Roy H. Bailey

[Supply, February 17th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday I received calls from three different people in my constituency who were condemning those of us in the opposition for spending too much time asking questions about the corruption going on over there. They told me they already knew about it.

These people are asking for some immediate support from the government because they cannot get social services. Under normal terms, their assets would be worth $200,000 or $300,000. Their cattle are worth nothing. They have no money. They cannot foresee getting groceries. They are condemning the opposition for what is going on over there. My response to them is that we have no choice.

The $2 billion that the government took away from these people could have been given back to the Prairies. It could have been put into the industry, and everything would have been alive and well. Instead, we have reached our lowest since the mid-1930s, yet the government sits idly by and lets that huge part of western Canada go down the drain. All three individuals have said that without help within 45 days or thereabouts, they do not know what will happen.

It is fine to argue this issue, but instead of coming up with piecemeal things, the government should give back the $2 billion it stole from the hunters who registered their guns. The government should give that money back to the people from whom they took it. If it did that, gun owners, ranchers, and people in western Canada would be happy today.

[Petitions, February 17th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present two petitions from different areas, not quite worded the same, but dealing with marriage. The constituents call on the government to revisit the topic of what actually constitutes marriage. The petitioners are from across western Canada. They are pleading with the government to do what they are asking for in these petitions.

[Resumption Of Debate On Address In Reply, February 16th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to my learned colleague. I enjoyed her remarks.

What I am about to ask strictly falls under her department in that the Government of Canada is spending millions of dollars warning everyone of the health hazards of smoking cigarettes--and I think it is paying off--but I am also somewhat worried, with more scientific evidence coming through and after talking to respiratory specialists, about the dangers of pot smoking, of marijuana and hashish. It is becoming clearer that it is a real health hazard.

I wonder if the minister would consider doing the same thing against pot smoking that the government has done for cigarettes.

[Reinstatement of Government Bills, February 10th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the new Prime Minister has announced not once but twice that he will stop discrimination against the west. Obviously he understands that there is discrimination against the west, otherwise he would not have made that statement. However in the next sentence he said that he was not prepared to take a look at the constitution.

At the present time in my province we have a $177 million deficit. The farmers lost money at record speed. I have not heard one word from the government opposite as to what immediate measures it will take that are necessary to stop discriminating against the west.

[Petitions, February 10th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to present another petition from my constituency. My constituents call upon the government to immediately hold a renewed debate on the definition of marriage and to reaffirm it as it was in 1999. They urge it to take all necessary steps to preserve marriage as a union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.

[Reinstatement of Government Bills, February 9th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, one of the disappointments was handing out the proverbial carrot that westerners were not going to be discriminated against again. They have been since I was 15 years of age.

There was hope out there that there would be some cure to this ongoing struggle with the gun registry. Despite that, we had a minister in 1997 come to my constituency and say that it is no more difficult than registering a car, and further, it will not cost nearly as much.

Here we are years later. The carrot was out there and today I hear that there will be no changes in that legislation whatsoever. There is the first step toward western alienation again. Would the hon. member care to comment?

[Radiocommunication Act, February 9th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the bill is an attempt to defy the geography of our nation. This cannot be done. The geography of a nation is set.

One of the advantages of being a little older than some of the members in the House is that I remember when people drove model A cars, although some were a little newer than others, and turning the thing on to determine who had a 50¢ licence to operate a radio. If a person were caught without a licence I believe the fine was $2. That was the first attempt and it failed dismally.

Where I live, even today, if I want to get an up to date weather forecast I go a few miles south. It is quite legal. It is an FM station. Eighty per cent of Canadians live closer to the United States than they do to the capital of their neighbouring province.This is a fact of life. It is just like Saturday night when I was getting ready to return to Ottawa on the flight on Sunday. I saw on CTV, I believe, an excellent program about how seniors were being treated in nursing homes. If that program had not caught my eye I would have shut it off.

Are we talking about robbery, piracy and so on, or are we talking about protection of our productions? There are many Canadians who do not like what they get on our television stations so they turn to the American stations. Many people in the United States will turn to Canadian programming. The government simply cannot make the bill work.

The reason we cannot make it work is that we live on a continent that shares everything. Even in the cattle dispute we recognize that it is a North American problem. For Canada to attempt to license those areas in Canada where the best signal and the only signal some can get is from the U.S., the bill would make those pockets illegal. The bill would make it illegal to receive those signals. There are pockets in B.C., in my province and in northern Ontario.

What the government is trying to do is to legislate against geography. We tried this before. There is a huge difference between the grey market and the black market.

In other continental industries we compete. In other continentals with a cattle industry we can compete. We have shown that we can compete in the automobile industry. We can compete in this industry as well. By putting the bill into effect the government is not allowing competition to take place and it may be hindering the betterment of Canadian progress.

Let us just think about this for a moment. The government says that a certain percentage of the programs must be Canadian. It will aim to get that certain per cent of the market and maybe not go beyond. In aiming for a low level, we may end up producing an inferior content and inferior programs.

I do not know the origin of the bill. Is it the CRTC? Let Canadians have the right, as Americans have the right. If they want to turn to a Canadian station they can turn to it, and many do. When Canadians wish to turn to an American station they do. It is a competitive market.

However what the bill attempts to do is kill that competition in a very important industry. I believe we have Canadians who have conquered this and who have gone into the United States and have done very well. However we should not limit the right of Canadians to a wider source of programming and, in turn, limit the U.S. because we then would not put out signals to their stations.

The bill is counterproductive and it could hurt our industry. It should be considered in committee where I would hope the committee would find a way not to pass the bill. It is not in the best interests of the receivers nor the Canadian telecommunication industry.

[Health, February 4th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, most people, including myself, began smoking cigarettes at a young age because of peer pressure. The town in which I was living at that time was a military town and not only were the uniforms very attractive but also the fact that many of the soldiers smoked.

At that time no one thought of the dangers of cigarette smoking. Today the government spends millions in providing educational warnings to all cigarette smokers.

Today's new danger is one now considered by the scientific community to be even a greater danger than smoking cigarettes. It has been widely proven by competent researchers that marijuana smoking is more dangerous to our health than cigarette smoking. Where are the government's educational facts about the dangers of marijuana and hashish smoking?

Today we have a health care system already overburdened. The government should be educating the public on the hazards of the use of these two illicit drugs.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, February 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague opposite with a great deal of interest. If we are going to make this applicable, we have to take a look at Canadians whether they live north of the 60th parallel or on the 49th parallel.

In my area there are some huge ranches run by families. The partners in those businesses, sometimes the male and sometimes the female, but having said that, they too should be eligible for some type of care even if it is not possible geographically. If there is childcare, money or deductions for others who are geographically available, then there must be some levelling of the playing field for those women who are in business with their husbands in a large enterprise but who have been left out of the picture and always have been left out of the picture. That is grossly unfair and grossly wrong to many Canadians.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, February 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, coming from Saskatchewan, where we have scored the coldest place on earth, not just in Canada, I must admit that I have not heard very much about global warming, even when I phoned my wife this morning for the wind chill factor.

I also would like to let the hon. minister know regarding emission controls and emissions from lawnmowers and so on that I now have four pieces of property butting up against mine on which they do not cut the grass or the weeds.

That is just joking, but I want to ask the minister if he does not believe that Canadians are doing more on their own without any concrete proof, let us say, on the idea of emission controls and cleaning our air and so on. It is taking place not necessarily because of the government but rather because of the nature of world events, which are zeroing in on the same topics.