Ron MacDonald

[Halifax Fractionation Plant, February 17th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring the House's attention to an article in yesterday's Globe and Mail .

The front page article describes the problems that plagued the Winnipeg blood fractionation plant when political manoeuvring became more important than proper technology and business practice. The Canadian Blood Committee, forerunner of the Canadian Blood Agency, currently trying to derail the Halifax fractionation plant and take over the Canadian blood supply, squandered millions of taxpayers' dollars before virtually giving the obsolete plant away.

In contrast, the proposed plant in Halifax will be built, financed and run by the private sector. Miles Pharmaceutical, which runs fractionation plants around the globe, has guaranteed the full output of the plant.

I call on the provincial ministers of health to learn from history, put petty politics aside and support the Halifax fractionation plant for what it is: good sound economic development in an area that is desperate for good economic news.

[Defence Policy, February 17th, 1994]

I will be very quick, Mr. Speaker.

I can understand, the hon. member opposite is probably used to watching Conservatives on this side of the House who make their decision first and then consult later. We are a government of a different stripe. We believe fundamentally that the people of Canada have a right to be heard before decisions are made.

The white paper will flow from the discussions that will take place in our caucus, in national defence, in the Parliament of Canada and in the standing committee that has been struck today.

If the hon. member will just give us a little time and give Canadians a chance to be heard, that paper will be tabled at the appropriate time in this House.

[Defence Policy, February 17th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I have waited a long time, probably close to five years, for a debate like this to take place in the House of Commons.

I was first elected in 1988. It should be fairly clear to anybody who has been to or lived in Nova Scotia and knows anything about national defence that the contributions made by the Canadian Armed Forces in Nova Scotia and indeed all of Atlantic Canada are extreme not just in dollars spent but also in contributions to communities.

When I was growing up, when we would see somebody in uniform on the main street of my home town, including my father who had served in the armed forces during the second world war, we would look to these people with a great deal of respect. It was bred into us. Of all the places in this great country, I believe there is no place where a service man or woman would feel more welcome than in a place like Nova Scotia because today we still harbour the same degree of respect for the men and women in uniform that we did during the Second World War and in times since then.

Places like Nova Scotia have benefited greatly financially because of the contributions and placement of bases of the Canadian Armed Forces. It is important when talking about the motion in front of us that we look at this from a bit of a historical perspective.

CFB Shearwater and probably half the Canadian navy on the east coast are in my riding. When I was elected in 1988, one of the big concerns that I heard over and over again was that these people in uniform who chose to serve their country so proudly and so well felt that once their representatives were elected, they forgot that they too were constituents who needed to be heard.

They were fed up in 1988 with what they saw as a series of government initiatives that clearly did not care what the job was that they were asked to do, that clearly were not policy driven. They seemed to be driven by an imperative first to get elected. Therefore they promised anything. However, once they were elected, they said they had a debt, a deficit and other things to consider. These were tough decisions. Guess who got the biggest cuts every time something came around? It was the men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces.

Somebody may ask why that is. Perhaps one of the reasons is that when one becomes a member of the Canadian forces and is a good soldier, seaman, air force pilot or working on the Sea King helicopters, one gives up many of the fundamental rights that every other Canadian has come to expect. One gives up one's right to publicly criticize government policy.

Many men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces immediately become an easy target for indiscriminate non-policy based cutting in the area that they have chosen to make a living, national defence.

In 1988, it was tough for me to canvass. When knocking on doors in Dartmouth, career naval officers said to me that my party was against the nuclear submarine program. How can you say your government will look after the interest of the Canadian military establishment, the defence industry establishment and indeed the interest of Canada as a sovereign state if you do not support this initiative?

I said to them that I believed the Canadian Armed Forces had to be given the tools to do the job that they were mandated to do. First and foremost, before we went into these major expenditures we had to have a defence review. We needed to have a white paper that had some teeth, that took into account the fact that the world had changed dramatically since any government had made a fundamental policy review in national defence.

People said to me at the time that Mr. Beatty, then Minister of National Defence, had a paper that went to the floor of the House of Commons. I told them that he had not acted on it, that we were still talking about it. They said that nevertheless it was a paper. I had a heck of a hard time convincing those individuals that the Liberal Party was committed to having a fundamental review of defence policy and that we would modernize our national defences for a changing world. I suppose a lot of them did not vote for me.

About six months after that when the Conservatives were re-elected in 1988, all their plans, policies and great promises of what they were going to do for the Canadian military establishment got shuffled away because of the debt and deficit. All of a sudden Mr. Beatty's white paper on defence was shredded. Once again we had a haphazard approach on how to deal with Canada's national defence forces.

In 1989 when the budget was brought in, after many men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces voted for the Conservative Party, voted for that government because they believed what had been said in the pre-shredded document of 1987 white paper, the Tories came in in 1989 and cut nearly $3 billion, $2.75 billion, from national defence over four years. They did this without any review of the impact that would have on the role that we asked the men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces to perform for us as Canadians both domestically and internationally.

We also saw base closures, again without a fundamental review. What is it that you want the men and women in the forces to do? Tell the generals and they will do their best. Do not come in and say: "We want you to do exactly the same today as you did yesterday, and by the way we are going to send you to three or four more peacekeeping hot spots in the world, but you are going to have to do it with $2 billion, or $3 billion, or $5 billion, or $7 billion less".

It was ridiculous. It was impossible to do both things at the same time. However the military did their best. Then we had what I consider to be an attack on regional realities in Canada.

Because the Tory government did not have a lot of seats in Atlantic Canada, it decided in the 1989 defence cuts that we would share a greater burden of defence cuts than any other part of the country. With 22 per cent of the personnel of the Canadian Armed Forces in Atlantic Canada, we received 55 per cent of the cuts in that 1989 budget. Forget what the mandate was. Forget what those bases were doing. Forget how that would impact on the ability of the Canadian Armed Forces to do their job. It was cut. A political decision was made to cut in Atlantic Canada because the Tories had very few seats there.

The Tories were not going to look anywhere else and we lost bases. We lost CFS Sydney, CFS Barrington, CFB Summerside. I still cannot believe that one. We had reductions in Gander, in Chatham, New Brunswick and on top of all that CFB Moncton, our supply base. I have talked to the generals who say it makes sense to have CFB Moncton, it makes sense to have CFB Chatham.

Political decisions were made at that point in time. The best advice of the generals was thrown aside. That government which had a lot of seats in one province, the province of Quebec, made some decisions about where supply bases should go. That is what it did.

It is little wonder that the men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces started to view all of us that practise politics in this place with a little bit of suspicion. They had been fooled once more.

The other thing that we saw in subsequent budgets was about $11 billion cut over the long term from national defence expenditures in Canada, all without a policy in place. Each and every time the government mismanaged its financial dossier, it hit national defence for the reason I said earlier. The men and women in national defence really do not have a voice. They are not allowed to speak up. They give up that fundamental right that every Canadian comes to expect because they have chosen to serve their country.

We are once again faced with the big bogeymen of the national deficit and debt. Where is government most likely to look first for cuts? National Defence. I have done my homework. I have done my research. I have come to a conclusion. We have a major debt problem in this country. We have got a deficit problem.

The one area of expenditure that has not contributed in any great way to the debt and deficit of this country is national defence. Since the mid-fifties we have seen the expenditures on national defence, not rise like in almost every other area of expenditure but go down steadily from about 25 per cent to about 7 per cent. We have seen the standing forces of the Canadian Armed Forces almost halved in the last 10 years.

National defence, I understand, is a big budgetary expenditure item. I am not saying that it is not. I think that in the absence of a fundamental wholesale full policy review that any further cuts to the Canadian military at this point in time would not only be stupid, would not only be dangerous but would be disastrous for the capability that we may be asking for in 12 months or 14 months' time, that the men and women and their generals and planners undertake for the Canadian Armed Forces.

I want to debunk another myth because some of it is coming from this side of the House and that is kind of hard for me to take. There is a myth that somehow when governments need to cut that we do not look at the strategic reasons why bases are in certain places but we say: "Well, we have to somehow equal pain". As an Atlantic Canadian who has been here for five years, when I hear equal pain it usually means more pain down in my neck of the woods than anywhere else. I hear this coming from some people in the department and some people in the government and it scares me.

Somebody said to me the other day: "Well, you know, Ron, you have $1,240 per capita being spent in Nova Scotia on national defence and the average is about $388 or $389 nationally. So I guess you can take a bigger hit than anybody else". The last time I checked, Canada had one of the longest coastlines of any state in the world. Of all the provinces in Canada, I would

put forward that when we take all of those coves on that craggy shore of Nova Scotia together, we probably have the longest coastline of any province in Canada.

The last time I checked, a sovereign state that had a navy had to put it on the coasts. It does not put it on the prairies. It does not put it in central Canada. I suppose it could try to put it on the Great Lakes but it might have trouble getting out sometimes. The last time I checked, if you are a maritime state, you have to put your navies on your coastline. We have the largest coastline of any state in the world. Nova Scotia has the largest coastline of any province.

British Columbia is on our Pacific side. Where do we put our navies? We put them on our coasts. That is why Victoria, Esquimalt and Halifax harbour are the homes to Canada's navy.

Yes, it costs to have a navy. It costs about a billion dollars per coast to have that small, paltry navy that probably needs a lot more equipment than what it has, but it does a damn good job with the equipment that we have given them and the resources.

I am not going to apologize and say because Halifax is the best ice-free Canadian port on the east coast of Canada that somehow we should shut everything else down in Atlantic Canada that has to do with the military because we have the navy. I am not going to do that because it does not make any strategic sense. The argument is full of vile subtleties that I am not going to debate in this place.

If we take out the Canadian navy and its contribution in Atlantic Canada, suddenly Atlantic Canada and all of the other defence establishment expenditures are below the national average. Is that not shocking? The member for Chatham knows that. I look at the member from Summerside and he knows that. However, past governments have said: "Well you have more than the rest, therefore you have to suffer a little more". Well, we have suffered quite enough from poor planning on defence strategy and poor economic planning of the last government. I am hoping that my government today is not going to do the same thing.

One thing I do know is that we do have a surplus of infrastructure in the Canadian Armed Forces. I know that. That is fundamental. It is reality. What I do know is that when planners over at finance start to determine what they think is sound infrastructure for defence then our defence policy hits the shoals. I know that defence planners are no more capable of dealing with science and technology planning perhaps or the post-secondary educational area in Canada than finance planners would be in defence.

That is why we need first-and I underline first-and foremost a fundamental review of what it is that we want our Canadian Armed Forces to do. Do up the list, priorize it, put our expenditure lines down, tell us how much it will cost and then sit down as a government and determine which of those priority options we are going to undertake.

I think to go the opposite direction would allow us to fall into the same trap as the previous Conservative government. It would allow the state of our Canadian Armed Forces to further erode to a point perhaps from which they will not easily be able to return.

It was not easy in this election to be canvassing with our red book. I supported the red book but it was not easy. The red book said that if we became government we would cancel the EH-101 helicopter contract.

CFB Shearwater is in my riding. It employs a lot of people and does a tremendous job for Canadians. There is the navy at Halifax harbour. Therefore, it was not easy for me to tell people at national defence that I supported new helicopters but I did not support that acquisition. I did it because I believed in the larger policy that we put forward as a government.

I said it before and will say it again to put it in Hansard that as long as we have the Canadian navy on both coasts, it is going to need shipborne air support. As long as we have ships and a navy and we need air support we are going to have to have good equipment to send our pilots up in.

The Sea King helicopters currently at CFB Shearwater are old. They are aging. We have great maintenance crews to keep them flying but they are still old and aging. This or some other government is going to have to make a decision on replacement because those helicopters must be replaced.

The argument then is as to whether or not the choice of the previous government was indeed a sane one. I do not think it was. It was a helicopter based on the premise of an old white paper in the absence of any modern defence policy saying that what we needed was a cold war helicopter. I know it does other things but essentially it was a cold war helicopter.

What I said to the people in my riding was that if they elected me as part of a Liberal government I would ensure there was a voice for the Canadian Armed Forces in my caucus and on the floor of the House of Commons. I would ensure there was a fundamental review of defence policy. I would ensure when that defence policy review was completed that somebody would be there to fight for the resources for the men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces to do the job we ask of them, which they do so willingly and so proudly on behalf of each and every one of us.

We are at that point now. I have read the red book. I had a little bit of say in how it was put together as some of us on this side did. We knew there would be cuts to national defence, but we said two things. We said we would fund the infrastructure program in the red book through cuts to the existing programs and we identified national defence as one of those departments.

We said we would take $360 million from national defence. We also said we would not take it in the same manner the previous Tory administration had, but that we would take it after consultation. I underline after. We indicated that any further cuts in national defence would flow from this fundamental policy review for defence.

I hope that on Tuesday we find that those commitments we made and that I and every one of us canvassed on are upheld in the budget.

Nobody in the Canadian Armed Forces I have met thinks times are easy. They know times are tough because they are taxpayers too. They know that the debt and deficit are spiralling out of control. However they also know that government has a responsibility to maintain a defence force.

What are the things I would like to see in the review? First and foremost we have to look at what our domestic requirement is. There is the navy on the east coast of Canada. We send those frigates and supply vessels out. We send them on exercises in the north and south Atlantic. It costs a lot of money to do that, but as long as we are involved in things like NATO then that is part of our commitment.

I hope that the defence review looks at what is the best and most efficient use of the limited naval resource we have on both coasts first and foremost looking at what it is we need as a sovereign state.

I have mentioned four or five times that we have the largest coastline in the world. I do not have to remind any Canadian that we have a major crisis in the Atlantic fishery. We cannot even police our own 200-mile limit. We have had a problem with too many Canadian fishermen taking too many fish because we could not watch them. We have had a problem with too many foreigners coming in and taking too many fish. Because we could not even police our own sovereign fish resource on the east coast the result is that we have about 40,000 people out of work down there.

We have seen an ecological catastrophe of biblical proportions with the virtual elimination of the northern cod stock. Surely to goodness we have learned our lesson and the defence review will look very closely at what it is we can do with our naval resources to ensure that our renewable fishery resource and which has employed so many hundreds of thousands of Canadians over the centuries is protected once those cod stocks return. That is a role we can look at.

There is another thing we have to look at. There is another war going on in our waters. That is the illegal drugs which are going into far too many coves, nooks and crannies, all along the east and west coasts of Canada. It is destroying our young people. Surely to goodness one of the things we must do is look at our defence resources and apply them in such a way that we combat this crime wave.

I hope we also look at the defence forces for other things. Domestic security also includes environmental security in this day and age. I do not know why we could not use the expertise of the men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces to have a first and ready strike force. Any time there is an environmental or ecological disaster in Canada these highly trained individuals could go in and secure the area and mitigate against environmental catastrophes as much as possible for Canadians.

On the international scene we are going to have to fish or cut bait. We cannot have it both ways. We are a small nation of around 28 million souls. We do our very best. Canada has participated in every peacekeeping venture since the second world war. Think about it. We are spending over $1 billion in our efforts in Bosnia at a time when the government has a $45 billion deficit and we are talking about cutbacks to programs and transfers to individuals.

These are not easy times for us. However surely the defence review will look at these things and will look at what it is we want our armed forces to do in domestic security. It will also look at what we should be contributing as part of our international collective responsibility. Maybe it is peacekeeping. Maybe we will decide there are other things we should do.

What I do know is that the framework established in the red book must be completed. This defence review we are debating today is absolutely essential and has been far too long in the offing. I am very pleased one of the first things our government has done is to choose to set this committee up as quickly as possible so it can go out and consult and come back with the framework for a modern policy for the Canadian Armed Forces.

I am no seer; I do not have a crystal ball. However I hope that on Tuesday the actions the Minister of Finance must take in order to try to control our spiralling debt and deficit will not adversely affect or prejudice this review. I hope the Minister of Finance and the Minister of National Defence will be able to effect as much of the savings as they must for this current year internally, without laying waste too much of the infrastructure of the Canadian Armed Forces.

In conclusion, this has been a great debate and I look forward to participating further as the day rolls on. The men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces have waited a long time for a government that lives up to its commitments on defence. They will be proud and pleased this defence review is now finally under way. At its conclusion they will find that yes, democracy

does work and that yes, sometimes political parties and prime ministers do keep their word to the men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces.

[Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements And Federal Post-Secondary Education And Health Contributions Act, February 9th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, the proposal the member puts forward certainly is debatable. I do not have the figures here for transfers to the province of Quebec. Looking at tax revenues going out and transfers going in, I would suspect that at least recently Quebec has not been hard done by, nor has Nova Scotia. At some point we will be net givers. I hope that at some point the province of Quebec will be a true have province according to the fiscal definitions.

If the question is would it not be better if Nova Scotia just collected its own taxes and kept everything it collected, I would like someone to tell me how it is going to decide what 32 per cent of hospital beds should be shut down in that province. I would like somebody to explain which universities will have to close and how people with my type of background will be able to get a university education.

The reality is that not each province at any given point in time is able to pay its way on all these programs. Equalization is not there as a handout; it is supposed to be a hand up. It is supposed to allow the provinces, dealing strictly with equalization, to have enough resources to try to build the infrastructures within their economies so that they can be competitive. It is not meant to keep them in poverty; it is meant to try to take them out of poverty.

When dealing with established programs financing I would caution my colleague to be very careful. My understanding is that those provinces which get EPFs, at least the seven that get equalization, are getting more than what they would get if they just kept their own tax base.

The question is not whether it is better to be sovereign. The question is whether we can work together as a nation with all our component parts to ensure that if the principles are no longer valid then there will be a debate on it. If the principles of a universally funded health care system are not valid and assistance to post-secondary institutions is not valid then let us have a public debate on it, and not necessarily here.

Let the Canadian people speak. We would find that the people in the Gaspé, the people on the greater northern peninsula and the people from the plains of Saskatchewan might jump up and say: "What are you trying to do to our country?"

The question is not whether or not we should have these programs. The question is whether or not we are able to afford them and whether or not the federal government as the senior partner in Confederation is prepared to work with each individual province to ensure that these programs continue.

I want to speak about EPFs and health care in the province of Quebec. The government in Quebec has done some very neat things in dealing with trying to keep the escalating costs of health care from going through the roof. Other provinces should look to Quebec to see what it has done.

I remember reading an article. One of the major costs of the escalation of health care is that every community has an out patient service and in order to properly staff an out patient service, look at the number of people on average coming through and determine how many doctors have to be there, what equipment has to be there, an anesthesiologist, a surgeon on duty, all of those things, and it is based on volume.

Some people say as many as 80 per cent of the visits to an emergency unit can be handled by a GP. They can be handled by a nurse or a nurse practitioner. Because we have become used to it being free perhaps it is over used. Perhaps it is abused.

The province of Quebec decided not to deny anybody health care but make alternate health care facilities available. If I were in Montreal and walked in needing stitching of a cut on my hand it would agree to do it but it would cost me a few dollars because it is not an emergency service. If I went across the road to the clinic I would be covered under the health care program.

That has saved the Quebec health care system tens of millions of dollars. There are efficiencies that we can look at. The federal government must lead in sharing these good examples as the province of Quebec has done.

I was in London, Ontario, at St. Joseph's Hospital, and London decided it had to better manage the health care budget it had in that hospital. It came in with a new management called total quality management, TQM. Within a year not only did it have better and happier staff in the hospitals, not only did it handle more people in a more efficient manner but it saved about 13 per cent of its budget. It was a large budget. It had not even intended when it set out to try to save money.

In health care, in post-secondary education, we have to lead the way. There are fewer dollars here. We have to lead the way in rationalization of services, both in the health care and in the post-secondary educational system.

I would leave my hon. colleague with this comment. I would ask him, and maybe he has figures to the contrary, to check with his party's research bureau to find out whether the province of Quebec, at this point at least, has a net output of taxes or a net input of taxes. If he could find that out I would be pleased again to debate the issue.

[Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements And Federal Post-Secondary Education And Health Contributions Act, February 9th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, the debate that is going on today is important. It actually strikes at the very heart of what type of country we live in.

Many times we engage in debate that has a very narrow interest across the country. This one certainly has not. I have indicated at other times when I have spoken in the House, specifically in opposition, that we have grown differently. We are a different state than our neighbours to the south and we are a different state than our two founding nations, both Britain and France.

We have decided to do something a little different. We are unique. We have believed as a nation-it is a founding principle of our nation-that there is some sort of collective ownership of the resource that is Canada.

We have structured programs through successive governments and have said that we believe in this great nation, Canada, which maybe one day has a disparity in the east, in Quebec or the west, that somehow governments have a responsibility to commit themselves to free market enterprise but at the same point in time to ensure that there is a redistribution of wealth in this great country.

Indeed I can go back to the time of Confederation. Atlantic Canada at that point in time was a have region in this country. It was one of the wealthiest. Some would say that we have never looked up since we joined Confederation. Some others would say that perhaps in the short history of this country-we are not an old country-these cycles perhaps are very small.

During the course of our short history we have believed that central governments have a responsibility to redistribute wealth in this country. We believe fundamentally with regard to those who because of the exploitation of a natural resource or certain trading patterns or routes exhibit great growth and personal wealth, employment and tax revenue that somehow there is a responsibility of government to redistribute that wealth.

We have formalized that in our Constitution. We have federal legislation that is called equalization. The equalization payments are the most visible sign of that fundamental principle of sharing and collective ownership of resource in this country that the federal government does.

Under equalization, the federal government has transferred some of the taxes that it takes to the less fortunate provinces to try to ensure that those provinces have the resources necessary to offer programs that their citizens deserve, indeed demand, programs of national standards so that within this great country we do not have very different applications of our economies.

It has worked very well. Indeed I hear sometimes from the province of Quebec, from some of the members who are here from the Bloc, that Quebec has been shortchanged.

That is up to debate. Sometimes in Atlantic Canada we believe that we have been shortchanged and that it is not just simply a matter of always wanting equalization. Perhaps it is a matter of fundamental government policies that allows each region of this country to develop its resources and its labour market so that some day we can all be contributors to the national economy instead of takers from the equalization pot.

Sometimes we are fighting over scraps. I would much rather see policies enacted by provincial governments that allow for the freer movement of goods and services and people, that allows for various regions of this country to develop their economies so that the people can develop to the fullness of their potential. That day is not yet upon us. Equalization is indeed important. I remember just a few years ago in this place when the government of the day was different. It was the Conservative Party, which is now down to two members in this place. That government saw the the role of the federal government in redistributing wealth a little differently. Every penny it could save, every dollar of its own debt it could transfer to the provinces it saw as a victory. Then hopefully it could go the public and say: "Look how well the economy has been managed". Through the restraints it put on equalization, through its interpretation of some of the clauses we saw the numbers of dollars that the provinces expected to get from the federal government jump wildly.

I think it was three years ago that I rose in my place and questioned the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister because that small, beautiful province of Prince Edward Island, whose minister of finance was preparing a budget, was given information by the federal government of the day that it could expect so many dollars in equalization under the formula for the previous year. At the last moment, two days before he tabled his budget in the P.E.I. legislature, the federal finance officials called and said: "Sorry, we have reinterpreted some of the provisions and now you are going to get millions of dollars less in equalization".

What did that do to little Prince Edward Island? The treasurer was going to be reporting a surplus in his budget. Can you imagine a surplus in this day and age? That surplus was turned into a deficit.

In my province of Nova Scotia the minister of finance, a Tory at the time, and I guess they did not even talk among themselves because he was caught quite unaware, found out he was going to get $72 million less. The province had already spent the money. Therefore, there was a pressing need from the provincial finance ministers and treasuries to put some order into what they could reasonably expect to receive from the federal government.

This bill puts some order in it. It is a five year plan wherein we tell the provinces: "We cannot give you everything you might want, but we are going to give you some certainty. We will tell you what our plan is and we will guarantee that we will not deviate from that plan in a way that negatively impacts on your fiscal ability to conduct your affairs in your own province". That is a plus. I do not think there is a premier of any of the seven provinces that receive equalization who would not get up an applaud this very positive measure.

There is another area that the bill does not address but it is equally important, called the EPF, established programs financing. These are programs that the federal government gets into to again try to equalize opportunity around the country. These are programs that fund our health care system in Canada and fund post-secondary education.

I told one of my colleagues from the Reform Party who called me a socialist Liberal, the other day-I thank you for the compliment by the way-that if it was not for EPF to the provinces across Canada that as the son of a coal miner from Cape Breton who not through any fault of his own but because of the working conditions of the day saw more pay days than he saw pay cheques, I would not have been able to afford to go to university. In some of the poorest provinces if it was not for the established programs financing, the EPF, we would have different systems of health care right across this country.

Those Liberal policies of days gone by just like equalization were corrupted by the previous administration. The result was that provinces that had programs of national standard dictated primarily by the federal government, as in health care, found in every single year, in every federal Tory budget that came into this place that they could expect less and less.

In a place like Newfoundland if you receive $12 million less for post-secondary education where in the name of goodness are you going to pick that up on your limited tax base in that province? In a place like Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba or Quebec, when a federal government unilaterally cuts because it has mismanaged the economy like the Tories did and says that it is not going to be participating at the same level as it did last year, tell me where those provinces pick it up. They do not.

One thing we said during our campaign and the Prime Minister has also said we will work on is once again to put some certainty into the levels of EPF, establish programs financing. We cannot give them everything. We have a huge deficit and a huge debt but we will put some certainty so that ministers of health and ministers responsible for post-secondary education in each of our provinces will be able to sit down and with some

certainty know that they are not going to get the royal shaft in the next federal budget that comes down from the federal government. That is exactly what we need.

I want to give some statistics. I am not going to criticize members of the Bloc Quebecois for their political beliefs. That is what freedom of expression is all about in the democratic process. We will have great and hopefully historic debates in this place about the issues they wish to put forward. However the reality is that many of the fractures we currently see in our country are recent ones. They can be traced back to a sense of not being listened to, a sense of betrayal by many regions of the country in their dealings with the federal government.

The province I come from does not want handouts. I would desperately love to stand in this House some day and complain that we are getting too much money and that it should go somewhere else.

My role as a member of Parliament is not just to represent and try to build a strong Nova Scotia. It is to try to better Canada. It is to try to ensure that we pass policies and programs which allow each and every one of our citizens, no matter who they are, no matter what their language, no matter where they come from, whether they are native born or immigrant, to participate to the fullness of their potential in this great country. That is what we are all here for.

Over the last number of years we have seen the erosion of the regime where we did transfer and did believe in collective ownership of the resources and riches of Canada. I want to give some sense as to why we are seeing fractures in the east and maybe in Quebec, but certainly in the west. They say that federal governments have not listened to them.

The federal Conservative government, in a number of successive budgets, possibly three or four, changed the established programs financing formula which is another form of equalization. It said it would participate on increases using the consumer price index, CPI minus one, CPI minus two, CPI minus three. What did that mean?

To a province like Nova Scotia it meant that if health care costs went up by 5 per cent the federal government no longer was giving out 50 cents on the dollar on that increase. The benchmark if it was the previous year was 50:50, but any increase over that would only be cost shared on a formula that said cost is consumer price index minus 3 per cent.

If the consumer price index was 5 per cent and the health care costs went up by 5 per cent there was not full sharing on that 5 per cent. Full sharing was received on 2 per cent which meant that the poorest provinces had to find within their limited tax bases a way to fully recover the 3 per cent increase. It was 100 per cent on those dollars, no 50-cent dollars.

What has it meant? It means under the old formula the province of Quebec will be the first province to no longer see a transfer in cash for hospital expenditures. It will be the first. It means that over the course of its 10-year program in health care alone the federal government had withdrawn on full funding 50:50, to the tune of $29.998 billion. In 1989-90 as a result of the government's formula where it rejigged what participation meant, it meant that the health care system in the provinces lost $1.107 billion.

What does one do in British Columbia? It is hard enough to deal with that if it is a so-called have province such as Ontario, which is not really a have any more because of the New Democratic government and its policies. But Alberta and British Columbia are finding it tough enough. What about the economies where there is deep recession and even depression?

What about education? As a result of this rejigging of EPF, this fundamental tenet of Canadian federal-provincial relations, in post-secondary education, during a 10-year period the Conservative policies will have cost $12.109 billion out of federal government participation on post-secondary education.

What does that mean? It means in the poorest provinces, the smallest provinces we have already started to create a society where it does matter where one lives and it does matter what one's tax base is, because the province of Nova Scotia has now seen transferred over nine years of Tory government a huge amount of the federal mismanaged debt. It is down sitting on its desk now. The same can be said for Newfoundland, Quebec, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. That is what it has done. Therefore the pressures on us now have been caused by intentional fiscal policies.

I do not think we can right all the wrongs of the past and I am not suggesting for one second that we could. I wish we could, but I do not think we can. What we can do is work with the provinces. We can tell them we are not going to give them the shaft every time they turn around at budget time. We are prepared to sit down and work with them. We understand that a dollar saved at the federal level by reducing transfers for these necessary programs is not really a dollar saved when looking at the impact on these smaller provinces.

I do not know what the Minister of Finance will come down with but I know our government will uphold the commitment it made to Canadians and to the premiers during the election campaign. We will not do what the previous government did and come in and lay waste to the equalization programs and established programs financing.

I do not think there is an issue that grips Canadians more today than whether or not our health care system can survive. There is a funding crisis and a utilization crisis in our health care system. Surely the way we deal with that is not to continue with the policies of the past government. We must deal with it co-operatively and recognize that the federal government got us into these programs and the federal government cannot be allowed to abandon them.

We also believe in fiscal responsibility. We have to look at the finances of Canada not just at the finances of the federal government. The finances of our provinces, the territories and our municipalities all impact on whether or not we are able to grow and prosper or whether or not we will be weighed down by debt. Our federal government has indicated it is prepared to deal with that.

In every one of the economic policies we pursue as a government, no matter how scary the deficit might be, no matter how many special interest groups may scream, whine and threaten, we will always, always, always make those economic decisions based on the impact on every average Canadian. That is different. That should give some hope to the unemployed. It should give some hope to the people in the poorest regions. It should give hope to some of the have not people in the have provinces who need training, who need to be put back to work, who want to be taxpayers instead of tax takers.

We may debate whether or not it is enough, but this is an initiative that stops the slide of federal dollars into the provinces. This initiative sends out a signal and a sign to the provinces that there is a new gang in town. This is a new Parliament. We are prepared to work with each and every one of the provinces to ensure that the priorities of Canadians are expressed and fulfilled not just by the federal government but by our provincial legislatures as well.

I applaud the government but I also let it know there are some on this side of the House, now that we are government, who still believe we have a fundamental responsibility to stand and speak for the people who elected us. To date the ministers seem to have listened. I know the Prime Minister has.

I know that many on this side of the House and on the other side as well will be vigilant in ensuring the government fulfils the commitments we have all collectively made to our constituents.

[Interparliamentary Delegations, February 9th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 34, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the report of the Canadian delegation of the Canada-Japan Interparliamentary Association to the second annual meeting of the Asia-Pacific parliamentary forum held in the Philippines on January 14 and January 15.

The recommendations that came out of this meeting are of great interest to Canada. The fact that the Canadian Parliament decided to participate even before this Parliament was formerly struck certainly indicates the importance that this government and this Parliament place on economic matters in the Asia-Pacific region.

[House Of Commons Standing Orders, February 7th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened to the hon. member often in the last two years as he led a political party from relative obscurity to one that certainly holds some currency with the Canadian public today. I do respect his views, although I may not agree with all of them.

The hon. member has done quite a lot, as has his party through their political movement to ensure that we just do not heap scorn upon those of us who seek to do public service through our respective legislatures but by raising some real issues. Sometimes institutions change very slowly. As a young member of Parliament I can tell the hon. member that much of which he speaks I have supported and I will continue to support.

The whole concept of why we are here, whether it is to serve our party, our political masters within the party or our constituents, I am sure is one that each member of Parliament has had to deal with at some point since this country was formed. It is a matter of compromise and it is a matter of balance.

We have a party system. It means that within our party structures we try to draw a consensus on major issues. To have a complete lack of any discipline within the caucus system, I would put forward, would lead to some anarchy and perhaps some extreme forms of legislation, coming as the member would say from the executive. I think there is a balance.

However, I do agree that excessive discipline has been used in this place and in political parties for far too long. It has caused an abuse of the privileges of members who come here to speak on behalf of their constituents.

I want to ask the leader of the Reform Party if he believes there is a happy medium between complete direct democracy for every member and the party discipline system. I have noticed in the few votes we have had in this House that it appears that either they are birds of a feather flocking together or-

[House Of Commons Standing Orders, February 7th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the whole area of pension reform is not something the Reform Party, the Bloc or the Liberals can claim credit for.

The Canadian public, because of the way we have conducted ourselves in the past here, has had a pox on both our Houses, and I mean the other place as well as this place. Therefore the good members who sit here are constantly being questioned about whether or not they are paid too much or whether or not they give value for money. That did not happen 10 or 15 years ago. It has just happened recently.

I can think of nobody in the previous Parliament who did not fully justify the pay received from the crown for the job performed. I can honestly say I have never met anybody who served in this place, at least when they first came to serve in this place, who was here for self-interest. They were here because they wanted to better the country.

The problem we have as legislators is that there are people like Mr. Somerville of the national coalition who would have everybody in the world believe that nobody works up here. That is fundamentally wrong. Every member of Parliament knows, as the new members in the Reform Party, the Bloc and the Liberals have learned very quickly, that this is a very difficult job. It is a tough job but it is one we sought.

As far as pension reform goes, I have always said I do not believe people in this Chamber are overpaid. They are underpaid for the work they do. Far too many have to make choices with their families and they have to live with those choices long after they finish serving in this place. Nobody here should get rich, but nobody should be beaten every day in the media and by public interest and indeed by some members here because they take a salary home for a job well done. That is on all sides of the House.

The public wants pension reform. I will continue to say what I said during the campaign. I am fully in favour of an independent committee saying what we are worth here. Regardless of whether it says we are worth $100,000 or $30,000, or if it says we are worth a pension after 20 years or 10 years, I am quite prepared to live or die by whatever the recommendations are, if it is a truly independent committee. Other members have to be prepared to do that also. They have to defend whatever it is the independent committee recommends to their own constituents not just during election campaigns but as soon as that committee reports.

I am in favour of pension reform, but let us support whatever it is that comes in from the independent commissions.

[House Of Commons Standing Orders, February 7th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure after five years of serving as the member of Parliament for Dartmouth to rise in this place to talk about the changes that have been proposed and put before us today with regard to the standing orders of the House.

When I first arrived here in 1988 I guess I was one of those people who wanted to change the world and do it rather quickly. But at the same time, because I had spent some time working for the previous Liberal administration, I knew that the rules of the House could be used either in favour of reform of the rules and progression of legislation or used to stymie.

Unfortunately, in the first four and a half years I was here the rules of this place were all too often used to stop that type of exchange and that type of debate and in actual fact to undermine the confidence Canadians had in this institution.

The Right Hon. John Turner, the member for Vancouver Quadra until the recent election and who chose not to seek re-election, often said that this place is the highest court in the land. It truly is. It is a pleasure to be sent here no matter what political philosophy one harbours at any time. Indeed it is an honour to be allowed to come to this place and represent one's constituents.

However, what happened in the last session at least, far too often the government of the day even without a great deal of consultation with its own members would decide with rules that were enacted in an archaic way so that only the executive branch of government had any right to know what in the name of goodness was going to take place. Bills were put before the House which were imperfect as most bills will be. Even on the government side good members, nearly all of whom were defeated or retired, were not allowed to have any input. They really saw what was going on when it went to their Wednesday caucus meeting. At that time there was no attempt to seek input so that as legislators or as representatives of the people we could better the legislation and put our ideas forward. It was the government line.

The bill would come down and members would be told: "That is it. You go in the House. You have your marching orders and you support that bill to the death". Members on the opposition side did exactly the opposite. Most times it did not matter if there was a grain or a whole beach full of wisdom in the bill members of the opposition opposed because it was viewed in

that type of combatant legislative set of regulations that was what they did.

The rule changes that are before us today are a step forward. We have seen a few steps forward since this Parliament was elected. We have seen the reform document that was tabled. When the Minister of Supply and Service and Public Works was our House leader, he put forward a number of reforms that we thought if we were the government we would like to try to pursue.

One thing was that we would have free debates in this House so that prior to the government making a decision members from all sides, not just the government side, but the opposition and other parties and the independents represented here would have an opportunity to put their position forward. Hopefully the minister or the government generally would listen and come up with better legislation, better regulations and better governance for the country. These rules start to do that.

I recall that in 1988 after I was elected committees were struck and all too often government members came in and supported bad legislation. As I said, in most cases opposition members would not support even good legislation. But there was one opportunity we saw for change. It was when the then Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs came forward to me as the critic and said: "Look, we have a Bankruptcy Act". It was Bill C-22. "We are going to introduce this thing in the House of Commons". I think the six or seven previous attempts to pass that had failed. It was clearly not in the public interest for anybody who was on that committee to see another attempt at reforming Canada's bankruptcy laws fail. We were in the middle of a recession and we were seeing unprecedented numbers of individuals and companies going bankrupt. I think the Bankruptcy Act dated back to 1948 or 1949. It had never been substantially reformed.

I said to the minister: "If you are prepared to allow us to pre-study the bill or give it to us after first reading and if you are prepared to tell your members on the committee that they have free rein to treat the bill as a draft piece of legislation, I will give you the assurance of the Official Opposition that our members will try to build a bill that can pass the House of Commons, that takes account of the special interests but comes forward with what is in the public interest". That worked and for months we studied that bill. The bill we came up with did not even look the same as it had.

Alas, when it came down to the crunch the government of the day decided it was going to become partisan again. When that happened the business of the committee shut down. That rare period of harmony in the committee changed. We became highly partisan and the bill hit the rocks. It was only because we were able to rediscover that sense of joint responsibility for legislation we were able to pull it off the rocks.

The country is better off today because there is a new Bankruptcy Act. Probably thousands of people are still employed in Canada because that act allows for reorganization of corporations and allows for reorganization of personal debt. It was a fine hour for the House of Commons when we did exactly that type of work.

The changes to the standing orders we are debating today go even further. I am an advocate of reform. If we are to gain back the respect of the people whom we are elected to serve it is important that we be allowed to do our jobs as parliamentarians. It means that members of the Bloc Quebecois, the Reform Party, New Democrats and the independents in the House be allowed as much input as possible into the legislative process.

The reforms before us today indicate that after first reading and before approval in principle when everyone is tied down to a position, bills can be referred to standing or special committees of the House. This has pushed us miles forward from where we were.

If we pursue this vigorously on important or contentious pieces of legislation or those which have various sides to them, members of the Bloc, members of the Reform and indeed members of the governing Liberal Party will be able without fear of reprisal from their whips-God love all the whips-to provide direct input. This is a very positive step for this Parliament.

Through the reading of the proposed amendments we are debating today I also get the sense that committees will or can be asked by a minister to come up with the general direction on a piece of legislation. In other words it can roughly formulate legislation which would then go to justice officials who would put it together.

As time goes on and in practice I hope that these committees will work together. I hope they will find areas in the public interest to conduct their own studies without necessarily a reference or request from a minister and come forward with what they believe is appropriate legislation addressing those concerns.

For example, in the last couple of sessions of Parliament members have come forward with private members' bills. Some of those private members' bills dealt with ingredient labelling. Actually the Deputy Prime Minister when she was in opposition had put forward a couple of those bills.

Suffice to say perhaps standing committees will be able to take that type of subject matter and formulate pieces of legislation. They could then be put before the House finding some process by which they could be properly debated and passed, if they are good pieces of legislation.

I could speak for days on this subject, but in closing I commend my government for taking the initiative so early in this new Parliament to put forward what I hope is the first of a

number of reforms. It will put some respect back into the parliamentary process and will also make this place more worth while for the members who serve here.

[Bosnia-Hercegovina, February 7th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure all members of this House were shocked and saddened to see reports of the carnage in Sarajevo on Saturday.

Once again the shortcomings of the UN position have been seen. Despite the best of intentions lack of a coherent direction is costing lives daily.

Warring factions continue to thumb their noses at the international community while we continue to issue condemnations and pass UN resolutions which we simply are not prepared to enforce, except for the one ensuring that the Bosnian government cannot acquire the means necessary to defend itself.

I implore our government while ensuring the safety of our troops on the ground to urge the UN to take whatever actions are necessary to stop this genocide. As one citizen of Sarajevo said on the weekend: "This was not the Chetniks that did this, it was the world. This is the world's responsibility".