Cliff Breitkreuz

[Budget Implementation Act, 1994, April 14th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite just spoke of the budget inspiring hope in Canada and among Canadians. Heaven help us if he thinks that is what it is doing.

It is both unfortunate and undemocratic that the government is forcing debate on the entirety of Bill C-17, the budget implementation act. Bill C-17 is an omnibus bill. Essentially it addresses four major issues and lumps them under one bill. Therefore it could be difficult for members to vote totally in favour or against the bill as I believe that each issue merits its own debate.

Having said that, I will be discussing one portion of Bill C-17 which deals with grain transportation.

Bill C-17 would increase production and the government's share of freight rates under the Western Grain Transportation Act from 10 per cent to 15 per cent for crop years beginning on or after August 1, 1994.

A goal of the Reform Party is to change the way the agriculture industry is dealt with by the federal government. The movement of grain to export positions is highly regulated in Canada and that is an understatement, to say the least.

Since 1897 when the Crows Nest Pass agreement became law, the government has regulated and controlled grain freight rates. It fixed and set freight rates western farmers paid Canadian Pacific to move their grain to what is now Thunder Bay.

In the early 1920s legislation was passed expanding and extending the effect of the original rate set in 1897 to all shipping points on the prairies, to all railways and to additional destination points. In short, the legislative action in the 1920s was the most significant turning point in the history of the Crows Nest freight rates for grain.

It changed the system from one governed by a two-party agreement between the federal government and CPR to one by which Parliament unilaterally imposed a national policy by statute. The industry has been paying ever since because of government regulation.

During the 1960s railways began to absorb losses as the cost of shipping grain exceeded the revenue from fixed freight rates. As a result, the railways could not afford to make necessary investments in the grain rail system. The MacPherson royal commission on transport which reported in 1961 concluded that the Canadian railways were losing money on transporting grain at statutory or government set rates.

In 1982 consultations with farm groups were held on transportation policies led by Dr. Clay Gilson. As a result, he recommended payments be made to the railways initially but over a period years these payments would be phased to the producers until producers received 81 per cent of the benefit and the railways received 19 per cent.

One year later in 1993 the federal government's response to the transportation crisis was to enact the Western Grain Transportation Act. The WGTA provided for the continued regulation of freight rates and a subsidy based on the difference between what the producer paid to ship grain in 1982 and the actual cost of shipping grain in the same year.

In essence the WGTA increases the freight rates so that the railways would have enough revenue to maintain the grain transportation system. What about the farmers? What does the WGTA do for them? Government payments to the railways would defray the cost to farmers of moving grain but producers would pay an increasing portion of rail costs over time.

In the WGTA a system was born that has regulations regulating regulations. The previous federal government reduced the Crow benefit from last year of $720 million to $650 million in the current year. The Conservatives planned further 5 per cent reductions next year and the year after if Crow benefit payments were not changed to be paid to farmers instead of railways.

The current government dropped the Conservatives' conditions and instead is proposing a 15 per cent cut next crop year. That leaves the Crow benefit at about $614 million, a drop of $106 million in two years. That means producers are left holding the proverbial bag. They will be paying more for freight while at the same time putting up with big brother, the federal government and its stifling regulations.

I submit that the entire system is flawed, bordering on the absurd. The WGTA prevents farmers, shippers and railways from introducing savings into the system but at the same time with Crow benefit cuts farmers have to use a high cost system with less money to pay for it. The strangle hold that regulations have over grain shipping is squeezing the life out of many western producers. Farmers must put out more money for freight and severe regulations prevent them from using cost saving ways to collect and ship grain.

We are asking the government to consider introducing an entirely new piece of legislation to govern the way farmers move grain, a piece of legislation that is fair to the farmers and railways alike.

The WGTA promotes provincial offsetting programs, distorts domestic prices and promotes railway inefficiency. It is also a barrier to investment in the industry. It is clear that something needs to be done.

We advocate a trade distortion adjustment program to defend exporting producers against foreign subsidies on competing products. The program is all encompassing to the agriculture industry and would benefit producers by taking into account their individual needs.

The program would include an automatic triggering mechanism based on the historic volume of exported products. There would be no producer premiums and legislation would ensure timely payout to affected producers within this same market period.

It is important to vigorously support and defend Canada's food producers against the effects of matters over which they have little control such as foreign subsidies and trade distorting influences. What Canada needs is a viable market driven industry through the application of federal safety nets, programs that are production neutral, not commodity specific.

Canadian producers need to be able to transport their grain to foreign markets without barriers. The federal government is only chipping away at the WGTA, thereby passing further financial burden to the producers.

As the system now stands the backlog and confusion in grain movement are a direct result of the inability of government managed system to serve the agriculture industries. We need only look at the rail car shortage which is not only cutting into sales and costing farmers money but damaging relationships with important customers as well.

Canadian railways are not meeting their unload targets at Canadian ports as required by WGTA. More influence must be placed in the hands of those who have a legitimate stake in the industry, those who rely on the agriculture industry to make a living, namely the farmers. They are the producers and must have greater participation in how the industry operates.

The federal government is proposing to reduce its share of freight rates under the WGTA in the bill. By doing so the government is leaving farmers with the worst of both worlds, increased freight costs and a high cost, inefficient and inflexible system.

The federal government has a good opportunity to change the way things are done in the agriculture industry. Surely it can see that over regulation is crushing the hope of Canadian producers. We need a single program to protect our farmers, not a mix and match of of programs.

There has been some movement in this direction, judging from the recent meeting between the federal agriculture minister and his provincial counterparts.

The government is only justified to protect Canada's agriculture producers from international forces as other countries are continuing to generously subsidize their agriculture industry. I urge the government to continue negotiating the GATT in an attempt to get international subsidies down so subsidies in this country can go down accordingly.

We must work to make the agriculture industry more self-reliant, not only for today but for the future as well.

[The Budget, March 14th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister and was inspired by Annie du la Chevrotiere of Brackendale, British Columbia.

Recently the Minister of Finance stated that his ultimate goal is to eliminate the deficit and balance the national budget. If the Prime Minister agrees with his Minister of Finance, will he commit to making a balanced federal budget a requirement of law?

[The Budget, March 10th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member's emotions and comments. I can also appreciate that our philosophies do not agree.

The hon. member talked about blinkers and not seeing to the end of our noses. I would point out that Alberta did not implement bills 101 or 178, if the hon. member wants to talk about blinkers and not seeing beyond our noses.

I would suggest that the Saint-Jean Baptiste days she enjoyed in Calgary would have transpired even if we had not had official bilingualism. Those festivities were there before there was official bilingualism in this country and I would suggest that even if we rewrite the laws of the Official Languages Act they will be celebrated for many years thereafter as well.

[The Budget, March 10th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am unilingual like my hon. colleague. My children as well took French in public school. Certainly the more languages one can speak the more rounded an individual one is. At the same time, when official bilingualism was instituted in this country we did not have two full blown separatist movements in this country. We had them after official bilingualism was instituted.

I believe that the Official Languages Act has gone a long way to bring this country to the state it is in. All we have to do is look across the way to see our 54 hon. members from Quebec.

[The Budget, March 10th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, before the House recessed almost two weeks ago my colleague from Nanaimo-Cowichan spoke about the Official Languages Act and reasons for cutting costs of implementing its policy.

I will be speaking on how the Official Languages Act ought to be changed so that it is fair and just for all Canadians.

The year 1994 is the 25th anniversary of the Official Languages Act. This law, enacted by the Trudeau government in 1969 and later revised by the Mulroney administration in 1988, was intended to bring unity to the country, to end the unjust treatment of French speaking Canadians and to help defuse Quebec separatism.

We learn from authors as respectable as Quebec's distinguished Christian Dufour that: "Some forget that it was not

bilingualism that made this country, that it cannot ensure its survival and that it could even lead to its destruction".

Those of us who have lived and worked most of our lives far away from the centre of power in Ottawa may have agreed with the original intention of official bilingualism. It was described eloquently in the 1968 throne speech of the first Trudeau government as exemplifying the essential connection between justice and national unity.

We also wonder whether the Official Languages Act has actually brought justice to the area of official languages. If the law is as badly flawed as we believe it to be, and therefore unjust, where does that leave Canada's unity?

It is my contention that language policy cannot and will not achieve the justice and fairness that is its stated goal until it is fundamentally rewritten.

I would like to draw the attention of colleagues to just one aspect of official bilingualism in order to show how badly flawed the present policy is and also to show how a careful and thoughtful revision of the policy could do much to reunite the country by removing an institutional irritant which sets anglophones against francophones and provincial majorities against their minority populations.

As it is presently written, the Official Languages Act requires the federal government to provide services in English in those parts of Quebec and in French in those parts of the other nine provinces wherever there is sufficient demand.

However, the act fails to define the concept of sufficient demand. Instead of providing a clear and easily understood definition, the act states that sufficient demand will mean whatever the federal cabinet decides it ought to mean.

The law recommends that the size of official language minorities be taken into account but so may, and this is from section 32 of the act, any other factors which the governor in council considers appropriate.

What this provision of the law means is that when the Official Languages Act was passed this House never debated-it never had the chance-the level or the extent of minority language service that seemed most appropriate. The provision of minority language services is the most politically sensitive aspect of the act and yet it was determined in virtual secrecy by order in council.

When highly contentious issues are developed in secret rather than in open debate in the people's house, the House of Commons, the resulting information vacuum opens the way to rumour and innuendo. Conspiracy theories come to be taken seriously.

This in turn has the potential to breed suspicion, resentment, prejudice and ultimately hatred along linguistic lines. For this reason, section 32 of the Official Languages Act needs to be rewritten to remove the arbitrary authority of the governor in council.

In its place there should be a clear, easily understood definition of the criteria that would cause a region of the country to be declared a bilingual district. This definition could be debated openly so that the resulting formula would be a just and moderate compromise between the rightful aspirations of Canada's linguistic minorities and the rightful concerns of our majority populations.

What I am proposing is hardly a new idea. It was first recommended nearly 30 years ago by the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. Before this the concept of openly defined bilingual districts, also known as territorial bilingualism, had existed in the laws of Finland for several decades.

In that country, the system has produced a sense of national unity between the Finnish speaking majority and the Swedish speaking minority that is enviable by Canadian standards.

Obviously it is not possible at this time to state categorically what definition my hon. colleagues might give to sufficient demand if they had the chance to review the concept in open debate.

However, I do feel confident that they would not choose to make it as loose as the definition that the federal cabinet chose to impose by order in council on January 1, 1992. This definition is so lopsided that it mandates services in English in Barkmere, Quebec, which has an anglophone population of 20, and in French on Baffin Island where 10 government departments and agencies, including the RCMP, the CBC and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, must provide bilingual services for the benefit of 220 francophones.

My guess is that my colleagues would stop the charade in which Toronto was designated bilingual for the purposes of federal services despite the fact that French is only the 11th most widely spoken language after such languages as Chinese, Italian and Spanish.

Nor do I think they would continue to let English services be imposed in east Montreal where they are an affront to the homogeneous francophone population that nonetheless feels that its linguistic heritage is gravely in peril.

I believe that my colleagues would adopt a definition of sufficient demand very similar to the one advocated by the Canadian Federation of Municipalities which maintains that services should be offered in an individual town, city or rural district only when the linguistic minority meets two statistical measures.

The minority must be above a certain percentage of the local population and it must also be above a certain total number. The

federation uses 5,000 as the minimum and absolute number and 10 per cent as the lowest acceptable percentage.

With these two criteria set, sufficient demand would include the vast majority of French speakers living outside Quebec and most English speakers inside Quebec but it would not be nearly as much of an intrusion as the present secretive definition.

In short, both minority rights and majority rights would be acknowledged. Canadians would be one step closer to true linguistic justice and, by extension, one step closer to a genuine, lasting national unity.

In closing, I draw the attention of my colleagues to another important anniversary. The year 1994 is not only the 25th anniversary of the Official Languages Act, it is also the 50th anniversary of D-Day. Half a century has passed since our fathers shed their blood on the sands of Normandy so that we could live in a country characterized by free and open government.

Let us take this opportunity to honour their memory by amending the act to remove its secretive, arbitrary aspects. Then perhaps we may consider ourselves worthy of the legacy of freedom that they bequeathed to us.

[World Cup Biathlon, February 23rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, on the heels of the winter Olympics there will be a world class sporting event in the riding I represent, Yellowhead, in Alberta.

From March 10 to 13, the town of Hinton will be hosting the world cup biathlon races at Athabasca Nordic Centre. The biathlon, which is a sport combining cross country skiing and rifle shooting, will bring an estimated $2 million in spending to our country.

Twenty-one countries and 238 coaches and athletes, many of whom are now competing in the winter Olympics, will be in Hinton for the world cup. The proud people of Hinton will have two local athletes to cheer on. Kevin Quintilio and Nicole Bressard, who belong to the Hinton Nordic Skiers Club, are world class biathletes who will make not only the people of Hinton proud but the people of Canada proud as well.

I thank all the participating countries for flags received. May I ask all members to join me in cheering on Canada's national team.

[East Coast Ports, February 22nd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport and was inspired by Mr. Creelman MacArthur of Halifax.

While the ports of Halifax and Saint John are ice free year round, the federal government spends millions of dollars annually to ice break the St. Lawrence. This creates a situation of the government indirectly subsidizing inland ports at the expense of those on the east coast.

At a time when the east coast economy is the hardest hit in Canada, why should Halifax and Saint John have to compete not only with inland ports but with the federal subsidies as well?

[Criminal Justice System, February 10th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians across the land are outraged that their hard earned tax dollars are being used to pay restitution to a convicted criminal who fell while playing a racquet sport in prison.

As reported in yesterday's Globe and Mail , one Allan Roe Coulter is serving a nine-year sentence at Matsqui prison in British Columbia after being convicted of armed robbery. Recently a judge awarded the convict $18,750 of taxpayers' money for slipping on the floor while playing racquetball in 1988.

This is just another sample of the sorry state of our criminal justice system. Canada's overburdened taxpayers already pay well over $50,000 a year to keep a prisoner in jail for 12 months.

On behalf of concerned Canadians everywhere, I ask the government to begin the great task of fixing the system.

[Social Security System, February 3rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for the question. We have to remember that the depression occurred during a time when there was not the government involvement in the economies that there is today. Things went relatively quickly once the crash occurred.

All we are doing today by this overspending is procrastinating. We are charging it to the future. I suspect, and there are economists that say this as well, that when that day comes when we cannot spend anymore and when foreign lenders will not lend us money anymore, what happened in New Zealand will also happen in this country. We certainly do not want to see that. That is why we say we have to stop spending now and prioritize spending.

[Social Security System, February 3rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member opposite for the question.

I think I can safely say that there is no member of the Reform Party, let alone the Reform caucus, that would not deny assistance to anyone who really deserves assistance. However there are billions of dollars going to wealthy people, people who are making above average incomes. It is those people from whom we feel that payment should be withdrawn.

For example, the Fraser Institute and economists from all over have shown studies that 30 per cent of wealthy people receive 30 to 40 per cent of government assistance. That just is not fair. It is not fair to those millions of average Canadians who are earning $20,000, $30,000 or $40,000 a year. It is not fair that the tax dollars that these people pay, and God knows they are paying enough, go to people in this upper strata.