Inky Mark

[Petitions, September 27th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, my next petition calls upon Parliament to keep the post offices open at the communities of Isabella, Miniota, Makinak and Inglis in my riding of Dauphin--Swan River--Marquette.

[Petitions, September 27th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, in the next petition, the petitioners request that Parliament, in the interest of the safety of all Canadians using airports, keep the 16 weather offices open and employed with certified weather observers. It may be such that some of the weather offices are closed, and upon the review of this petition, the petitioners request that Parliament reopen the above stated weather offices.

[Petitions, September 27th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour to rise today to present a number of petitions for the good people of Dauphin--Swan River--Marquette.

The first petition contains thousands of names and it calls upon Parliament to enact Bill C-295, an act to amend the Holidays Act, to recognize Remembrance Day as a legal holiday that honours the men and women who died serving this country in wars and in peacekeeping efforts.

[Devils Lake Diversion Project, June 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Kildonan—St. Paul for bringing this motion forward for debate this evening and also the member for Selkirk--Interlake for the excellent job he is doing.

Tonight the timing of this motion certainly shows where the government has been over the last decade. This is the eleventh hour. This is the time when the pumps are going to be turned on.

The government has had over a decade to deal with this problem. I remember hearing about this problem before I was a member of Parliament. After becoming a member of Parliament, I remember hearing previous foreign ministers debating and talking about this.

Unfortunately, the government missed the opportunity to do something about the water. At a minimum, it could have had this referred to the International Joint Commission. I still remember going to a meeting where then foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy made a presentation to the Canada-U.S. friendship association, I believe, on this very topic. He was struggling at that time on having it referred to the International Joint Commission.

Here we are, at the eleventh hour, and the pumps are ready to be primed to dump water into the Sheyenne River and into this country's water courses. I have a question for the hon. member for Selkirk--Interlake. What went wrong? Why over the last 12 years did the Liberal government not do something about it and not get us to this point?

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 20th, 2005]

Certainly, Mr. Speaker, having been here for eight years and having sat through probably a couple of dozen pieces of legislation in this House, I also understand the use of the semantics and language. It may be appropriate for finance bills to use the word “may”, but I prefer the words “must” or “should” rather than “may” because they have more teeth to them.

This is what the debate is about. The debate is about the record of this government over the last 12 years. It does not matter what kind of word the government puts in the legislation if it does not enact it. We will end up going nowhere. We will end up in the same position. Ten years from now we will still be talking about it, just as we have over the last 12 years.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 20th, 2005]

Again, Mr. Speaker, it is not so much about the money but about the trust that something will actually get done.

I have a riding with 13 aboriginal reserves. Aboriginal housing is crucial. There is a shortage of housing. The fact remains that for 12 years we have been talking about this. Is it going to happen simply because it is in Bill C-48? I do not think so. Education and training are also very important. No one disputes the content of the bill. I think what is in dispute is why it is in this bill and not in Bill C-43. Why does the government need this bill to make it work?

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 20th, 2005]

This is what it says in the bill, Mr. Speaker.

This debate is about trust. It is about trust, or the lack of trust, in this government by the populace of this country and how the government deals with day to day issues like agriculture. In my riding, agriculture is very important. It is the backbone of Dauphin--Swan River--Marquette.

This is about trust in regard to the government not being able to get the border open to cattle, which also has impacts all animal producers: elk producers, bison producers, alpaca producers, dairy producers, sheep producers and goat producers. The government decimated the Manitoba beef industry to the tune of over 90%. With annual cashflows of about $500 million then, I do not think the receipts are even at $100 million now.

In fact, the government does not even have the decency to go to the WTO to challenge the border staying closed. It did not even apply to the judge in Montana for intervener status. The government is pretty pathetic, but again, this involves issues out west somewhere, not in central or eastern Canada where all the votes are.

How about the softwood lumber dispute? How many years do we have to wait before that dispute gets resolved?

Even the CAIS program has problems. It is a shambles. Last week the government told farmers they could apply and get their deposit back. What does that say? We just go from program to program. This one is sort of like the grandchild of AIDA.

I have been here for seven years and for seven years I have watched the farmers suffer. They are losing their equity. They are going out of business. We know that farm wives are working so their husbands can stay on the farm.

We do not have car plants in western Canada. It is nice to see them here and I have no problem with that, but the fact remains that all parts of this country have to receive assistance.

As I have said, this is about trust. I will complete my remarks by saying that we all come here with great intentions and we do get very partisan at times, but unfortunately we do not do the right thing at the right time. Bill C-48 is another good example of that. It is not the right bill. Maybe it is being done at the right time to keep the government in power, but it ain't the right bill.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 20th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I will go into even more depth. In 1993-94, the first year of the Liberal reign, the revenue side was $116 billion, the deficit was $42 billion, and the debt was $508 billion. The Liberals paid interest of $38 billion. In 1997-98, the debt went up to $619 billion and $50 billion of interest was paid. Someone has to account for all that debt.

Let us not forget that the deficit was balanced on the backs of all Canadians when the Chrétien government and the current Prime Minister, who was the finance minister then, took $24 billion from his budget and paid down the deficit. Obviously that is when we had the health care problems. I remember that because I was mayor at the time and it was all downloaded to the provincial governments. The provinces had to figure out a way to pay their bills. That was when the cuts started. A decade passed before we recovered from those cuts.

Let me demonstrate the Liberals' love of money. They certainly do not criticize the GST. They are collecting $30 billion plus every year. They receive over $30 billion from EI, which again is overtaxation. In fact, the Liberals took the federal employees pension fund of $30 billion. On the way to Ottawa this week, I sat beside a federal employee who said that the union is going to sue the government for taking that fund away from its workers. I say shame on the government for doing that.

At the same time, we have unpaid liabilities of something like almost $1 trillion on the old age pension. How are we going to look after our seniors down the road when we have to budget annually to pay the bills?

This debate tonight is not about the budget. Bill C-48 is really not worth the paper it is written on. Under the section “Purpose and amounts of payment” and “Authorization” on the second page, the bill states the governor in council “may” give consideration and “may” authorize the minister. It says “may”, not “must”. That does not mean anything. It really means that the NDP signed something that it is not sure is going to happen.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 20th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to take part in the debate this evening. There is no doubt that those watching this debate will conclude that Bill C-48 certainly is a creation of the NDP and that Bill C-48 was a deal to save the government from defeat.

We also know that the Liberals do not understand the whole concept of accountability and taxation. We all know that Liberals love to tax and spend.

I want to say for the record that in 1972 when Pierre Trudeau started governing the country the national debt was $16 billion. When he finished in 1983 it had actually increased to $160 billion. That is 10 times more.

Mulroney came in 1984 and started with a debt of $160 billion. When he finished in 1993 he left a debt of $489 billion.

When Jean Chrétien came in 1993, the debt started at $489 billion. When I came to Parliament in 1997 it had already ballooned to $620 billion. That is Jean Chrétien's debt. Who is going to account for that $620 billion in 1997?

[Fisheries Act, June 13th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to take part in the debate on Bill C-52. I listened carefully to my colleague from British Columbia on the whole issue of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. I can certainly echo similar experiences in my riding of Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette of actions of the bureaucrats at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Unfortunately, too many of these regulations force the department to operate in a manner that is unaccountable to anyone except itself. The people in my riding understand that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has a relevant role to play in terms of environment enhancement to ensure that the fisheries remain intact in the future. There are huge bodies of water in my riding and fish are very important to the people who live there.

Unfortunately, because of the way the regulations operate they make a lot of people angry, sometimes because they do not understand the history of the riding and how real things happen. For example, the installation of culverts and ditches is always a sore point with the rural municipalities. Fisheries officers from who knows where, possibly from academia, usually inform the municipalities that they have to take the culverts out. They are not allowed to install them without studies, which incur costs. The same thing happens when bridges are being built. Engineering studies have to be done. It increases the costs for the rural municipalities.

We know that regulations tend to get out of hand. With Bill C-52 perhaps we need to look at less regulation and do away with some of the regulations that exist in the current legislation rather than add to the regulations. I would like to hear the comments of my colleague from the west coast.