.
I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, I forgot to mention at the beginning of my speech that I would be sharing my time with the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, if I may.
The bill the Senate is proposing today on improving the safety of our railway is meaningless if the railway has deteriorated and the means are not in place to restore it. By the way, I am a little disappointed in everything the Senate proposes, regardless of the bill, but that is another issue.
The Conservatives would have us believe that privatization is the answer to just about all Canada's problems, but this privatization will not work.
In the Gaspé, a consulting firm was hired to assess the condition of our railway and to determine what it would take to restore it. The cost of upgrading our railway was estimated to be $93 million. The government is saying that the municipalities in the Gaspé are supposed to find $93 million to repair their railway. That does not work. They cannot do it.
Furthermore, the government sold them on a project in 2006 when it told them that their section of the railway would be privatized, the ownership transferred to the municipalities and a co-operative of municipalities would be created and would be responsible for the work to be done. At the time, CN and its allies did not conduct a real assessment of the government's needs and trotted out any old figure.
They said it would cost $19 million to restore our railway. That was not the case. Today, five years later, we see that $93 million is required. There is a $73 million deficit to make up in order to restore our railway. We asked the Conservatives whether they were prepared to help us improve our railway, and the answer we got was total silence. We got no answer.
The communities in the Gaspé, and it is apparently the same on Vancouver Island, depend on their railway. It is a job creator and a wealth generator. It is worth a lot more than the $93 million that has to be found in order to restore it. It creates jobs and it means that tourists can come to our region and spend money. It makes it possible for new businesses to set up and have a safe and effective shipping service. But we do not have the money to restore it.
We want to get serious and enact a bill that says safety is the primary concern. Safety is important, but people still have to be able to use the railway. But it has closed down. I am very happy for this bill to be passed, but the railways outside the major centres are going to be left behind, and that is not going to change. They are going to continue to deteriorate. The government has privatized them. It no longer believes in railways for remote regions and it is abandoning them.
Now it is deciding to focus only on railways in urban areas. I am very happy about that, but even there, the Conservative government is abandoning us. Certainly there is no money in places outside urban areas. The Conservatives are not prepared to give us a hand. We do not have the money to hire people ourselves and buy the resources that are needed to improve our railway.
I would like to give the House an idea of how the railway stands in the Gaspé. The railway network in the Gaspé is a section that is unique in Canada. It is 202 miles long, and it is probably the section with the most bridges anywhere in Canada over the same distance. There are 93 bridges in 202 miles. That is why our railway is so expensive. It has been let go and our bridges have been allowed to deteriorate. That is why we have no VIA Rail service today. We have a “VIA Bus”.
The railway in the Gaspé is supposed to be class 3 track. Trains are not supposed to exceed 45 mph, which is about 70 km/h. At present, trains go over some bridges at 5 mph. That is why VIA Rail no longer wants to go there, because it has become ridiculous. Not only do the trains travel at 5 mph, but they cannot brake on the bridges. If they do, even at 5 mph, the bridge could collapse. This is really very disturbing. It is very important that money be invested so the railway is brought up to standard.
It is all well and good to pass legislation that is, in theory, very useful to Canadians, but if the Conservatives are not prepared to allocate the appropriate resources, at the end of the day, this bill is worthless. This bill is more theoretical than anything else. It needs to go much further than what the Conservatives are proposing. We need a real national transportation plan, a plan that improves transportation for Canadians and that sees it as a given that the environment must be protected, in short, a green plan. That is what we need, a cost-effective plan that generates jobs and wealth.
For the time being, I do see that happening. I am waiting for the Conservatives to propose something appropriate.
View Jean-François Fortin Profile
(QC)
Mr. Speaker, the members of the Bloc Québécois will vote in favour of Bill S-4. This is no surprise, I agree. We have before us what I would call an apple pie bill, meaning that it is good and that everybody likes apple pie. Nobody is against motherhood and apple pie. So, obviously, the Bloc Québécois is in favour of rail safety.
Bill S–4 amends the Railway Safety Act in order to encourage rail companies to create and maintain a culture of safety, particularly—and I come back to the specific areas in the bill—by strengthening rail company safety; by protecting employees who raise safety concerns and by requiring that an executive from each rail company be legally accountable for safety.
The bill also enables the government to penalize offenders with tough new monetary penalties and enhanced legal penalties.
The amendments also seek to improve the oversight capacity of the Department of Transport by, for example, requiring companies to obtain a safety–based railway operating certificate indicating compliance with regulatory requirements. The amendments also clarify the authority and responsibilities of the Minister of Transport with respect to railway matters.
Why would anyone be against that? Still, it is easy to tell rail companies to be safe, but if the government does not help them, if it just stands by watching important branch lines deteriorate over time and complaining about the resulting danger, then it is not part of the solution; it is part of the problem.
This government and its predecessors are to blame for the appalling state of our rail network—particularly in Quebec. For example, on Wednesday, January 18, 2012, there was an article by Radio-Canada—which will no longer be able to question the authority of the Cartman government if the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages's new code of conduct comes into force.
The title of the Radio-Canada article was “The Gaspé needs $95 million to save its railway”.
I will read this very short article:
Residents and elected officials are rallying to maintain the Gaspé's railway network, particularly the Matapédia-Gaspé line.
A series of actions, which will be put in motion over the coming weeks, were announced on Tuesday at a press conference in New Carlisle.
Members of the Société du chemin de fer de la Gaspésie or SCFG, which is owned by municipalities in the region, need an investment of $19 million a year to repair the rail line and improve safety.
A study conducted by the SCFG...that was released in December found that an investment of between $93 million and $100 million is needed to maintain and repair the 320 km of track between Matapédia and Gaspé.
During the protest that was held at the New Carlisle station...SCFG management gave [the governments in] Quebec City and Ottawa an ultimatum.
Without a commitment from the governments, the Matapédia-Gaspé line could be shut down completely by March 31 [2012]. Already, VIA Rail passenger trains have not been travelling on this line since December 21. For safety reasons, VIA Rail is transporting its passengers by bus to Gaspé.
The president of the SCFG and mayor of Gaspé, François Roussy, is aware that a request for $95 million in funding is significant; however, the funding is vital to the survival of the railway. “We must use every means available to us to mobilize our governments,” he told a group of residents and elected officials...
[Meetings have been held.] Members of the SCFG want to meet with Premier Jean Charest and with the Minister of the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec as soon as possible...to let them know how difficult it will be to encourage private investment in the region without a railway that is in good repair.
[The minister], who is also the federal Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, responded to the needs of the SCFG on Tuesday. He indicated that he could not commit to granting the request at the moment, but he promised to look into the matter.
It took VIA Rail ending service to the people in the Gaspé to get even that wishy-washy answer from the minister.
How can the government justify the fact that it is dragging its feet when it comes to assuring the safety of VIA Rail passengers, yet it is threatening the workers at that company with special legislation, because a strike could hurt the economy?
The closure of a section, the dilapidated state of the network, believe me, that is what is really hurting the economy. It is easier for this government to abandon workers than to help railroad users.
We will vote in favour of the bill, because we believe that the rail network is essential to the Quebec economy. Furthermore, if the Conservatives were to propose bringing in a high-speed train between Quebec City and New York, the Bloc Québécois would support it.
However, the fact that we are voting in favour of this bill does not mean that we necessarily support the Conservatives' way of doing things, which involves forcing others to pick up the tab for its own failings. That is typical. They ignore rail safety for years and then threaten to fine any businesses that use these unsafe networks.
Thus, the federal government needs to follow through on its desire to tighten safety rules and make available the funds that railway companies so desperately need in order to maintain the railway network, particularly in the Gaspé.
I would like to reiterate that the Bloc Québécois will support the bill. Thank you for the time given to me here today.
View Claude Gravelle Profile
NDP (ON)
View Claude Gravelle Profile
2012-05-01 17:20 [p.7436]
Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my Quebec colleague a question.
The premier of Quebec is a Liberal, as is the premier of Ontario. In Ontario, the Liberal provincial government is not doing anything to improve the state of railways in the rural regions of northern Ontario.
I would like to ask my colleague whether he believes that the same thing is happening in Quebec with that province’s Liberal premier.
View Jean-François Fortin Profile
(QC)
Mr. speaker, the Quebec provincial government has already confirmed financial assistance, although of course it is not as much as is required. Approximately $17 million may be forthcoming. However, as you just heard, the total amount needed in the short term to maintain and repair the rail line to make it safe is approximately $95 million. By saying that it would make a financial contribution, the Quebec provincial government has shown where it stands.
Nevertheless, we are still waiting for answers from the Minister of the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec. It is high time for the federal government to say something and to come to the assistance of railway networks, particularly in the Gaspé.
View Philip Toone Profile
NDP (QC)
Madam Speaker, today, I would like to present a petition to the House on behalf of the people of Sainte-Thérèse-de-Gaspé who gathered signatures from 800 concerned residents. These people are concerned about the plan to abolish the employment insurance transitional measures and pilot projects as of April 2012. Fishers and forestry workers are still having a hard time.
Many people in the Gaspé have difficulty accumulating enough hours of work to even qualify for employment insurance benefits. Those who do qualify have to wait for up to six weeks without any income. We are calling on the government to maintain the transitional measures for at least two more years. The Gaspé cannot afford another exodus of workers with so many promising projects on the horizon.
The petition that I am tabling today shows that the people of the Gaspé are concerned that they will not be able to continue to live with dignity in their community for very long. The Conservative government is making a mistake by cutting employment insurance rather than eliminating subsidies for oil companies—
View Guy Caron Profile
NDP (QC)
Mr. Speaker, today, families in the Lower St. Lawrence and the Gaspé are concerned, and with good reason. Nearly 600 workers at four Cedrico lumber plants may lose their jobs because the company is experiencing financial difficulty. A thousand indirect jobs are also threatened.
This is yet more proof of the Conservative government's inaction, more proof that they are not doing anything to create or maintain jobs in the regions. I remember that in 2008, at the height of the forestry and economic crises, the government gave $10 billion to the automotive industry while it gave only crumbs to the forestry industry.
What is this out-of-touch government waiting for to take action and revive the forestry industry in Quebec and in Canada?
View Jacques Gourde Profile
CPC (QC)
Mr. Speaker, our government is aware of the problems communities and workers affected by the forestry crisis are experiencing, particularly at this time of year. That is why our government is continuing to support the workers and communities affected by the forestry crisis in Quebec and Canada. Thanks to our government, concrete initiatives have been put in place: $100 million to create jobs and increase economic activity, including $20 million for silvicultural work.
View Philip Toone Profile
NDP (QC)
Madam Speaker, I will pick up where I left off last time, about a month ago. My colleague from St. John's South—Mount Pearl has proposed a very worthwhile bill. My colleagues in the Conservative Party have said that the collapse of the ocean fishery has already been studied and the federal government has already done all it can to restore the fish stocks that have collapsed. If that is really the case, the cod and other fish stocks in the Gulf of St. Lawrence would not be in danger or have almost completely collapsed. We know that the groundfish stocks, such as cod and ocean perch, are already considered to have collapsed. Their recovery prospects in the medium term are fairly poor, at best.
The cod population in the Southern Gulf of St. Lawrence is at its lowest level in 61 years of monitoring and is still declining. The mature cod population from 2008 to 2010 is estimated to be, on average, 37% of the average level observed from the mid-1990s to the end of that decade, and 10% of the average level in the mid-1980s.
Since 2009, there has been no cod fishery in the region because of a third moratorium imposed on catching cod in the southern gulf.
How can we rectify the huge mistakes that caused this catastrophe? We have to start with an inquiry, as the bill proposes. That will give us the scientific, ecological, economic and social information we need in order to rectify our mistakes, to undo the ineffective and often destructive fisheries management policies that the federal government has imposed on fishers.
An inquiry would allow us to understand the big picture, the economic, social, political, and scientific aspects of the fisheries collapse, which is without a doubt the biggest catastrophe that Atlantic Canada has ever faced.
We do know some of the causes of the fisheries collapse: overfishing, caused by a lack of essential scientific information needed to understand the true health of the fish species in the Atlantic and the Gulf of St. Lawrence ecosystems; overfishing, caused by weak international laws that allow fishers from other countries to decimate fish stocks with impunity; climate change, caused by greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation and rampant urbanization, which has led to changes in water temperature and water acidification; and many other forms of human intervention that have damaged the Atlantic and the Gulf of St. Lawrence ecosystems.
When settlers first came to the coast 500 years ago, cod was so plentiful that sailors could scoop them up into their ships with buckets. The cod fishery is one of the mainstays of the economy of the Maritimes, including the Gaspé Peninsula and the Magdalen Islands, and it was one of the main reasons for settlement.
As recently as the 1940s, cod fishers were landing between 300,000 and 600,000 tonnes of cod per year. Then in the 1990s, the federal government banned cod fishing in response to the collapse of the cod fishery. By 1993, all Canadian cod fishing was banned. Today, in 2011, no real solution to the devastation of the cod fishery has been either proposed or implemented.
In the Gaspé and the Magdalen Islands, the loss of the cod fishery has been devastating. Not only were cod and other groundfish the mainstay of the economy in the region, cod was also a cornerstone of Gaspé culture, as exemplified by the tradition of cod curing, so famous to the region that it became known as the Gaspé cure.
The Gaspé Cure is the result of a drying method that is made possible by the climate on the coast of the Baie des Chaleurs, a dry, windy climate that provides ideal conditions for sun-drying cod.
Today, the Gaspé Cured company continues this century-old tradition that has been passed down over the years. The company has established a major processing plant in Sainte-Thérèse-de-Gaspé, one of the places in the Gaspé where fishing is most active.
According to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, cod fishing has been the backbone of the Quebec fisheries, in both the Gaspé Peninsula and the Magdalen Islands. As a result, the community had become heavily dependent on these resources. However, the moratorium and the decline in total allowable catch have affected it severely.
In 1985, there were nearly 1,700 groundfish licences in Quebec, and more than 3,300 fishers and fisher's helpers were engaged in the cod fishery. At that time, the total cod landed values were in the order of $18 million. In 2002, there were fewer than 1,000 groundfish licences. In total, for all of Quebec, the number of active cod fishers and fisher's helpers was estimated at 1 150 in 2002 for landings of a total value of only $3 million.
Nearly half of those fishers are found in the Gaspé Peninsula. The sustainability of many coastal communities that depend on fishing is under threat at present.
This way of life in my riding is threatened in large part because of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' rules and regulations. Thanks to the department's questionable conservation policies, and thanks to its foot-dragging when it comes to taking real action on overfishing, the fisheries of the east coast have been mismanaged almost to the point of annihilation.
The minister said no to an inquiry into the state of the fish stocks in Newfoundland, even though federal management of the fisheries has clearly been a failure. An inquiry into the reasons for this failure is long overdue.
The minister's refusal to allow the inquiry has an impact beyond the borders of Newfoundland. This mismanagement that destroyed the Newfoundland fisheries has either destroyed or severely damaged many of the fisheries in my constituency also. When an Atlantic fishery collapses, it does not affect only one province; it impacts all of the regions that are part of the species' habitat.
The commission of inquiry called for by Bill C-308 would provide Canadians with a rare but crucial resource needed to rebuild the east coast fishery: clear and accurate information based on the experience of independent scientific experts, fishers and other stakeholders who rely on the Atlantic fisheries.
I urge the government to recognize the national importance of the Atlantic fisheries and pass the bill. I also urge the government to recognize the importance of the Gulf of the St. Lawrence to all Canadians.
By passing Bill C-308, the government will finally open the door to creating a sustainable Atlantic fishing economy throughout Atlantic Canada.
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