House of Commons Hansard #103 of the 36th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was transport.

Topics

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3:30 p.m.

Some hon. members

Nonsense.

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3:30 p.m.

Liberal

Steve Mahoney Liberal Mississauga West, ON

How can members opposite say that is nonsense? It is absolutely the truth. There was involvement with the private sector, the municipal sector, the provincial government, the territorial governments and the federal government. It was a true partnership. By and large, with a few exceptions, the money was used to build core infrastructure which included things like sewers, water pipes and roads.

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3:30 p.m.

Progressive Conservative

Greg Thompson Progressive Conservative Charlotte, NB

Don't forget the golf courses.

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3:30 p.m.

Liberal

Steve Mahoney Liberal Mississauga West, ON

We need roads to get to the golf course. There are some beautiful ones in his part of the world. The roads to get there are wonderful. I was not talking about them. I was talking about the official opposition and its position.

Here is a statement by the member for St. Albert, a man for whom I have respect as chair of the public accounts committee. I serve as vice-chair. It is meeting at the moment so I will try to hurry. The member for St. Albert said that the newly announced infrastructure program had all the makings to become another administrative fiasco.

Was it an administrative fiasco in 1993? No. Was it a success? Absolutely. It was a success from sea to sea to sea. It seems that members of the official opposition in particular cannot take yes for an answer. If we looked in every one of their ridings in addition to the Conservative ridings that I referred to, I suspect we would find infrastructure programs where the entire community including the provinces were all involved in delivering high quality transportation systems to the people.

Let us ask another question. We all know that opposition parties submit closet budgets, phantom budgets, would be budgets or hoped for budgets. How much money did the official opposition budget for transportation infrastructure? Never mind the Tories. We know what the Conservatives have done. They said they would spend about $30 billion more than already is available on debt reduction and tax reduction to help their rich friends. They would not do anything for transportation except maybe pray to the sky and hope that someone would solve the big picture problem.

How much has the official opposition put in? Nothing. How can its members stand with any kind of credibility and vote for a motion like this one? What do they call their alternative budget? They call it solution 17. In their budget there was not one dollar, not one loonie, toonie, or anything for transportation infrastructure. Their finance critic wrote about an alternative budget. He put the entire surplus of $95 billion over the next five years toward a plan of tax cuts in debt retirement. The official opposition is actually a bit better than the fifth party. The reason is it has spent all the surplus whereas the fifth party spent the surplus plus $30 billion and still did nothing for transportation.

I listen to the policies and to the ongoing leadership debate in the official opposition. I listen to candidates like Tom Long from Ontario. He goes around the country and gives one message in the west and another one in the east. He insists on telling people that he will cut their taxes and get an economic boom going in the country even though we are currently sustaining an unprecedented economic boom that is second to none.

It is amazing to see what is going on all over the country. All we have to do is travel to find out. Yet we have no commitment from any of the candidates who would be prime minister of this great land on what they would do for transportation infrastructure. At the same time we have a fifth party who stands in this place and whose leader will not run for a seat in the House. I wish he would. I would love to see him in here.

I should officially welcome the new member from St. John's to his new seat. I guess they did not tell him that it would be that far back in the corner. I am sure, with his credentials, that he will be moving up. He is a former minister of education in the wonderful province of Newfoundland. I sincerely welcome him to the House and into the fray.

Hopefully he will bring some good old down home Newfie common sense and recognize that when you put forward a statement on a national transportation policy you should try to gild the lily a bit and include some specifics. You should not just stand to make grandiose statements that everybody else should fix all the problems, especially when you come from a part of the country where you would be hard pressed to try to convince anyone who has been there that transportation is not in any kind of difficulty.

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3:35 p.m.

Reform

Ken Epp Reform Elk Island, AB

Mr. Speaker, I find it interesting that the hon. member who just finished speaking has been in the House for many years and does not even yet know the most rudimentary rules of this place. For example, he spoke about our new colleague in the first person. He cannot learn anything. He cannot learn the name of our party. He is clueless.

I have two or three questions or comments. The first one is with respect to debt retirement. We in the Canadian Alliance are promoting that we should get the debt reduced because it has a huge impact on our budget. Large amounts of money go to pay interest. To retire our present debt in 25 years would mean applying a total of $50 billion in surplus every year for 25 years to pay the principle and interest on it. That is assuming that interest rates do not rise too much above what they are now. I do not think that I will get—

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3:35 p.m.

Liberal

Stan Keyes Liberal Hamilton West, ON

From where will you get the money?

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3:35 p.m.

Reform

Ken Epp Reform Elk Island, AB

The question is from where will we get the money. That is a good question. Meanwhile the Liberals are trying to figure out how to spend the bit of surplus they get. They should be applying more of it toward the debt. That is exactly my point.

The other question I have is for the hon. member who gave his speech and not the parliamentary secretary who feels obliged to heckle me while I am making this wonderful dissertation.

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3:35 p.m.

Liberal

Stan Keyes Liberal Hamilton West, ON

You cannot get it right. I am not a parliamentary secretary.

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3:35 p.m.

Reform

Ken Epp Reform Elk Island, AB

Are you not a parliamentary secretary?

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3:35 p.m.

Liberal

Stan Keyes Liberal Hamilton West, ON

Not for over a year now.

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3:35 p.m.

Reform

Ken Epp Reform Elk Island, AB

The hon. member is not a parliamentary secretary. He could be but he is not.

In his speech the member indicated that the infrastructure program had nothing to do with politics. Then I have a very simple question. If it does not involve politics, why is it that the cheque was delivered by none other than the Liberal Minister of Justice who found it necessary to travel to my riding in a big flurry for only one purpose, to deliver the cheque?

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3:40 p.m.

Liberal

Steve Mahoney Liberal Mississauga West, ON

Mr. Speaker, perhaps the minister wanted to ensure that the cheque arrived safely. I am not sure why it was done. In any event, it is nice that the member has acknowledged that indeed the cheque did arrive and the project was a go.

Let me just make one correction. I referred to the newest member in the House as the member from St. John's. Some may think he is a saint. People in his riding may think he is a saint but that is not his name. I did not refer to him in the first person. I referred to him as the member from St. John's. There are five names in your new silly party, not two. You should perhaps learn them.

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3:40 p.m.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)

Let us just stop there and stick to the debate on transportation at hand.

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3:40 p.m.

Liberal

Steve Mahoney Liberal Mississauga West, ON

Mr. Speaker, I guess you could say he started it but I will not get into that. Who cares? You are right, Mr. Speaker. We should stick to the debate on transportation. That is the important thing.

It is important that we pay down the debt and the government has started to do it. If we put all our eggs in one basket we wind up with nothing but broken eggs. That is exactly what the official opposition is doing.

Speaking of eggs, if we take a look at the policy of the fifth party, that is exactly what it is doing. Its members are not only putting all the eggs in one basket. They are adding eggs to it that they do not even have yet, that the chicken has not laid yet. How in the world will they fill a basket with non-existent eggs?

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3:40 p.m.

Progressive Conservative

Bill Casey Progressive Conservative Cumberland—Colchester, NS

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for the nice travelogue about Nova Scotia. He is absolutely right. It is entirely beautiful.

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3:40 p.m.

Liberal

Steve Mahoney Liberal Mississauga West, ON

A great transportation system.

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3:40 p.m.

Progressive Conservative

Bill Casey Progressive Conservative Cumberland—Colchester, NS

Yes, there are some good highways in Nova Scotia, but there are also some bad ones. It is interesting that he missed those highways. He missed the 101 where in the last few years 50 young people have been killed because there is no federal-provincial agreement to upgrade that highway. For decades there was money available from the federal government to be applied to main highways, but now there is none. Not one cent is budgeted for this year or next year in Nova Scotia where for years there was money to address those dangerous issues.

I want to go through some of the points he made. He mentioned that the fixed link is a wonderful piece of transportation infrastructure. He is absolutely right. That was a Conservative project right from beginning to end.

He did not mention the toll highways in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. He missed the toll highways in his travelogue. He went all around the toll highways. He did not go across the toll highways. He probably does not like paying tolls any more than we do every day of coming and going. He avoided that toll highways.

I will tell the hon. member who did not avoid the toll highways. It was the voters in the last elections in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. We cannot find a Liberal anywhere near either of the toll highways in Nova Scotia or New Brunswick. The hon. member may think the Liberal policy is great, but I can tell him the voters know that it is not a good policy.

He went on to talk about the great port of Halifax. He is absolutely right. There is infrastructure there, but last year when Halifax needed help to compete with other ports in the United States for post-Panamax containers where was the federal government? It was hiding somewhere. It was completely invisible. Even though other governments in other countries helped, Canada did not help the port of Halifax and it lost that competition.

The hon. member mentioned that we were complaining about potholes. We are not complaining about potholes in our infrastructure. We have a highway in Nova Scotia, to go back to the highway that he missed, highway 101. It is between Halifax and a large university community. Some 50 people have been killed on that highway since 1993. A lot of them were young people. We are not talking about potholes. We are talking about serious business.

I want to read something from the Globe and Mail this morning and then have him comment on it. It is a comment about France's policy on highway reconstruction. It reads:

According to Le Figaro , even though France has Europe's third highest road mortality rate...bureaucrats won't fix deadly stretches of highway if the work costs most than...$750,000.

German planners, however, will spend up to $937,000 to save a life while the Swiss will go as high as $2 million.

We have a highway in Nova Scotia on which we have lost 50 lives in seven years and not one penny has been assigned to Nova Scotia for highway work this year. I would like to hear the member's comment on that.

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3:45 p.m.

Liberal

Steve Mahoney Liberal Mississauga West, ON

Mr. Speaker, when we talk about issues concerning young people who are killed on what could be considered low grade roads, those are not matters which should be bantered about in this place. These are matters on which all levels of government have to work together. They all have a responsibility.

By the way, I was close to that highway, but the hon. member is right in that we turned off at Highway 104 to go into Halifax.

The Government of Nova Scotia has a strong responsibility within its local community, if it has those kinds of tragic numbers, to ensure the road is upgraded. As I have said, and the hon. member has agreed, it has managed to do it throughout the entire province with a transportation system that is second to none. If the hon. member can point to the stretch of highway that has had the carnage and loss of lives of the nature and the magnitude he has just told us about, then I believe he should take it up with the minister of transportation in that province and he should ask that it be addressed as quickly as possible.

We have problems in our own communities. In Ontario young people are killed on our roads. Tragedies occur and we must do something to stop them. We must continue to fight drunk driving. We must continue to educate our young people through better licensing programs and better education to try to deal with the carnage on our roads. To turn it into a political issue by saying that the federal government has somehow not addressed a national roads policy or a national transportation policy and to use that kind of statistic is most unfortunate.

I would support the hon. member in his attempts to have that road upgraded and fixed so that we can put an end to the terrible tragedies.

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3:45 p.m.

Progressive Conservative

Greg Thompson Progressive Conservative Charlotte, NB

Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that I did not have a chance to question the hon. member from Ontario who just spoke. As usual, he is fast and free with the information, but when he is taken to task by anyone in the House to either back up what he is saying or provide us with some real information, he always falls short of the mark. Is that not the Liberal way? We have been waiting seven years for a national highways program. The hon. member completely ducked the issue because the Liberals do not want to take responsibility. It is as simple as that.

This year, just as a note, the federal government will take in about $4 billion in fuel taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel. Transport Canada will have a surplus of approximately $3.9 billion this year, but again there is no highway policy.

I want to compare our position with that of the United States to give an example of where we are really falling behind in terms of infrastructure; that is, highways and those things that are needed, whether it is highways or air transportation, to move our goods and people around and to grow the economy as we would like to see it grow.

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for West Nova. I am sure you will be interested to hear another Nova Scotian go into detail on some of the shortcomings of the federal government in that province.

Getting back to our case versus that of the United States, just a couple of years ago the President of the United States announced the TEA-21, the transportation equity act for the 21st century. I have a summary of the act which I would be pleased to table for any member who might want to take a look at it.

On June 9, 1998, President Clinton signed into law the transportation equity act for the 21st century. This guaranteed a level of federal funding for surface transportation. I will give an example of how much the Americans are putting in at the federal level on highways alone.

The amount guaranteed for surface transportation under that act is estimated to be $198 billion. In essence, the guaranteed amount is the floor. It defines the least amount of the authorizations that may be spent. The least amount that would be spent is $198 billion. Let us assume, and for the most part everyone would agree with me, that the American economy is basically ten times that of Canada's. At a minimum, if Canada were to reflect what the U.S. is doing, we would be spending $20 billion on surface transportation in this country. We simply are not doing that. We are falling behind.

The member for Cumberland—Colchester mentioned the number of deaths on the infamous Highway 101 in Nova Scotia. There have been over 50 deaths in the last seven years alone.

Not only from the public safety point of view should the federal government be doing something, but also from the standpoint of growing the economy.

I had a question for one of the Reform members—

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3:50 p.m.

Reform

Ken Epp Reform Elk Island, AB

The Canadian Alliance.

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3:50 p.m.

Progressive Conservative

Greg Thompson Progressive Conservative Charlotte, NB

Excuse me, the Canadian Alliance.

The question concerned the free trade agreement. We remember the huge debate that we had in 1988 leading into the election. In fact, the 1988 election was called the free trade election because that was the number one issue that dominated the hustings. We know that the Liberals, in fact every member seated opposite, raged against the free trade agreement.

When the Liberals took office in 1993 the economy was growing and it has been grown ever since. We have not had a downturn since they took office. Eventually it will happen and none of us wants to see that. However, the truth is that the Canadian economy has grown largely because of our export capacity, largely because of the free trade agreement which they railed against, but now they embrace it as if they invented it. We know full well they did not invent it. In fact, they were going to tear it up. They were going to nullify it.

With that growth in the economy comes an obligation on the part of government to do something about transportation. What I am leading to is that there are some parts of the country which are suffering because of our transportation links. One of those areas is Atlantic Canada. Unfortunately, the Canadian Alliance, formerly the Reform Party, looks at Atlantic Canada and says “What is wrong with you people? Why can you not get your act together? Why do you not have the kind of prosperity that we witness in western Canada, particularly Alberta and B.C., or the type of economic growth that we see in Ontario?” That party misses the point that we have been trying to make for years in this House, particularly the last three or four years, with respect to transportation. If we are going to grow the economy we have to have links in and out of our provinces to trade goods, which other areas of the country have been able to do successfully. Ontario has great transportation links to the United States.

We embraced the free trade agreement, along with the Liberal premier of New Brunswick at the time, because we saw it as an opportunity to enhance our markets to the south of us, because we are always forced to trade east and west from one end of Canada to the other. Since then we have not seen growth in infrastructure, particularly highways, to move our goods and people in and out as efficiently as might be the case. That has certainly hampered us.

I really believe the government has a responsibility to build that infrastructure. What we are saying is, give us a chance to compete and we will compete successfully, which we are doing. However, we are certainly denied some of the growth that other parts of Canada have experienced because of the lack of efficient transportation in and out of Atlantic Canada.

To add insult to injury, when the member for Cumberland—Colchester questioned the minister in the House today, the minister alluded to the airport in Toronto and the travelling time of two to three hours for people travelling to that airport. He inferred that in the province of New Brunswick we will at some point be left with one airport. Which one will it be? Will it be Moncton, Saint John or Fredericton? The government does not understand Atlantic Canada and it is not willing to do anything to help Atlantic Canada. It does not understand the big picture.

My party is saying that the government has to come up with a policy. The Liberals cannot fly by the seat of their pants on every issue. They have done it on health care and transportation, and the Canadian public will simply not tolerate that type of make it up as they go along, fly by the seat of their pants attitude.

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3:55 p.m.

NDP

Peter Mancini NDP Sydney—Victoria, NS

Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment my colleague from the Conservative Party on his perspective as an Atlantic Canadian.

I would concur with him that for far too long those of us in the Atlantic region have been disadvantaged because of the historical trading links that went east to west. At the time of Confederation, we in the Atlantic region gave up the natural north-south trading routes, and we did so in good faith. As the member said, today we find that without the necessary infrastructure it is difficult to compete.

I would question my colleague on the issue of airports because I found his comments to be most interesting. We have a small airport in Cape Breton that is absolutely essential if we are to develop and grow an economic base. Yet we are threatened at various times with the loss of the flight service station and the loss of the people who operate the runway. We have been told that this could be centralized and done from Halifax.

The member spoke about the loss of two airports in New Brunswick, but I think we face the same thing in all of the Atlantic region. The government's philosophy might be to have one central airport, not in New Brunswick, but maybe in Halifax. I wonder if the member would care to comment on what the loss of these vital airports would do to areas like Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Cape Breton.

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3:55 p.m.

Progressive Conservative

Greg Thompson Progressive Conservative Charlotte, NB

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his comments. I do not think we disagree on what we see happening.

I wonder if Doug Young is going to be the author of the privatization or the elimination scheme when we take a look at airports in eastern Canada, as he was with port privatization. That is a name that would probably shell shock everyone on the Liberal side and send them into hiding.

It is frightening to think about what might happen. Who knows? We will just have to wait and see. That could be in the works for New Brunswick. I know the airport authorities in Fredericton, Saint John and Moncton are pretty concerned about it, but there is no evidence coming out of Ottawa that we want to grow those areas. They could abandon them at a minute's notice. None of us know.

It is quite disturbing, and it goes back to what I concluded in my speech, it is sort of like flying by the seat of our pants, with no long range planning. The premiers across the country are screaming for a plan. If there is a plan, not everyone will get everything their way, in particular premiers or even the federal Minister of Transport, but there is always a little give and take. Canadians deserve a plan.

Only in that way can we plan for the future. We want to make the right decisions as we go along but we cannot make the right decisions if we are flying by the seat of our pants in a sort of ad hoc planning committee, if there is one. We want to see a plan. Until we see it we are going to be pretty concerned about what might happen in Sydney or in Saint John, New Brunswick.

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4 p.m.

Progressive Conservative

Bill Casey Progressive Conservative Cumberland—Colchester, NS

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the member's opinion on something to emphasize my position that the policy of the government is inconsistent and does not make any sense.

In the government's transport projections for spending next year under contributions to provinces toward highway improvements, it says that under the Outaouais development agreement it gets $4.7 million, whereas the province of Nova Scotia gets $1.8 million.

The Outaouais area, wherever the Outaouais area is—

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4 p.m.

An hon. member

That is right here in Ottawa.