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Results: 1 - 15 of 1191
View Martha Hall Findlay Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Chair, I appreciate the efforts of our colleague, but particularly right now when in the House of Commons we're facing some significant challenges about respect or lack thereof for parliamentary process, I don't support this. It's not the fact that I have an issue with the wording or the intent of the motion. It has everything to do with the fact that this committee just did a review of the AbitibiBowater deal. Just this morning we heard an outline of what the report should include. I think out of respect for the process, we should see what the report says and let the committee do its work before we put forward a recommendation based on the results of that report. That's the first one.
As Liberals, we do not support bulk water exports. We do not support the commoditization of bulk water. Personally, as a long-time Georgian Bayer who has been very involved in water issues, I will stand up proudly and say that. That has not changed. I would say that the fact that nothing has changed is almost to the point.
There was a motion in the House in 2007. If at this point this committee decides it needs to do another motion and needs to revisit the same topic, then it is taking away from the responsibility of the government to do its job based on the 2007 motion. I would suggest that going down this path almost takes away the responsibility of the government to do its job the first time around, and takes away from the value of the 2007 report.
As much as I appreciate the value of this, and as much as we are very concerned about water exports, our position is that we are not supporting this motion for those reasons.
View Martha Hall Findlay Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate the kind words of my colleague, Mr. Julian, and it's a mutual respect.
I also said that one of the reasons I don't support this is not because the Liberal Party has changed its position at all, but because I'm not sure the AbitibiBowater decision has the consequences...we heard from only a couple of witnesses in our relatively limited review of the decision here at the committee.
My colleague knows that I have expressed concerns about the legal opinion of what happened in the AbitibiBowater decision. I have raised those concerns.
I will reiterate that this motion is premature when the committee in fact is tasked with providing a report on the AbitibiBowater decision. My colleague would be perfectly free to bring forward another motion after that report is done, but I think it's a lack of respect for the committee process to pre-empt the committee report.
View Martha Hall Findlay Profile
Lib. (ON)
Just for the record, Mr. Chair, I will say for the third time that the Liberal Party is not reversing its position. I take some offence at the continued suggestion that we are. I will say it clearly: we have not reversed our position.
We've expressed our concern about this motion at this particular time, for two reasons. One, it pre-empts the work of the committee. Given all of the discussions we're having in the House of Commons right now about the need to respect parliamentary process, I would hope that this committee would do so. Two, there is a motion from 2007, and if we do not hold the government to account on that one, if we go forward with another one, we will be denying the responsibility of the government to respond based on the 2007 motion.
The Liberal Party has not changed its position at all.
View Martha Hall Findlay Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much, gentlemen.
Mr. McMahon, as an aside, I just want to thank the Fraser Institute for its commentary in recommending that the current Harper government follow the lead of the prior Liberal governments in its economic policies. Thank you very much for that. I thought that showed great insight.
I'll just throw in my background—not necessarily a philosophy background, but an international law background—and suggest that entering into international trade treaties is not a giving up of sovereignty, but is, in fact, an exercise thereof. Entering into contractual arrangements is, in fact, an exercise of our sovereign ability to do that, but that's a much longer conversation.
Some interesting issues have been raised, Mr. Sinclair, and the challenge we have now is that we're not going to answer these in five minutes, so I will be asking for some further discussion, actually. On the issue of property rights, there's a very big difference between an ownership right and a right to use. If you have a contract to have a three-year supply of widgets, for example, and the widget supplier cuts that off after a year and a half, then you will have a legal claim against the supplier of widgets for the loss you will have suffered with regard to lack of access to those widgets for the subsequent year and a half.
I don't know that compensating somebody for an early termination of a right to use water or an early termination of a right to use wood or timber, or have access to that, is a bad thing. I don't know, and I don't know that it necessarily needs to be a denial of the underlying ownership rights of those resources to provide compensation if, in fact, there was an arrangement to use and that arrangement gets terminated early.
As I said, we're not going to be able to answer these questions in five minutes, but I would like to have a longer conversation because, like you, I feel we have to make sure we maintain that ownership right and the rights that come with it with the provinces and the territories.
Here is my other challenge. We've heard that perhaps there's been abuse of nationality of enterprises to take advantage of chapter 11. We've heard challenges with possible arbitration panel biases that need to be addressed. We have very clearly a lack of communication, and this is the one I will finally ask your thoughts on now and again for further discussion because, as a perfect example, the country is in the middle of negotiations with Europe. I think the opportunity here is to learn from some of the challenges that the NAFTA provisions have created to allow us, in our discussions with Europe, to perhaps word things better--to be clearer on nationality, for example, and to address some of the challenges we've seen in a clearer way.
Any thoughts you might have on that, after this, would be very helpful.
Finally, the most important thing I have come away with from the AbitibiBowater issue is the extraordinary lack of communication that allowed the federal government and Canadian taxpayers to be on the hook for a claim that could conceivably have had that compensation.... I don't disagree at all with the idea of compensation, but it could have allowed that compensation to go to other aspects of liabilities, such as the remediation and the pensions that never happened.
It's very frustrating to hope for responses in five minutes.
View Martha Hall Findlay Profile
Lib. (ON)
We start at 8:45, so we'll by done by 10:45. I would just as soon meet.
View Martha Hall Findlay Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you.
Thank you very much for being here this morning.
I'm just a little confused. You said there was no discussion and there was no involvement by the government at all until the settlement. Can you just elaborate a little?
I know that it's all part of the chapter 11 process, but it still strikes me as a little bit odd that the province was able to take such a drastic action—expropriations don't happen every day in Canada—for which the federal government, and Canadian taxpayers, I would say, have such significant responsibility, with apparently absolutely no involvement in the decision in the first place.
It seems a bit striking to me that Canadian taxpayers would be exposed to that without any prior involvement. Can you elaborate on that? Feel free to throw in your opinions--
Voices: Oh, oh!
Mr. Don Stephenson: I have no opinions--
Ms. Martha Hall Findlay: --as opposed to just the lines.
View Martha Hall Findlay Profile
Lib. (ON)
To be clear, an expropriation of a large business by a government when it's not making room for a highway or the kinds of things that we're normally used to.... Other than those, this kind of expropriation does not happen every day in Canada, just to be clear.
View Martha Hall Findlay Profile
Lib. (ON)
I won't add to the question. I'll just point out that's what you said in your earlier testimony, so that didn't actually answer my question.
View Martha Hall Findlay Profile
Lib. (ON)
It was a question about the commentary. It was a question about the ability of the federal government and its taxpayers to be on the hook and to be liable for such a significant compensation without having been involved in the conversation beforehand, but thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
View Martha Hall Findlay Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I hope to be very quick, because I want to turn it over to my colleague Mr. Simms.
The issue, for my colleague Mr. Keddy, is not that we disagree with chapter 11 and the rules. We fully understand that you need to have them. The key is that with any legal action there is always opportunity to engage in negotiations beforehand.
So where was the federal government, in discussions with the provincial government and AbitibiBowater, in recognizing that there were opportunities to deal with the liabilities of Abitibi with regard to remediation, for example? Perhaps there was an opportunity. So instead of just cutting a cheque for $130 million after the fact, that federal money could have been used to address Abitibi's liabilities for remediation, and thus help the remediation process, not just the company.
My point was not a dispute with the issue of chapter 11 or the existence of the rules. I understand that completely. But if we can't do anything about this now, maybe we've learned that we need to be much more involved beforehand.
I think my colleague Mr. Julian has raised an interesting question about the applicability of chapter 11 and the nationality of different companies. I think that's worth looking at.
Mr. Simms.
View Martha Hall Findlay Profile
Lib. (ON)
It's not legally separate because the value of assets is tied to liabilities.
A voice: Exactly...[Inaudible--Editor]...different assets.
View Martha Hall Findlay Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much, all three of you.
I have a quick comment, Mr. Crowley. On your last point, we did earlier have the discussion about the frustration and complete lack of negotiation and discussion between the provincial government and the federal government before putting that liability on Canadian taxpayers. I hope that in all of this we may have learned some lessons.
I say that out of full respect for the need for the process, the understanding of chapter 11, the need for that and the international responsibilities that this entails, and indeed from a positive perspective.... But your last point, I think, was the most telling, and I think is something that the federal government needs to work on, if not officially, very much in increasing the level of negotiation, interaction, and cooperation with the provinces.
An hon. member: Hear, hear!
Ms. Martha Hall Findlay: My question, though, is for Professor Van Harten.
As an Osgoode graduate, I'm particularly glad to see you here. This is great. My question for you relates a little bit to Mr. Shrybman's comments.
We're very short of time, but I was interested in your list. I'm glad that's coming to the clerk, because Don Stephenson from the department had said that this is the first time there has been--I think he said this is the first time--a settlement by the federal government under a chapter 11 expropriation. You've suggested there were a bunch more, so I'm looking forward to that.
But can you comment on Mr. Shrybman's comments about what this does from an international law perspective to some of those other rights such as water and forests?
View Martha Hall Findlay Profile
Lib. (ON)
Given the lack of time, Mr. Chair, I'll allow colleagues to continue.
View Martha Hall Findlay Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you very much, everybody, for being here.
I have two questions. One has to do with the security perimeter and trade, and what we can do on the trade side.
The second one, if we have enough time, will have to do with the number of people we have on the ground. Maybe Ms. Watson can answer that, in terms of what we are doing in Washington, what we are doing at the state level, what we are doing with our consulates in different cities, and how many people we have on the ground. How has that changed, if at all, in the last number of years? If we can and have time, I would like to pursue that a bit.
But my first question—and it's no secret to anybody around the room—is that I have some real concerns about the security perimeter announcement, not because of our enthusiasm to thin the border from a trade perspective; I actually am worried that the security piece may in fact cloud what we want to accomplish from a trade perspective.
There's an awful lot of things that have thickened the border that are not related to security. I appreciate the value of seeing the President and the Prime Minister doing this, in the sense that it will clearly—Don, as you said—motivate people in both countries at lower levels to pursue this; that's good. I am worried that the security piece is going to end up being very political; it's going to cloud some of the things that I think everybody wants to see in terms of trade.
My question is, can we separate them out? Is there a way to effectively take out the pieces that are aspects of thickening the border—compliance requirements, some of the regulations, some of the parts in...that half of this agreement? Can we isolate those more effectively, away from the security piece, so that regardless of what's happening on the political side in terms of security and sovereignty, we can move forward as a committee, as a country even, on those issues?
I understand that this might be a bit challenging, but I want to make sure that we do proceed with those aspects, regardless of how cloudy the other piece might get. I just too often hear people saying that 9/11 has created a thickened border. I don't buy it, to be honest. I see an awful lot of protectionist policies; I see an awful lot of things happening at the border that are perhaps done in the guise of security because “oh well, we have to”, but I'm not really sure they're necessarily security-related.
I'm asking for your help, in effect, to separate those out so that we can focus on those we can move forward on.
You're shaking your head.
View Martha Hall Findlay Profile
Lib. (ON)
I don't mean to interrupt, but if we want to address what Mr. Keddy was referring to—a significant increase in stoppages for compliance of a truck carrying fish or Christmas trees—how can we possibly not address that problem without having to get into a significant discussion about security and sovereignty? Those guys at the border are not asking for that truck to be unloaded and reloaded because of 9/11. And if they are, then I think that's misplaced.
I'm actually saying that I think we have to be able to separate them, because I am concerned that we're going to be caught up in the political discussion. I appreciate the fact that there were two main thrusts of the announcement, but I want to see trade improved between these two countries. I want to do this not because of a concern about the other, but more because of a concern about moving forward on the first.
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