Howard Hilstrom

[National Revenue, February 17th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Minister of National Revenue denied that John Thiessen's tax returns were released without authorization. I have a letter from the RCMP confirming that Revenue Canada has been told of this leak.

Does the minister want more black and white evidence or will he tell us on what authority the tax returns of John Thiessen were released?

[Small Business Loans Act, February 16th, 1998]

It would be out of order and so I will not do that.

I would like to ask the hon. member for Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre just where in Reform policy, where in the Reform meetings that he has maybe attended or spoken to Reform members about has it ever been said that the Reform Party does not want the police services and the fire departments run by government? That is specifically what he said to this House and I would like to have him clarify whether he is telling the House the truth on that matter. Does he stand by those statements?

[Small Business Loans Act, February 16th, 1998]

I apologize to you, Mr. Speaker, for rising on a point of order. I am new to the House and I do not understand the rules fully. As a result, I apologize.

I suppose that a statement calling an hon. member a liar would also be out of order.

[Small Business Loans Act, February 16th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question. When the member who is currently making his speech says something that is absolutely and totally wrong or false, is it allowed?

[Revenue, February 16th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, first the minister of Indian affairs failed to tell the House how and why the contents of a confidential letter of complaint were released. Now five years of personal income tax returns of Mr. John Thiessen of Winnipeg were released to the Manitoba Public Insurance Corporation without authorization, contrary to section 241 of the Income Tax Act.

I would like the Minister of National Revenue to tell all Canadians why personal tax returns are being released without authorization and if these are the only ones.

[Division No. 72, February 12th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, some day in the future there will be a dual market because every farmer in the country cannot be kept under a monopoly. That will change. I have no about it. When it happens I hope the government of the day apologizes to farmers and pays compensation. I will be waiting to see the day. I am sure it will happen in my lifetime, God willing.

I am sure the hon. member for Palliser voted against the time allocation motion, having the debate shortened, but he seemed to support it in his speech. I cannot imagine why he would do that when we are trying to get all the facts on the table. We are trying to present them to the government that is bringing forward the bill so that it can learn to change its ways and change the bill to reflect what is best for Canada and for farmers.

I would like to bring NDP members up to date. They talk about survival of the Canadian Wheat Board as do the Liberals and Bloc members. It is paramount in their minds. Everyone should be talking about the survival of Canadian farmers in western Canada.

I will describe a typical farm in western Canadian. We are not talking about a quarter section or a half section any more. We are talking about investment dollars in the millions, just under a million dollars to run a decent sized grain farm. We are talking about a significant business.

It is foolish to talk about marketing grain as it was done 60 years ago or to say that is the way it should be done nowadays. The cosmetic changes the Liberals are putting forward in the bill do nothing with regard to true price discovery. They do nothing with regard to freedom for individuals to produce a product and sell it on their own as they see fit. The bill is a recipe for disaster for western Canada.

I would like to talk for a minute about what would happen if the wheat board went to a dual market or allowed farmers to sell on their own. Who would then market the grain? One of the biggest marketers would be the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool. I lived in Saskatchewan before I moved to Manitoba. There was a lot support for Sask Pool. Many of my old CCF relatives, current NDP relatives and others in Saskatchewan support the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool. The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool is a top grain marketing co-op in the world. The pool placed 23rd overall. It was the largest grain marketing co-op. Those that ranked above it were involved in dairy, meat and sugar.

If a farmer were allowed to sell his grain outside the wheat board, he might choose to sell it to the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool. The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, with its size in the world economy, especially in the agricultural sector, could very well find out what is a good price. It could compete against the wheat board. It could compete against Cargill, UGG and ADM. At that point the farmer would have the choice. He would say that he got a real good price from Sask Pool and that is where he would like to sell his grain. If Sask Pool suddenly decided to shaft the farmer for a few years and to start giving grain away for political reasons or doing something foolish to cause the price paid to the farmer to go down, we would soon see the farmer selling to an alternative buyer.

Sask Pool has made an alliance with an eastern European country with regard to the possibility of changes in the future grain marketing system in Canada. UGG has formed a strategic alliance with a Japanese company, Marubeni. I read from a report:

Industry sources said the alliance is also part of a long term strategy by Marubeni as it is watching for deregulation of Canada's wheat and barley markets.

What do they think Saskatchewan Wheat Pool is doing? It knows a deregulated market for marketing grain is coming down the pipes. Everybody in the House should know it by now. There is enough information around. For some reason the Liberal government is sticking its head in the sand. Instead of trying to make changes today it will keep western Canadian farmers in this straitjacket monopoly for the next 10 years to 15 years. Maybe this straitjacket will only last until the next election, with any luck.

I would like to speak for a moment to price discovery. This deals with the inclusion clause, Motion No. 43. The proposed inclusion clause would allow the mechanism to fundamentally change the price discovery process and reduce the relevance of the grain purchasing price setting mechanism. I will use canola as an example. It has been raised in the House and everyone is familiar with that product.

The Winnipeg Commodity Exchange canola contract provides a price reference and an effective hedging tool for producers, grain merchandisers, exports, importers and processors both domestically and internationally. They have a choice. They have to decide when they market canola how they will do it.

Therefore the futures price for canola, and this could read wheat or barley, either way, reflects the world price of canola. This function of a commodity exchange provides for an effective and efficient way to discover prices, to hedge those prices and to transfer price risk.

What am I talking about? I am talking about a major Canadian business, for example a $1 million farm or a $500,000 farm on the prairies, making decisions in their corporate or personal best interest. They need to maximize the profits they can make for their farms.

The proposed inclusion clause, if used to grant authority over canola, would allow for price discovery process supporting the canola contract to change from an open market system to a closed regulated system and eliminate the relevance of the contract as an international pricing and risk marketing tool.

I ask members of the NDP and the Liberals whether this is what they want. I think they do because this is the bill they have put forward. They do not want a true price discovery mechanism to be in place. By not having access to what actually is happening in the Canadian Wheat Board as to pricing and so on, it looks to me like they are trying to keep the whole thing kind of hidden, kind of secret, so that the true price for grain is never determined. The farmer takes what he gets, according to what the wheat board wants to give him.

I could continue to speak about the wheat board and the impact it has on demurrage costs and a lot of other things, but I think I have made the basic points as to why farmers have to have choice. It is their pocketbooks we are talking about. They should be able to sell their grain to whom they want, whether through the wheat board or privately.

I do not support Bill C-4. I support a wheat board for the farmers who want to be in it.

[Fisheries, February 11th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the fisheries minister claims he cannot release vital observer reports that show foreign fishing activities, legitimate or otherwise, off our east coast. He claims he would be breaking the law to do so.

The minister also claims there are no foreign trawlers fishing off the coast of Labrador. He claims there is no salmon crisis on Canada's west coast. He claims he has every right to continue the aboriginal fishing strategy when the court has declared it illegal. He claims bureaucracy does not interfere with DFO science.

The minister is consistent in at least two respects. First, he is dead wrong. Second, his claims do not reflect the facts as known by the Canadian people, Canadian fishermen, Canadian courts or even his own employees.

[Canadian Wheat Board Act, February 9th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, being a new member of Parliament, I have not had a whole lot of opportunity to speak to the House to this point. In doing so on these amendments to the Canadian Wheat Board Act, the particular clauses dealing with the election and duty of directors, I would like to mention that I have a vested interest in this bill and a vested interest from a personal point of view, along with the views of my constituents.

I am a cattle rancher from an area where there is a lot of grain production. We are just north of Winnipeg. As a result, what I talk about here today is very close to my heart as well as my pocketbook, something which is really not the case for a lot of other members in this House, particularly on the other side.

The farmers in our area definitely want to retain a wheat board. However, they do not want to be forced to sell their products solely to the Canadian Wheat Board. I have some suggestions that I will come to in a moment as to how they should be treated and the kind of board that we should be dealing with for western Canadian farmers.

It is a little bit hard to debate the Canadian Wheat Board bill today because the wheat board is currently being challenged in the Winnipeg courts on constitutional grounds by, I believe, a farmer named Mr. Dave Bryan, so the debate we are having here today may well be pointless. If that court finds that it is against the constitutional rights of farmers to be forced to sell their grain there then, as I say, we will be talking about nothing.

The crown attorney in charge of that case is a more junior crown attorney whom I have known for some years. It is not a case where they are putting in the top federal prosecutor.

Getting back to the election and duty of directors, I would like to say that the purpose of the Canadian Wheat Board and its directors is to ensure that this commercial entity maximizes returns to producers. Here again we are talking dollars in the pocketbook.

The minister for the Canadian Wheat Board and the backbenchers on the other side of the House, a lot of whom are from Ontario, certainly represent their farmers. I would like to point out to the House that the roughly 1.3 million tonnes of wheat that they produced last year did not go overseas. It went to the United States and the Canadian milling industry. Why does anyone suppose that is where it went?

I can show members Ontario farm magazines which will clearly show that the reason the wheat does not go offshore is because they get the best price in the United States and the best price milling here in Canada. They do not want to be part of the Canadian Wheat Board. They do not want to be a director. They do not want to have any duty to make sure the wheat board works well. Why do we have the wheat board that we have today? That is the problem dealing with these elections and duties of directors when in fact the wheat board is not even serving western Canadians by maximizing their profits.

Farmers out our way, as I said, want to have a wheat board. But what they really want is a wheat board along the line of these new generation co-ops where the people and the farmers who are in the organization, the wheat board, the co-ops or whatever we want to call it, want to be there. Everybody in an organization who wants to be there will make sure that organization works well and maximizes profits.

The problem with the wheat board and the amendments being brought forward today is we have a significant number of farmers who do not want to be in the wheat board. We end up with these massive legal arguments. I heard today about the half tonne truck which has up to $135,000 or $150,000 worth of assessments against it by Revenue Canada. This kind of wheat board and the opposition to it is sapping the very strength out of and killing the profits that the farmers are supposed to be making. That is what should be dealt with here today. It is that very profit making incentive.

Once again, the duty of the directors who are elected should be strictly to maximize profits. I think western Canadians quite clearly do not trust the federal government and Ontario, Quebec and the other provinces telling us in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and a small portion of B.C. how we should run our commercial operations, our farms and our ranches.

The directors that we would like to see elected from our constituencies would be purely decided by western Canadians. There would be no appointments from Ottawa, no dictates from on high. We would end up with the provinces that I mentioned previously deciding how to run the elections. They have a very clear vested interest in the operation of a future wheat board. That is the kind of elections we would like to see.

The duties of these directors would be dictated by the provinces in the west that are producing the grain, not by Ottawa which has other interests. I am sure that every bushel of grain in every negotiation overseas is not based solely on “Oh, boy, I hope I can get that farmer up in Selkirk the best dollar for this”.

There is no doubt that foreign interests come in. We have all seen the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the weight he throws around in Manitoba and in this government. That is one of the big concerns of the farmers in western Canada. Decisions are not made purely on a commercial basis.

I will not get into the secrecy of this because that is a debate for another day, but I would like to mention oats. Oats used to come under the Canadian Wheat Board. Many people have said “Is there a disaster now that oats are no longer under the wheat board?” I spoke to this very issue when I was travelling around my constituency. When oats no longer came under the wheat board, there was a short time frame when the marketing of oats was not clear cut and profits maximized, but within a very few months the marketing of oats was great and profits were maximized.

They will not find anybody now growing oats begging to get back into the Canadian Wheat Board. This is the very thing I am talking about, the wheat board for the future. The wheat board has to be run, controlled, directed by western Canadian farmers.

A lot of them want to have this marketing board. I assure members of that. They want to maximize their profits.

The net income for farmers in Ontario and Quebec is much higher than it is in Manitoba, Saskatchewan or Alberta. It shows that a marketing board for the dairy industry, I guess that accounts for the majority of the profits here, can be a very strong influence on the net profits that farmers make and that is what we want in western Canada.

The prairie provinces want to run the Canadian Wheat Board and that is not happening with these amendments here today.

The elections will go ahead. We will end up with new directors of the wheat board, but the duties that they will end up being given will come from Ottawa. That is why this new wheat board, with the amendments to it, will not work. It will not survive more than a few years if they go through.

My earlier suggestions regarding the Canadian Wheat Board being run by westerners and the sapping of strength by having it run from Ottawa is that this membership composed of western farmers will maximize profits.

Under this set-up, I would imagine that a wheat cartel would arise where the rest of the world, Canadian millers and everybody else, would have to pay the maximum price. There would be no in-fighting.

I appreciate the opportunity to talk on this topic today. It has a lot to do with the profits we will make in the west. Please, give us a break.

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 1997, February 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I would simply ask the hon. member if Quebec in fact is a net gainer under equalization and the CHST. If it is, how would the hon. member demonstrate how Quebec would continue to pay for these things if he achieves his goal of separating Quebec from Canada?

[Haiti, December 4th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I was in the RCMP for over 30 years and I know that there is no way that policing in Haiti is like normal policing in Canada. As a result, I am very concerned about the safety of the RCMP in Haiti.

I would ask the minister again what specifically will he do to ensure their safety?