44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 5, 2024 11:00AM
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition from members of my riding.
The petitioners point out that volunteer firefighters account for 71% of total Canadian firefighting first responders. Canada allows volunteer firefighters and search and rescue volunteers to claim a $3,000 tax credit if 200 hours of volunteer services were completed in a calendar year. That amounts to only about $450 for each member, which often does not cover the cost of their own gear.
Therefore, petitioners are asking the Government of Canada to increase the tax credit to $10,000 and to support Bill C-310, which would do just that. I hope every member of the House supports the bill.
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- Feb/5/24 4:38:43 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would agree with some of the other questioners about this false narrative that the mention of carbon pricing in this free trade agreement has anything to do with forcing Ukraine to put a price on carbon, because Ukraine already has a price on carbon. It has had one longer than Canada. The member talks about what President Zelenskyy said. President Zelenskyy, in this place, said to please pass this free trade agreement quickly. It was signed when he was here. I met with the Ukrainian consul general in Edmonton, and he said to please tell my colleagues that they want unanimous support for this from all their supporters around the world, and especially Canadians, and he could not believe what the Conservatives were doing here.
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- Feb/5/24 4:47:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague across the way for a very good speech that called out the quite inexplicable opposition that the Conservatives have to this bill.
The Conservatives talk about hearing only what we want to hear, but they are not hearing the President of Ukraine. I met with the Consul General for Ukraine. He asked why we could not pass this quickly and unanimously. He said that they need our support to show the world that Ukraine has unanimous support among its allies. It is the only the Conservatives that are blocking the support.
Could the member comment on why Conservatives are taking this stand, although I am not sure how he could explain this?
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Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise here today to speak to Bill C-57, the new Canada-Ukraine free trade agreement. I have already spoken at length about the bill, but I would like to speak once again, more briefly, about some of the highlights so far.
First, I would like to mention once again that the Canada-Ukraine friendship is very special. Over a million Canadians are very proud of their Ukrainian heritage. When Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Canada was the first western country to recognize that act. Shortly after that recognition in 1995, Canada signed an early foreign investment protection agreement, or FIPA, with Ukraine, so we have always supported attempts to strengthen our trade with Ukraine.
The NDP supports this free trade agreement, and our primary concerns centre on the fact that negotiations began before Parliament had an opportunity to have input on our negotiation priorities and how quickly the bill came before us after the agreement was signed. Following accepted practices would not have delayed this agreement or the bill, but could have made it better for both parties. I am happy to say that the minister seems to have changed her behaviour by following proper protocols and practices of the House when announcing imminent negotiations for a new free trade agreement with Ecuador, so I hope that practice will continue in the future.
Returning to the Ukraine free trade agreement, we have heard repeatedly from Ukraine how important this new agreement would be to the country and how important it would be to rebuild Ukraine once Russia is defeated and this war is over. President Zelenskyy signed this agreement when he was here in Ottawa last September. Ambassador Yuliya Kovaliv, who came before the international trade committee, of which I am a member, emphasized repeatedly how beneficial this agreement would be to Ukraine and to Canada.
The Ukrainian Canadian Congress, which brings together all national, provincial and local Ukrainian Canadian organizations, has pleaded for parliamentarians to support Ukraine by passing the bill quickly and unanimously. Instead, we have seen the Conservatives oppose the bill at every turn using all sorts of tactics to delay its passage. I sit on the Standing Committee on International Trade, and when we were debating the bill the Conservatives tried to introduce amendments that were clearly out of the scope of the bill and, indeed, out of the scope of any free trade agreement. They emphasized what we should be doing to give aid to Ukraine. This is a free trade agreement between two countries; it is not about giving aid to countries. Acceptance of those amendments not only would have delayed the bill, but would have required renegotiation of the free trade agreement, adding months to the process for no benefit when Ukraine is pleading for quick action.
We just voted on another Conservative amendment to the bill that would have removed a small mention of carbon pricing in the environment chapter, a mention that put no requirement on either party to bring in carbon pricing or raise carbon pricing. It simply mentioned the fact that both countries agreed that carbon pricing was a good thing, and Ukraine has had carbon pricing longer than Canada. Again, if the amendment had succeeded, it would have sent negotiators back to the bargaining table, all for no reason.
When the Conservatives forced all of us to vote in every line item in supplementary estimates in December, a vote-a-thon of over 30 hours that cost over $2 billion to Canadian taxpayers, they voted against all other support for Ukraine, including Operation Unifier, where the Canadian Armed Forces are helping Ukrainian armed forces.
The Conservative opposition to support for Ukraine, including the delaying tactics on the bill before us, has not gone unnoticed by Ukraine. Two weeks ago I happened to meet with the consul general for Ukraine in Edmonton, who covers western Canada, and he specifically brought up his deep concerns with the actions of the Conservatives on this file. This is a representative of the Ukrainian government. He pointed out that Ukrainians are fighting and dying, not just for their own freedom, but for democracies all across Europe and around the world, and he pleaded with me to pass on the message that Ukraine needs the full support of all its allies.
Canada, because of its huge Ukrainian diaspora, is one of the most important of those allies. The consul general was mystified and dismayed by the lack of support from the Conservatives on this bill. Therefore, I asked to speak today to pass on his plea, from his government and his entire country to every member here, to pass this bill unanimously and to pass it quickly without delay. I am going to stop early in this speech because I am the last speaker and I hope that this debate will collapse so that we can get to the vote on this bill and pass it right away and help Ukraine by doing what Ukraine has asked us to do.
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- Feb/5/24 5:43:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, free trade agreements, or fair trade agreements as we like to promote them in the NDP, are beneficial to both parties. They have to be, or nobody would sign them. The reason Ukraine would like us to sign this bill, as the ambassador put it when she was before the international trade committee, is that it would benefit Ukrainian businesses. It benefits Canadian business owners who are working to help rebuild Ukraine after this war is over. It benefits all of us, and that is the reason we negotiate free trade agreements with countries. This is a revamping of an earlier free trade agreement that was done in 2017. I remember speaking to it then.
Therefore, these free trade agreements are solely designed to be beneficial for both countries. We can disagree on minor details within those bills and the NDP has concerns about some of the investor-state dispute mechanisms in this bill, but we want to support Ukraine. We are voting very much in favour of it.
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- Feb/5/24 5:45:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would simply say that Ukraine is looking to the world for support in its struggle against Russia. It is looking to the world for fighting the war now and rebuilding later. What is noticed around the world is when countries have divisions within their parliaments and legislatures with respect to support for Ukraine. We are seeing that in the United States. This is very concerning to Ukrainians and they are very concerned about seeing the same pattern here in Canada. They really want to see unanimous support to show the rest of the world that we are behind Ukraine.
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- Feb/5/24 5:46:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would simply say that I would rather we have a culture in this place where Parliament is asked about free trade agreements and negotiations before they happen, which is what I mentioned in my speech about the minister telling us here in Parliament when her team is going into negotiations with another country, in this case Ecuador, so that we can look at that situation and say what our priorities should be for Canadians and Canadian workers. That way we can have an influence over the negotiations and give advice to the negotiators before things happen. As the member said, we are just simply presented with a fait accompli, and we have to vote yea or nay on that. I think we should have more say before negotiations start and we should have a proper amount of time to examine the bill before this debate happens, and that, I am hoping, will happen in the future.
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- Feb/5/24 5:48:49 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there is a lot in that question.
I would first say that there is nothing in this free trade agreement that forces a carbon tax or carbon pricing on Ukraine. Ukraine already has that. However, there is a statement in the agreement that says that nothing in this agreement will force either of the two countries to change their environmental policies or laws. That is just a false argument from the start.
Second, we had an amendment about Canada providing more military support and armaments to Ukraine. I voted against that for two reasons. One, it was totally out of the scope of the bill and so we could not really listen to that; we could not hear it. Two, this is a free trade agreement. It is about setting the rules between two countries on how they trade with each other. It is not about sending aid to Ukraine.
Ukraine needs armaments. I remember the very first day of the war that President Zelenskyy said, “I need ammunition, not a ride”. However, this is a totally separate question. If we had voted in favour of that amendment, it would have sent the whole agreement back to the negotiating table, and it would have set it back weeks or months, who knows how long. Of course, I voted against that.
Ukraine wanted this bill passed as it was, it wanted it passed unanimously, and I am proud to say that is what I am doing.
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- Feb/5/24 5:51:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I saw that tweet from Elon Musk, and I would disagree with him in saying that it is not the only thing we need, but it is the first thing we need. It is the easiest, cheapest way to bring down our emissions and help solve the climate crisis. We will need to do everything else, but that is the first thing we need to do.
We have had it in British Columbia for over a decade and it has worked, despite what Conservatives say, and despite Conservatives telling my constituents that we should get rid of the federal carbon tax to help my constituents; we do not pay a federal carbon tax in British Columbia. However, it is an essential part of any country's fight and any jurisdiction's fight against climate change.
I am boggled by the fact that the Conservatives do not get that. I am happy that Elon Musk gets it, because I do not agree with everything Elon Musk says. It is certainly the easiest and cheapest way to fight climate change, and we need to do it and everything else.
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