Gerry Ritz

[Supply, May 8th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Toronto—Davenport for his intervention. He is of course on the record as trying to spearhead a national drinking water committee. I think it would be very important to do that. I think it should be an all party committee. I think it must confer with the provincial ministers, the Federation of Municipalities and so on.

It is time for the drinking water concerns to be addressed in a systematic fashion, not an ad hoc series of programs. We need to look at the big picture, break it down into components and address each one of those: the sewer, the water distribution system and so on, and it needs to be done through research and development. It is also very important to stress the co-operation and conditions that would be placed on provincial jurisdictions. This is their area of expertise and they really need to be brought to the fore. I know my colleagues from Quebec will certainly stress that issue, and I fully support that. The federal government is really trampling on provincial jurisdiction in doing this but let us take a look at it in a systematic way.

The member mentioned the snow storm in Toronto and the help it received. A couple of years ago, when an ice storm hit this region, lower Quebec and so on, the federal government was there. If we look at the floods in Manitoba and other areas of the country, we see that the federal government had a role to play.

I would ask the members opposite today to keep crisis and disaster in mind as my community of North Battleford applies for extra funding to get its water back under control.

A new sewage plant has been committed for the year 2003. We would like to bring that forward by a year or a year and a half. The problem we are seeing is that the green funds that have been announced are a little tough to access when the forms are not out yet. They are a little tough to administer when the guidelines say that anything planned needs to have the planning done, the site selection done, the environmental assessment done, the contract let and the building built and tied into the system in less than a year. That is physically impossible when we look at all of the concerns that have to be addressed.

Let us have a look at those regulations. North Battleford sits in the middle of a large agricultural area. It is certainly aware of federal government programs, such as AIDA, and how difficult they are to manage and maintain. It is also aware of the green funding. However, when it looks at the funding it sees it as a public relations spin that really does not address the issue in a practical or common sense way.

We need to get beyond the partisanship and the politics and address this across the country. We have a lightning rod in North Battleford. We had one in Walkerton. We need to seriously look at this issue.

[Supply, May 8th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I rise today as the MP who covers the area of North Battleford where we are having our latest outbreak of problem water. I will read the motion that my colleague from Fundy—Royal put forward for people who have just joined us. It states:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should act with the provinces and territories to establish enforceable national drinking water standards that would be enshrined in a Safe Water Act.

When I look at this motion, I have a certain amount of trepidation in voting positively for it. People at home are crying out. There is a demand and a need for safe water across the country.

We have a myriad of standards at this point. There are over 79 guidelines in the Canadian drinking water quality, 54 of which are health based, 17 are based on aesthetics, which is colour, taste and so on, and another 8 have a combination of the two. As I said, I talk about this with some trepidation. This is a provincial jurisdiction. We really have to get beyond the politics and look at the end of the day to what is best for the common good of ordinary Canadians who are demanding safe and secure water supplies across the country.

There is a myriad of examples where there are problems. Senator Grafstein has a bill in the Senate at this time. He has identified 700 communities, and he says there are probably more, that have problems with water. At any given time there are 5,000 communities across the country that have boil water advisories out.

We have to look at the concentrations of livestock and some of the weather related problems. Part of the problem in North Battleford is that the river content is very low at this time. Compound that with the sewer pump that is on the wrong end of the town and there is a recipe for disaster.

A tremendous amount of studies have been done. Currently we have national standards but they are not binding. The problem as I see it is that there is a tremendous disconnect between the standards we have and the testing that is required.

The problem with the testing is that it is very expensive. The procedures are very costly. The fancy name is cryptosporidium, which is the little bug in the water in North Battleford. Testing for that requires tankers of water to be taken to the provincial lab, which is 300 or 400 kilometres away. That is done on an ongoing basis. It is cost prohibitive.

The other option is to have a chemical engineer or a biologist on staff, which of course for a community of 15,000 again is cost prohibitive. There has to be some sort of national, provincial and municipal co-operation.

The Minister of Transport made a comment the other day. He stated “The government believes the improvement of our drinking water supply and sewage treatment is an utmost priority.” That is what he said. The health minister, in a comment to my question to him yesterday in this place, said that there was nothing more important than public safety, that we really had to spend money on our crumbling infrastructure and that $56 million had been allocated to Saskatchewan.

To replace the sewage plant alone in North Battleford, we are looking at $20 million. That is a third of the total allocation to Saskatchewan. It will handle the output for 15,000. There is roughly a million people in Saskatchewan, so members will see that the $56 million will be a couple of dollars short and probably a day or two late in this instance.

There are a couple of heavy weights at the cabinet table saying that they realize there is a problem. It really begs a question. Moneys have been allocated to the Canada infrastructure program with the focus on water and sewer. We have a tremendous problem with crumbling infrastructure in water and sewer related areas. One member cited the problems on first nation reserves. He is absolutely right. We see that at home on the reserves. However it is also hitting our towns and communities that pay huge taxes are looking for security in their water and sewer supplies.

We are not seeing it happen out there. As the federal government cut the funding on the health and social transfers, that got off-loaded to the provinces. What did the provinces do? They cut support and so on to the municipal governments, the lowest level of government, which led to problems that we see today. They cannot do the testing that is required because the dollars are not there. Staffing has been cut, and it has been a compound action all the way down. I guess we all share in the disgrace in our safe water supply.

We are being asked today to support the idea that the federal government should get into the business of clean water. That is an argument unto itself. If we look at what federal governments have done over time with health care, employment insurance and other programs like that, we see that they have become bureaucratically heavy and have not delivering the germ we need out there in the real world.

Clean water is and will continue to be a complex issue. We have geography. We have climate. We have floods and all sorts of things that happen. We need access to source. Then we have the crumbling infrastructure. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities said we need $16.5 billion just to get everybody back to a benchmark that would give us relatively safe water and sewage handling. The whole Canada infrastructure program over three years is $4 billion. That will not even supply maintenance.

We will have to take a lot harder look at this issue. Government spending is all about priorities. We saw an announcement of $560 million to the arts. Then people say that they need safe water. Where do we suppose they vote? Which one would they ask for? We have a long gun registry that has eaten up $600 million, and we do not have safe water. Which one would the ordinary citizen want to put the money into? It is all about priorities.

The impact of the water crisis in North Battleford goes away beyond money and regulations. People on the street are concerned about their health and the future safety of the water supply. There is a problem out there about when it will be safe. When the people who were in charge when the problem hit say the water is safe, will these people take their word for it? Probably not. A whole supply system has to be flushed out and that can only be done after rigorous testing has been done at both the sewage end and the pump intake end. There is a combination there of wells and surplus water that is used.

There has been a tremendous outpouring of support for North Battleford's situation from across the country. A lot of other communities, which were in that same situation to a lesser degree, have come forward with ideas. As was mentioned before by my colleague from Red Deer, tremendous gains have been made on the applications of cleaning up our water supply. We are marketing those across the world. If North Battleford wants the upscale, high tech equipment, it will have to go to Beijing to buy it from a Canadian source. We just do not seem to have that communication system in this country which puts the buyer and the seller together. In a lot of cases it is very cost prohibitive.

There are a couple of options available to clean up the cryptosporidium that is in the water in North Battleford. One involves a complete ultraviolet light filter system, which is very expensive and high maintenance. It needs to be maintained on almost a daily basis because of the volume of water that would go through it. The summer capacity is like 3.4 million gallons a day, so that adds to the problem. The system is very dry right now, so it could even go higher than. That is the average.

Other people have come forward. Canadian Tire did an excellent job of getting bottled water to the people. The line up has been as long as two kilometres and those folks have risen to the challenge. They have committed to 1,500 gallons a day to be brought in. They have given fantastic support to a small community. The Canadian Tire store is probably the best loved store out there right now. I really commend it for its efforts.

Culligan has stepped up to the plate. It will ship in skids of water at its cost, including cost of the water, freight and everything. The only thing Culligan wants is for the province to waive the enviro charge, which would be about $1,200 on what it is planning to ship in. I was on a conference call yesterday with the new premier, Lorne Calvert, the mayor and the council, and I am sure the province will step up to the plate.

Everyone is looking for solutions. We are way beyond trying to condemn anyone. We need to find the answers and move along with that.

The crisis over water in Canada is becoming a crisis over government. People are looking to their municipalities that provide these services. They then look to their provinces and ask them for their support. Lastly, they look to the federal government that made the decision to make the huge cuts in health and social transfers. They are telling the federal government that the cuts were for the deficit, which is gone, so we should now prioritize some government spending.

Canadians want the government to look at putting money back into safe resources like water and sewers. They want the infrastructure system, which is so sadly lacking across the country, to be built up again. It is not systemic to one particular area. Every province has problems. No one is blameless. Five years ago we were slashing funding and now it is time to step up to the plate and put some of it back.

We have been asked today to support the idea that the federal government should get into the business of clean water and the safety of supply. I guess in a vacuum where that does not exist someone has to come forward. I have a real problem voting for the federal government to get into a situation like this but of course the money rests with the federal government.

What we are looking for today is the federal government to commit the $20 million that will be needed in North Battleford to bring its sewage system up to standard so it can get back to doing ordinary business.

[Infrastructure, May 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, there is a major problem. The application forms have not even been designed yet. Time is not on our side on the issue of safe water.

All communities need access to safe water today, not days and months from now. Platitudes, promises and public relation spins will not fix any problem.

The Minister of Health pledged his support this weekend. I will ask him again. When will he remove the bureaucratic delay and start the money flowing into communities?

[Infrastructure, May 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, in typical Liberal fashion, the government throws large gobs of money at real problems and then drags its feet on delivery.

Before last fall's election the government promised hundreds of millions of dollars to rework sewer and water facilities. Six months later another community, North Battleford, has a major contamination. Guess what? The government cannot trigger any of that promised money.

When will the government get its act together, cut the red tape and get out the money it promised?

[Stock Market, April 27th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, with our stock markets so volatile these days, here are 10 new definitions for stock market terminology.

Momentum investing: the fine art of buying high and selling low.

Value investing: the art of buying low and selling even lower.

Broker: poorer than you were in 1999.

P/E ratio: the percentage of investors wetting their pants as this market keeps crashing.

Standard and Poor: your life in a nutshell.

Bull market: a random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.

Bear market: a 6 month to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewellery and the husband sleeps on the couch.

Stock split: your ex-wife and her lawyer split all your assets equally.

Profit: a religious guy who talks to God.

A 64 cent penny stock: what it now costs a loonie to buy.

[Supply, March 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his intervention. He is quite right that the net income on a farm is a very elusive target if there is any at all.

Seventy-five per cent of the farms in western Canada are viable only because of off farm income, that is husband and/or wife both working off farm to keep the cows in the barn.

The problem with the AIDA money, and he is talking about the $2.6 billion that was in the global budget, is that less than 60% of it ever left the cabinet table and got on to the kitchen tables. That includes 1998 and 1999.

Distraught farmers in my riding have been phoning me. Less than two-thirds of what they applied for in 1998 ever came to them. Now they are getting clawback notices from the minister of agriculture and his friends asking them to send back two-thirds of it because they were overpaid. Can we imagine being on the bankrupt rolls and being asked to send money back?

The government has rejigged the formula to include things that were not in the original formula. That would be fine if it triggers more money when the government could not get it all out in the first place, but it will now claw back the two-thirds it sent out.

The payments for 1999 are finally coming out. Guess what year it is? It is 2001. Is it a bankable program? My sweet aunt Fanny, it never got out there. It is sending out only two-thirds of the 1999 money because it is scared it will run out of money. What an absolutely ludicrous reason. The government never sent out more than 60% to begin with and it just put another $500 million in the same clogged pipe.

That pipe must be clogged with Liberal logic because we never saw any of the money out west. The Saskatchewan grains and oilseed sector is hardest hit in the country. How can the government sit across there and vote against any more money being topped in? It would not matter if we were asking for $10 billion today. Nobody would qualify.

[Supply, March 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, it was just over three years ago, as a rookie MP with a farming background from a rural riding in western Canada, I stood here with a certain amount of pride and dignity to talk about farming issues.

Three years ago agriculture in western Canada was on a slippery slope. We started to realize that farming out west was 90% politics and 10% producing the product.

We have seen agriculture over the last three years decline to the point that we have an industry in crisis. Agriculture is one of the largest industries in the country when we consider the inputs that go into the ground, the processing that applies to everything we produce and the jobs created on the in and the out.

The agriculture minister stood in this place and said to western Canadians and Ontario producers that crop insurance and NISA were the answers to global subsidization problems. What a ridiculous statement.

Later the Prime Minister stood in his place and we heard him say that there could not be an agricultural crisis because he did not read about it in the National Post or the Globe and Mail .

Those newspapers do not represent the problems we have in western Canada or in rural Ontario, let alone in Quebec or the maritimes. An editorial writer from the Globe and Mail who is based in Winnipeg decried the whole situation. What a joke. Those people should get outside the city, have a look around and talk to producers who cannot afford to put bread on their own table let alone put a crop in the ground this year.

There is a lot of talk about the $500 million that has been allocated. There are a couple of problems with that number. When we look at the budget that the government handles, close to $160 billion this year, $500 million is not a lot of money in that context. It is a lot of money when compared to other industries that receive money from the government, but we are talking about the third largest contributor to the GDP.

The problem has gone way past the farm gate. As I alluded to, a tremendous number of service industries feed into the agricultural sector. Input costs have gone up 50%, 100%, or 200% in some cases, for fuel, fertilizer, chemicals, land taxes, machinery costs and so on.

The member who spoke before talked about a 1,000 acre western farm. That would be a hobby farm out there. The average farm in the west approaches 3,000 to 4,000 acres. There are all kinds of large farms in my riding with 10,000, 12,000 and 15,000 acres that try and make a go of it. The average cost of machinery is in excess of $1 million to $2 million on each farm.

The problem with all those inputs, the parts and everything else that keeps them running, is our low dollar. All the input costs are based on American money. We are starting out 37 to 40 cents behind, and those costs are rising.

The Prime Minister says that the low dollar is great for everybody because it helps with our exports. Well it has not seemed to help with my export prices on commodities that the wheat board handles but it certainly has cost me a lot in the pocketbook on the input side.

The freight system in western Canada is now based on conflict and animosity rather than being commercially based and properly tendered. Rising transportation inputs are probably the highest costs on my farm. Transportation costs me at least one-third off the top, which is absolutely ridiculous.

The answer to rising transportation costs on the prairies is to go higher up the food chain. Let us value add to the grain, durum, barley and so on. Let us run the flour mills and pasta plants, which have been tried and shut down because of regulations controlling the way we must buy and re-buy our own products. It is absolutely ludicrous. We are forced to pay freight and elevation charges on a product that never leaves the farm. How smart is that?

When that is explained to backbenchers on the other side they say that it is ridiculous. They ask why durum growers cannot build their own pasta plants and grind their durum into flour and recoup the extra $3 a bushel. The Canadian Wheat Board says that we cannot do that.

Ministers, like the one from Prince Edward Island who stood here and said that the wheat board is a great thing, do not live on the prairies. The people who come from these opposition benches do live there and we all got elected in 1993, 1997 and 2000 campaigning on an open and accountable optional marketing system. We need that.

The wheat board does not export out into the global market as it used to. Everything it buys and sells now goes through a line company, hence the transportation, freight and elevation charges to tidewater. There are no terminals on the west or east coasts. It is run back through one of the line companies. Who is making the money? It is not coming back to the producer at the farm gate.

Where do we go? The debate today is on subsidies, safety nets and the role of government. The role of government in this institution is to play catch up. The farm is in crisis. We must have a cash injection before spring. Farm groups and provincial governments are lobbying for a minimum of $900 million from the federal government and the balance of 40 cents on the dollar from the provinces. They thought that would get the crop in the ground and that hopefully the European and American subsidies would start tailing off. We have seen crop problems in the rest of the world that may bring the price back up.

We need those options. We must be able to do that. We must be able to value add, as I said. We need the government to look at the tax component of our input costs and the huge freight problem in the west.

There are answers. We need a safety net system. There is talk about short and long term situations. In the short term we need cash to get the crop in the ground. There is no doubt about it because we are playing catch up.

In the long term we need a NISA account that will allow us to level the playing field for good and bad years. Even the agriculture minister now realizes his previous position was wrong. We must be able to use the NISA account to level out the bad years. We must change the fundamental way NISA is handled so young farmers can get a start. The average age of farmers in Saskatchewan is 60. We have lost two generations of young producers because they cannot afford to get into the industry. We need a NISA account that will allow that type of thing to happen.

We need crop insurance that is user friendly so we can insure crops that are not covered properly now. When there is a claim we need results to be specific to one farm and not calculated as a general average, as is done with the costs.

We need a long term trade type of cushioning mechanism. It can be the trade distortion thing we talked about with the Crow money or a system like GRIP or MRI in Ontario, but it must be able to soften the blow of offshore improper trade subsidies. That is the long term requirement, but we need cash today to be able to keep on farming.

I am sharing my time with the member for Crowfoot who I know has some great points to put on the record today.

[Agriculture, March 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, recently the government attempted to address the anguish of Canadian farmers by tossing out some old money and claiming it was new. The fact that the amount was still too little does not seem to bother the government. In fact it diverted untold thousands of dollars to big city newspapers to brag to urban Canadians about their phony compassion.

The agriculture minister claimed he was merely trying to inform all Canadians about the great job he was doing. However, the ads failed to mention that farm programs were slashed over the last year while our trading partners continued to prop up their industries. The ads did not mention that almost half the money promised back in 1998 was never delivered, while the part that was delivered is now being clawed back.

Government advertising is not the real issue. Did it ever occur to the government that thousands of Canadian travellers should be informed that the hoof and mouth virus rampaging through European herds can be carried on shoes, clothing or on fresh foods? Did it ever occur to the government to stop patting itself on the back and to put resources in the hands of farmers and inspectors who will save Canadian agriculture, despite the Liberal government?

[Government Of Canada, October 20th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, let us talk about the top 10 planks of this Liberal government's legacy. They are: $25 billion ripped out of health care; EI surpluses scooped and put into general revenues, and God knows where they went; the civil servant pension surplus savaged; HRDC grants and giveaways, with half of 1% of files investigated leading to 11 criminal investigations; complete disregard for all hep-C victims; the APEC inquiry and the Somali inquiry stonewalled and interfered with constantly; Bill C-68, the firearms registry, with a cost of half a billion dollars so far, which would be better spent on real policing and real public safety; promised reform of the Young Offenders Act dies again; criminal justice that holds criminal rights above victims rights; and priorities in law making that put the safety of poodles ahead of the safety of our children from pedophiles. Any of these top 10 would make a fitting epitaph for the Liberal government come election day.

[Agriculture, September 25th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the election must be getting close. The Liberal ads are getting bigger and better.

The minister of agriculture stubbornly refuses to admit that all his multi-million promises to Canadian farmers are not worth the paper his press releases are printed on. Farmers wait months for responses to their requests for assistance after spending hundreds of dollars getting them prepared by professional accountants.

I suggest to the minister that his programs are too complex for the people who need help. As it is, 58% of the claims in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, two of the hardest hit areas, are rejected. Ninety per cent of claims for 1999 remain unprocessed. I suggest to the minister that his programs are too complex for the people he has running them.

On Friday the minister stated that the full commitment of $600 million had been disbursed for 1998. That is not so. In fact that is the total including the 40% provincial contribution; a couple of dollars short. Of the promised 1.7 billion federal dollars only 41% has gone out to the few farmers who have been able to fight through the government red tape.

Clearly it would be enlightening to have all Canadians check the facts on this government.