Bill C-2 (Historical)

Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act

An Act to establish a process for assessing the environmental and socio-economic effects of certain activities in Yukon

[Bernard Valcourt, Conservative, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Again, it's a good point and that's a good question. You're exactly correct that many people have suggested that Bill S-6 will make significant changes that will undermine the assessment process, but this is simply not the case. I mean, read the bill. For example, I would encourage committee members to look at subsection 47(2) of the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act. This is the portion of the act that lays out which sorts of projects are assessable under the act.

Mr. Chair, we have made absolutely no changes to this portion of YESAA. All we have done is clarify the existing assessable projects, and in doing so, we have actually ensured that YESAA conforms more closely to the umbrella agreement. Again, paragraph 12.4.1.1 of the umbrella agreement explains that projects and significant changes to existing projects will be subject to the development assessment process. So when you hear the accusations that the issue of significant changes.... It is in the umbrella agreement. A lot of people like to say things and to proclaim things, but there is nothing like the facts to focus the mind.

[Bernard Valcourt, Conservative, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Well, I'd like to repeat this. There is absolutely nothing in Bill S-6 that deviates from the Yukon umbrella agreement or that infringes upon aboriginal or treaty rights. Any suggestion that first nations are some how diminished by this legislation is simply—if I can use the word—false.

In fact, protection for these rights can be found in five legally recognized documents, as I alluded to for the member from the Yukon. These are the Canadian Constitution, in section 35; the Yukon umbrella agreement; the Yukon First Nations Land Claims Settlement Act, an act guaranteeing those rights; the Yukon devolution transfer agreement, also another legislative instrument protecting those rights; and finally, this act itself, Bill S-6 and the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act.

I would also like to add that several critics have used the argument that although Bill S-6 may not be directly in conflict with the umbrella agreement, it may violate the spirit of the agreement. Well, this too is plainly misleading. I would ask the opposition to turn to the text of the Yukon Environmental and Socio-Economic Assessment Act itself, and to read section 4, which is clear. It states that if—-“if”, okay?—there is “an inconsistency or conflict between a final agreement and this Act, the agreement prevails”. I think we have taken all the steps to ensure and guarantee the protection of those rights. I'm satisfied that this does that.

[Bernard Valcourt, Conservative, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

How can I answer this? You say they feel, they feel, they feel. It's not about feeling. This is about facts, and the fact of the matter is that these provisions do exist in other parts of the north, in other territories. The experience, whether under the Mackenzie Valley act, the water board act, or any other, is that those provisions have not eroded or violated the rights of first nations, and nor will these.

If you read the act, look at section 4. It is clear. Nothing in this act can violate or derogate from the umbrella agreement. It's plainly written. It is in the application of the act that they will see the benefit to first nations and to all Yukoners, for that matter.

You say they feel. Yes, they may feel but where is the evidence that the rights of first nations have been affected? I look at the policy directions, for example, that were given. Four policy directions were given by the Liberal government, the previous Liberal government, and all four were for better protection of the rights of first nations.

I cannot see how a policy direction can undermine the rights, given the experience until now. Minister Nault, among others, issued policy directions that were to protect the rights of first nations. That is a tool that is not currently in YESAA. That is what this bill provides to YESAA, the ability for the minister to give a policy direction that will help the assessment process and protect the interests of first nations.

[Bernard Valcourt, Conservative, Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will try to stick to the 10 minutes as much as possible.

I want to first congratulate you, Mr. Chair, on your new role in this committee.

Just to remind members, one of the first things our Conservative government did after coming into power in 2006 was to put in place a comprehensive northern strategy. We have been delivering on that strategy ever since.

Bill S-6, the Yukon and Nunavut regulatory improvement act, is just the latest example. This is about improving and enhancing social, economic, and environmental procedures in Yukon, and the water licensing procedures in Nunavut. The bill is the last and final legislative step of our government's regulatory improvement agenda in the north. Many of you will already be familiar with our government's efforts to modernize and strengthen regulatory systems in the north.

As you may remember, the first of these legislative initiatives was the Northern Jobs and Growth Act, which received royal assent in June 2013. The second was the Northwest Territories Devolution Act, which received royal assent a year ago tomorrow, on March 25.

The regulatory changes proposed in bill S-6 would build on this progress and ensure that development assessment legislation in the Yukon and Nunavut will remain strong and more effective and in keeping with the spirit and intent of the land claim agreements—which I remind members will remain the law of the land in these regions.

Allow me to take a moment to briefly describe the evolution of the development assessment legislation in Yukon, which has been the subject of most of the debate as this bill has moved through Parliament.

When negotiating the Yukon Umbrella Final Agreement, signed in 1993 by the Government of Canada, the Yukon government, and Yukon first nations, a whole chapter—chapter 12—was dedicated to the establishment of a development assessment process. This chapter outlines the objectives of this process, describes how the government should bring about legislation consistent with the chapter, and sets out the parameters of what should be contained in this legislation.

This legislation, called the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act, YESAA, was developed in accordance with the agreement and was passed into law in 2003. The agreement also called for a five-year review of the act, and that was provided by paragraph 12.19.3 of the umbrella agreement. That started in 2008.

The review itself was extensive and examined all aspects of the Yukon development assessment process, from YESAA and its regulations to implementation, assessment, and the decision-making process, as well as process documents such as rules, guidelines, and forms. It was completed in March 2012. At the end of the review the parties jointly agreed to 72 out of 76 recommendations, many of which could be addressed through administrative changes. A few, however, required legislative amendments, which are included in Bill S-6.

In December 2012, following the completion of the five-year review, the passage of amendments to CEAA—the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012, and our government's announcement of the action plan to improve northern regulatory regimes in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, we contemplated further changes to YESAA to ensure consistency across regimes, including

legislated “beginning to end” timelines.

There is also the ability to give policy direction to the assessment board, to create cost recovery regulations and to delegate certain powers of the federal Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development to a Yukon minister, as well as the possibility of allowing projects seeking renewal or an amendment to be exempt from a subsequent assessment if, in the opinion of a decision body for the project, there is no significant change to the original project.

While these amendments were not discussed as part of the five-year review, my department did consult with Yukon first nations on them throughout 2013 and 2014. Critics of the bill have argued that the consultation process and the amendments are inconsistent with the spirit and intent of the agreement.

I want to be very clear that all of the amendments in bill S-6 keep in mind the objectives of chapter 12 of the agreement, which includes the concepts of timeliness, avoiding duplication and providing certainty.

Not only are these changes consistent with the spirit and intent of the agreement but paragraph 12.19.4 of the agreement also states that:

Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to prevent government from acting to improve or enhance socio-economic or environmental procedures in the Yukon in the absence of any approved detailed design of the development assessment process.

The fact of the matter is that Yukon first nations were consulted at every stage in the development of this bill from 2008 onwards.

While we know that not everyone agreed completely with each amendment, it does not mean that the consultation was inadequate. It is our view that we met our duty to consult and that this does not require consent, for if the umbrella agreement required consent, it would say so.

More importantly, this bill not only continues to protect the interests of Yukon first nations as set out in the umbrella agreement, it provides for greater protection of those rights. For example, clause 9 of the bill specifically amends the legislation to ensure that the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board takes into account the interests of first nations, including Yukon first nations without settled land claims, in conducting its review.

Another important fact, which we must all keep in mind, is that the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act doesn't only impact Yukon first nations; it impacts all Yukoners. This legislation requires every project, including municipal projects that are not exempt under YESAA's regulations, to go through a full environmental assessment before it receives the green light to proceed or be renewed, regardless of whether or not any changes to the original project were made. This may include everything from culverts and hydro poles to a winter road or a subdivision, or larger projects like a placer mining project or a copper ore mine.

The Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources completed a review of this legislation last fall, and at the end of their review they endorsed the bill unanimously. They correctly recognized, I submit, that the passage of this bill will improve and enhance the development process in the Yukon, help foster economic development in the region, and create jobs, growth, and long-term prosperity in an increasingly global marketplace. Once passed, it will ensure that Yukon and Nunavut remain competitive and attractive places in which to live, work, and invest for years to come.

Mr. Chair and members, I urge this committee to do the same and vote this bill into law.

Thank you.

Supply

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure to join in the debate today on this opposition motion. May I note off the top that I will be splitting my time with my very capable colleague from York West.

Certainly I will never pretend to have a vast or deep technical appreciation for the complexities of the procedures of the House. However, I assure members that any light that I would shed would be pale in comparison to the comments in the intervention that was made earlier in the debate from the government leader of the House.

I will not be quoting from Marleau and Montpetit or citing passages from Beauchesne's. I believe as far as the technical aspects of the motion, they were very much addressed during the presentation by the government House leader.

I would like to make comments about the current Prime Minister, but I will not reach back too far and try to celebrate the 40 year career of our current Prime Minister and his commitment to public life. I will leave that to the pundits and the biographers and let him take his rightful place in history, which I am sure will be smiled upon by all.

I would like to talk about events that have occurred recently and more, the recent initiatives shown by this Prime Minister, including some of the brave, decisive decisions that have been made while he has been on his watch. He has presented legislation, rendered opinions on everything in our day to day activities in the House that have really made Canada a better place to be and one of which all Canadians can be proud.

I must make note first of some of the comments that have been made on the other side of the House during the course of this debate. They would like to think of late that things have slowed down in the House and that the work of the government is not being done. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Since 2002, over 55 pieces of legislation have come forward. Of those, 22 have been passed by the House, the Senate and have received royal assent. We really should celebrate some of this significant legislation.

I look at Bill C-2, the Yukon Environmental and Socio-Economic Assessment Act, Bill C-5, the act respecting the protection of wildlife species and species at risk in Canada and Bill C-12, an act to promote physical activity in sport. That is the first piece of sport legislation that has cleared this House since the late 1960s. Bill C-44, an act to compensate military members injured during service is legislation that addresses some obvious inequities in how we deal with members of the military who have sustained serious injury and debilitating injury.

Of late we have had a tough time as a country. We have to look at some of the things we have experienced over the last 12 months such as SARS, mad cow and the forest fires and floods in western Canada. My home province of Nova Scotia just suffered the effects of hurricane Juan. We have had our own array of difficulties and none through any cause of our own. We have been very fortunate. Because of our financial situation, we have been able to offer assistance. We have been able to move in and make decisive, benevolent moves to help in each of those areas.

The pain is far-reaching on several of those issues, but certainly the federal government has been there. Had we not been in good financial stead, then perhaps we would not have been able to assist as well as we did.

Obviously, on our financial house, everything comes back to the economy and what has gone on with it. Sometimes as Canadians we suffer from a short memory. It is convenient not to remember back to 1995 or not look back and remember when this country operated with a $48 billion deficit. The state of the books as of the mid-1990s was deplorable. We were close to being recognized as a third world nation. We just could not continue as a country.

Under the leadership of our Prime Minister, a vision was set. If we could get our financial house in order, then we could to reinvest in the social programs, those programs that Canadians hold so dear. That is what in fact took place. Cuts were made, and, yes, every Canadian shared in the pain of those cuts. However they were imperative. We had to lasso the deficit and gain control of our financial well-being. That was done in the mid-1990s.

Since then we have been able to reinvest. Our economy continues to grow and continues to strengthen.

Since 2002, 612,000 jobs have been created under the Prime Minister, two-thirds of them full time. While other members of the G-7 continue to experience huge difficulties with their national budgets, we are firm on the controls of the budgets here with the Government of Canada.

From 1997 to 1998, Canada became a deficit free country for the first time in 30 years. In the year 2000 the recorded surplus was $12.3 billion. In 2003 the government under, the Prime Minister's leadership, recorded its sixth consecutive surplus budget. In doing so we have applied $52 billion to the national debt. That alone this year will save the people of Canada $3 billion in interest payments on that national debt, which is significant and that has to be noted.

It is great to talk about the big numbers and about the national picture in terms of our financial position. Let us bring it down and let us talk about what has been accomplished at the grassroots for the average Canadian. How have they benefited from the leadership and the stewardship of the Prime Minister?

I remember that it was not that long ago, two or three years, when we all talked about the brain drain and the loss of our best and our brightest as they moved across the border to seek employment in the States. The government saw this as a problem and the Prime Minister saw this as a problem and part of his vision was to invest in innovation and research.

By doing so we were able to keep those students and professors in Canada, to have them study here and perform their research here. What we have seen is really a shift, where now the drain is coming from the States. These people are coming back to Canada or they are staying in Canada and we are attracting some of the best and brightest minds from other countries.

I can take that down to a personal level. I see the investments that have been made in the universities in my area, St. Francis Xavier and the University College of Cape Breton. They are benefiting from programs such as the national research chairs, the Atlantic innovation fund, those types of investments. We are keeping those kids here.

I see the reinvestment in health care of $34.8 billion following the Romanow commission. We have an MRI machine in Sydney. We have digital x-ray machines in Inverness and in Richmond County. People can get x-rays which can be digitized, then sent and read by specialists anywhere in the world. That was not available two years ago.

I see improvements in infrastructure in my home communities, in Birch Grove and in St. Peter's through the Canada-Nova Scotia infrastructure program. Tomorrow I will attend tomorrow the opening of a water treatment plant in Glace Bay, where a $10 million investment by all three levels of government will provide clean water to the residents of Glace Bay. I am very happy to be part of that announcement.

I could talk about species at risk legislation that is important to the people and Kyoto that will secure a healthy environment as we go forward to the future.

What I would like to finish on is the Prime Minister's guidance and leadership through the Iraqi crisis. He took a brave, strong and principled position throughout the Iraqi crisis, identifying that Canada stood as a sovereign nation, much to the criticism of the official opposition. When we look at the polls now, well over 70% of Canadians know that he did the right thing.

Our Prime Minister has provided great leadership in this country, and well beyond this motion today, he will continue to provide that leadership to the people of Canada.

Canada Elections Act

[Ted White, Canadian Alliance, North Vancouver, BC]

I hear the parliamentary secretary interrupting again and crying out and asking how many bottles of champagne there are at Stornoway. Obviously I do not have an intimate knowledge of the wine cellar at Stornoway, but I would expect the Leader of Her Majesty's Official Opposition, just as I would expect the Prime Minister, to have an appropriate amount of appropriate liquors, wines and foods for the times when he entertains heads of state and important people from around the country.

The leader of my party has an important job to do as Leader of the Official Opposition and it is entirely appropriate that he have the correct tools to do his job. Part of that toolbox involves the wine cellar at Stornoway for the sorts of events that he might hold. He has to interact with the movers and shakers of the business community of the country, with international heads of state and with important people who are interested in the political process and who may want to make representations to him about the way the government is handling the portfolio.

Frankly, if the minister over there or in fact any of the members on that side think they can rattle me by throwing these things at me, they are completely wrong because I feel perfectly comfortable with the positions we take on bills.

I want to get back to fundraising. Raising money eyeball to eyeball from individuals is the way the Canadian Alliance has always done it. We have been very comfortable with that and we would have been happy to continue to work under those rules. Even the 25% average that we have collected from corporations over the past five years, most of it was from small corporations giving $1,000 or less, which is the amount allowed in the bill anyway. When we look at those small contributions, the $1,000 to $1,100 amounts, they are often from mom and pop-type businesses that give a corporate cheque because their accountant only decides at the end of the year whether the money will go under their individual incomes or under corporate spending.

That was one reason that our party supported the $1,000 figure for corporate donations, even though, on principle, we were not opposed to the idea of no political donations. We felt it facilitated individual donations to have that small limit there. I am not sure if it will necessarily stand up to a charter challenge but, nevertheless, the concept is not particularly offensive to us.

As I mentioned, the Canadian Alliance has always raised its money directly from its supporters. When I joined the Reform Party back in 1987 it was very small party and it did not have the benefit of tax deduction status. We had to start from nothing with nothing and within 10 years we became the official opposition in the Government of Canada. That was a big achievement because a party needs a lot of passion from supporters behind it to raise the money to achieve that.

I am actually very disappointed in the bill that the government did not accept some of the recommendations that I made to make it easier for small parties to get started. One of those recommendations was the 50 candidate rule.

The government has consistently tried to prevent parties from having registered status, tax receipt status, by requiring them to run 50 candidates in ridings in a general election. The fact is that when the Reform Party first started we could not do that. This is unfair. It penalizes small parties. The fact is that a party needs 12 members for recognition as a party in this place,

During the hearings on Bill C-2, which was the overhaul of the elections act in 1999 and 2000, the committee, on which I was a member, had representations from most of the small parties operating in this country, the Green Party, the Communist Party, a whole list of them, and I had discussions with them.

There actually was a court case in Ontario that ruled that a party was actually two persons and that running two candidates was sufficient. Even the small parties agreed that was going to the other extreme from the 50 candidates.

Our committee reached an agreement that it should be 12 candidates. I went to the minister with that and said that in order to avoid any more tax challenges, which have already cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars fighting a ridiculous fight, why do we not make it 12 candidates. I told the minister that all the small parties had agreed to that number, that we could be put it into Bill C-2 and the issue would be finished. There would be no more court cases. The minister was absolutely bullheaded and would not do it. This fight has continued on and will go all the way to the Supreme Court and cost us an absolute fortune.

Bill C-24 gave us the opportunity to revisit the issue. I tried in vain to get the minister to go back to this and change it to 12 members but he would not do it. I cannot help but feel that he has not properly assessed the risk here and that he just does not care about taxpayer money. He seems oblivious to the fact that he is wasting millions of dollars fighting these battles which he cannot win.

One of the other battles in which he is currently involved and one which he cannot win is the one having to do with third party advertising. This is the right, in a free and democratic country, for third parties, that is people outside the political process, to bring up issues and spend money on supporting candidates or issues during election campaigns completely outside the electoral process.

The government has fought that for at least 15 years. First it was the Tory Party and now it is the Liberals. This has been ongoing. The minister has spent tens of millions of dollars fighting against this third party advertising which the courts keep striking down. His argument is that because of a ruling in Quebec, which had to do with the Quebec referendum and that there should be spending limits on the yes and no side in a referendum and no third party interference, that this is justification for applying the same rules to an election.

The fact is that is faulty logic. A referendum has a yes and a no question on the ballot. A person either votes yes or no. There is no other issue.

If a person gives some money to a yes side and some money to a no side to fight the battle leading up to voting day, I think most people, and perhaps all people, would agree it is entirely fair to then exclude third parties from that. Then it becomes unfair. If we want a fair fight, then we allow the yes side and the no side to fight fairly with limitations.

When this is applied to an election, an unlimited number of issues will come to the fore during an election. Political parties will not bring up the things they do not want to talk about. Therefore, it is only fair that third parties be allowed to intervene and spend some money on themselves.

Before I go on, Mr. Speaker, might I ask for unanimous consent of the House to split my time with the member for Surrey Central. If there is unanimous consent for that, I will split my time; otherwise I will not.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, it gives me pleasure to speak on the third group of amendments. I want to start by commenting on the last suggestions made by the hon. member who just spoke. He referred to Bill C-2, which I also sponsored. His colleague from North Vancouver sat on the committee when we dealt with this bill.

According to him or whoever wrote his speech, the bill tightens the elections rules in a way that is too tight. In other words, it does not give opportunities to smaller political parties. This is revisionist history at its best, because of course everyone who was around here after the 1993 election remembers that the first set of amendments we made to the Elections Act, after our government came to power, was a bill sponsored by a then Reform MP to tighten up because marginal political parties were getting a subsidy. The bill was under the name of Ray Speaker, I believe, and it had to do with eliminating the subsidy to a group that called itself the Natural Law Party, because it was a fringe group and not a political party in the traditional sense of the definition. It served to do just that.

Whoever wrote his speech failed to take that into account. The hon. member should go back to him or her and ask the writer to read Hansard . Hansard is good stuff. It tells us all kinds of useful information, particularly about what we did ourselves. That is always useful.

He may also want to take the transcript of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. The then chairman of the committee, the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands, was just excellent at chairing that committee. So excellent were his skills that he is now the Speaker of the House of Commons. It was at this committee that we did the work at the initiation of a Reform, now Alliance, MP. So much for that.

I would now like to speak to Motion No. 12. I agree with the member who just spoke. The amendment proposed by the New Democrats simply does not work. Incidentally, I proposed this amendment following a speech by a colleague of the hon. member opposite, the member for North Vancouver, who indicated that there was a flaw.

He was right. This flaw did exist. If there were no receipts for funds collected by riding associations since 2000, we would not know what to do. Before 2000, fine, there is a type of grandfather clause. However, for money collected since 2000, we have to know where it came from, but there was no rule saying that we had to know where it came from, so we did not know.

Which is why he was right to raise this point. The member for Edmonton—Strathcona is quite right when he says that this motion moved by our colleague from the New Democratic Party does not work.

If this motion were to be carried, there would be thousands of dollars in riding association accounts that would go nowhere; they would be in a sort of limbo, because it would be impossible to track them. For this reason, we cannot agree to the amendment proposed by my colleague.

I thank all members for their contributions to report stage. I ask them all to vote for Bill C-24.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that was not a very serious question asked by the hon. member. We are supposed to be discussing this morning why time allocation at this stage of the bill is required. Instead we have these questions which are not really serious and it surprises me because the member is usually a very serious person, particularly as it pertains to election laws. I will be the first to recognize some of his valuable contributions. We do not always agree on election laws, but on Bill C-2, which we did before, he made a number of suggestions which were constructive. Even on this bill, which he also disagrees with, he has been helpful from time to time. But having him rhyming off what he perceives to be so-called scandals and to say he wants my response to that, it of course it has nothing to do with the issue before the House, and it has nothing to do with anything because they are largely in his mind.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I want to take a moment to speak to the second group of amendments.

I have listened attentively to the speech just given by the hon. member. I know he feels very profoundly about his constituents. I know he works very hard for them. However in his speech he has not stated correctly the position of all of us in the House.

That being said, I will be the first to admit that he works hard for his constituents. I remember last summer when we had a crisis of another kind in his part of the country. He and I were speaking to each other during the summer months from our respective homes, working on such things as the Hay West initiative. I know how hard he and another member from Saskatchewan worked.

The Saskatchewan farmers were in my office last week. Again, we were discussing not only the problems they have now, which are very real and very serious, but we were also discussing the issue of last year in which constituents from my constituency, your constituency, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if I can address you as such for the purpose of identifying your constituency because your constituents were very helpful, and those from a number of areas.

I do not agree with some of the things that are being said now. The issue of the legislation in the House and the issues of the overall agenda of the government are not identical. Obviously a minister negotiating with a province to obtain help for a group of people is not necessarily a legislative initiative. Where the two coincide is in question period where members, opposition members in a greater number but government members too or government supporting members, question the government to ensure that it does what is best for Canadians. That is done by question period. That is done by the statements that we make in the House of Commons. That is done by the private members' initiatives that people produce from time to time on a whole variety of issues and so on. That is done by the committee work that we all do around here. Countless committee reports are tabled in the House of Commons. Issues are discussed. Committees increasingly travel throughout the country and listen to Canadians.

You and I, Mr. Speaker, were just recently in the U.K. looking at what its Parliament does, and the same in Scotland. I think everyone who went there came to the conclusion that although the U.K. Parliament does some things better than us, our committee system is by far superior to its committee system. That is much to the credit of members on all sides of the House in terms of the good work they do.

The issue of marijuana legislation is not one that somehow interferes with how ministers are trying to help out with issues, whether it is SARS, the BSE issue in agriculture or anything else. A bill was introduced and put on the Order Paper by the minister. We have not yet debated it, so obviously it has not taken debating time away from anything else. That is the marijuana bill.

In terms of the bill that is before us today, Bill C-24, and the amendment that we are discussing at the present time, it is designed to make this great institution even better. I do not apologize for that. I think it ultimately serves all Canadians better when the legislation that governs how we are elected is better.

I feel that this legislation will improve our system. In 1973-74 there was no legislation on political party financing. Later there were strict laws on spending limits. I will use my case as an example since it is the one I know best. I come from a socio-economic background where it would have been impossible to become a member of parliament a generation ago. Yet, today I have the opportunity to serve my country.

Who would have thought that a busboy at the parliamentary restaurant, who dropped out of high school, would become a member of parliament let alone a minister or Leader of the Government in the House of Commons?

Yet, I had this opportunity. I may have worked hard, I may have been lucky, but for the most part it is the law that allows me to be here because I did not have to be rich to be a candidate. It was not a prerequisite as it is in some democracies, or so-called democracies.

Our neighbours to the South hold some great democratic values for which I congratulate them. But they are still not well endowed when it comes to democratic values. My test of democracy is not, for instance, met by the news that Senator Hillary Clinton spent the equivalent of what is spent by all political parties in Canada for the 301 ridings in this country to get herself elected.

The bill we have before us at this time will help improve this system. Not for me, who has been in one elected position or another for the past 27 years, but for the future generations. I think that I have a reasonable chance of getting the nod from my party for the next election, and maybe even a reasonable chance of getting re-elected, but those who come after me are entitled to a better situation than I have known. They are the ones I hope will benefit from this opportunity, along with the institution in which we all sit.

Now for the clause in question, which we are addressing. Its objective is to clarify the fact that, after the next election, there will of course be a review of the legislation. That is already there, but I have proposed an amendment. Its purpose is to respond to the concerns of the committee, by stating that, next time, this review must address the financial aspect we are adopting at this time, today, tomorrow and in the days to come. We must be sure that, should the formula require adjustment, improvement, additions or deletions, or anything else, the steps required to make such major improvements will be there. The amendment in question is in Group No. 2, which we are discussing, nothing else.

Back to what I was saying before, with all due respect to certain of my colleagues—particularly the previous speaker—I disagree strongly with him when he says this is not a significant bill. I believe it will likely be one of the most important bills this Parliament enacts.

Those who produced the original act in the 1970s have produced a very important piece of legislation, and so is Bill C-2, which was introduced in a previous Parliament to prohibit this kind of control which was impending by third parties, these so-called public interest groups which were influencing the political system by claiming to be running parallel campaigns.

That is when the National Citizen's Coalitions of this world were stopped. There is a case pending before the courts and we will see what comes of it. I will not discuss the details of the case because I do not want to prejudice the outcome, but I think that this is another important bill for democratizing our institutions. Today, we have Bill C-24 before us and we will conclude debate.

I urge my hon. colleagues to support the last step we have to take to complete this debate, that is, take the required votes and then pass the bill in the House. This will ensure that it will become the law of the land for generations to come, so that our institution can be increasingly one which represents all the citizens of our country, men and women, regardless of their ethnic origin or whatever group they belong to, allowing them to at least aspire to get elected. If they are as lucky as I was, they will get elected to represent their fellow citizens in this place.

Budget Implementation Act, 2003

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to hear from the Liberal member that the member for Bonaventure—Gaspé—Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Pabok had worked on the committee studying the employment insurance program.

We must remember that the bill we worked on after the 2000 election is identical to Bill C-44, which existed before the election, that is before the member for Bonaventure—Gaspé—Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Pabok was elected.

For our listeners, there is nothing new in Bill C-2 regarding employment insurance. It is the same bill. The member for Bonaventure—Gaspé—Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Pabok said, “I am making a heartfelt appeal to the minister to change the EI Plan”. Nothing has changed since he was elected and they are talking about his alleged performance on the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development.

The question I asked last week had to do with the crisis situation. I agree with the member that the government has given $90 millions to New Brunswick, but it also reduced employment insurance by $278 million a year. My question is this: What will the government do in a crisis? That is the question.

Supply

[The Deputy Speaker]

I have the honour to inform the House that a communication has been received which is as follows:

Rideau Hall

Ottawa

May 8, 2003

Mr. Speaker:

I have the honour to inform you that the Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson, Governor General of Canada, signified royal assent by written declaration to the bills listed in the Schedule to this letter on the 8th day of May, 2003, at 4:07 p.m.

Yours sincerely,

Barbara Uteck

Secretary to the Governor General

The schedule indicates that royal assent was given to Bill C-2, an act to establish a process for assessing the environmental and socio-economic effects of certain activities in Yukon; and Bill C-10A, an act to amend the Criminal Code (firearms) and the Firearms Act.

It being 5:33 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's Order Paper.

Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act

[The Speaker]

With respect to Bill C-2, third reading, in light of the agreement of the House, I now declare the motion for third reading carried.

(Bill read the third time and passed)

Canada Elections Act

[Marlene Catterall, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think you would find consent in the House that the vote on the previous motion be applied in reverse to the vote on the main motion on Bill C-24 and to the vote on the motion on Bill C-2, with the addition to the Liberals voting of the member for Eglinton—Lawrence, the member for Scarborough East, the member for Oakville and the member for Scarborough Centre.

Specific Claims Resolution Act

[Rick Borotsik, Progressive Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Madam Speaker, I find it rather ironic that I rose to speak in support of Bill C-2 just prior to Bill C-6. All of the accolades that I gave to Bill C-2 with respect to the consultative process, to all parties not only being involved in the process but being supportive of the process are absolutely and totally changed when we come to Bill C-6. In fact, it is the same minister and department, but it is like night and day.

Bill C-6 has not had a consultative process. It has not listened to the joint task force of 1998. It has not brought all of the stakeholders together in a consultative process. It is frankly one of the worst piece of legislation that the ministry could bring forward. Here we have two examples, one a good example and one a deplorable example.

Again, I rise on behalf of my colleague, the member for Dauphin--Swan River, who has been instrumental in speaking in opposition to the bill. I would like to reiterate the position of the Progressive Conservative Party that we cannot support Bill C-6 at third reading.

As has been said by the member from the NDP, there are a number of shortcomings in the bill, not the least of which is the limit of the commission of $7 million for the tribunal. We recognize when we are dealing with land claims, when we are having to make necessary commitments to those land claims, that the majority of them are well over the limit of $7 million.

It seems to me that it is simply a matter of the government putting in place another roadblock where it does not have to deal with the real issue of settling these land claims, and simply delays and delays. As usual the government feels it can stick its head in the sand often enough and long enough with whatever the issue. Whether it be EH-101 helicopters, health care, taxation, gas prices or land claims, it sticks its head in the sand and eventually it thinks that people will either forget or the issue will go away. It will not and it cannot.

In fact, in this particular case what the government would like to do with its proposals in Bill C-6 is take about 100 years to clear up the backlog of the outstanding land claims. The government may think it has 100 years, but I know the average age of the government members and I can assure the House they do not have that long to sit in the House to be able to settle those land claims.

I am also concerned with the makeup of the tribunal. We have examples now of other organizations that have government appointed members. One that comes to mind is the Canadian Wheat Board where the government has its own appointees. What they simply do is take the agenda of the government to the table and nothing changes. This is the same factor in Bill C-6 where the members of the tribunal would be appointed by the same person, the minister who is trying to reach an agreement on land claims which is a total conflict of interest.

However the government is not too concerned with conflict of interest as we have seen with other issues that are now going on in the House. It is not only not a concern for the government but it seems to be part of the norm. It seems like the government members like to put into place legislation that would perpetuate more conflicts because that is the way in their minds business is meant to be done. It seems they have done a very good job of putting in place another conflict with the land claims system which is something they probably did on purpose.

Another issue relates to animosity. There is not a stakeholder who supports the bill with the exception of the minister. The minister feels that it is the best piece of legislation contrary to whatever anybody else believes.

As I said earlier, there was no consultation and no process. Any of the people that it is trying to achieve a settlement with do not buy into the process and do not buy into the legislation.

The Progressive Conservative Party will vote against Bill C-6 at third reading. We believe strongly that bringing forward Bill C-6 would just perpetuate the problem. We believe that there must be closure. We believe that there is a need for an honest resolution to the land claims issues within the country. There is not only a need but a constitutional right to be able to settle those land claims. Unfortunately, the bill would perpetuate the problem, it would not fix it. It is more part of the problem than part of the solution. Therefore we will be voting against the bill.

Question No. 105

[Rick Borotsik, Progressive Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am speaking to legislation that was taken through committee by my colleague from Dauphin--Swan River who, unfortunately, cannot be here today. He has been absent from the House and committee in the past while, although I know members of the committee miss his important influence and input into the committee work. I know they miss him because he does have a good grasp on what is happening with regard to first nations issues.

I have stood in the House and spoken in favour of Bill C-2 previously on behalf of my colleague from Dauphin--Swan River, and I will again reiterate the support of the Progressive Conservative Party for Bill C-2.

This past Tuesday a vote was held in the House on an amendment to Bill C-2. The original amendment was proposed by the member for Dauphin--Swan River and passed at the committee. It said that any future changes to regulations were to be brought before the standing committee before being published in the Canada Gazette or before coming into force. Effectively the committee agreed with this as being a good amendment, that before any of the regulation changes were to go forward and be gazetted they would come back to the parliamentary committee. What an innovative way of doing business in the House that in fact parliamentarians and the committee, which knows how the regulations would affect this legislation, would be able to deal with it.

However, even though the committee accepted and approved the amendment, it came back to the House and the minister felt that it was a little beneath him to take an amendment from an opposition member of the committee so he decided last Tuesday to do away with it.

I am somewhat disappointed with the member for Yukon. I respect him and his ability to bring this legislation to the House. I respect the passion by which he has dealt with this legislation. However I have to admit that I am disappointed that the member for Yukon did not stand up and support what the committee had done to bring this legislation forward and support the amendment. This would be a small chastisement of the member for Yukon, an individual who has put his heart and soul into this legislation, and who, as I said earlier, I respect for what he has done in the past but perhaps cannot respect him quite that much for not supporting this amendment coming forward.

Having said that, we do support it. We believe it is a good step forward. We believe the process was a good process, right up until the committee amendment was defeated in the House, but it brought together basically three levels of government, and I say that with some trepidation, but it was the federal government, the territorial government and the Council of Yukon Indians which represented the majority of the aboriginal governments within Yukon. I believe 11 of the 14 were represented at the table. That is good, co-operative federalism at work. I wish other departments and other ministers would consider that co-operative federalism when dealing with their own portfolios. They could probably learn a lesson from the minister in this particular case when they did go out and did use the consultative process and used it well, I might add, in order to bring all those parties to the table.

What it also does is it creates the process whereby environmental and socio-economic effects of a wide range of development activities are carefully assessed and considered before a project is approved. That is also very positive. This puts a process in place that will allow developments to go forward without having all parties throwing unnecessary barriers or roadblocks in the way. The ultimate result will be increased opportunity for economic development within the Yukon territory. That in itself is extremely positive.

The bill would also establish a development assessment process which would oversee development proposals within a province, which is, as I just said, a proposal that obviously would assist the process as opposed to having roadblocks thrown in its way.

There are some concerns, as was mentioned earlier by my colleague from Windsor and by other sitting members. The fact is that the benefits of the bill certainly outweigh all the negatives. As I say, it speaks to the insensitivity of not only the minister but certainly of the member who brought it forward, in not allowing what we consider to be a very important amendment that was brought forward and accepted by the committee but which was then taken out of the system in a back door fashion.

I want it on record that the Progressive Conservative Party will support Bill C-2 in its final reading. I appreciate the fact that the first nations in Yukon have the ability to more forward as well as they should.

Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—St. Clair, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and indicate on behalf of the New Democratic Party of Canada that we will be supporting Bill C-2. We are pleased at the progress this demonstrates in terms of transferring authority and control to the first nations.

We do not see the bill, assuming it will pass into law and eventually be the law, as a panacea for all of the problems that will be confronted by the Yukon government and the first nations in Yukon with regard to environmental assessments. There are problems with the bill. However, because we have waited so long, we are at that stage where the party feels we must move ahead.

We expect that over the next number of years some of the problems that have been identified and that I will make reference to today will come to the fore. They will require either amendments to the legislation or some very generous interpretations to broaden the scope of the legislation.

One of the concerns we have with the legislation is that it will supersede the Canadian environmental assessment legislation. As the party representative on the environment committee, I have just gone through the review of that legislation. That legislation and the amendments to it will be coming before the House sometime between now and the spring. I am concerned because some of the amendments we made to it are not necessarily reflected in this legislation.

Again, going back to our support of the legislation, we see this as an initial stage. I will not say that it is an experiment, as we are beyond that, but it is the initial stage of having the first nations of this country take greater control of the environmental assessment process. For that reason alone, in spite of our concern about potential conflicts between the Canadian environmental assessment legislation and this bill, the Yukon environmental and socio-economic assessment act, we believe that it should go ahead, and we should develop experience from it.

One of the other concerns we have is that the legislation is not clear enough, we believe, as to how assessments will be dealt with when they cross boundaries, whether it is dealing with Alaska or with other parts of Canada, with the territories or British Columbia. It is quite possible, and I think of the pipeline in particular with the potential for pipelines coming out of the north, that it will require a number of jurisdictions to have environmental assessments. How that will be resolved, how the assessment process will take place when we have multi-jurisdictions, is not at all resolved in the legislation. That is a problem that will have to be dealt with at some time in the future and potentially in the near future.

Perhaps I will digress for a moment, if I may. Anyone who has looked at the territories and the north generally recognizes that they are under tremendous pressure and will be even more so in the next number of years from major endeavours to develop, whether it be in the mining sector, and the diamond mines are probably the best example, or in oil and gas. There is going to be tremendous pressure put on the governments, both in the north and in the provinces immediately adjacent to the north, to deal with how or whether those projects should go ahead. I would suggest that this legislation is going to be tested very early on and probably repeatedly.

It has some very good points in it. I think the major one is that it is not strictly the traditional environmental assessment approach. It does take into account and in fact give priority to socio-economic issues. It does not ignore, as we have on a number of occasions with the existing environmental assessment legislation, historical and cultural issues and topics. In fact, it makes it mandatory that they be taken into account.

The first nations who were consulted extensively in this process insisted on that being in the legislation, and rightfully so. I believe it is going to give us an opportunity, perhaps for the first time on the globe, for those issues to be taken into account significantly. We can point to other examples around the globe where assessment legislation will sometimes look at those issues almost as the periphery of the environmental assessment hearings that go on, but in Yukon they will be front and centre.

I suggest that we will see situations, and I am going to use an example, where perhaps a significant mining development wanting to proceed, that being the proposal that is before the hearing, will be confronted with the reality that there is a regional fishery that is very fundamental to that community, that forms the basis of that community. The importance of that historical fishery will be given prominence and may in fact override the need to have that mine developed. Given the fragility that we find in our northern territories, it is important and crucial that in fact those considerations be taken into account.

The first nations have argued strenuously in a number of areas, and we were confronted with this in the species at risk legislation, that traditional knowledge be given equal weight with what I will call European science. It was accepted in that particular piece of legislation and it is incorporated into this one also. It recognizes that the scientific technology and techniques that we have developed are not perfect. They are at times certainly not the best method to assess the significance of developments on the natural environment. In fact, the traditional knowledge that comes out of the first nations will be at times, in some cases many times, a better technique to be used. Again, as I said, that traditional knowledge, that concept, that principle, is incorporated into this legislation. It is an important step forward to be doing that.

The structure of the board and the executive committee I believe calls for commentary as well, because it reflects the importance of the first nations and local communities being involved in the process. The board will be composed of members of the first nations. Also, they will have not a majority but a significant representation at the executive committee, which is a three member committee. It will have one member from the first nations and one appointed by the government and then those two people will choose the third person. The larger board is roughly equally balanced between the local communities and first nations and the appointments from the government.

Therefore, the needs, the desires and the decision making will be flowing from the local community, not from the south. These will be people who know their communities, know their regions and know their territory. They will know what is best for it, where they want it to go and where they want to take it, what they want to save and what they want to develop. This is built into the legislation and I believe it is one of the strong points of the legislation.

There has been some debate and some criticism of the legislation over what will be considered. There is what is being touted in the legislation, the project list regulator, which will be the body that will determine which activities are subject to assessment and which are not. The goal of that body is to catch those projects that pose a potential risk to the environment and/or that have socio-economic impacts. It will also take into account and ensure that activities which do not pose any risk, either to the natural environment or with socio-economic impacts, will be cleared quickly and will not be assessed because they do not need to be.

The other point I want to make, which is both a strength and I think also a weakness in that it does not go far enough, is that of the cumulative impact. This has been a real weakness in the Canadian environmental assessment legislation to this point. We have attempted to deal with it in amendments that will be coming before the House shortly. I do not think we did so successfully.

Equally so, I do not think that this legislation is broad enough. It is one of the areas where some very generous interpretation is going to have to occur in order to take into account fully the cumulative impact of a series of developments and those developments impacting on the natural environment. One small mine may not be a problem, but if it is the first of a chain of mines in that particular region it may in fact be a major problem. More of that work and the questioning of cumulative impact has to be taken into account at earlier stages than what we have traditionally done under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

[Gurmant Grewal, Canadian Alliance, Surrey Central, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise this morning on behalf of the constituents of Surrey Central to participate in the debate on Bill C-2, an act to establish a process for assessing the environmental and socio-economic effects of certain activities in Yukon.

We heard from the hon. member for Yukon and I do appreciate his concern for the environment and the socio-economic development of Yukon. All members in this Chamber are concerned. However, I wish that the hon. member had some influence on his government and the minister to address the issues which I will be addressing.

Let us consider some important elements about rural Canada. Canada is the second largest country in the world with a huge wealth of natural resources. Though we are sparsely populated in Canada, more than 60% of our population lives in 10 or so of our southern most cities.

In the last decade of the Liberal government's rule, rural Canada has more or less been ignored by the government. Rural Canada suffers because of poor roads, poor rail links, and a lack of infrastructure development.

The interior of Canada depends on resource based industry, which is not supported by government programs, and is suffering badly from the plight of the Liberal government. The reasons are political more than anything else. It likes to focus on the voter rich areas, but it forgets about the concerns of rural Canadians.

The mismanagement of our natural resources by the Liberals is quite evident. Softwood lumber, mining, oil and gas and the fisheries are some of the examples of Liberal government mismanagement. If the weak Liberal government had a vision Canada would have been exporting more value added products rather than the natural resources like raw materials that we export.

If we were to go to the port in Vancouver we would see big heaps of sulfur or lumber. Why can we not add value to the products? It would not only create jobs but it would contribute to the economy. That is the unfortunate plight.

Rural Canada is suffering because of Liberal government mismanagement. The government's approach to dealing with the environment, Kyoto, endangered species and wildlife, or even the gun registry has not been fair to the rural communities in Canada.

Bill C-2 should have been in the House at least six years ago. Despite the lengthy development process the bill is significantly flawed. The Canadian Alliance is opposing the legislation, not because legislation in this area is not needed, but because this particular piece of legislation is not what is needed. Our main concern with the bill is that it does not do the very thing the minister says it does. The minister and his department claim that the bill would hand over to Yukoners the task of assessing development projects that have been proposed on federal, territorial and first nations lands.

The government says the bill is about devolution, about putting into local hands responsibility for making these assessments, but the truth is that the minister would retain for himself the power to control the process and to control who sits on the board that would be set up.

Once again the federal government cannot keep its hands off areas that should be under provincial and territorial jurisdiction. When it says that it is handing over powers to another level of government, it is doing nothing of the sort. There is no true handing over of power to Yukoners. The minister would retain the powers that he claims would be given to Yukoners.

I would like to focus on other concerns that we have with the bill. The minister would have too much authority over project assessment in Yukon. The bill was supposed to be about devolving to the people of Yukon authority for project assessments. The public relations material from the minister's department and the spokesman of the committee have sold this bill as a devolution of power, but the opposite is true. The minister would hold all the strings.

We find that in a number of places in the bill, the most important of which is the composition of the assessment board, which would be the main body established by the bill.

Let me mention some of the amendments the Canadian Alliance moved in committee. These amendments would have curbed the minister's power over the assessment process, but each amendment was voted down by the Liberals in committee.

First, the minister currently has the power under the bill to make an unlimited number of patronage appointments to the assessment board. Two different amendments were proposed that would have restricted the size of the board. We made those amendments on the recommendations of an MLA from Yukon. This would have limited the federal minister's ability to make patronage appointments to the board, but the amendment was not passed because the Liberal members voted against it.

Second, another amendment would have forced the minister to establish minimum qualifications and other criteria for the selection of board members. The bill in its current form makes no such requirements and therefore patronage appointments are easier to make. Our amendment would have made patronage appointments more difficult for the government and the minister. Again, the Liberals on the committee voted down this amendment.

Third, we also proposed amendments designed to strengthen the role of the Yukon government at the expense of the federal minister's role. The bill is supposed to hand to Yukoners control of the project assessment process, so one would have expected these amendments to pass because they are very natural amendments, but again the Liberals voted them down.

One such amendment would have strengthened the role of the territorial minister by enabling him to nominate one of the three executive committee members of the board; just one of the three. At present the minister must merely consult the territorial minister on one of those three appointments. Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker?

Another amendment would have strengthened the role of the territorial minister at the expense of the federal minister by enabling him to nominate two rather than only one of the four non-executive board members. Again, the Liberals voted this down, choosing instead to keep all of the strings in the federal minister's hands.

Another amendment would have limited the size of the board to a maximum of 13 members, but the Liberals on the committee voted against this. So now, the federal minister can make as many patronage appointments as he or she wants, up to 13 at least.

Another amendment would have changed the process of how the additional board members are chosen. Currently half of these members are nominated by the Council of Yukon First Nations. Under another amendment, the other half would be nominated by the territorial minister. That is fair enough. Half would be nominated by the minister and half by Yukon first nations through the council.

The handing of power from the federal minister to the territorial minister would make sense if, as the minister says, the bill is about handing to the people of Yukon powers that have until now been with the federal government. However again the minister is holding all of the power rather than giving it to the people of Yukon.

Clause 22 would give the federal minister authority to select the communities in which six assessment officers would be located, because the bill would establish six offices in various communities in Yukon. This would create the potential of political influence in the selection of the communities. We have moved an amendment that the authority be transferred from the minister to the board so that a board could make those decisions but again the Liberals on the committee rejected that amendment too.

A second major concern with the bill is that it is silent on the subject of timelines for the completion of assessments by the board. This is unacceptable given the problems that have existed in Yukon in this regard. Project assessments have taken far too long. Given this major problem, the bill should have addressed the matter of timelines right away. The bill has failed the people of Yukon on that issue again.

Let me describe the problem that has existed in Yukon, with project assessments dragging on for so long. Development and the economy of Yukon are hurting and the people of Yukon are suffering for that.

Currently, environmental and socio-economic assessments of proposed projects in Yukon are assessed under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. It is administered by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. The department has failed to conduct a timely, efficient and cost effective assessments of the projects in Yukon under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

These projects should be assessed in a timely, efficient and cost effective manner but the department has failed the people of Yukon. It is widely recognized. For example, in the mining industry, the recent annual survey of mining companies rated Yukon as having the second worst mining regulatory system in Canada. A survey was done by the Fraser Institute and it rated Yukon to be the second worst mining regulatory system in Canada. By the way, the first one was British Columbia.

As for hard data over the past 10 years, the length of time between the submission of an application and the delivery of a permit for a mining project has far exceeded what any reasonable person would consider acceptable. I did some research and have some examples.

Western Copper Holdings Ltd. made a submission in 1994 for an assessment. It is still not complete after 97 months. Imagine a business company applying for a licence and waiting for 97 months.

New Millennium Mining Corp. made a submission in 1996 for assessment. It is still not complete after 79 months.

I had an opportunity to visit the Cominco mine. Cominco Ltd. made a project assessment submission in 1996 and the permit was delivered in 2000, after 47 months, almost four years.

Minto Explorations Ltd. made a submission for assessment in 1994 and the permit was delivered in 1997 after 35 months, almost three years.

Viceroy Resources Ltd. made a submission in 1994 and the permit was delivered in 1996, after 23 months.

Most jurisdictions in Canada, at least for small mines, take six months to one year. Can members see the comparison? In the rest of Canada it takes just six months to one year. In Yukon it takes from 97 months. That is not acceptable. Globally it takes two years or less and that is the norm. The Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, has not come close to these Canadian norms of two years or less.

The failure of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development to conduct timely, efficient and cost effective assessments of projects in Yukon has contributed to the economic slowdown in Yukon and destroyed Yukon's reputation as a sound and stable jurisdiction in which to develop new mines. How can Yukon attract foreign investments or investors in the mining industry when the government's standard is letting those miners down?

For example, the shutdown of the mine at Faro in 1998, I am sure the member for Yukon knows, had disastrous economic consequences in the region. This could have been mitigated by timely approvals of other projects prior to the Faro shutdown. However those timely assessment projects by the government were not there. One company had to shut down. The other projects for the assessment were not completed for so long and the economy suffered.

The federal government has not been equal to the task. As a result, Yukon's economy is largely dependent on the net federal transfer payments to fuel economic activity, whereas Yukon could be self-sufficient. Development should have been taking place if the government's approach was right.

Given the failure of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development to conduct timely, efficient and cost effective assessments of projects in Yukon, we would expect the bill to correct these deficiencies so that worthwhile projects could proceed in a timely manner. However the bill does not do this nor even attempts to do this.

Instead the bill focuses on identifying and mitigating negative impacts of development. The bill shows little concern for development as something positive and desirable for the people of Yukon. It focuses on the negative impacts of development, including damage to lifestyles, heritage sites, the environment and community social systems. Therefore the bill is missing a needed balance between development and sustainability. It does not consider development as a public good which benefits communities.

The assessment board is therefore incapable of weighing costs and benefits in a balanced fashion since its only mandate is to safeguard against damage. Under the bill the board's preference when making assessments must always be to prohibit or limit development, even in cases when the benefits of a project would be great.

The only timeline that would come into play has yet to be determined, since it will be a part of regulations. That timeline does not relate to the assessment process. It relates to something that will follow the assessment process. Let me explain this, because it demonstrates just how much the bill fails to do what is needed.

Once a project has been assessed, the board, or one of the six offices in the communities that have conducted the assessment, will recommend to the responsible federal, territorial or first nations decision bodies whether the project should be allowed to proceed. These decision bodies, not the board or its six offices which are supposed to be listening to the people, have the final say. The board can only recommend. These decision bodies can accept, reject or vary the recommendation contained in the assessment.

The incredible thing about the bill is that timelines will be created under regulations for the decision bodies to issue their decisions. The bill specifies no timelines for the assessment board and its offices to deliver assessments to these decision bodies. That means the board can make its own decisions as to how long it wants to take to complete an assessment. People who do the labour of assessment get to decide how long they will take to finish their work, the while development will be held up.

I mentioned that the regulations will decide about the timelines and the fact that the regulations are not submitted along with the bill. Normally, the government submits the regulations after the bill is debated in the House. All members in the House passionately debate bills and passionately vote on bills, but without knowing the contents of a bill.

The government is in the habit of submitting the intent of the bill without any substance or subject matter. The subject matter and the substance comes through the back door by way of regulations. Why does the government not submit all regulations with the legislation when the legislation is tabled in the House so we can debate them and vote on them? We could then understand what the bill means. The government is not governing; it is ruling through the back door. Eighty per cent of the substance that we see in the law in Canada comes through the back door by way of regulations not debated in the House.

The Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations, which is supposed to scrutinize those regulations, has very limited powers. The committee cannot even scrutinize regulations made by the delegation of authority to various agencies and boards. The disallowance procedure is not on statutory footing, but I will talk about that another day.

This is a non-partisan issue. The House needs to have a disallowance procedure for those regulations which are submitted through the back door to be scrutinized properly. If committee members decide that those regulations are not fair enough, or they are not legal or they are not valid, then they should be disallowed. That procedure should be on statutory footing, but it is not.

Sixteen years ago a committee set up a temporary experimental procedure to see if the procedure would work. For 16 years we have been following that temporary procedure rather than putting the statutory disallowance procedure on statutory footing. However that is for another day.

The Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development has a history of foot dragging in completing assessments, and we have seen this in relation to the mining industry. Timelines should have been imposed on the board by the legislation itself, not by the regulations. The bill fails the people of Yukon in this important respect.

It is unfortunate that the bill fails to provide the people of Yukon with a true devolution of power as the minister has been touting. It also fails to provide a timely way to assess and approve projects so that they can get off the ground and development can begin in Yukon.

What is particularly shameful is the way in which the Liberals have concealed their failure to the people of Yukon by telling them the opposite of what the bill will do. The first thing mentioned in a Liberal press release was that the bill would hand over power to the people of Yukon. Once again we see the Liberals playing their power games with other levels of government. We are seeing again that confrontation between the provincial and territorial governments. The Liberals are hoping their public relations material will be slick enough that the public will not catch on.

We in the Canadian Alliance are opposed to the passage of this bill and will vote against it in the true interests of the people of Yukon. I am sure people of Yukon will understand. I wish the hon. member representing Yukon had some influence on the government in addressing these issues.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, in 1995 the Yukon first nations, the federal government and the Yukon government signed a great treaty.

Many people in Canada probably do not know that one of the interesting results is it created the potential for 16 different governments in the Yukon at the federal, territorial and first nations level.

The challenge was when it came to development assessment on a project, a first nations business, or a corporation, or a mining company that had interests across several boundaries of these many orders of government may have had to go through many different assessment processes, laws and regimes. There needed to be a one window process put in place.

The last time I debated the bill I spoke about how the law was created over a number of years, about how it would accomplish a one window approach and how some of the issues that came up during those many years of debate were dealt with in the proposal.

With all these orders of government managing various lands and resources, the Yukon could have found itself with 16 or more different ways for assessing projects throughout the territory. However, Bill C-2 will establish a single uniform process for assessing land projects in the Yukon.

Therefore, potential proponents will have to follow only one set of regulations for assessing the environmental and socio-economic effects of their projects in the Yukon. In order to promote responsible development activities, the assessment process must be uniform and predictable. The bill includes both these characteristics.

If responsible development in the Yukon is to include proper protection of the environment, certainty and timeliness are equally essential to the assessment process and are reflected in Bill C-2.

I committed at this stage to outline some of the ideas, concerns and suggestions that arose during the debate and the committee process on Bill C-2.

The Yukon organizations, Klondike Placer Miners' Association and the Chamber of Mines, have a number of suggestions. They want to ensure there is procedural fairness regarding a proponent's ability to respond and to appeal. They want to ensure that the proponent receives all the information pertaining to the application and is able to respond during the assessment phase prior to a recommendation being made.

They want to ensure that there is public input on the development of regulations and on the development of the Yukon environmental and socio-economic assessment board rules.

In this legislation there are very many important things, some of which were fought for by these groups.

The regulations define what a project would be, for instance. There are some other coordination issues in the regulations. This is a very significant factor in how this is going to work and what is defined as a project. It is very important that the public have input in this area. It is the same with the rules. Rules that will be developed by the board have some very instrumental elements that some of the Yukon groups asked for, for instance, time lines. It is very important that there be good public input into these major aspects of the bill.

The mining industry wants the bill to establish methods whereby the public will be consulted. Any legislation benefits from public input.

The assessments must have clear time lines in order to ensure a healthy economy. These processes should occur within the time lines. It provides certainty to those doing the development. For placer miners, even more so these days, well defined limits that are followed at every stage are a must for the stability of the industry.

A lot of these points are suggestions from the mining association. They also reflect what the chambers of commerce are interested in.

They would like to appeal to an elected official if there is a dispute with the board. They also suggested a scheduled review of the act because it is so important to ongoing protection of the environment and development in the Yukon.

Once the act is in place, they do not want existing projects to be reviewed unless the proponent requests a review. To ensure certainty, many of the miners told the committee that projects must only be reviewed if a proponent is requesting a change to that project. The ability to arbitrarily trigger a review is part of the legislation which has raised concerns in part of the mining community.

Assessments must also consider benefits to society. The purpose of the act should ensure that development as a public good is considered during socio-economic assessment. The economic factor is where there needs to be recognition of the good and the prosperity that the development brings so that Yukon families can support themselves and, through their taxes, fund the things that are important to governments.

They want to ensure that rules pertaining to designated offices will be reviewed. Designated offices should not be allowed to make their own rules to ensure that the rules are not different in different districts and a proponent is not treated differently in different districts. There are going to be six offices throughout the Yukon.

There was some suggestion that the scope of the act was so limited it could not catch some major projects that might have a negative socio-economic impact on communities and first nations such as the designation of parks or protected areas.

Again, in the assessment of cumulative impacts, they want to make sure that the board is empowered not only to consider the adverse impacts but the positive impacts of those developments. They also are wary of the possibility that certain mineral development could be imperiled where there are conflicts with the land use plans and this regime.

The Yukon Chamber of Commerce had similar concerns and suggestions.

Many of the intervenors were quite positive toward a five year review of the act and input into the regulations and the rules, all of which are so instrumental. In a pioneering piece of legislation that will have so much impact on the community and on the territory, it is important to incorporate these items.

Three first nations provided input, the Kwanlin Dun First Nation, the Kaska First Nation and the White River First Nation. They want to ensure that there is a five year review in place. They also want to ensure that the first nations are involved in the development of the regulations, which is a view consistent with that of other intervenors.

The Conservation Society also provided input throughout the process over the years and also represented the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. One of the major points, over and above the ones that I mentioned was that there should be enforcement legislation so that the results of this legislation would not be just recommendations, as they are now, but decisions. This would be regulatory legislation as opposed to advisory legislation. The five year review and involvement in the regulations were also mentioned.

The bill is complex because there is another land claim in the northern part of the Yukon which involves the Yukon North Slope. The Wildlife Management Advisory Council of the Inuvialuit expressed an interest that there not be duplication of the screening that comes under its processes related to its screening committee under that land claim, which would then overlap the assessment process in the Yukon system. There could possibly be two different results from the different assessment processes.

The Association of Yukon Communities was also an intervenor. It represents 100% of the municipalities in the Yukon and over 80% of the people in the Yukon.

It noted in its submission that it had been involved with the public consultation process from the beginning, since 1996. It met regularly and had input with groups, including the Council of Yukon First Nations, Yukon Chamber of Mines, the Klondike Placer Miners' Association, the Yukon Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, the Yukon Conservation Society.

The municipalities were concerned that because they were not recognized as an order of government in the bill, they may not have a right to appeal on every issue that occurred within municipal boundaries. They also suggested that it be mandatory on panels occurring within the municipal boundaries to have representation on the panel recommended by the municipalities.

In their reading, they thought it was unclear where CEAA and YESAA would cover a project and that there might be a dual assessment. The bill basically removes CEAA from the Yukon. Yukon will be one of only three parts of Canada that have their own assessment process. It will be designed by the local governments and people in the Yukon, for the Yukon.

It is exciting when people can work with the federal, first nations and territorial governments. It is a process that is unique to the country and to Yukon. They then do not have to follow the national legislation that may not be as sensitive to local concerns. The municipalities also thought that as other orders of government or decision bodies were in line within their jurisdiction, they should have the same provision in certain instances.

These were some of the ideas and suggestions that were raised during the debate. We have been processing this proposition created by three governments in Yukon for Yukoners. Whatever emerges from this Parliament will be unique to Yukon and to Canada. Perhaps it will contain elements of a model for the country for refinement and emulation.

Emerge it must. Our economy is at a low ebb and we need a regime to protect the environment while providing the certainty to entrepreneurs, corporations, first nations business persons and businesses so that we can all get on with building an economy so that Yukon families can survive and prosper in the beautiful country that has been given to us.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, for the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development]

moved that Bill C-2, An Act to establish a process for assessing the environmental and socio-economic effects of certain activities in Yukon, be read the third time and passed.

Business of the House

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to make the business statement and I will have two motions which relate to that immediately afterward, with the permission of the House.

This afternoon we will consider the Senate amendments to Bill C-12, the sports bill. I understand this will be brief. This will be followed by third reading of Bill C-15, the lobbyists legislation. If time permits, we would then turn to Bill C-20 on child protection, and then possibly Bill C-23, the sex offender registry. I think by then the day will probably have exhausted.

Tomorrow our plan would be to commence with Bill C-2, the Yukon bill, which would then be followed by Bill C-6, the first nations specific claims bill.

When the House returns on March 17 we will complete the budget debate on that day. I will have a motion to offer to the House in a few minutes to defer the vote on that.

March 18 shall be an allotted day, as shall be March 20. I will give an update to members of the House in terms of legislation to be called on March 19.

Mr. Speaker, there have been consultations among the parties and I wish to seek unanimous consent for the following motion. I move:

That, if on March 17, 2003, a division is requested on the main motion for government order, ways and means proceedings No. 2, the said division shall be deferred until the conclusion of the time provided for government orders on March 18, 2003.

For the benefit of members, that refers to the budget motion.

Canada Elections Act

[Marlene Catterall, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it was the motion for concurrence in Bill C-2.

(The House divided on the amendment to the amendment, which was negatived on the following division:)

[The Speaker]

I would ask the chief government whip for some clarification. On Bill C-2 there were two votes. One was on the concurrence motion and one was on an amendment. Perhaps she could tell us which vote it is that applies in this case because I gather there was a difference.

[Marlene Catterall, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I believe you would find consent in the House that the vote previously taken on Bill C-2 be applied in reverse to the motion now before the House and to the subsequent motion on Bill C-20.

Yukon Environmental and Socio-Economic Assessment Act

[The Speaker]

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the report stage of Bill C-2. The question is on Motion No. 1.

Canada Elections Act

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise to debate Bill C-24 that we support, obviously, in principle. In this bill, there are numerous provisions that are light years away from the current political financing legislation.

Of course, substantial improvements could be made. I will give examples shortly. Nevertheless, I must first tip my hat to the government party for finally seeing the light on the road to Damascus and introducing some amendments to the federal electoral legislation, so that parliamentarians and political parties will no longer come under undue pressure from major contributors or, at least, so that parliamentarians and political parties will no longer appear to come under undue pressure from major contributors.

Nonetheless, I must say that it is easy to make amendments when they do not commit you to anything. I will come back to this later. The Prime Minister was careful to propose this amendment to the existing federal electoral legislation at the very end of his career, ensuring of course that the new provisions would not apply to the current Liberal leadership race that will decide his own successor.

It is interesting that the Prime Minister waited more than 35 years after his political career began to suddenly become the advocate for such an amendment to the Canada Elections Act.

Need I point out that since it was first elected in 1993—if we exclude the by-election in 1990—the Bloc Quebecois has not stopped pushing for the electoral legislation to be amended to include the principles of public financing in effect in Quebec.

Let us remember that public financing has two key components: first, contribution ceilings and second, a formal ban on anyone other than voters contributing financially to political parties.

The government has taken up a few provisions in these two pillars, but has vehemently opposed any kind of amendment that might have come from the pressure, proposals, amendments and motions by the Bloc Quebecois. The government has also been very careful to wait a few years before making these proposals, so that people might forget that these provisions had been moved by an opposition party.

That would be unthinkable. How could the government publicly admit that is way introducing legislation initially suggested by an oppossition party? The government saw to it that people would forget that the idea came from an opposition party and, all of a sudden, it takes it out of our hat and says, “We have just made an extraordinary discovery; we are proposing a legislative change that will be absolutely revolutionary and will ensure that, suddenly, our citizens trust our political institutions more”.

Some discovery. Perhaps it would have been a good idea if the government had discovered it before. I guess that, on the Liberal side, it takes a few years before they finally take action.

Must I remind the House that the Bloc Quebecois made a number of proposals to this effect. In 1994, my colleague from Bas-Richelieu—Nicolet—Bécancour, who was then the member for Richelieu, moved a motion to this effect in the House. Of course, it was defeated, thanks to our colleagues in the governing party.

A little later on, in 1997, the present leader of the Bloc Quebecois, the member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie, also made a proposal along the same lines. When we debated Bill C-2 in the House and in committee, the Bloc Quebecois came back with a number of proposed amendments, which the government wasted no time rejecting.

Eloquent speeches were made in this House and in committee, in particular by the government House leader, as he was then also. He had a brief stint as Minister of Public Works and Government Services, but was not there long, for reasons known to us all. I will read some excerpts from the very wise comments made by the government House leader at that time.

In the House Procedure and Affairs Committee, the Government House Leader stated:

The Lortie commission has recommended neither that only individuals be allowed to make contributions nor that a maximum be established for contributions. Moreover, where such rules do exist, two individuals sometimes make equivalent contributions right up to the limit in order to get around these constraints.

Really, now.

He subsequently answer a question by our colleague from Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, who had a different political allegiance at the time, and was then in favour of public financing—and still must be—and perhaps may have made a modest contribution to this change in attitude on the government side.

His answer to our colleague for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord was as follows.

Corporations and individuals have virtually identical rights under the law. What a company can do legally as far as contributions are concerned, an individual can do also. The law does not treat them differently. It does not set higher ceilings for individuals than for unions or companies. Limits are the same for everyone. In other words, there is no ceiling in either category in terms of tax deductions. It is the same thing, provided it involves a taxpayer.

He said that there was equality between corporate and individual entities, as far as their ability to contribute to political parties was concerned.

Still in his answer, the government House leader said:

The system is transparent. I think that it is also accountable—

—as for banning contributions do not come from individuals that, this would be of very little benefit. Lortie said that it was so easy circumvent such a provision that it would not make sense. He may not have said it in those terms, but this is more or less what he meant.

We know what is happening today. Instead of the corporation paying $1,000, the president contributes $500, the vice-president $300 and the secretary $200, which means that the end result is the same. The only difference is that the system is less transparent instead of being more transparent. We no longer know from whom the money is really coming. It is coming from obscure individuals, instead of coming from GM, Ford, or some other corporation.

The government House leader went on to say:

Lortie also said that we would quickly use up the funds of political parties if we did that.

What caused this sudden about-face on the part of the government House leader? Why has he suddenly become the promoter of a limit, of a ceiling for corporate contributions? Will, all of a sudden, a corporation that would like to contribute $150,000 to the election fund of the Liberal Party of Canada, give $10,000 to its president, $10,000 to its vice-president, $10,000 to its secretary, and so on until the amount of $150,000 is reached? At least this is the possibility to which the government House leader alluded.

I guess that the government House leader was suddenly hit by the invaluable virtues of public financing, since he spoke so eloquently about it in this House.

My time is running out, but I will have the opportunity to address this issue again at the later stages of the bill, and I will examine more closely its various provisions and explain why these provisions seem satisfactory in some cases, but clearly unsatisfactory in others. In the meantime, we will have the opportunity to move a number of amendments.

[Ted White, Canadian Alliance, North Vancouver, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to say a few words about Bill C-24. Incidentally it is a very thick bill, about half an inch thick, and I know you are a busy man, Mr. Speaker, so you probably have not had the time to glance through it yet, but I have read it from cover to cover. Whilst it is half an inch thick, a lot of it is repetitive, repeating the same clauses over and over for nomination meetings, for registration of electoral district associations or for leadership races. Much of it is repeated.

In speaking to Bill C-24, I would like to reference Bill C-2, which was the bill on the major changes to the Canada Elections Act, which took place a couple of years ago, a bill for which I was critic and moved it through the House over about a three month period.

When Bill C-2 was going through the House, I proposed on behalf of the Canadian Alliance that we put an end to the patronage appointments of Elections Canada whereby the government appoints all of the returning officers and most of the field staff for Elections Canada. The Chief Electoral Officer had begged us to allow him to select and appoint his own staff, because it is completely inappropriate for the governing party to be appointing key personnel in what is supposed to be an independent body. The minister at the time argued that this was a ridiculous suggestion because it would cost too much and increase the bureaucracy at Elections Canada, and therefore we should not waste our money on it.

However, when we look at Bill C-24, what do we find? An enormous bureaucracy being set up to register and track the reports of electoral district associations. I have already spoken with the Ontario chief electoral officer because Ontario does have exactly this type of system, and it is very intensely administrative in nature. It requires enormous amounts of paperwork. It requires elections people to follow up constantly with riding associations or electoral districts to get the paperwork done. This is going to cost much more and be much more complicated than anything that was proposed to get rid of patronage in Bill C-2, so I really think the minister was playing politics at the time.

In Bill C-24, the government is also setting up a very complicated process for nominations. The government has argued that what it is trying to do is level the playing field to make it easier for disadvantaged people to take advantage of the possibility of becoming candidates for political parties.

I am convinced that most of the government members have not bothered to read the bill. They probably took a look at the half inch thickness and decide not to attempt it. However, if we really read the bill we will see that there are at least 15 pages of requirements for people getting involved in a nomination meeting. Now if we are talking about people who are traditionally disadvantaged, for example, as they would argue, women in the community who may not have the business contacts to help them get big donations to start a nomination meeting, those same people will not have the contacts who have the accounting skills or the management skills to run the sort of paperwork that is required for a nomination race.

So I would argue that the government is very misguided in what it has done in this bill and I think again it is playing politics. What it is actually trying to do, while it pretends to be arguing in favour of the disadvantaged, is creating a situation whereby those people will be excluded. It will be restricted to people who have the business contacts, the skills and the ability to manage a very complicated nomination race procedure.

The bill also perpetuates the unfair 50 candidate rule, which requires parties, in order to be registered and to have registered riding associations, to run 50 candidates in an election. The courts have struck down that provision. They have said that it is unfair and that it is inappropriate. In discussions in this House and in committee, all of the parties except the Liberal Party agreed that number 12 would be appropriate, which is the number that is recognized in the House as being appropriate for recognition of party status. So again the government is perpetuating unfair, anti-democratic practices while it still argues out of the other side of its mouth that the bill is an improvement.

It has also continued to maintain the gag law in the bill. That is the part of the Canada Elections Act that prevents third parties from arguing their perspective during election campaigns. The gag law has been struck down three times in the courts, yet the minister, even as late as yesterday, was still arguing that it was appropriate to keep that gag law in the Elections Act.

He has wasted tens of millions of dollars fighting it in the courts. It gets struck down every time. He argues that the basis for putting the gag law back into the Elections Act is that there was a court ruling in Quebec which justified the use of a gag law and restrictions on spending of third parties.

What he fails to say every time he quotes that Quebec court judgment is that the judgment was about referenda, not elections. Referenda, Mr. Speaker, as I am sure you know, are about either a yes or a no answer. They are about one issue and the answer is either yes or no. It seems perfectly reasonable that we might put limits on who can argue for a yes and who can argue for a no in order to have a level playing field with both groups having access to the same amount of resources and money, but an election is a multi-faceted event with numerous issues, some of which are local and some of which are national, and there are literally hundreds of thousands of different issues that need to be argued.

To try to transpose a court ruling in Quebec to do with referenda into a general election status in this bill is completely inappropriate. The minister knows it. I have begged him to stop wasting taxpayers' money on these court cases and he continues to do it. In fact, he is a disgrace because he has wasted money on the gag law and he is now going to waste enormous amounts of money on a complicated process for nomination meetings. During all of that time he accuses us of trying to waste money by putting real democracy into the act, by getting rid of the patronage appointments that the Prime Minister does for Elections Canada.

Incidentally, there are returning officers who do not turn up to work at Elections Canada and the Chief Electoral Officer is unable to do anything about it. Unless he can convince the governor in council, which means the Prime Minister, to cancel the appointment of one of his cronies to the returning officer position, there is nothing that can be done. The end result is that incompetent party hacks get appointed to the positions in Elections Canada that should be filled by skilled people who are non-partisan.

I would like to urge the government to be open to considering changes in the bill. Perhaps I am being a little naive, because the bill is going to be rammed through and we all know that. We are going get this public funding whether we agree with it or not. But I would hope that the government might be open to taking a look at a fairer way of allocating the public funding. The way that it is set up at the moment, the funding is given on the basis of the number of votes that were achieved by a party in the past election. Really, that rewards past electoral success and not necessarily the popularity of the party as it stands at the present time.

I heard a very creative suggestion, for example, and I am not putting this forward as CA policy at this time, it is just a creative suggestion that I heard, which was that maybe it would be fairer to base the funding on the number of registered electoral districts that a party has.

For example, for every registered electoral district that a party could maintain across the country, it would receive a certain allocation of funds. That would make it fair because it would reward parties that were trying to become national in scope. It certainly would not be a disadvantage to the ruling Liberal Party because it maintains riding associations, or electoral districts, in every riding in the country so its allocation would be exactly the same. Parties like the Canadian Alliance, which is gradually establishing riding associations across the country, would also gain benefits as it established these, and it would really make a judgment about how serious a party was at being a national player. For parties like the Bloc that tend to be restricted to one region, it would not penalize them either, because it would be running electoral districts or associations in every riding in that province and so it would still get its allocation.

That seems to me, just on the surface of it, perhaps a fairer way of doing it. If we really must have public money put into this, I would hope the government might be open to suggestions like that from outside interests.

In closing, I will say that I think the bill is pretty badly flawed. There has not been much chance in 10 minutes to get into the real meat of it, but I will repeat my hope that the government would be open to some further suggestions in committee as to how we might improve the bill.

Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act

[John Finlay, Liberal, Oxford, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the purpose of the amendment as was read was to remove subclause 122(2) of the bill.

While I believe in the object that the standing committee was hoping to achieve with their amendment to the clause, the problems with the amendment can be addressed and the underlying objective can be adequately accommodated through the original bill clause and existing processes. I will try to explain why.

The standing committee amendment to clause 122 has a number of deficiencies that would prove problematic.

Perhaps principal among these is the fact that the committee's amendment does not take into account that there is a second regulation making provision in the bill in subclause 47(1). It is under this provision that the project regulations would be made and hon. members should know that these regulations are the ones that will be of the most interest to the public and industry and environmental interest groups.

Second, the proposed new subclause 122(2) does not provide for a role for the other place. Under current practice, regulations are reviewed by the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations, a committee of both the House and the other place. We believe this is appropriate and should be maintained for regulations made under Bill C-2.

The amendment proposed by the standing committee could also prove problematic as it names a specific standing committee in a statute. As the names and functions of House committees could change over time, the provision could be rendered ineffective unless there was an amendment to the bill.

I would like to spend a few minutes explaining why I believe the bill does not require the amendment suggested by the committee to provide opportunities for public involvement in the regulatory process under the bill.

First, I would like to remind hon. members of one of the key features of the bill, referred to at length during the second reading debate in the House: extensive consultations on the bill.

The fact is that there have already been considerable consultations conducted regarding what the public and interest groups think should be included in the two key areas of regulations under the bill, and that is those that establish what activities are subject to assessment and regulations and those establishing time lines within which decisions must be made.

In addition to those consultations that have already occurred, I note that clause 122 of the bill already requires the minister to consult with the government of Yukon and all Yukon first nations prior to making regulations. These consultations have also been ongoing for some time now. I am confident that when these regulations are drafted, consideration of all this input will be reflected.

I would also like to remind hon. members that before regulations are finalized they are pre-published in the Canada Gazette with an opportunity for public review and comment on them. This provides yet another opportunity for public and interest group input to these regulations.

Finally, these regulations will be reviewed by the Standing Joint Committee on the Scrutiny of Regulations. As hon. members know, this is a joint committee of the House and the other place. The addition of subclause 122(2) would, therefore, only serve to duplicate existing processes for this place, while providing no role for the other place.

I believe that hon. members can be confident that there will be numerous opportunities for input by the public and interest groups, the Yukon government and first nations into the development of all regulations under the bill. Further, including subclause 122(2) would only be problematic and serve to duplicate existing processes. I also believe that all hon. members recognize these problems and will join me in supporting the motion to remove subclause 122(2) of the bill.

[David Kilgour, Liberal, for the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development]

moved:

That Bill C-2 be amended by deleting subclause 122(2).

[The Deputy Speaker]

There is one motion in amendment standing on the Notice Paper for the report stage of Bill C-2. Motion No. 1 will be debated and voted upon.

Canada Elections Act

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think that is an excellent question.

First, the hon. member will recognize that in Bill C-2, and in all other amendments to the Elections Act—I am talking about all major changes—there has always been a convention of giving a six month delay. This allows Elections Canada to put structures in place.

Take the example of registering riding associations, of which there are four or five per electoral riding, depending on what part of the country you are in, and the number of registered political parties that exist. We are talking about 301 ridings. There must be audit systems and such for all of these riding associations, some 1,500 or 2,000. That is a big number. That is the first element. That represents a major measure that needs setting up.

Second, I explained the convention of a six month delay for amendments to the Elections Act. I would like to be able to say that the bill will be passed in six weeks, but the official opposition is using stalling tactics, which means that the only way we can move forward on this is to impose time allocation. Unless the Canadian Alliance withdraws the proposed initiative.

Also, it is important to note that there is not just one political party that is having a leadership race. The member opposite is part of the only political party represented in the House that is not currently having, or has not recently had, a leadership race.

The Canadian Alliance had one, but they may still be raising money to pay off their debts. As for the New Democratic Party, theirs just ended a few days ago. The leadership campaign for the Progressive Conservative Party has already started. The Liberal Party's race will begin soon, I believe the official launch of the campaign will be in the coming days, if I am not mistaken.

Indeed, this situation is not unique to our party. It has been the case for at least three, even four of the five political parties represented in the House of Commons. In any case, all of these elements can be discussed in committee, and I thank the member for his question.

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak in favour of Bill C-24. The proposed legislation would improve the transparency and fairness of Canada's electoral system and address the perception that corporations, unions and the wealthy exercise a disproportionate influence in our political system.

Canada's electoral system already is the envy of many countries. As Canadians we have participated in election observation missions right around the world. As a former Minister of International Cooperation, which I was a number of years ago, it was always such a pleasure to see a number of our fellow citizens under Elections Canada, sometimes under UN mandate, participate in election observation in many countries of the world. We have done so through the Commonwealth and through la Francophonie and each time have earned the respect of other countries.

The amendments we have before us today continue the modernization of our electoral system that began with the enactment of the new Canada Elections Act in 1970 and the 1974 Election Expenses Act.

I had the pleasure of sponsoring Bill C-2 during the last Parliament. This is a bill intended to consolidate all Canadian electoral legislation and it has done so for a good number of measures. This being a democracy, however, there is no limit to how far we can go in improving certain legislation.

Today we have before us a new bill which builds on what we have done in the past, improving our electoral legislation still further.

The bill follows the Prime Minister's commitment of last June, in his excellent eight point action plan, to bring forward new legislation for political financing. This commitment was reiterated in the Speech from the Throne.

I hear our colleagues across the way expressing enthusiasm at the initiative. Perhaps later they can express that enthusiasm in their debate.

It also reflects the consultations that I have had with political participants and it builds upon existing political financial measures that exist both in Canada and elsewhere in the world.

Hon. members already are familiar with the key elements of the proposed legislation. The Prime Minister presented it to us in the excellent speech that he gave to the House last week. As such, I would like to take the opportunity to focus on the public financing provisions of the bill, which have received considerable praise from the general public but which have also drawn criticism, undeserved criticism of course but criticism nonetheless, from the hon. leader of the opposition.

On the key public financing measures, the virtual elimination of political contributions from corporations and unions and the new limits on individual contributions would have a significant financial impact on political parties and, arguably, to some extent, on candidates as well. For that reason the bill would build on existing financial measures already provided for to political parties to maintain the viability of our electoral system.

The measures contained in Bill C-24 are the following: the rate of reimbursement of electoral expenses for parties is increased from 22.5% to 50%; the definition of expenses eligible for reimbursement is broadened to include a portion of polls during election campaigns, and the ceiling for reimbursement to political parties is raised correspondingly; the percentage of votes candidates must obtain in their ridings in order to qualify for reimbursement of electoral expenses is lowered to 10% from the current 15%.

On this point it is to be noted that almost all candidates in the last election who would have received this funding, virtually all of them, 115 out of the 120 or so, are for parties represented on the opposition side of the House. Therefore, that particular measure favours almost exclusively opposition political parties. Almost no defeated Liberal candidate would have qualified for the particular measure I just described.

There would also be an allowance for registered parties of $1.50 for each vote they received in the previous election, to be paid on a quarterly basis.

Also, we are proposing amendments to the Income Tax Act to double the amount of an individual political contribution that is eligible for the 75% tax credit from $200 to $400, with of course the adjustments for each other bracket of credit accordingly. This would make it easier for candidates to receive smaller donations at the same time as the larger ones would no longer be possible.

As the Prime Minister noted in his opening remarks, public funding of the federal electoral process has been a longstanding tradition in Canada. Just in case members across the way are pretending that we as Canadians invented something here, we have not. Everyone knows of the U.S. primary system for the president and how a particular presidential candidate is awaiting, having won a certain number of votes, in order to qualify for the famous matching funds coming from the public treasury in the United States. So in fact--

Business of the House

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I will start with the rest of this day and then go on with the future agenda.

If the opposition follows through with its offer, as promised during question period, to withdraw its motion today on the strength of the commitment made by the Prime Minister to, on the first day following military deployment should there be one which we all hope of course there would not be, call a votable opposition day that would free up the rest of the day.

Following that, this afternoon we would then deal with Bill C-19. Should there be any time left we would call Bill C-22, although I suspect that there would not be that much time, and perhaps Bill C-19 would take us close to the end.

Tomorrow we shall begin the third reading stage of Bill C-6, the Specific Claims Resolution Act, followed by Bill C-2, an act to establish a process for assessing the environmental and socio-economic effects of certain activities in Yukon.

Monday next, and Thursday as well, shall be allotted days.

Tuesday morning, we shall be resuming consideration of Bill C-13 on assisted reproduction. After oral question period, we shall begin consideration of Bill C-24 on political financing. Wednesday, we shall resume consideration of any unfinished business, with the possibility of continuing debate on Bill C-24.

Canada Pension Plan

[James Rajotte, Canadian Alliance, Edmonton Southwest, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I believe I have 40 minutes for my speech and I will not be splitting my time with anyone, so you will have the pleasure of listening to me for up to 40 minutes.

Later I will address some of the comments made by the parliamentary secretary, but first I want to detail what Bill C-3 is supposed to do. I want to talk about some of the history of the Canada pension plan just to give members some background and then I want to propose alternatives or state where the Canadian Alliance stands on the bill.

Bill C-3 is an act to amend the Canada Pension Plan and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Act. It will transfer the management of the cash operating balance and the bond portfolio, which is about $40 billion, to the CPP investment board. Specifically this will permit all amounts held to the credit of the Canada pension plan account to be transferred to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board by repealing the requirement to maintain in the account a three month operating balance.

Second, it will establish a means by which the investment board may be required to transfer funds to the government to the credit of the Canada pension plan account so that the immediate obligations of the account can be met.

Third, it will transfer to the investment board over a three year period, 1/36 per month, the right, title or interest in each security held by the Minister of Finance and establish the conditions on which the securities may be redeemed or replaced.

Fourth, it will provide a 30% foreign property limit. The Income Tax Act applies to the investment board and its subsidiaries on a consolidated basis, to provide that the investment board will be considered to hold the property of its subsidiaries for the purpose of applying the foreign property limit. Of course at second reading our party proposed an amendment to expand this to allow at least a small way for Canadians to access capital markets to further increase their retirement savings. They themselves then would be more independent at a stage in life when they want to enjoy the full benefits of life rather than being dependent on government assistance.

Fifth, the bill will make housekeeping amendments to the investment board's reporting requirements.

I have some observations and a little history. The CPP investment board was incorporated by an act of Parliament in 1997. It was set up as an arm's length crown corporation and was charged with ensuring the soundness and sustainability of the nation's pension plan.

The assets were planned to be transferred over this three year period to ensure a smooth transition for capital markets, provincial borrowing programs and the CPP investment board itself.

By investing CPP cash not needed to pay current pensions, the board's aim is to enable higher returns in the stock and bond markets over the long term. The CPP investment board currently manages about $14 billion, mostly in equities, for the pension plan. The assets to be transferred include the CPP bond portfolio, made up mostly of provincial government bonds, and a three month cash operating balance. The Department of Finance is currently managing this money.

The CPP investment board made $360 million in fiscal year 2001-02 but lost $845 million in the previous year. About two-thirds of the board's money is invested in indexed stocks tied to the S&P/TSX composite while some is allocated to U.S. and international stock indexes. Including returns from the CPP bond portion, the entire pension plan made $2.3 billion in fiscal year 2001-02.

The federal government's chief actuary estimated that the proposed changes would increase returns on CPP assets by about $75 billion over 50 years. Of course in that estimate we have to take into account the serious decline in the stock market over the last three years, which certainly affects the specific prediction that the chief actuary made.

At this point I want to basically give an overview of Bill C-3 and also speak about the Canadian Alliance position and what we in the official opposition would do if we were in government.

The main thrust of the bill is to transfer all the amounts held in the Department of Finance within the Canada pension plan account, including the bond portfolio which is worth about $40 billion to the CPP Investment Board over a three year period. It would establish a means for the transfer of assets between the Department of Finance and the CPP Investment Board so that immediate payout obligations of the plan could be met. The legislation also spells out how the provincial securities currently held on the account may be redeemed or replaced.

As I mentioned earlier, it applies the 30% foreign property limit. We were quite disappointed that the government did not consider increasing that limit so that it would allow Canadians to access more foreign content within the CPP investment as it should within RRSP accounts as well.

To give a brief history of the Canada pension plan, the government is representing this as a housekeeping bill, but it deals with one of the main pension programs which Canadians receive and it is incumbent upon us to give a history before we vote on this at third reading.

The Canada pension plan was devised over 36 years ago as a mandatory plan on a “pay-as-you-go” basis and would be transferred from generation to generation. There is no account in my name or someone else's name and it is not tied to a social insurance number that would then be invested as a nest egg for retirement. The people who are currently working are paying for those who have retired. When this was started, people who were retired at the time started receiving the benefits but they had not gone through the system in that way. That was one problem.

The actuary at the time advised the Liberal government that this would be problematic, particularly as a demographic shift would occur in which the population growth would not be as much as it was in the post-war period. The government was advised that it would encounter some real financial crunches. Unfortunately, the government at the time disregarded that advice. It shadowed the future in which later on the finance minister completely disregarded the advice of the chief actuary in the mid-1990s and fired the actuary when the person gave advice contrary to what the government wanted.

In 1966 Canadians were told that their payroll deductions required to fund the Canada pension plan would never go above 5.5%. This is important to note because the present government is guaranteeing it will not go above the 10% level. Obviously the 1966 guarantee was untrue. The actuary at the time warned that percentage would not be sustainable over the long term, particularly with the fact that the population was not growing at its previous level.

The government of the day has told Canadians that it will not increase it past a certain percentage, but how can Canadians be expected to believe the government will hold it at a certain percentage when it clearly has not done so in the past?

When it was designed by the government at the time, it was assumed that there would be six tax paying workers for every dependant retiree. That was true when it was set up, although even at the time the actuary pointed out that with the demographic shift this would not happen in perpetuity. The government unfortunately did not set up a system whereby it was invested in people's names in an account and set aside over a 20 or 30 year period so it would be there as a nest egg when they retired. Unfortunately it was a situation where the government counted on this in perpetuity growth in the population that would fund the Canada pension plan. This was unrealistic at the time and the government should have realized that.

By 1993 contributions and interest could not produce the revenue required to cover the benefits paid out. The crunch started by the early 1990s. In 1996 the Canada pension plan was in a great deal of trouble. Over 10 million Canadians were paying $11 billion into the plan but three million people were being paid about $17 billion in benefits. Even though we had a ratio where 10 million Canadians were working and paying into the plan and only 3 million were receiving benefits, we still had a fiscal situation where the amount being paid out in benefits was above the amount being paid in. As we go into the future imagine the stress and the pressures that will be put on the Canada pension plan when the population does not grow at the expected level and when more people retire, particularly the baby boomers.

At that time, the $6 billion difference had to be made up out of general tax revenue so clearly it was not sustainable. The Canada pension plan's chief actuary warned that without changes the plan would be in very deep trouble, particularly when the baby boomer generation began to reach the age of 65, about the year 2012 which is not that far off.

By 1977 the Canada pension plan's assets had fallen to $35.5 billion. During the fall of that year, the Liberal government introduced Bill C-2, which was designed to save the Canada pension plan by the only way it knew how. It increased the cost to taxpayers and took more money from Canadian taxpayers rather than introduce some real fundamental reform to change the system.

Starting in 1998, Canadians saw their take home pay shrink as contribution rates for both employees and employers were jacked up in a series of increases to Canada pension plan premiums. CPP premiums went from 5.6% of the average industrial wage to 9.9% in five years. This is a staggering 73% increase and the biggest tax grab in Canadian history.

The government and the Minister of Finance love standing and saying that they have introduced a $100 billion tax cut, which is completely untrue because they neglect to mention the Canada pension plan tax increase. They also neglect to mention the EI surplus which they have been hiding and using for general revenues. The fact that they stand and talk about this $100 billion tax decrease is just simply untrue.

In 1995 the chief actuary of Canada noted that contribution rates would have to nearly triple, from 5.6% to 14.2%, over the next 30 years simply to ensure benefits could be paid for the indefinite future.

This is an important point because the contribution rate is now up around 10%. The government says, as it said before with the 5.6% level, that it will never go above that. This is not what the chief actuary said in 1995. This person stated that it would need to go to 14.2% over the next 30 years to deal with the retirement of the baby boom generation. The result is that employers and the self-employed are feeling the brunt of this Liberal tax cut.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business has been conducting letter writing campaigns, both on this and on the employment insurance account. What it is notes is that while employers have received a 7¢ reduction in their employment insurance premiums, the Canada pension plan premiums have gone up by 40¢, and they are said to increase another 25¢ in 2003.

That may not sound like a lot but for small businesses with very small margins, increases like this for each worker are very substantial and certainly cause a lot of businesses to really look for ways to cuts costs. The most obvious way they can cut costs, unfortunately, is through labour. If the costs of labour for small businesses, a coffee shop or whatever, increases, the only way they can really deal with that in the immediate term is to cut labour, which means laying people off. The CPP premium increase is not only a tax grab, it is a job killer as well. Everything the employers have gained back in their small employment increases has been eaten up and more by the Canada pension plan increases.

The worst injustice of the Canada pension plan in general, is the intergenerational unfairness. This is a point I want to return to a number of times in my speech.

Every Canadian worker born after 1980 will see their Canada pension plan investment offer them a 2% return on investment for their retirement. This is unbelievable and unacceptable. However for those who retired in 1995, a different generation, they will receive a 9% return on their investment which is a greater return. However, if one looks at the long term investments over a 20 or 30 year period, this is obviously unacceptable as well.

Economist David Foot has suggested that the federal government should raise the retirement age by two or three years so that boomers can contribute to the CPP longer, thereby creating a bigger pool to invest and from which to draw. It would not have to raise premiums or cut benefits. It is something the government obviously has considered but not acted upon.

Another consideration is that the government could bring in more flexible workplace policies to address some of the problems which I talked about earlier, where employers faced with increased CPP premiums unfortunately have to lay off workers.

A lot of Canadians who are approaching retirement or who have retired have said that if we bring in more flexible workplace policies, older workers nearing retirement could work part time and still make full pension contributions to maintain revenues in the pension fund while creating employment for younger workers. This would also mean that they would still contribute and would draw upon that for a longer period because it would be more sustainable.

Economist David Foot, in describing the 1997 reforms, said, “They do not recognize the profound demographic changes that have taken place since the program was launched”. That is indisputable. The fact is the government has not recognized this pay as we go plan setup where we had a huge population explosion after the second world war with a relative decline after that. It has not recognize that a demographic shift would cause some serious constraints on the Canada pension plan.

The Canada pension plan will take just under 10% of income to receive 25% after age 65. The average annual payout is $5,500 a year. That figure is something we should all consider, because the government loves to say that it is providing for Canadians in their retirement. The average annual payout is $5,500 a year. Obviously a Canadian cannot live on that so for the government to say that it is providing for Canadians in their retirement through this plan is simply farcical.

Another figure we should keep in mind is the number of seniors in Canada will double to 22% of the population by the year 2031. This will place a heavy burden on workers who have to support these pension and health programs. It is important to note that the demographic shift causes a lot of other pressures as well, particularly in health care. As we age we require more and more of the health care. That is just simply logical. Canadians are rightly concerned about where the tax revenues will come from to pay for our social services. Instead of dealing with these problems, unfortunately the government has pushed these off by introducing marginal changes, as it has done with this bill.

Members of the Canadian Alliance do not believe that our future security lies in the wages of a shrinking workforce. It lies in the vast productivity and production capacity of a full economy. We value retirement security as a vital element of independence. The government's goal should be to ensure that as many Canadians as possible are independent in their retirement years, that they can afford to have a good standard of living, that they can afford to take a relative amount of trips when they need to and that they have the quality of life they deserve.

Our policy platform states that we will honour obligations to retired Canadians and those close to retirement under the current state run programs. We will also maintain support for low income seniors.

We believe that future retirees deserve a greater choice. People in my generation who are extremely frustrated with the Canada pension plan deserve a greater choice and a greater opportunity to increase their retirement savings. We should have a choice between a government managed pension plan and a mandatory personal plan. Giving Canadians greater control of their own affairs and retirement plans would eliminate the foreign investment restriction for retirement investments, thereby allowing access to greater capital and investment opportunities. We would devise options allowing individuals greater opportunities to save for themselves as the current system failed its original objective from 1966.

This is an important point because friends my age in their early thirties see the RRSP contribution limit each year. A lot of people in the 55 to 65 age group do not have a lot of money put away. Let me use for an example dentists who own their own dentistry business. They have taken quite a while to pay off debts they incurred when they started out after graduating from dental school. By the time they reach 55 they do not have a lot of money put away because they spent the first 15 or 20 years in their business paying off their debts. At the age where they are making profits or their earlier investments have paid off, they would like the opportunity to put some money into their RRSP. With the present contribution limit it is simply impossible for them to put enough away so that they are fiscally secure when they retire in 5, 10 or 15 years. I hope the Minister of Finance will look at raising the contribution limit for RRSPs in the next budget.

I was talking to a friend recently who said the forms the government sends out indicating the amount an individual can put into an RRSP is a joke. She indicated that the government takes so much from her in taxes that she does not have anything left at the end of the year to invest in an RRSP. The contribution limit is a slap in the face because the government takes so much in taxes. Canadians are taxed at the highest marginal rate of $60,000 per year, and that is an absolute joke.

Canadians who get out of university usually have a high debt load. If they are lucky they may get a job making $30,000 or $35,000 a year. They have to pay down their loans and pay taxes while trying to establish themselves at the same time. Paying high taxes simply creates a crunch on them that is unfair. The government should create opportunities so that these people can pay down their student loans and pay less tax so they can start establishing themselves. For those individuals who are far-sighted they could then start putting away even at that age for their retirement.

Bill C-3 is a step in the government's planned development of the public pension plan in this country. It is managed at arm's-length by a crown corporation. As the Canadian Alliance noted at second reading, the bill is more than a housekeeping bill. The government says it has only presented some minor changes, but we regard them as much more.

We are opposed to the solution proposed by the government. Canadian workers and employers would be bilked out of billions of dollars to pay for a plan that is unquestionably unfair to Canadians of all generations, but particularly to the younger generations in our society.

The Canada pension plan began floundering in the 1990s. In 1996, 30 years after its inception, the plan was going bust. It was fulfilling the prediction of the original actuary who said that this pay as we go plan was unsustainable in the long term. This created a situation where the benefits exceeded the amount going in by about $6 billion. This had to be made up out of general tax revenues.

The Liberal solution was to take more money from the Canadian public. It was similar to health care. Instead of addressing some overall issues and proposing fundamental reforms, it resorted to taking money from the Canadian taxpayer. This is something the government is doing now with the new elections bill. Instead of addressing genuine concerns about the ties between businesses, unions and government, what does the government do? It asks the taxpayer to pay for everything. It wants taxpayers to pay for everything in the elections bill, despite the fact that they may or may not support a particular party. Taxpayers now would have to support every political party that attained a certain number of seats in the last election.

I will go back to the CPP premiums. Beginning in 1998 the CPP premiums were jacked up from 5.6% of the average industrial wage to 9.9%. As I mentioned earlier, the government promised it would never go past this 5%. The government said this promise could be carved in stone. It is now up to 9.9%. The chief actuary at the time said it would have to go to 14.2% over the next 30 years.

Now the promise was that the premiums would never go above 10%, yet the chief actuary said they would go over 14%. Unfortunately we do not receive his advice any more because he was summarily dismissed once the finance minister realized that he did not like his advice. This is a tradition that we see all too often with this Parliament.

It is interesting that people such as the Auditor General who have independence and are able to observe the government and how Parliament operates, are the ones who are bringing to light, as is the case with the firearms registry, the actual substance the opposition has been stating for years. We need objective and independent analysts such as the chief actuary to help us.

When the finance minister fired this person simply for giving advice that the finance minister did not want I think that was a serious breach of independence that Parliament should have addressed. Unfortunately, the government simply let it happen and did nothing.

The worst injustice by the government and its Canada pension plan hike of 73% is the intergenerational unfairness. The government simply has not addressed this and it does not want to address this. In the last election campaign the Liberals simply engaged in scare tactics about this, rather than address the actual problems with the Canada pension plan.

What is meant by intergenerational unfairness? Every Canadian worker born after 1980 would see his or her Canada pension plan investment offer a 2% return on investment for the retirement years. That amount might as well be stuck in a mattress. It is pathetic that we would allow younger Canadians, such as the pages here before me, to receive 2%. Imagine that over a 30 year period there would be a 2% return on the investment. That is completely unfair and it should be changed.

Political Financing

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, the legislation I have just introduced forms part of the eight point action plan on ethics, announced on June 11, 2002, by the Prime Minister of Canada, to improve the fairness and transparency of Canada's electoral system. These changes also build on an overhaul of our electoral legislation, which I introduced in the last Parliament through Bill C-2, to modernize many aspects of the Canada Elections Act.

There has long been a perception, whether founded or not, that certain groups in society--corporations, unions and the wealthy--may exercise undue influence in our political system through the financial contributions they make to political parties and candidates. This legislation addresses this perception and enhances the fairness and transparency of our political system by ensuring that full disclosure of contributions and financial controls would apply to all political participants.

While parties and candidates are already subject to disclosure requirements, other important participants in the political process are not.

According the bill, party riding associations, leadership candidates and nomination contestants would now be required to disclose contributions received as well as expenses incurred to the Chief Electoral Officer.

Furthermore, nomination contestants would be subject to a spending limit equivalent to 50% of the candidates' spending limit in the same riding in the previous election.

A further key element to the bill is a prohibition on contributions from corporations, unions and other associations. As a minor exception to this prohibition, corporations, union and associations would be allowed to contribute a maximum of $1,000 annually to the aggregate of candidates, local associations, and nomination contestants of a registered political party.

The bill would limit the amount that individuals could contribute: the aggregate of a $10,000 annual donation to a registered party, all of its local associations, candidates and nomination contestants combined. Individuals would be allowed to contribute $10,000 to the leadership contestants in a particular leadership campaign.

Together, these reforms would increase confidence of Canadians in our electoral system.

Of course, the virtual elimination of political contributions from corporations and unions, and the new limits on individual contributions, would have a significant financial impact on political parties and, to a lesser extent, on candidates.

For that reason, the bill would also increase the financial assistance already provided to political parties and candidates.

Thus, the percentage of election expenses that can be reimbursed to parties would be increased from 22.5% to 50%—as is already the case for candidates—and the definition of reimbursable election expenses would be broadened to include polling. The ceiling for expenses eligible for reimbursement would be increased correspondingly.

The qualification threshold for reimbursement of candidate expenses would be lowered from 15% to 10% of the number of valid votes cast in the riding.

This will allow more candidates—unsuccessful candidates in this case—to receive reimbursement after elections.

As is already done in three provinces, registered parties will receive an allowance. It will be paid quarterly on the basis of the percentage of votes they obtained in the previous general election.

The measures in the bill reflect consultations that I have had with a wide range of experts and stakeholders, as well as provincial authorities across the country. They also draw on political financing measures that are already in place in several Canadian provinces, and indeed other countries as well.

I look forward to working with all members of this House on these changes to strengthen the connection between Canadians and their political representatives, and to increase public confidence in the integrity of our electoral system, a system that is already recognized as one of the finest in the world.

Business of the House

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, my response will not be in prose and verse. I just have not been hit yet with the attack of Jingle Bells , which undoubtedly seems to be striking here and there in the House.

We will continue this afternoon with the prebudget debate.

Tomorrow we shall consider report stage of Bill C-3, the Canada pension plan amendments. If there is any time left, we would then proceed with Bill C-15 respecting lobbyists. I intend to speak to other House leaders about that.

I shall communicate directly with members concerning the order of business, when we return from the adjournment on January 27. This will include any of the aforementioned business not completed, which includes: Bill C-3 and Bill C-15, obviously; Bill C-2, the Yukon bill; Bill C-6, specific claims; Bill C-10, the Criminal Code amendment; Bill C-19, the first nations bill; Bill C-20, protection of children; Bill C-22, the divorce legislation; and Bill C-23 respecting certain offenders.

As members can see, there are lots of items on the legislative agenda.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my best wishes for the holiday season and, of course, a happy new year 2003 to all hon. members, our staff and pages, not to mention the busboys.

Committees of the House

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to take part in the debate on the Auditor General's report.

As the hon. member for Matapédia—Matane said, I think that the Liberal members opposite cannot read. I do not want to be too insulting, but the Auditor General stated that they have $30 billion more than they need. That is the issue. There is a $40 billion surplus in the employment insurance fund and only $15 billion is needed for emergencies.

During the last election, in 2000, the Prime Minister toured the Atlantic provinces saying, “We will fix the employment insurance problem. We will make changes because the Liberals lost seats here. We have to fix this”.

When the House resumed, the member for Bonaventure—Gaspé—Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Pabok told the Minister of Human Resources Development, “This is a cry from the heart. Changes must be made”.

I remember Bill C-2. When it was introduced following the 2000 election, the Liberals opposite came to us and said, “It has to be passed quickly. The government is willing to pass this right now. We will work in committee to make other changes. We know that the workers need changes”.

How can this government proudly say, “We took your $30 billion in surpluses that we did not need. We paid down the debt, we balanced the budget, we lowered income taxes and we invested in social programs”. But who gave them permission? That is the question.

The Auditor General said herself that this was not right. Now, the Liberals want to justify themselves. Is it because they cannot read or because they do not know how to listen?

They come in with cheap shots in saying, “You don't believe the people who have a handicap”. Which party not too long ago cut their income tax credit? It was the Liberal Party that did it and it almost split the House. We know what happened to the motion that came from the NDP. The people who care about the handicapped people are on this side of the House and not on the government side.

As for the bill we wanted to present to the House on the recommendations made by the parliamentary committee, all parties agreed that changes were necessary.

Either we accept our country the way it is, or we do not. Our country is diversified. This is obvious when hon. members rise in this House and say “The money was used for this and for that”. Yet, when it comes to taking money from employees who worked hard for it, that is something else.

There is a small fund called the EI fund. If workers lose their jobs, they are eligible for employment insurance benefits that come out of this fund. The government is taking this away from them.

As if that were not disgraceful enough, as if they had not taken enough money away from workers without asking, the government is so greedy that on July 1, 2002, it added interest to EI overpayments

We are talking about people who are out of work. The woman from Tracadie owed $15,000 to employment insurance. She thought her employment insurance benefits had been calculated properly. She had a small business. She worked. During the off season, she did not receive any money. She paid her bills and made deposits at the bank.

One day, the government, through the Minister of Human Resources said “It is too bad. You did not declare your employment, now you owe $15,000 and you are disqualified from receiving EI benefits”.

It is a disgrace that today the government turns around and says “That is fraud”. This person did not even receive any money and she is being treated like a crook. The woman from Tracadie paid $120 to the federal government each month to try to repay her debt. She took this $120 from her employment insurance benefits.

With the interest the government is charging on the overpayment, guess how much money goes to his debt? Twenty dollars a month and $100 in interest. It is a disgrace to see how the Liberals go after poor people's money.

They cannot even monitor the GST, with the result that some companies rob them on a daily basis. It is a disgrace to go after the country's poorest. I would like to see Liberals rise and challenge what I am saying here this evening.

It is estimated that the government deprives New Brunswick of $278 million in benefits every year. It is small and medium size businesses that lose these $278 million. These are benefits that were spent in stores and restaurants, benefits that helped people make a living.

Instead of taking action and helping people get organized to find work and stimulate regional economies, the government cut support to the country's poorest, because they cannot protect themselves, they cannot afford to hire lawyers and they do not contribute to the Liberal campaign fund. This is the only reason they are punished. This is a disgrace.

It is a terrible disgrace to see a government manage our country in this fashion. It is disgusting. The government should be ashamed.

A recommendation was made by all the parties in the House to make changes to the employment insurance program. The Prime Minister travelled across the country. He went to the Gaspé, to Belledune, in New Brunswick, to Cape Breton, to Halifax. He promised to make changes, but he did not make these changes. Now, the only thing that the government says is, “Ah! we are giving that money to Canadians”.

I have no right to steal money from my child and give it to someone else to please that person. This is no way to run a family; this is no way to run a country. This is a disgrace.

That money is deducted from people's paycheques. Workers get up every morning to go to work and they receive their paycheques on Friday. The stub shows their gross earnings, their total earnings. Then, they can see how much taxes they paid. These taxes are used to fund our social programs and to manage the finances of our country. As for the Canada pension plan, it is for people, when they are ill or when they retire.

Employment insurance is for when one loses his or her job. It is not for balancing the budget and attaining a zero deficit. It is not for giving the former Minister of Finance a reason to pat himself on the back and boast about what a great finance minister he has been. “I was careful with public funds. I have no deficit. We are paying down the debt.”

But at whose expense? We have a government spending a billion to register firearms. We know that Groupaction got its hands on $22 million, and that scandals abound. Then the poor little workers are grabbed by the throat and told, “You have no right to a living. Your family does not have the right to have food on the table tomorrow morning”.

The government would have the House on the idea that 85% of qualified EI recipients in fact receive benefits. They say that 85% of qualified workers receive benefits, but that figure should be 100%. They ought to be ashamed that 15% still do not qualify. What they are not saying, however, is that only 40% of people who pay into EI are actually drawing benefits.

What has happened in regions like the Atlantic region? Young people could have seasonal employment and have some hope of staying in the region. But they are told, “No, you need 910 hours. If you don't have them, go work in Ontario or out west. That is how we will treat you”.

And what about the construction workers? “This is how we will treat you. Go to Alberta to work, leave your wife and kids behind. If you quit your job after that, there won't be any EI”. The general theme was, “Tough luck, you can starve to death.”

These are very proud people, good people. My colleague over the way comes from PEI. I am sure he agrees with me, but he cannot rise and talk about what is going on in PEI.

What is happening to the fish plant workers and the forestry workers? They depend on EI. How many times have I repeated here in this House: big city people like to have 2x4s to build with, and the lumber comes from trees cut down in our part of the country. Big city people like their blueberries, and they are picked in our region. Berry picking does not go on when there is snow on the ground. How many times have I said the same thing?

It is not on Yonge Street, in Toronto, or on Sainte-Catherine Street, in Montreal, that fishers catch cod, but in Chaleur Bay, in the Atlantic or in the Pacific. This is seasonal work. We need to understand this. And so do Canadians. To build a united country, we need to work together. The Liberals ought to be ashamed.

Frankly, my concern is not with EI premiums. I have seen no worker or demonstrator in the street, shouting that the premiums were too high. I have seen no employer in the street, shouting that the premiums were too high. What I have seen is people shouting, “I no longer qualify for EI. The Liberal Government of Canada is picking on me”.

In 1989, when Doug Young, my predecessor, was in opposition, he criticized the Mulroney government for making changes to the EI program. He said,“I encourage all New Brunswickers to fight any changes to the unemployment insurance system with vigour, because they would spell disaster for New Brunswick”.

In February 1993, when he was in opposition, the current Prime Minister of Canada stated that the Progressive Conservatives were not acting properly in connection with the changes to EI.

What did he tell, in Rivière-du-Loup, a group of people opposing the changes to the EI system? He told them that the government was not acting properly, that it should not be attacking men and women, that it was discriminatory. He said that, instead, it should be dealing with the economy and creating jobs, and that those who went back to work would no longer need employment insurance. We must give these people a sense of pride, and stop putting them down.

I find it disgusting to hear that $50 million going to Toronto described as an investment, whereas $6 million going to Atlantic Canada is described as social assistance. We have had it. There is no place for this kind of language in a united country. It is not fair to say that people in Atlantic Canada are abusing the system. These are proud people; they want to work, but they need job opportunities.

If millions of dollars were pouring into New Brunswick, as they are in the pockets of Groupaction, there would be jobs in New Brunswick and no one would be unemployed. If the government were serious about economic development, we would be able to develop our economy.

Last week, the Liberal Minister of Labour said in Belledune that there was $90 million set aside for northern highways. This week, she said, “What I meant to say is that this is $90 is part of the $500 million that were promised last year”. Announcements cannot be made two or three times. That is not how announcements should be made. When you make an announcement, it is done. The $500 million that was announced was for highway 2 in southern New Brunswick, not for northern New Brunswick. Now, we hope that they will keep their word. They cannot move forward by going back on their word.

In New Brunswick, people believe in economic development. We believe that infrastructure needs to be put in place. We need to stop cutting and invest in people and the economy. That is how to solve the problem.

We cannot cut the Gaspé Peninsula, or the Atlantic regions off and tell the people there that there is nothing left for them and that we no longer believe in them. It does not work like that.

I quite like Toronto. It is a fine city, but the folks from back home do not want to live there. It is not where they come from, it is not their home. When a government is in power, it has a responsibility: it cannot look after just one province, it is responsible for the whole country. It has to understand how people live. That is what a real government is all about.

These days, the government has forgotten all about this. It does polls. It asks itself, “Will we get enough votes? If so, we are fine. Did we cut enough? We cut too much; we will give back a bit. They are hungry; we will solve it with a few crumbs”.

In human terms, we need more than this. Back home, small businesses want to succeed. They want to create jobs. There cannot be jobs if the government does not build the infrastructure to get people to work.

For example, in northeastern New Brunswick, they want the government to build a natural gas pipeline. They say, “Where the natural gas pipeline is being built, there will be job creation”. When you look from out west all the way to Bernier, in Quebec, there are jobs. Any further, and there are no more. Which means that if there were natural gas back home, the region would prosper. It would pave the way for businesses and people could work. People would give anything to work or to create jobs.

Last week, I met with representatives of the local chamber of commerce. They asked me what they could do to create employment. I told them the only way would be to have infrastructure and to get the wheels turning to attract companies and create jobs.

As I was saying before, all of a sudden one week they announced $90 million. This dropped to $77 million on Monday, and today, Wednesday, there is no money left at all. Some announcement. That will create jobs.

People do not just want employment insurance. It exists and was created for cases when the government cannot fulfill its responsibilities or else for companies to find employment for people. People do not want to go on social assistance. People are eager to work. People from back home go to work in northern Ontario, in Toronto. You meet people from my region everywhere you go, and some of them have left their family behind in order to find work.

It is a disgrace to hear people say they are all lazy and no good and do not want to work, as my predecessor said. I answered back, “If you worked for $5.50 an hour, you would be lazy too”.

People want a good job, they do not want to be on employment insurance. That is not what they want. It is a program that belongs to them to help them out when they are going through hard times.

As I have said before and am saying again, 35 days before a general election, the Liberals believe in everything that I just talked about. But the day after the election, and for the next four years, they forget all about it. They become true right-wing Liberals and say, “We will look after our major corporations and people like those who run Groupaction. We will throw money at them, to the tune of $20 million or $22 million a shot”. Now, these people have fun; they are not on social assistance and they have food on the table every morning. Their children are not hungry. These people have no problems.

But that is not the case back home. I meet people; every day, my office receives between 50 and 100 calls from people who are in dire straits. On the government side, it seems that they only get a couple of calls, usually from Groupaction, Bombardier, GM or other corporations. Now they have noting to worry about: one call, and everything is settled. As for the others, let them starve to death.

Let us hope that the government will realize what needs to be done. It is not about benefits, it is about having a system that works, and it is about beginning to give money to remote regions, to regions that have seasonal workers, so as to help them and create jobs. At the same time, we could have a program to ensure that these people can survive during those periods when there is no work to be had. We cannot let them down.

We do not live in that kind of country, I think. It is said that we live in the best country in the world, but today there 4.1 million children who are going hungry in this country. Three hundred thousand children depend on food banks each month. That is nothing to be proud of.

Therefore, I am asking the government to do some soul searching, particularly since Christmas is coming. Perhaps the government will have some good news for us in January.

[Odina Desrochers, Bloc, Lotbinière—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the report that was tabled today. I helped draft this report, since it is the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, on which I sit, that also examined premium rates and employment insurance surpluses.

We asked many questions in the House. The Department of Human Resources Development provided some explanations. So did the Department of Finance. This is the third time that the Auditor General has sounded the alarm and said “It really makes no sense that, with current premiums, there is a surplus which, on March 31, 2002, reached $42.8 billion”.

I invite members opposite to read the report. There are some very interesting conclusions and recommendations. We hope that, for once, the government will address this issue.

I want to say something about the first recommendation. When recommendations are made to this government, it is important to include dates, because this government has a habit of saying “Soon, soon, soon”. But for us, soon now means 2003, if not 2004.

The first recommendation is very clear and it includes a cut-off date. It reads:

That the government clarify and disclose to Parliament and the public accounts committee all the relevant factors used in setting the employment insurance premium rates, particularly with regard to determining the nature of the employment insurance account balance and deciding on its disposition.

That the government table the relevant information to Parliament and the Committee no later than March 31, 2003.

This means that the other side will have to wake up and begin to realize that there is a major problem with premium rates and the employment insurance surplus.

The second recommendation states that:

During the review of the employment insurance premium setting process, the government take all necessary steps to include consultations with employee and employer groups along with the Canada Employment Insurance Commission and the Chief Actuary of Human Resources Development Canada and all other relevant stakeholders.

We put a question to Human Resources Development officials. They told us “We will soon begin consultations and that is about it”. We asked where these consultations would lead us. They replied “If we cannot agree, we will go back to the old method”.

The old practice is the one that allows the government to keep on collecting the surplus and strangling the unemployed.

I will continue because this report is very important. The last time the Auditor General referred to the EI fund, she said, “This is the third time I have raised this issue. I hope that the government will deal with this very important issue once and for all”.

The third recommendation is as follows:

That the government prepare a status report on these consultations—

It should start with this. This is most important.

--summarizing each participant's position, contribution and conclusion to the review of the employment insurance rate setting process and table the document to Parliament and the Public Accounts Committee when the review is complete.

I think that the members of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts have once again found ways and methods for this government to finally resolve this problem that affects workers and small business. The way that premiums are paid hurts small business and creates problems in terms of competition. The members opposite do not seem to understand this.

I will continue with the fourth recommendation, and I hope the members opposite will take the time to read this report.

The Auditor General said that if the government did not act, she would have very harsh criticism when she returns before us in April, 2003. She has warned the government three times now and she hopes that they have heeded her.

The fourth recommendation reads:

That the government formally reinstate the requirement that the Chief Actuary of Human Resources Development Canada prepare and produce full and complete actuarial reports for the EI program for 2002-2003.

As my colleague, the member for Rimouski-Neigette-et-la Mitis, said earlier, since Bill C-2 was passed, the whole issue has been left in the hands of the government and the Minister of Human Resources Development. We do not know where the money goes, nor how the premiums are set. It is high time, therefore, to return to more transparent and more effective methods.

I will finish by quoting the fifth recommendation from the report:

That the government consider legislative amendments that would require the Chief Actuary of Human Resources Development Canada to produce on an annual basis actuarial reports on the EI program. That these reports be made available in a timely fashion to all stakeholders and the public on the Human Resources Development Canada website.

There are five major recommendations in this report, which are to my mind logical and necessary if we are to get to the bottom of this problem with employment insurance, which affects workers and small businesses. The current employment insurance rates are strangling them.

I am directing this message to the government, and to the present Prime Minister as well, if he really wants to leave a legacy, an image of someone who cares, who has given some thought to the fate of the jobless and the small and medium size businesses that are struggling. He has an opportunity, in my opinion, to leave us as the mark of his passage through here as Prime Minister, the proof that he is humane, a man of compassion and one who understands the suffering in our society.

I do not think this will happen, because there is a conspiracy within this government, the present Minister of Finance, his parliamentary secretary who has just spoken, the member for LaSalle—Émard, the Liberals, or the Quebec Liberal caucus, to keep on digging into the employment insurance fund.

This government's sole objective, in maintaining the premium rates and the surplus in the fund so high, is to keep its hand in the till so it can pay down the debt. It is doing this at the expense of the unemployed workers and the small and medium size businesses. This is unacceptable, heartless, totally arrogant.

I trust that the Liberals over there, the federal Liberals from Quebec, will take time to read this report so they will understand what poverty is, and will get moving once and for all on solving the problem with the EI fund and its surplus.

[Suzanne Tremblay, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette-Et-La Mitis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am wondering what to respond to since I have not heard any questions. The member took this opportunity to make a speech.

If people are paying employment insurance, it is so that if they lose their job, they can get benefits, thanks to their insurance. That is the purpose of employment insurance.

In some ways, it is good that we have this system and employment insurance. What is bad when we talk about employment insurance, is that the government has misappropriated it for other purposes. When the Bloc refused to support Bill C-44 in 1997, it was because the government was using this bill as a licence to steal. That was the issue.

In 2000, the government came up with Bill C-2, which made theft from the fund legal. That is what is unacceptable.

[Nancy Karetak-Lindell, Liberal, Nunavut, NU]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the second report of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs, Northern Development and Natural Resources on Bill C-6, an act to establish the Canadian Centre for the Independent Resolution of First Nations Specific Claims to provide for the filing, negotiation and resolution of specific claims and to make related amendments to other acts, with amendments.

I also have the honour to present, in both official languages, the third report of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs, Northern Development and Natural Resources, pursuant to its order of reference dated Tuesday, October 22. Your committee considered Bill C-2, an act to establish a process for assessing the environmental and socio-economic effects of certain activities in Yukon, and reports the bill, with amendments.

Parliamentary Reform

[Chuck Cadman, Canadian Alliance, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on the issue of modernization in this place.

I honestly believe that we need to have a long hard look at the excessive use of time allocation and closure and bring back meaningful debate. Quite likely very soon, the House will be asked to debate the Kyoto protocol, arguably the most important issue to hit this session. While I would never anticipate a decision of the House, I will anticipate the Prime Minister and his House leader. Even though the government has absolutely no agenda it will resort to closing off debate on Kyoto because it is concerned that if enough Canadians become aware of the impact, the government will be in hot water.

If one is on the right side of an issue and debates it sufficiently enough, one will win, and the Liberals know that they are on the wrong side of the Kyoto issue so they will respond by stifling debate. They used the same tactic when they raised the CPP premiums by 70%. The figured that if Canadians were upset about a 7% GST, they would not have much appreciation for a 70% CPP hike, so they rammed the bill through using closure at every turn.

The naval aid bill of 1913 marked the first time in Canadian parliamentary history that closure was used. When it was used to shut down the pipeline debate in 1956, a respected academic, C.E.S. Franks, dubbed the incident the most important in Parliament's history. He argued that the pipeline debate had “inaugurated the modern parliamentary age of both obstruction and reform”.

If 1956 marks the inauguration of the modern parliamentary age of obstruction, then I submit that 2002 marks the age when the right of the opposition to filibuster died. The opposition no longer has the tools to obstruct. Normally, as soon as the government gets a whiff of a filibuster or anticipates controversy, it closes off debate and advances the bill through the system before the public gets wise to its contents. On the second day of debate on the CPP bill, the government invoked time allocation. The remaining stages of that bill met the same fate. The public felt the impact of Bill C-2 long before it ever heard there was a bill before Parliament.

It is important to note that the finance minister at the time was the member for LaSalle—Émard, the member who now cries crocodile tears about democratic deficit.

Time allocation and closure are supposed to be about managing time. The government uses time allocation to manage controversy. When it introduces a controversial bill, it invokes time allocation almost immediately, slipping the bill through Parliament before the opposition has time to solicit public support for its point of view.

Filibusters are a part of our history and play an important role, since they raise the profile of an issue so that the public can learn and respond. Sadly, that tradition has been lost because this government and its predecessor have taken just about every filibuster tool away from the opposition.

The last time the opposition waged a successful filibuster was with the Nisga'a bill. Unlike debate, the government could not curtail voting, so the Reform Party introduced hundreds of motions, causing the House to vote around the clock for 42 hours. It was that unusual event that made news as far away as the United Kingdom. It was a successful filibuster tactic in that it raised the profile of an issue.

How did the government respond? The first order of business in this Parliament was to remove that tactic. The current government House leader shuts down debate at every turn, often leaving the House with nothing to debate. Since this session began we have had an unprecedented number of take note debates. We have taken note more often than we have taken action. There is no legislation, so we take note and navel gaze for days at a time when Canadians are faced with serious issues that demand action.

The reason we are taking note today is not that we do not know what to do or that we need to convince ourselves that reform is needed. It is that the government has nothing else to do and would rather take note than take action.

It has become so bad that sometimes government members have had to filibuster their own bills in order to give the appearance that the House has something to do. Under the current House leader's reign, the House has had to be adjourned early every Friday and sometimes on Thursdays. Just last Monday, we shut down more than one hour early.

It might come as a surprise to some, but the Canadian Alliance is not entirely opposed to the use of time allocation and closure. With a few changes, these procedures can be used legitimately and effectively. I would like to read into the record the Alliance's policy on closure and time allocation from Building Trust II, our document on the issue:

First, we recommend amending the rules to provide the Speaker with greater discretionary authority. The Speaker should only allow a time allocation motion to be put forward if he is satisfied that the motion does not infringe on the rights of the minority.

Second, we believe that a change in attitude is required. An Alliance government would respect the parliamentary tradition of the balance between the right of an opposition to solicit public support through debate and reasonable delaying tactics and the right of a government to eventually have its legislation come to a vote.

The final point would be to provide more legitimacy to the legislative process, including the process for allotting time, by allowing free votes.

The excessive use of time allocation is symptomatic of a larger problem. The government has little time for parliamentary process because it arrogantly believes that its own internal process is sufficient.

While we can appreciate that much work goes into the creation of legislation, Parliament is where the views of the public are brought to bear on the process. The current process is unacceptable. Once a bill is introduced in Parliament, or leaked to the media in advance, another extremely thorny subject but best left for another day, once introduced, the public and the media accept that it will become law. The parliamentary process is often seen as little more than a delay. What takes place on the floor of the House is nothing more than a time game. Debate is not intended to convince anyone of anything but is used to fill time. That is the perception of the public.

The government is interested in only one thing. The question it asks of the opposition is not how it feels about a particular bill, or how it feels it might be improved, or why the opposition's constituents have a problem with it. No, the only question on the mind of the government is how much time the opposition is going to spend on it.

The government House leader takes all this information from the opposition parties regarding time and decides if it fits into his timetable. What is said or done on the floor of the House and in committee is rarely considered. The concern is not what is being said, but how long it takes to say it. This is the only leverage the opposition parties have, so they use it. An opposition that messes up the government's agenda occasionally succeeds in getting change. The result is that speaking and listening become irrelevant, while disruption and delay occasionally achieve change.

We should consider giving more value to debate, rather than time, by allowing free votes. Free votes would go a long way toward altering this dysfunctional relationship between the legislative and executive branches of government. With free votes, the government would have to listen to debate. It would have to negotiate and be willing to compromise. With this process, legislation could be improved.

Because of the use of closure, members have resorted to other means to legitimately raise the profile of an issue. These other means are no substitute for legitimate debate, but in the absence of such, members are left with little choice. The most obvious recent example is the Nisga'a voting marathon in the last parliament. I am sure that Canadians would much rather listen to reasoned debate than to the ringing of bells or to members' names being called for 42 hours straight.

Government Contracts

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I will repeat for the hon. member's benefit: the contributions are already public and the rules of transparency will be enhanced by the bill that is going to be introduced shortly. Finally, I might point out to her and her party that, when we reinforced the rules for third party transparency with Bill C-2, her party voted against it.

Supply

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I am not reprimanding anyone on my side of the House, bien au contraire. I will get to that in a little while and I hope the hon. member will listen attentively.

I am not too worried about consistency when debating the Alliance members. Their party is the one which not too long ago wanted to take some people whose profiles they did not agree with and put them at the back of the store. It is the same party that chastised its own members and put them at the back of the House. It is the same party that turfed people out of their critic roles and all kinds of other things when they made statements they did not like. So I will take the remonstrances from the people across the way with a grain of salt.

Let me get to what was said a while ago about Canada's record as a liberal democracy. We can have our debates inside the House and disagree with one another all we like, but to pretend that this is akin somehow to our not being the liberal democracy that we are, the international observers that we are, the international defenders of peace that we are and have been, is simply wrong.

It says all kinds of wrong things about the people who work for Elections Canada, with which I do not agree. It says all kinds of wrong things about our peacekeepers, about Canadians working as volunteers offshore trying to install parliamentary democracies and other liberal democracies elsewhere in the world.

I for one am very proud of what they have done, and I am very confident about every effort they have made, such as representing Canada in Zimbabwe. We have been chastised for that by the House leader for the official opposition, which is wrong. None of us on this side of the House, regardless of how we agree or disagree with the motion that is before us, would agree with the premise raised by the hon. member that our international election observers cannot defend Canada as a result of a dispute on how to elect committee chairs. That is simply ridiculous.

This is internal cuisine that we have here. That is what it is. We will solve it and that is fine, but we should at least put it for what it is and not start saying that Canada somehow misses its international role as a result of a dispute two sword lengths across the way for our electing committee chairs.

There was an indication a while ago about how we did modernization and how all of us live by the modernization rules that we have set in place.

We put in place a modernization rule whereby members on all sides of the House could know a day ahead of time what the subject would be. What did the opposition do yesterday, those same people in favour of modernization? They put forward two motions so that we would not know which one they really wanted to move today. Next week perhaps there will be 10, and the week after the entire phone book so we will not know what the topic will be. They are completely going around the modernization rule which they themselves said they are in favour of. Let us remember what is going on here before we believe everything we are told by the other side of the House.

I want to talk about the parallels that have been drawn with the Canada Elections Act. I am the minister responsible for the Canada Elections Act. I put forward Bill C-2 to modernize our election laws, to put rules on third parties and to do all those things so that there would not be some of this grey money, shall I call it, that was entering the political process and so that we could not have these campaigns artificially defeating some of our people in the House. There was the no more prime ministers from Quebec campaign which some of us saw not that long ago. Do we remember those campaigns? Do we remember how they got there?

We remember all those things. We put forward Bill C-2 to plug up those loopholes. Which party voted against it? Do we remember which party was against Bill C-2, which party was against those transparency rules? It was the Alliance Party. Do opposition members think I have forgotten or that any other member on this side of the House will soon forget?

After we put that in place, the National Citizens' Coalition protested. Of course the National Citizens' Coalition is not national and it is not a citizens' coalition or anything close to it. Anyway, that organization decided it would launch a court action against me and the government for having passed that. Then it brought the government to the Supreme Court against having transparency rules. Does everyone know who was the leader of the National Citizens' Coalition when it did that?

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Madam Speaker, first I would like to congratulate my colleague from Halifax West. I agree with a lot of the things he said. It was an excellent submission, especially the point about the 800 years in developing a parliamentary procedure and that we should be careful in what changes we make.

I would like to muse on the strategy the opposition parties have come up with for opposition days this fall. Last week we debated a motion from the Alliance when members explained they would like to debate “a new idea” from the member for LaSalle—Émard. Rather than debate one of their own ideas, they wanted to debate another Liberal new idea. Today we see that Bloc members once again have made a great point all day that they would like to debate “another new idea” of the Liberals, an idea from the member for LaSalle—Émard.

Most of the motions coming from a majority government are Liberal ideas which we promote and debate, but now the opposition has decided to give their days back. In the time that they have to promote their ideas of how they will be a government in waiting, we also get to debate new Liberal ideas. It is devastating.

In the spirit of collegiality I encourage my cher collègues to keep coming up with good ideas so that the opposition can press forward with this strategy right to the bitter end.

I would like to talk about today's motion but first I will read it into the record.

The motion reads:

That, in the opinion of this House, government appointments of ambassadors, consuls general and heads of regulatory bodies and Crown corporations should automatically be referred to the appropriate committee of the House of Commons for consideration, and that the relevant Standing Orders of the House of Commons should be amended accordingly.

On December 5, 1984, the special committee on the reform of the House of Commons, the McGrath committee, was appointed to examine the powers, procedures, practices, organizations and facilities of the House of Commons. Among the recommendations it ultimately came up with was that committees should be authorized to review non-judicial order in council appointments or in some cases nominations for appointment.

As a result, under Standing Orders 110 and 111 of the House of Commons, non-judicial order in council appointments are automatically referred to the appropriate standing committee within five days for consideration. The committee may call the nominee or appointee before it during the subsequent 30-day period to review his or her qualifications for the post. The committee may report recommendations to the House, but in keeping with the recommendations of the McGrath committee it does not have the power to confirm or reject the appointment.

In essence, the resolution today is confirming that procedure and reinforcing it. I do not have a problem with that. That is confirmed in a statement made on February 19, 2002, by the member for Mercier:

In the case of any political appointment, the committee may ask to give its approval regarding the experience and expertise of the appointee to perform the duties of his job.

This is an article from the Canadian Press .

I have no problem in supporting the motion and the system that basically is in place.

The Standing Orders currently allow for a review of order in council appointments. Since 1994 there have been over 4,300 such appointments and the committee has rarely used this power except when there was significant publicity. I would like to commend the former members of Parliament for using this power judiciously, for not having the types of circuses that occasionally occur in American congressional hearings that go on and on, and which do not serve the purposes that a rational review is meant to accomplish.

While we are talking about appointments, I want to make a clarification on another bill we are reviewing, Bill C-2. There was an issue related to appointments to a board in that particular bill. One of the members of Her Majesty's loyal opposition was concerned that there might be problems with these government appointments because of the significant major powers of this board.

The member may have had some bad experiences in the past related to this and so has concerns. For clarification, and I said this on CBC radio last night as well, this particular board has only seven members and only one is appointed by the minister free and clear. The rest are nominated by other organizations. That may be a generic debate related to boards totally appointed by the Government of Canada. In this particular case it is not relevant because only one in seven of the members is appointed by the government.

A number of members from all the parties today have talked about various aspects of government reform that have been discussed in the House. I want to talk about private members' bills because there are a number of members who have been concerned about various aspects of it. I probably have a different view than many members. In promoting private members' business and making it more successful, we must increase the respect that parliamentarians have for the people who work in the departments and vice versa. They must also increase their respect for us so that we can get good policy into private members' bills.

If I come up with an idea in an area in which I am not an expert, I go to the experts who have spent careers on that particular area. Some members do this and that is great. The experts have checked out various legislation in other countries that is similar. They have checked the pros and cons, and consulted people. They have done legal checks. They have done all sorts of research on a particular area and if members can say that they have dealt with it, consulted on it and looked at it, then people would give more credibility to the initiatives.

On the other side, the people in the departments too have to respect that every member in the House is a representative of the people. They have been elected by the people to put forward the wishes of the people. When members, no matter which party they are from, come up with ideas or suggestions which more often than not probably emanated from the people, then the people who have designed the bill should be able to answer the questions. They should be able to come up with the reasons why the bill should stay as it is or make appropriate changes.

We need to increase that dialogue. Everyone would have more respect and more confidence in the product that comes out. Perhaps we could have more progress in private members' business.

Canada Pension Plan

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-3 would basically carry on with the work that was done in a prior Parliament under Bill C-2 establishing the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. Some of the points the member has raised were discussed and considered when we went through that process.

One of the principles that was discussed was whether the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board should be an instrument of policy. By that I mean whether it should be an instrument used to promote social or fiscal policy or other objectives that Parliament might have such as ethical investment which the member mentioned. Should we have any investments in tobacco companies because tobacco is bad? We want to clean our environment therefore should we not be supporting those areas?

Those are all very important goals that we try to work on. However considering the size of the pool of funds available to the investment board it is clear that there is a high risk that those investments, if strategically placed, could have a significant disruptive effective on the marketplace.

The decision was taken back then that the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and its investment funds would not be utilized as a policy tool. In fact, we would have investments. Our objective was to maximize the return on investments comparable to what other investors receive in the marketplace and that investments would be made in the broad cross section in Canadian markets as well as having a balanced debt and equity, and to afford up to 30% of those investments offshore as under the RRSP program. That is where Parliament made that decision.

This particular bill is not bringing that subject back up again although the member again raised the concern that we would like to do those things. Upon reflection, I am sure the member would agree that it would be a dangerous thing to take the money of participants in the Canada pension plan and use it to somehow steer social or public policy considering that such a large amount of money is intended to provide pension benefits for retirees, death benefits for spouses and children, survivor benefits and disability benefits which are substantial. The member may want to comment on those points.

He may want to comment on the fact that the Canada pension plan system was under some question about whether or not it was viable over the long-term. He may also want to comment on the fact that the changes made in Bill C-2 were necessary to ensure the long-term sustainability of the Canada pension plan system.

Notwithstanding the member's noble intent to advance social and public policy, I think he would concede that it is in conflict with the premise of ensuring that the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board optimize the return for pensioners to ensure that the cost of operating the plan is as fair and reasonable as possible. At the same time it should be maintaining the benefit levels of all of those benefits, whether they be pension benefits, survivor benefits, death benefits or disability benefits. We must ensure that they remain at levels which would allow our seniors to get the benefits.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that would be an interesting subject for discussion for a broadly based round table, because it really is all about the impacts of an aging society, in every aspect. We know how the baby boomer spike has moved through the system and has affected us over the decades in various ways. It used to be that tennis rackets and golf clubs were the big investment for baby boomers and now it is bird-watching equipment.

The impact on the Canada pension plan system is significant in terms of the ratio of workers to retirees. It is going from about five workers per retiree down to three. It means that there is a greater demand. By the same token, if we follow it out to its logical extension, once the baby boomers get into the late retirement years and in fact pass away, all of a sudden the demand is going to shift again. We are going to go through this and we are going to get the echo generation.

Canadians were saying at the time that they thought the Canada pension plan system was bankrupt or was maybe going to be bankrupt and they were concerned about it. The government, through Bill C-2 and now through this bill, Bill C-3, is completing a process to ensure that the Canada pension plan system is on a sound footing, that the returns on the moneys invested are comparable to other investment opportunities and that this plan will be there for them in their retirement.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to participate in the debate on Bill C-3, having been a member of the finance committee when the former Bill C-2 established the CPP Investment Board. Having spoken on it, I feel I have a little bit of background knowledge on it.

I was astounded today to hear some of the commentary by some of the members. There was one speaker, I believe from the NDP, who suggested that when the GIS increased, the CPP would automatically decrease. That is absolutely incorrect. Canada pension plan benefits are determined independently, they are not subject to an income test or a means test. Canadians get reports periodically on their prospective pension benefits so that they know exactly what they have to work with in terms of their overall retirement planning.

Bill C-3 would provide another step toward the fuller implementation of the creation of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board which was set up under former Bill C-2 to bring the Canada pension plan into the next phase to take into account the fact that we have an aging society. That is what it comes down to.

Let me comment briefly on the investment board. I then want to get back to the Canada pension plan because it is important that we reassure Canadians exactly what the Canada pension plan system is and how it works for them.

The board established in 1998 and it is an independent arm's-length board from government. It has a mandate to invest only in the interest of plan members. It has full authority to develop and implement investment policies and has a process for choosing its own board of directors.

It now has a track record with regard to the moneys that have been transferred to it for its investment and indeed on a calendar year basis, the Canada pension plan's last reported annual return was 6.2% which outperformed many other large public sector pension plans. Canadians should understand that the board has a good track record. I wish to note some comparatives. People might be familiar with the Caisse de dépôt which over the same period had a return on its investment of negative 5%. It lost 5%. The Ontario teachers pension plan lost 2.3%. In terms of the performance measures, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has been doing a good job on behalf of Canadians through the management of Canadian funds.

There was a question raised by some members about a number of issues such as, why we do not invest in certain types of investments rather than others, for instance, why do we not have an ethical filter, or a health filter? For example, let us not invest in tobacco companies because tobacco is bad. There were a number of principles involved in establishing the investment board and one of those was that it was not going to be manipulated and used as an instrument of policy. It was not going to be used to direct how we were going to influence certain activities either in the marketplace or in terms of social policy.

Therefore, the thinking at the time was that given the size of the fund the investment board was going to manage the fund on behalf of Canadians. It was important that this large investment body, with this large pool of funds, was not going to be used in a way which would bring disruption to the marketplace. It meant that it was going to invest in a balanced way right across the spectrum and basically emulate the investment patterns of all other investors in the Canadian marketplace as well as foreign investment content.

The House has dealt many times with foreign content in registered retirement savings plans, et cetera. Certainly it continues to be a matter which the finance committee has looked at.

It is another element of a good investment strategy to ensure that there is an opportunity to have a balance in a portfolio and that Canadians can earn a fair and equitable return relative to other investment opportunities. However with a restriction on foreign investments, it could be argued that those who have a different investment strategy and utilize investment funds outside of their RRSPs have no limitations on how much they can invest abroad.

They do have options if in fact the returns were that much greater, but in this volatile marketplace the CPP Investment Board is not meant to be an instrument of high risk or volatility. It has to support the marketplace to the extent necessary not to impair the availability of capital for Canadian capital markets. At the same time it should be supportive of Canadian businesses through equity investments that reflect the broad base of listed equity investments as well as debt instruments that are available to all investors.

The issue regarding foreign investment is always under discussion and it is useful to have. I know that the CPP Investment Board is made up of some of the best experts in the industry and those kinds of questions come up. As members will know, the Canada Pension Plan system is a collaboration of federal and provincial governments and there is a tri-annual review, I believe there is a review this fall, at which time the provinces and the federal government get together to look at some of the matters which have come to their attention, and where they may want to review policy positions.

I would encourage all members who are interested in the process to make suggestions to the Government of Canada, to the Minister of Finance, maybe through the parliamentary secretary, about items they would like to see discussed with regard to the future of the Canada pension plan and how it operates. It is constructive to get those items on the agenda so that when the provinces and the federal government get together and sit down and talk about the CPP, they have the benefit of the ideas we have from Canadians and from our own work, whether it be through the finance committee or otherwise. Their deliberations will determine how the Canada pension plan can better serve Canadians over the longer term.

I was a concerned about one speaker from the Canadian Alliance, the member for Peace River. It reminded me of the discussions that were taking place in the House about the future viability of the Canada pension plan system. The then Reform Party, now the Canadian Alliance, came up with a view that the Canada pension plan system should be replaced by another system which was described as a mandatory pension contribution by Canadians. It is almost a mandatory retirement plan.

This was the solution to the problems of the Canada pension plan system because it has higher premiums than it used to, and it has an unfunded liability. According to the Canadian Alliance we should take that system, put it over here, and the best thing we can do for Canadians is have a mandatory contributory plan to pensions.

I have never, ever thought that this idea was well thought out. I was concerned that someone actually would suggest that somehow retirement contributions would be mandated, knowing that in a volatile world, more often than not people are not only living from paycheque to paycheque, they are actually borrowing to live. How does a Canadian make a mandatory contribution to a pension plan, to a pension program, when cash flow is not available? How does he or she provide for those pension benefits? It makes no sense. I have not heard the explanation and I hope that the members who are suggesting that would explain that point.

There is another aspect. Let us look at the Canada pension plan system and what it does today. It provides pension benefits to Canadians when they reach retirement age. Canadians have the opportunity to retire early, up to age 60 instead of 65, by taking a slightly reduced pension. They also have the opportunity to extend or defer the collection of Canada pension plan benefits and earn even a greater benefit. So there is a little bit of latitude here, depending on personal circumstances. Canadians have this opportunity either to take pension benefits early or to defer them.

The Canada pension plan also provides survivor benefits to the spouse of a pensioner who passes away. It is very important that there be this continuity of the benefits for a family or a part thereof because they have responsibilities.

There are also death benefits. I am not sure if Canadians are aware but under the Canada pension plan system a person does have a death benefit. Should a pensioner die, a death benefit is there for the surviving spouse and for any surviving children. I think the amount was $2,000 but I believe it is now just $1,000. It went down but the benefit is there.

Then there is the disability benefit, which most Canadians probably have not figured out why it is in the Canada pension plan system. Under the Canada pension plan system Canadians who become disabled and are contributors to the Canada pension plan system qualify for disability benefits.

We have talked quite a bit in recent days about the importance of disability benefits and to make sure that people who are entitled to those disability benefits get them. There is some controversy now about whether the rules have been changed and maybe some people who should get disability benefits are not getting benefits. I think members know, through our work in our constituency offices, that there are venues and that every case can be dealt with on a case by case basis to justify a disability benefit.

That is an expensive proposition. Members can imagine how when we build up pension benefits, survivor benefits, death benefits and disability benefits, the CPP is a very important program for Canadians. For the life of me I do not understand how a mandatory retirement plan replacing CPP would address all those other benefits. What would happen to the survivor benefits? What would happen to the death benefits? What would happen to the disability benefits?

I asked the member for Peace River what would happen to the disability benefits. He said that was a very good question and that he would have to think about it.

Those things are not thought about after one says “here is our solution to the problem”. Those things have to be thought out in advance. I must say that it is disconcerting to me to think that when suggestions like that come out they could actually become part of a policy or a platform item of a party to suggest that by a stroke of the pen we could get rid of the CPP and do something else, which I am not sure Canadians could manage, particularly in those early years.

We made a number of changes in the plan over the years. They were important changes to respond to the needs of Canadians.

The Canada pension plan system has an unfunded liability and members know that. It has become a source of criticism by the members of the government and of the Canada pension plan system itself. However members must understand from where we came.

The Canada pension plan system started in 1966. When it was first started the initial premiums I believe were about $35 a year. It was very nominal. At that time there were at least five working persons in Canada contributing premiums for every one pensioner.

Why was the Canada pension plan system set up? If we look back and we figure out who these people are who receive pensions, they are the people who came through the depression years. These are the people who in the most important part of their earning life went through a depression and had no opportunity to provide for retirement. It was devastating for families. They could hardly feed themselves. It was a period of time before I was born, but we educate ourselves and we have to understand where Canadians came from. So that was a big part of why the CPP was set up.

Canadians had nothing for themselves in retirement. We had to take care of them somehow so we established the Canada pension plan system in 1966 to provide some measure of retirement dignity for those who had built this country. What more noble cause could there be?

The people who started collecting pension benefits back in 1966 made no contributions to the pension plan. They just started collecting benefits because they had nothing. So all of a sudden this principle that we are always in arrears, today's workers are paying for today's pensioners.

When there are over five workers for every one retiree there can be low premiums. What has happened as we have moved through the decades? Our society started to age. In the next 10 or 15 years instead of having five workers for every pensioner there will only be three. It is clear that something has to change.

Pensioners collecting CPP who had worked some 40 years and made regular contributions to the CPP from 1966 to 2001, their accumulative premium contributions were less than $16,000. I will put that in perspective.

Today's pensioners paid in about $16,000 if they had worked from 1966 to 2001. What can we get for $16,000 even if we assume that it was invested and received a fair and reasonable return over all the years of contributions? We would not have received much, and yet our Canada pension plan system paid out pension benefits, death benefits and later disability benefits, the child benefit and survivor benefits.

Things changed to the point where premiums had to increase. Today's pensioners receive about $8 for every $1 they put in. The opposition is suggesting that it is a travesty that tomorrow's pensioners will not get the same $8 for every $1. I do not know where anyone can make investments like that anymore. We did it at the time because it raised the quality of life of yesterday's pensioners up to a reasonable standard so they could live in the dignity to which they were entitled. It was not equitable but it was the right thing to do.

Now we have to look at the reality of an increasing retirement population. We have to look at the fact that all of a sudden it is expensive to continue to provide retirees with those ongoing benefits and still maintain some stability in that. It costs money and there were increases.

Members continue to say that this was a tax grab, the biggest tax bite ever, and all the hyperbole one can think of. All of the funds in the Canada pension plan are separate and apart from the government's revenue. They are not included in the determination of a surplus or deficit for the year. It is a separate fund. All CPP premium contributions go to the plan and all benefits are paid out of that plan.

When the actuaries did their numbers they told us what we had to do to ensure the long term sustainability of the Canada pension plan system. There were substantial increases. It was important for Canadians to continue to support pension benefits, survivor benefits, death benefits and disability benefits up to a level so that our retirees could live in dignity in their retirement years. To suggest that we are somehow going to take this away and force Canadians to fend for themselves is not only wrong, it is irresponsible.

Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act

[The Speaker]

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at second reading of Bill C-2.

Canada Pension Plan

[Charlie Penson, Canadian Alliance, Peace River, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am happy to rise today to speak to Bill C-3, an act to amend the Canada Pension Plan Act that has been brought back in this Parliament after Parliament prorogued last spring.

The main thrust of Bill C-3 is to propose a transfer of all amounts held in the Department of Finance within the Canada pension plan account, including the bond portfolio which is worth about $40 billion. It is the transfer to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. This transfer would take place over a three year period.

Bill C-3 would establish a means for the transfer of assets between the Department of Finance and the CPP Investment Board so that immediate payout obligations of the plan can be met. The legislation also spells out how the provincial securities currently held in the account may be redeemed or replaced. Lastly, the bill would apply to the Canadian pension plan fund the 30% foreign content limit that applies to registered retirement savings plans and employer and union sponsored pension plans in Canada.

While Bill C-3 is a step in the government's planned development of the public pension plan, managed at arm's length by a crown corporation, the bill is more than a housekeeping bill. The Canadian Alliance is opposed to the Liberal solution of bilking Canadian workers and employers out of billions of dollars to pay for a plan that is unquestionably unfair to younger generations in our society.

The Canada pension plan was devised over 36 years ago by a Liberal government with a noble objective, one which I believe all members then and now can agree on, to provide retirement security to all Canadians and to reduce poverty among seniors. A mandatory pension plan was devised and paid for through equal payroll contributions and deductions from workers and employers.

Back in 1966 Canadians were told that their payroll deductions required to fund the Canada pension plan would never go above 5.5%. However, how times change. When the plan was designed it was assumed that there would be six taxpaying workers for every dependent retiree. Of course, we know that has changed significantly. The member for South Surrey—White Rock—Langley just talked about the changing demographics in our society. Anybody who does not have a plan to deal with that is in for some nasty surprises.

We know that the birth rate in Canada for every two people is 1.2, not even a replacement factor for those people. It will certainly have a major impact on how governments operate and how we will continue to fund retirement savings with a bigger percentage of our society being in the older category and less people in the younger group paying the bills.

From 1966 to 1982, annual Canada pension plan contributions exceeded the plan's annual benefit payouts. The funds were invested in provincial bonds and the plan's assets accumulated to almost $24 billion. Beginning in 1983, however, contributions fell short of benefits. Nevertheless, the interest on the $24 billion was sufficient to keep the overall CPP in surplus for another 10 years. By 1992, the pool of assets had grown to $42 billion.

However, in 1993, the year this current Liberal government took office, was the year that the culmination of contributions and interest could not produce the revenue required to cover the stream of benefits. That was a major turning point. The Canadian pension plan's chief actuary warned that without changes the plan would be in very deep trouble, especially when the baby boomer generation began to reach 65 in about the year 2012.

By 1997 Canada pension plan's assets had fallen to $35.5 billion. During the fall of that year the Liberal government introduced Bill C-2 which was designed to save the Canada pension plan by the only way it knows how to govern: take more money from Canadian taxpayers. We see it over and over again and again this year in the Speech from the Throne.

The Liberal government showed its contempt for Canadian taxpayers and Parliament all at the same time by invoking closure after a mere eight hours of debate on a huge issue that Canadians needed to be concerned about.

Starting in 1998, Canadians saw their take home pay shrink as contribution rates for both employees and employers were jacked up in a series of increases to the Canada pension plan.

Canada pension plan premiums went from 5.5% on the average industrial wage income to 9.4% where it is currently. By 2003 it will be up to 9.9%. That is a staggering 73% increase and the biggest tax grab in Canadian history. What is really scary is that the former chief actuary of the Canada pension plan had suggested during that time that a rate higher than 9.9% was necessary to save the pension plan. However that did not suit the former finance minister's plans for his political career and instead of listening to the chief actuary he had him fired. That solved a lot. I guess what goes around comes around. Eventually the former finance minister met the same fate himself and he was fired.

With more money flowing into the Canada pension plan as a result of these jacked up rates, the plan's total revenue exceeded benefits slightly in 1998 and by 2000 contributions alone were high enough to cover all the benefits. By the end of 2001 Canada pension plan assets were approaching $48 billion. Yet despite extracting all that money from Canadian taxpayers, the Canada pension plan's unfunded liability is estimated to be a whopping $430 billion. Just in case people cannot relate that to what is currently in the plan, the current plan's assets are approaching $48 billion but the liability is $430 billion. It has almost 10 times as much in liability as we have funds to cover it.

The current chief actuary of the Canada pension plan, the one who replaced the one fired by the finance minister, admits that the contributions will once again fall short of benefit payouts but the government is betting on the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board to beat that system. We heard from the member for Burnaby--Douglas that he was concerned about that because the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board had losses when the market went down.

The member for Lanark—Carleton, who spoke before me, also has a big concern with this. Our concern is not so much that there is a Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, it is that government tends to use these boards for political expediency and political operatives. Pressure can be put on these boards to invest in favoured companies that happen to give a lot of money to the governing party of the day, and which maybe the Liberals favour. We know the Quebec pension plan has had difficulty managing its money wisely and it tends to be politically motivated.

The other problem is that in a small market like Canada the huge amount of money has a disproportionate effect on our markets. What does it invest in? At one time Nortel made up 30% of the Toronto Stock Exchange. We know where it is at today and I think the Canada pension plan also knows where it is at because that was one of its major investments at the time, but what else do we invest in if we have to invest in Canada? Even more so, the legislation would restrict the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board to invest 70% of all that it has in Canada. There is a 30% foreign investment rule restriction that ties the hands of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

Employers and the self-employed are feeling the brunt of the Liberal CPP tax grab. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is currently conducting a letter writing campaign on the subject of the government's job killing payroll taxes. It notes that while employers received a 7¢ reduction in their employment insurance premiums, Canada pension plan premiums went up by 40¢ and they are set to increase another 25¢ in 2003. Everything the employers gained back in the employment insurance premium reductions has been eaten up by Canada pension plan increases.

If the government plans to see the CPP hike through, I would hope that at least it would look at the mangled EI program where revenues far outstrip EI costs and disappear into general revenue.

The worst injustice by the Liberal government and its CPP hike is the intergenerational unfairness. Mr. Ménard admits that every Canadian worker born after 1980 will see their Canada pension plan investment will offer them a 2% return on investment for their retirement. However those who retired in 1995, a different generation, will receive a 9% return on their investment.

What does that say to our young people who are expected to pay the bills? They are expected to pay the bills for our generation's retirement and they will not even have enough for their own as a result of this mismanaged plan. That is totally unfair and it simply will not work. As these young people get into positions of power in government and other places in society they will not accept this. They will throw it off. It seems to me that it would be better to change our plans now than to have a mangled system thrown out down the road in 10 years by the generation that sees this as being totally unfair.

The fact is that the Canada pension plan will take in just under 10% of income to receive 25% after age 65. The average annual payout is $5,500 a year. The best one can hope to receive from CPP is under $9,000 a year.

We talked about how things have changed and are changing in terms of demographics. The number of seniors in Canada will double to 22% of the population by the year 2031. This will place a heavy burden on workers who support pension and health programs.

I am sure that hon. members know if they examine their hearts on this issue that when the young people of today form the majority in this country they will be sorely tempted to change the plan to ensure that they will get some of the benefits that will now only go to the people who are currently in the plan.

The Canadian Alliance does not believe that our future security lies in the wages of a shrinking workforce. Rather, it lies in the vast productivity and production capacity of the economy. We value retirement security as a vital element of independence. The Canadian Alliance policy platform states that we will honour obligations to retired Canadians and those close to retirement under the current state run programs. We will also maintain support for low income seniors. However, and this is a very important distinction, the Canadian Alliance believes that future retirees deserve a greater choice between a government managed pension plan and a mandatory personal plan.

With the objective of giving Canadians greater control of their own affairs and retirement plans, we will eliminate the foreign investment restriction for retirement investments and devise options to allow individuals greater opportunity to save for themselves as we see that the current system failed its original objective from 1966. Times have changed considerably in terms of demographics.

What we are interested in is fairness in the system and a system that will actually work for future generations. That is why we think the Canada pension plan in its current form is failing young Canadians who are coming up. We are concerned that when young Canadians discover this as they become adults and they come into positions of authority, that they will take matters into their own hands and make changes. Instead of waiting for that to happen, let us look forward a little, be proactive and try to devise a plan that works and will work for future Canadians and will respect the demographic change happening in Canada. As I said earlier, we have an aging population.

We hear a lot of chatter from the other side but the fact of the matter is that it is the Liberal government--

Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act

[Keith Martin, Canadian Alliance, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to the bill. I want to bring to the attention of the House a connection to this bill which deals with aboriginal people.

There is an absolute crisis taking place on the Pikangikum reserve north of Kenora, north of the minister's riding. This reserve has the highest suicide rate in the entire world. Alcohol and drug abuse are rampant. Organizations are dysfunctional. Ninety-five per cent of the homes do not have running water. There are no sewers; there are outhouses. The community is bereft of hope. I say that with a single purpose in mind.

To show how acute the crisis is among the Ojibway people, this year alone eight females, five of them just 13 years old, have killed themselves. The Pikangikum reserve, with roughly 2,000 people, has an eight year average of 213 suicides per 100,000 people, which is 36 times our national average. I raise this issue in connection with the bill to plead with the Minister of Indian Affairs to deal with the situation acutely, to implement some suicide prevention programs to help save the children in particular of the Pikangikum reserve north of Kenora.

Turning now to the bill, 32,000 people live in the Yukon, which has 4% of our land mass, of which 77% is wilderness. There are 61 mammal species and 278 bird species. There is an extraordinary array of environmental jewels and cultures that exist in the Yukon. The bill is certainly going in the right direction toward blending sustainable development with preserving that incredible gift we have as a country.

I would suggest to the hon. minister that it is possible to link sustainable development and environmental protection with the enhancement of the lives of the people there. I would suggest a model to the minister. Brazil and certain parts of southern Africa have linked them. They have basically said that wild spaces have to generate funds if they are going to survive. The funds generated are poured back into the wild spaces for their preservation. The opportunities are enormous.

What does the north in general have? There is the Alaska Highway pipeline for one and the Northwest Territories pipeline down to Alberta for gas. The north has diamonds, the new emerald find near the Finlayson Lake district, natural gas, iron ore, lead, zinc and copper. They will provide the basic fuel to generate long term sustainable employment in the Northwest Territories and an enrichment of the people's lives there.

That will only happen if some of those moneys are then poured back into environmental protection and environmental enhancement. If we manage to link up that development and also utilize those moneys not only for the welfare of the people but also pour some of it back into the environment, then the people of the Yukon and the people in the north in general will have sustainable development that is congruent with environmental protection.

Historically, they have done a very good job of preserving their environment by engaging in some innovative cleanups of toxic sites. Indeed, only the wood bison and the peregrine falcon are the two major mammal species that are in danger of extinction. That is not a bad track record. The peregrine falcon has dropped to a threatened species from one on the verge of extinction.

There are some significant challenges in the north. I hope the resources there can be used to drive some environmental protection issues, such as the issue of pollution.

In Siberia the Russians dumped a lot of nuclear materials right on the ground. Those radionuclides, those cancer causing, teratogenic, carcinogenic materials have gone into the food chain. If we look at aboriginal people and some of the large mammal species at the top of the food chain, we see extraordinarily high levels of the cancer causing and teratogenic materials within their body tissue. It is having a devastating effect, particularly on aboriginal communities in the north.

I encourage the government to work with other arctic nations to deal with this acute situation. If we do not deal with it now, those cancer-causing agents, those radioactive materials that are so prevalent in certain parts of the north, will continue to waft into our food chain with devastating effects on the people who live there.

The other issue we are dealing with is climate change. The natural resources of the north can be used to generate the resources needed to combat climate change. Is it Kyoto or bust? No, there is a third way.

Kyoto, as we know, is a shell game, moving emissions trading credits around the world. In fact our country will do absolutely nothing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. That is the big flaw in Kyoto. How can we do that? One of the things people in the north and indeed all of us can do is use energy more responsibly, conserve energy better and use existing technologies to reduce our emissions quite significantly through cars, trucks and in heat loss through homes. The amount we conserve could go well beyond the 6% target we set for ourselves in Kyoto in relation to 1990 levels. Indeed, we could go beyond that, which would be useful for all of us.

This is important for the north because if we look at the last few years, in 1998 and 1999 Yukon had two of the four warmest temperatures ever recorded in history. The Beaufort Sea ice pack was 40% less than what has ever been seen. Is this proof of global warming? No, it is not. Is it an indication that there is a problem? Yes, it is, and if we want to use a precautionary principle, we must do whatever we can to use our energy resources more responsibly. In doing so we could go beyond the commitments we chose to make, without, incidentally, taking on the oil patch, reducing jobs or affecting our economy.

If we were to adopt the approach of using the technologies we have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we could find an actual added benefit to our economy in terms of a net increase to the GDP.

I would ask the minister to please look at the experience in Europe where they are well ahead of the curve on this. If we do not adopt the approach of using existing technologies to reduce pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions, two separate entities but connected by virtue of what produces them, we could be left behind the eight ball in terms of our own economic development. I would encourage the government to look at those issues.

My friend from Yukon brought to our attention a very interesting problem connected to this bill, the issue of medical manpower. Yukon has a problem with medical manpower, particularly the distribution in rural areas. We have had some very good discussions on this and there is a solution. What Yukon can do is connect with existing medical training facilities for doctors, nurses and technicians and have some of that training take place in Yukon. If it does that in conjunction with paying for a certain number of medical school nursing and technical-medical positions in return for an equal number of years of service in rural areas, Yukon will be able to get the medical manpower that it desperately needs. Indeed my friend from Yukon brought to our attention the terrible situation of a lot of people in Yukon being unable to get basic medical care as a result of this acute problem of a lack of manpower.

Bill C-2, through the generation of funds and sustainable development, could generate funds that would enable Yukon to pay for certain spots in medical training facilities and in return the quid pro quo would be that those individuals would have to spend an equal number of years in a rural setting under service settings such as Yukon. It does work. We need to catch people right out of school and get them into those rural centres where they can develop relationships and set down roots. There is a better chance of them staying in those rural areas than if we try to pick people out of urban settings after they have completed their training.

The next issue I would like to address is the issue of aboriginal communities. The question of how to engage aboriginal people in development was asked in Central America and Brazil.

It was found that if the aboriginal people were allowed to use some of the money from the natural resources, be it emeralds, diamonds or natural gas, and were able to pour it into primary health, education and skills training, they would be able to improve their health and welfare. This is very consistent with a document put out by a consortium of aboriginal groups. The document gave some very basic principles of what needed to be engaged in with the Yukon government if sustainable development were to work: the aboriginal peoples would be consulted; they would be participants in development and local governments would have municipal powers, which is what the Canadian Alliance has been fighting for and now the minister of aboriginal affairs has been communicating very well. If aboriginal people could have municipal powers, be engaged in the development process in a constructive way, be participants at the table and share in the resources in a meaningful way, then we would have sustainable development in the Yukon as well as improve the health and welfare of aboriginal communities in Yukon.

I hope the premier of Nunavut and his council will look at this as a model he could adopt for his communities in Nunavut. As members know, the rates of substance abuse, sexual abuse and suicide rates in Nunavut are off the wall. The feds are paying huge amounts of taxpayer money to sustain the situation in Nunavut right now. If Nunavut were to look at some of these models, which I hope will be applied in Yukon, then both Nunavut and Yukon would benefit.

Some people like to look at northern development in isolation but I would encourage them to look at northern development as part of Canadian development. If we were to track where the resources in the north were going, for example the pipelines, we would see that they do flow north to south. It behooves us as a country to have a greater north-south dialogue within our own country. I would suggest that has been lacking for a long time.

The engagement between the populated areas along our borders with the United States and the people in the north would go a long way to removing misconceptions and ensuring greater development and harmonization of economic and social activities between both the north and the south.

I want to emphasize again to the government that within the bill lies a great opportunity to engage in true sustainable economic development. However, in order to do that, the development of natural resources in the north, be it natural gas, diamonds, emeralds, tourism or hydro power, can and must be done in a way that ensures that the people of Yukon benefit economically from the development of those resources and that the development of those resources generates a pool of cash that can be used for environmental protection.

I think the public would be shocked to know about the absolute lack of resources that many of our conservation officers have. They struggle to find $100 to pay for a pair of binoculars when they are doing research in the field. With the lack of resources and the yeoman's job they perform, they deserve a medal. They are unable to do the job they are being asked to do which is to preserve and protect the environment in the north and protect the species that live there.

The bill is an interesting one and we look forward to it coming to committee. My party has put forth some constructive amendments. We certainly hope the government listens to them so that the bill will move forward in a constructive fashion that benefits all the people in Yukon and indeed Canada.

[Peter Adams, Liberal, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize to the member for Davenport. I knew there was a standing order to that effect. We all listened with great interest to what he had to say.

There are some comments I want to make with respect to Bill C-2, the Yukon environmental and socio-economic assessment act, which was so eloquently introduced by the member for Yukon. The reason I want to make these remarks includes the fact that I was very proud to be involved with the Yukon self-government legislation in the House some years ago. I was particularly upset when the speaker from the Canadian Alliance today digressed into the morals and attitudes of members of Parliament and the tone of the House of Commons, when in fact I believe that we are following through morally on the legislation that went through the House, as we are on the Yukon umbrella final agreement, chapter 12, which says that a regime of the type represented by Bill C-2 must and should be put into place. I am delighted we were able to do that and that the member for Yukon introduced it.

The remarks of the member for Davenport are very well taken. The member has raised this point as a question: that the legislation will effectively replace the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and other assessment processes in the Yukon with an approach that is inclusive of other governments and decision making bodies and that ensures meaningful opportunities for public participation in assessments.

It is my understanding and I think the understanding of most members that this does not mean there is a lack of federal presence or a weakening of assessment standards. I think it means a move toward true sustainable development, integrating environmental, social and economic considerations when making decisions about projects. This is to the great benefit of future generations in the Yukon, and future generations in Canada. This is not something that has to do with just that one territory. The bill would move decision making closer to the people affected by the development projects. I agree with members here that it is a positive step.

However, the Government of Canada will continue to play a role in assessments involving federal departments, agencies, lands and regulations. Canada will be represented on the Yukon environmental and socio-economic assessment board, which has been mentioned and which will administer the assessment process in the Yukon.

As well, it should be made clear in regard to the process that would be put in place by Bill C-2, and the questions raised by the member for Davenport can be addressed again, that the legislation maintains the high standards Canadians have come to expect under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

It is my understanding that the new process will include all the improvements now being made to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act under Bill C-9, which is now before the committee of the member for Davenport, and I assume, by the way, that if committees ever get working in the House in this session the member will be the Chair of it.

Another benefit of the single process that would be established by Bill C-2 is that it goes beyond the traditional realm of environmental assessment to also take into account the social and economic impacts of a proposed budget. That is what I have said, by the way: It is a true interpretation of what sustainable development means. One cannot consider the environment out of the context of economic and social considerations of the people of the region concerned. Regardless of how small or large a project may be, assessors will be required to consider how it will affect people's quality of life, their livelihoods and the heritage and culture of Yukon first nations people, as well as, naturally, because it is an environmental thing, the impacts on land, water, air, fish and wildlife.

The single development assessment process provided for in Bill C-2 is a first for Canada. I am hopeful that one day it will serve as a model for other regions, which is why I said that today we are not simply considering something that is important for only the people of Yukon.

I trust, as has been the case with the previous three speakers, that the bill will have the support of all members of the House, including, eventually, the Canadian Alliance.

[Charles Caccia, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure to participate in this debate. I would like to start by complimenting and congratulating the member for Yukon and the member for Winnipeg Centre for their very exhaustive, comprehensive and thoughtful analyses of the bill.

I was particularly struck by the comment made by the member for Winnipeg Centre when said that this was the most culturally sensitive bill he had seen ever come into the House. Coming from an opposition party, this is quite a compliment being paid to the government and those who have helped in preparing the bill.

Also, the member for Winnipeg Centre referred to this bill as resulting from the most comprehensive consultations that have ever taken place. I would imagine that he speaks from experience and that his comments are very relevant.

Unfortunately, I cannot say very much about the intervention by the member for Portage--Lisgar who trotted a number of old chestnuts into the debate which were not really necessary in the context of Bill C-2. However, in explaining the reasons for his opposition to Bill C-2, he referred to the fact the bill would be a disincentive to potential developers. I do not see anything in the bill that can be interpreted as being a disincentive to a potential developer.

On the contrary, if one were to read, as several members have already done, the purpose and the aim of the bill as indicated on page 1 is “to establish a process for assessing the environmental and socio-economic effects of certain activities in the Yukon”. If that is not adequate enough to give the member for Portage--Lisgar sufficient assurance, then he probably would find that assurance by reading clause 5 of the bill where the purposes of the proposed act are outlined. Clause 5(2) is extremely well worded. It states:

(2) The purposes of this Act are

(a) to provide a comprehensive, neutrally conducted assessment process...

(b) to require that, before projects are undertaken, their environmental and socio-economic effects to be considered;

If I had any criticism for this particular clause, I would have it in paragraph 5(2)(e) where it seems to me that perhaps it could be phrased in a more positive way. It states:

(e) to ensure that projects are undertaken in accordance with principles that foster beneficial socio-economic change without undermining the ecological and social systems on which communities and their residents, and societies in general, depend;

When the bill comes to committee, I would recommend an alternative wording by way of an amendment which would say, instead of “without undermining” which is a bit negative and detracts, the words “while enhancing the ecological and social systems on which communities and their residents”. Enhancing is a positive approach and it fits much better into the general purpose of the bill as outlined by the short title.

However this is not the place perhaps to make suggestions for amendments to the bill and I am sure that the member for Yukon in his very committed way will look at every positive possibility to strengthen the bill.

I would only like to say that we have a Canadian Environment Assessment Act and the bill ought to be responsive and on the same wave length and have the same degree of application and strength as the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

Therefore, I would like to put on the record some questions, namely, how will the two laws, Bill C-2 when it is proclaimed, and the existing Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, plus the current Bill C-9, which is in the process of being referred to committee, integrate? How will they come together? Will they be implemented in the same way, as I hope they will? Are the two laws reinforcing each other? Are the interpretations of each of the definitions in clause 2 of the bill the same? In other words, are they going to be applied in the same manner?

For instance, will the words “significant impact” be interpreted in the same manner in both laws once they become operative? For instance, will “mitigative measures” have the same significance in both laws? Will the word “assessment” have the same definition? Will the word “environment” have the same definition? Will the word “project” also be defined in the same manner? I do find some comfort and assurance in clauses 63 and 64. At this stage one can only raise these as potential questions for examination in committee and leave it at that, because I am sure that after all these consultations the bill will be examined very thoroughly.

My task is coming to an end. I will conclude by quoting a letter I received from the Yukon Conservation Society today in which the text, signed by executive director Christine Cleghorn, reads as follows:

Since the signing of the Umbrella Final Agreement (UFA) in 1993, the Yukon Conservation Society has participated in and followed with keen interest the development of new environmental assessment legislation for the Yukon.

At the present time, [the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act] is scheduled for review by the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development...Despite having undergone a second round of public review this spring, the draft legislation remains a convoluted, labyrinthine document. For a jurisdiction with only 30,000 people and environmental assessment trends indicating that over 85% of projects assessed each year are small projects, it is our view that YESEAA is unnecessarily complex to the point of absurdity. It seems that during the negotiations the original vision in Chapter 12 was lost to trying to create a piece of legislation that is basically a super version of The Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

We believe it would be beneficial for YESEAA to be heard by both of the above-noted Standing Committees.

These are, namely, the aboriginal affairs committee and the environment committee. This is not possible unless the House leader approves of that approach and I do not know whether this would be very productive and very helpful.

To conclude--

[Inky Mark, Canadian Alliance, Dauphin—Swan River, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate representing the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.

I have listened to the debate very carefully as various members of different parties enunciated this afternoon. Bill C-2 is an act to establish a process for assessing the environmental and socio-economic efforts of certain activities in the Yukon. The key word is process. In essence the bill establishes a process.

On first reviewing Bill C-2 it appears to make a lot of sense. It puts in place a new arm's-length assessment board to evaluate new projects. That is the primary goal. It makes sense to have all the stakeholders, all levels of governments, sitting at the same table. I know that is not an easy accomplishment.

The purpose of this board is to do both environmental and socio-economic assessments for all new proposals. In other words, assessment is the key function of the board. If the process had been totally inclusive then obviously it is rational to think that the selection of the board should be an inclusive one and all the stakeholders should be represented on the board.

All Canadians are concerned about our environment. They are concerned about waste, natural and man-made; the generation and disposal of waste; recycling; clean water and air; as well as the promotion of a clean environment. Canadians believe that it is the government's role to protect our environment as well as our resource base not only for today's generation, but for our future as well. In other words, all new development should be evaluated through the environmental lens. That is what Canadians will have to learn to deal with.

It is interesting to note that Bill C-2, in large part, will supersede the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act on most fronts. In principle, the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada supports the process as established in Bill C-2.

This is not a perfect bill, as we have heard today. There is no such thing as a perfect bill when it comes to this place. That is why we have this process. This is second reading and from here it will go to committee. Hopefully we will make it more perfect in committee.

We believe that a single board to do the work is a good idea.

Let me make some comments about consultation. When the government says it has done consultation, 99% of the time I am a skeptic. In my five years in the House, having shepherded a number of bills through the House, I am always disappointed with the way that governments have consulted in the past on previous legislation.

With Bill C-2, I am pleasantly surprised that the government did some consultations. We have been told there have been two major rounds of public consultation during the development of the bill. The first was in the fall and winter of 1998 and the second in the summer and fall of 2001. Both rounds of consultation provided opportunities to all Yukon first nations to receive presentations and to provide their comments orally in their own communities. First nations were also invited to make written submissions.

The reason I am surprised is that for too long different levels of government, whether municipal, provincial or federal, tended to do business by themselves. What makes sense is to get people together to sit at the table to work out the problems, especially when something affects all three levels of government.

I am happy to hear that this process actually took place. If access had been truly given to all stakeholders, and if all levels of government were involved, then this can serve as a template for other provinces to follow down the road. From that perspective new ground has been tilled with this particular bill.

I must remind everyone in this place that government is about people and is for the people. That is why we must ensure that the process is an inclusive one on any decisions we make, and that we all sit at the table regardless of the level of government. We must think this through regardless of political affiliation. We are here to deliver service to the citizens and taxpayers who sent us here. This is what democracy is all about. From that perspective, Bill C-2, if validated to be true, reflects what democracy should be.

People in other regions will have taken a proactive approach with regard to the bill. It is in their best interests to be involved. It is the people's resource base and environment. We all know that it is also their future, both environmentally and socio-economically. They need to be involved in determining their own economic future.

As has already been mentioned today sustainability of all communities in Yukon is important as it is everywhere else in this country. Hopefully Bill C-2 would help bring that goal to reality. Bill C-2 should create an atmosphere of stability and even more important, it should develop an atmosphere of hope for the people who live in Yukon.

The PC Party of Canada supports Bill C-2 in principle. We support a grassroots driven approach to legislation that is long overdue. More legislation coming from that side of the House should follow this process. We look forward to working out the details of this legislation in committee. We need to validate both the process and the contents of this legislation. It would also be a good idea for the standing committee to look at the new regulations attached to the bill which are almost ready to be tabled. The details will be worked out in committee, and I look forward to debating them there.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased on behalf of the NDP to join the debate on Bill C-2 and, unlike the previous speaker, I welcome the opportunity to speak to the bill because the NDP caucus is very much in support of Bill C-2.

We have watched with great interest and great care as we have gone through the various aspects of Yukon governance for aboriginal people, the first nations communities in Yukon. We see this as a logical next step as we implement the first nations self-governance in Yukon and give them greater control over their resources, their land base and the issues for which they very much deserve to have a voice.

Bill C-2, otherwise known as the Yukon environmental and socioeconomic assessment act, is a proposed federal statute that has been developed pursuant to chapter 12, the development assessment process, of the Yukon first nations final agreement, the umbrella agreement that was arrived at in the process of negotiating first nations self-governance. This is something we have been looking forward to and welcoming for quite a number of years.

The purpose of the Yukon environmental and socioeconomic assessment act is to ensure that the potential environmental and socioeconomic effects of projects are assessed prior to any level of government, federal, territorial or first nations, deciding whether it should be or should not be allowed to proceed.

For clarity we should know what we are talking about. I am not sure that the previous speaker from the Canadian Alliance actually ploughed through the very lengthy briefing book that we have here. He seemed to be raising issues that had very little to do with this important bill.

The process of assessing the effects of a project will be referred to as the assessment process while the process of deciding whether a project should go ahead will be referred to as the regulatory process. We should have those two avenues clear in our mind as we go into greater depth in our analysis of the bill.

It is actually critical to note that the leadership of the Council of Yukon First Nations wholly supports the bill at this time. This should be all that we need to know as parliamentarians in the federal House of Commons. Once we are satisfied that broad consultation took place among the stakeholders and once we are satisfied that the very people who would be most directly affected by the bill are satisfied with it, who are we to stand in the way of the bill moving through the various steps and being implemented into law? We could view it as arrogance to do otherwise and certainly as cheap politics to score political points for things that are entirely unrelated.

We would do a great disservice to the people of Yukon and certainly the first nations of Yukon if we were to ignore the representations they have made and the work they have done to put together Bill C-2 and to get it to the stage where we find it today.

I mentioned that we wanted to be satisfied that there has been broad public consultation, which is something I will deal with in more depth later, but we are satisfied in this case. In fact we could almost use this as a template model for how consultations should take place if we are serious about garnering real input and real representation from various groups. If we look at what they have done in Yukon over the past five or six years leading up to this particular bill, that is a process that we should be using for other legislation as well.

I note that there were two major rounds of complete touring consultation throughout Yukon. There was one for 90 days that went to every community and first nations village throughout the whole Yukon. Every first nations community not only had an opportunity to send in written submissions on draft one but each community had an opportunity to have an open public hearing in its community.

Taking what they had heard in that initial consultation process, the drafters of the legislation, the tripartite committee that was struck to put this together, took back what they heard, implemented those changes and went for another exhaustive tour around the whole territory two years later with draft two, which I believe was a 60 or 70 day exhaustive tour.

I do not think anyone here could safely say that there was not adequate consultation, nor that the input during those sessions was disregarded or not treated with the respect that it deserved. We are satisfied in this case that genuine consultation did take place and led to what we think, as I have said at the outset, is a very worthy document.

As I mentioned earlier, we have two separate routes here. We are dealing first with the regulatory process and the assessment process. Dealing with the assessment bodies, as to who will make the assessment, the Yukon environmental and socioeconomic development act would establish the Yukon environmental and socioeconomic assessment board. It would also establish six designated offices located throughout Yukon. Again, what could be viewed as a model of decentralization, this board would not be concentrated solely in Whitehorse. There would be an opportunity to have fully staffed offices spread throughout the Yukon in the regions of the north.

The board would be made up of seven members, three of whom would make up the executive committee. The Council of Yukon First Nations and Canada would each nominate one member to the executive committee. The hon. member from the Canadian Alliance, the Indian affairs critic for the Canadian Alliance, said that this could make room for patronage appointments, that there may be an opportunity for abuse in the composition of this board. This was dealt with in the early stages. How this board will be struck will be critical for the ongoing success of the operations of the board and how it will be constituted has been set out in Bill C-2.

The CYFN, the Council of Yukon First Nations, and Canada would each nominate one member of the executive committee. The Minister of Indian Affairs, after consulting with the two other executive committee members, one of which, as I have said, would be nominated by the Council of Yukon First Nations, would select the third executive committee member who would be the chair of the board. I do not see room for abuse in this process unless the hon. member from the Alliance sees something that I am not seeing.

Two of the four remaining board members would be appointed also by the Council of Yukon First Nations, while the others would be appointed, one by Canada and one by the government of Yukon. If there is room for abuse or a patronage appointment, it would be for one member of the seven member board. I am not here to say that kind of patronage appointment never happens. Maybe the Government of Canada or the ruling party of the day will use some kind of a patronage appointment but it will only be for one board member because the possibility has already been contemplated and it has been nipped in the bud. It has been eliminated given the structure of the committee that is laid out in Bill C-2.

I admire the Alliance member for raising the possibility of patronage appointments but our caucus is satisfied that there is no such room for abuse in this particular process. Therefore that is not one of the justifiable grounds for trying to block or to stall this important bill.

Under the Yukon environmental and socioeconomic development act, the board may establish panels to conduct panel reviews. These panels must be made up from board members. Again, I do not understand where the room for abuse comes from.

One of the features that I particularly like about the bill is that six small communities would have designated offices, although I am not sure which six communities would have them. I presume Dawson City would be one and possibly Old Crow, Teslin, Tagish and Mayo the other ones. I am not sure which communities would get these various offices but they will be located in each of the assessment districts.

It is easy to say that Ross River and area could be considered one development area. Certainly the Dawson City area and the gold fields, et cetera, is another with the mining interests in that area. Haines Junction and the far western part of Yukon might be considered another area. However the boundaries of the assessment districts and the location of these designated offices would be worked out in the implementation phase of the YESAA.

On the board's recommendation, the number of designated offices and the assessment districts can be increased or decreased to meet operational requirements. In other words, flexibility is built into the bill so that we can increase or decrease the number of regional offices to meet the various application demands that may be put forward.

The logical question is: What sort of activities would be subject to assessment? I believe the Alliance member was fearmongering when he said that some business venture may come forward and have its project nipped in the bud by this new authority in Yukon that may scare away investors and turn down their applications. If the member had read the briefing book or perhaps listened he would know the sorts of projects that would be subject to assessment and what project's assessment would be waived, deemed unnecessary or exempted from the assessment process.

The project list regulator will be the body that will determine which activities are subject to assessment and which ones are not. The goal of the PLR is to catch those projects which pose a potential risk to the environment and/or socioeconomic impacts while ensuring that activities which do not pose any risks are exempted.

In other words, if there is no environmental or socioeconomic risk to the activity that is being proposed, it does not have to be subject to an assessment review. It is only activities or enterprises which do pose an environmental risk or a socioeconomic impact on Yukon that would be subject to the assessment. I do not see how that differs from the current status quo, which is the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act as it stands today, which this bill will supercede once it is implemented.

Under declarations, the parties recognize that there may be some activities that do not pose any risk under normal circumstances but, because of special conditions, the risk may be increased and therefore the activities should be assessed. The type of things they are getting at there are culturally sensitive issues, issues that have a social impact as much as an economic impact and as much an environmental impact.

To address that, Bill C-2 provides for exempted activities to be declared where any level of government with authority for the activity is of the opinion that there is a risk of impact. This again is contemplated and a clear course of action is laid out within Bill C-2 that might be dealt with if necessary.

If several governments are decision makers for a project, they must all consent before an activity is declared to be a project. This is intended to allow an activity that would not normally require an assessment to be assessed if there are particular concerns. For example, if it were to be carried out in a sensitive area or if there were issues of cumulative impacts that were not part of the original activity or enterprise.

The entry point also is pointed out or itemized and assessed in Bill C-2 that most projects will enter the assessment process at the designated office level in the region in which the enterprise will take place. A small number of large or complex projects will enter into the assessment process directly at the executive committee and will not undergo any assessment by a regional office. This would have seemed logical, quite straight forward and easy to follow had the people debating the bill today actually gone through the briefing notes.

When the designated office makes an evaluation on a project, it will be subject to further review from the central board as to whether it should immediately go ahead, whether it should go ahead with specific terms and conditions, whether it should be barred or whether it should be referred further to the executive committee for its recommendation as well. The executive committee has an alternate screening role. The projects that are submitted to the executive committee will be screened again for the same four tests. The committee ultimately can order that perhaps the project should go to a public panel review or some other form of public consultation review.

As members can see, this is perhaps why the bill took a number of years to get to this stage. It is very complex and it is difficult to foresee all the possible implications or possibilities that might come forward and to deal with those eventualities.

The boards and the bodies can issue documents allowing a project to go ahead without any further review. I do not think I will deal with those technical aspects any longer because I am aware of the time limitations.

I will try to answer the question in which most people in the House should be interested, which is this. What will the Yukon environmental and socio-economic assessment act mean for Yukon first nations? That ought to be the ultimate question with which we should be dealing today and with which we should be seized.

We believe that Bill C-2, or the YESAA, will fundamentally change the role of first nations in environmental assessment in Yukon. Perhaps that is really more to the point to which the member from the Canadian Alliance was objecting. We have noticed a pattern with the aboriginal affairs critics from the Canadian Alliance systematically opposing every move toward true self-governance for aboriginal people and systematically trying to cite reason after reason why aboriginal people should not be given the next stage in their own self-determination.

We believe this will change the role of first nations in environmental assessments in Yukon because under the current assessment regime, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, first nations have had very little opportunity to participate in any meaningful way with these environmental assessments. Under Bill C-2 they will play a much larger and more significant role.

Some of the issues of serious concern to first nations such as the socioeconomic and cultural effects, which were not given any consideration under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, will be a very important part of every assessment under the new YESAA.

For further clarity, under the YESAA, assessments will now be conducted by neutral assessment bodies rather than by self-assessment by government alone. This is a fundamental change. This will be an independent board made up by stakeholders nominated by first nations and the other players, the federal and territorial governments themselves. These issues will be dealt with by the board rather than by the government itself, which obviously led to a certain conflict of interest.

The assessment bodies must seek the views of any first nation that will be affected by the project. In other words, the mandatory consultation process is built in here. It will not be left subject to the courts. It will not be required to be heard. A first nations community would have to seek legal redress and demand to be heard. That process is built into Bill C-2, much to the satisfaction of the people involved.

Also integral part of Bill C-2 is that every existing project must consider as an aspect of going ahead the need to protect first nations rights under the final agreements, under the umbrella agreement. In other words, there can no longer be any doubt, and we do not have to go to the courts again, that any developer must consider first nations' rights when they undertake an enterprise.

We have had recent court rulings like the Haida ruling in B.C. dealing with forestry issues. For the government to do any development affecting first nations and treaty rights, the consultation process is necessary. However up until today third parties, business enterprises, did not necessarily have to take into full consideration treaty rights of first nations people that might be affected by the economic enterprise being undertaken. Now, under Bill C-2, for any future development of Yukon, it is mandatory and binding that the need to protect first nations' rights under final agreements, or first nations' special relationship with the wilderness environment or first nations cultures, traditions, health and lifestyles must be taken into consideration before a permit will be issued for that development or that enterprise within Yukon.

Also within Bill C-2, one of the biggest changes for first nations people in Yukon, is that both assessment bodies and other bodies must give full and fair consideration to traditional knowledge. The words traditional knowledge show up in Bill C-2, as do references to culture, tradition, health, lifestyle and first nations' special relationship with their wilderness environment. There has never been a document so culturally sensitive when it comes to first nations people as this bill, so it is shocking to me to hear any major party in the House of Commons speak openly that it cannot support it.

This is breaking new ground. This is forging a whole new path for our relationship with aboriginal people and economic development. If we hear every party in the House of Commons saying that the answer to the atrocious conditions is economic development, well here is the acceptable road map as negotiated between the affected stakeholders in Yukon by which such economic development can and shall take place with sensitivity toward the special relationship to the wilderness environment, the cultural, the economic, the traditional, the health and the lifestyle issues that any such enterprise might affect.

As well the assessments of every project and existing project must consider the potential environmental and socioeconomic effects which include effects on economies, health, culture, traditions, lifestyles and heritage resources of the project. In other words, if a mining enterprise might interfere with a traditional fishery, even if one is of a much larger magnitude than the other, the traditional enterprise must be taken into consideration before the new economic development enterprise is given a permit and allowed to go forward. That was not the case.

That might seem like common sense but up until today, until we pass Bill C-2, that has not been the case. That is why we have a backlog of 200 such cases before the courts today. The only redress aboriginal people have, if they want consideration of those cultural issues, is to go to court and fight for it, unless someone voluntarily recognizes their right to have those traditional issues recognized.

Another effect of Bill C-2 is that the participation of Yukon Indian people in the assessment process is guaranteed. It is not something that will be granted when it is not an inconvenience and be withheld when it is inconvenient. It will be guaranteed.

Federal and territorial decision bodies much consult with the first nations without final agreements. In other words, those first nations within Yukon that are not members of the Council of Yukon First Nations, and there are some, must be satisfied as well. They are being folded into this umbrella deal. Maybe that is the wrong term because we refer to the Yukon self-government act to this day as the umbrella framework agreement. However those first nations who are not currently members of the Council of Yukon First Nations will have their concerns dealt with as well. I think they are the Kaska and the Kwanlin Dun, and there may be others. I believe that 9 out of the 14 first nations are members of the Council of Yukon First Nations.

Some, for whatever reasons, are not currently members of that plenary organization. They may be in the future but in the interim federal and territorial decision bodies must consult with the first nations that are not part of any final agreements so far, before issuing decision documents for projects that will affect their traditional territories. In other words, some activity or enterprise could take place on areas where current claims are in effect. That would be wrong and might jeopardize future negotiations and the settlement of those claims. We all believe that it is in everyone's best interests to have those claims settled and nothing that takes place should interfere with the progress being made as we work to finish those negotiations.

Self-governing first nations will be decision bodies with respect to projects on settlement land. This is a whole new status. This contemplates that we have to get our minds around a whole new way of dealing with economic development on first nations land, and that is where Bill C-2 breaks new ground. It really shows us a template, a model, which has been arrived at through an exhaustive consultation process and it shows us perhaps a template for future settlements in other parts of Canada. Maybe it is a good thing.

Earlier today I met with the representatives of the Council of Yukon First Nations and said that perhaps the reason that we arrived at such a civilized, thorough, comprehensive and almost unanimously accepted document is that Yukon is kind of a nice, manageable size. Yukon is almost a microcosm of the rest of Canada when it comes to relationships between first nations and the federal government. Maybe because the population is small and manageable enough we have done it here as a template, as a pilot project, and perhaps this model will work in future negotiations as well.

The implementation of the Yukon environmental and socio-economic assessment act or Bill C-2 is structured in such a way that part 1 will come into force on royal assent while parts 2 and 3 will come into force up to 18 months later. This will allow the parties to make appointments to the board early on so that the board can begin to develop and put in place rules and bylaws, hire staff for the board in designated offices, et cetera. After 18 months or less the actual assessment process will come into place. Therefore, it is fair to say that no new projects will be developed in Yukon under the rules of the new assessment act until some time in 2004.

I began my remarks by saying that Bill C-2 finds its origins in chapter 12 of the umbrella framework agreement. It is instructive to those who perhaps have not dealt with this bill very much to realize what tests have to be met for Bill C-2 to truly reflect the details of chapter 12 of the umbrella framework agreement. The chapter was to provide for a development assessment process that recognized and enhanced, to the extent practicable, the traditional economy of Yukon Indian people and their special relationship with the wilderness environment.

The directive was to put in place a development assessment process that provided for guaranteed participation by Yukon Indian people and utilized the knowledge and experience of Yukon Indian people in the development assessment process. Does Bill C-2 meet that test? I argue, upon reading the bill, that yes it does.

Does Bill C-2 meet the test that we need a process which protects and promotes the well-being of Yukon Indian people and their communities, of other Yukon residents and the interests of other Canadians? Does it meet that test? Again we are satisfied that, after an exhaustive consultation process of all stakeholders, there is unanimous consensus virtually that yes in fact Bill C-2 does promote and protect the well-being of not only Yukon Indian people and their communities but of other Yukon residents as well and the interests of other Canadians in general.

Does Bill C-2 protect and maintain environmental quality and ensure that projects are undertaken in a manner consistent with the principles of sustainable development? That is what the bill is about. The very substance of the bill is that it must be in keeping with the principles of sustainable development but with special consideration of the cultural, traditional and unique relationship that first nations have with the land.

Does Bill C-2 protect and maintain heritage resources? Bill C-2 specifically refers to heritage resources. Again, it is groundbreaking and precedent setting legislation that takes into consideration those intangibles, things that do not necessarily have a large market economy value, but have value in the traditional lifestyles of aboriginal people.

Does Bill C-2 provide for a comprehensive and timely review of the environmental and socio-economic effects of any project before the approval of the project? Contrary to what the member from the Canadian Alliance was saying, yes it does. It has guidelines and time frames. We will not have cases where a development application is held up for years and years. That is the status quo. That is what we have now. We might have a mining enterprise that wants to start an operation 60 miles outside of Dawson City and it might wait five years for all the various assessments to take place such as the water surface assessments, the transboundary assessments and the exhausting assessments that need to take place.

What would take time, what would bog down and bury a number of economic development projects in Yukon is if Bill C-2 were to wind up in the courts. What if the first nation community that is close by says that this enterprise fails to take into consideration its historic right to have input into this project and it takes two or three years for the courts to deal with that case?

That is when venture capital runs scared because venture capital seeks stability and a process that it can trust and rely on, with a known timeframe to get an answer of whether the project will be reviewed or not.

Bill C-2 would give that satisfaction and that comfort to investors, that at least there is a mechanism in place that would not be challenged in the courts and that within a specific timeframe they would get an answer as to whether the project should or would go ahead or not.

Does Bill C-2 provide for a comprehensive and timely review of the environmental and socio-economic effects of any project before the approval of the project?

Again, to meet the tests of finding its origins in chapter 12 of the umbrella framework agreement it has to. The experts in the field, many of whom are in the gallery watching today, the people who have spent the last seven years developing this, are satisfied that Bill C-2 would meet this test, that it would provide for a timely review of the environmental and socio-economic effects of any project before the approval of the project.

Will Bill C-2, upon its introduction, avoid duplication in the review process for projects? This is an issue that was put forward on behalf of the developers and business interests that may be affected.

Does this avoid duplication in the review process for projects and, to the greatest extent practicable, does it provide certainty to all the affected parties and project proponents with respect to procedures, information requirements, time requirements and costs?

These are key questions that need to be answered before economic development venture takes place in Yukon.

We are satisfied again that Bill C-2 is comprehensive enough in its scope and its mandate that these pressing questions would be addressed, the business community can feel comfortable that these issues are addressed and that all affected parties and project proponents would be satisfied that the duplication of procedures, information requirements, time requirements and costs would be of be avoided with Bill C-2.

Will Bill C-2 require project proponents to consider the environmental and socio-economic effects of projects and project alternatives and to incorporate appropriate mitigative measures in the design of projects?

I will leave that one up to the experts who have reviewed these cases. They are satisfied that Bill C-2 would address that concern and that those are the objectives of chapter 12 of the umbrella framework agreement that must be met in order to call Bill C-2 an accurate reflection of that chapter.

We in the NDP caucus believe that a large part of the success of reaching consensus with Bill C-2 is due to what we are pleased to point to as the most comprehensive consultation process that we know of in issues dealing with aboriginal affairs.

It is a point of legislation that with any government legislation implemented that may affect or may have an impact on treaty rights, or traditional rights, or the constitutional rights, or even the common law rights of aboriginal people, there must be a round of consultation. However the confusion has come, and it has again come to a head under the first nations governance act, or as the aboriginal affairs standing committee deals with the first nations governance act, just what is broad consultation? What is the definition of broad consultation? What satisfies the tests of having been fairly and adequately consulted if that is what is mandated in the legislation?

I would like to speak to that briefly because we believe if the fruit of genuine consultation is a quality piece of legislation, such as Bill C-2, then what can we anticipate with Bill C-7, the first nations governance act, with a consultation process that all parties agree is largely flawed, incomplete and less than comprehensive?

It is instructive to look at the principles of consultation and see if they were met in the consultation leading up to Bill C-2. Can we look at the methodology used for consultation in Yukon and find the formula, the recipe, and the methodology that could be implemented elsewhere?

I should start by saying that aboriginal people, through their first nations plenary organizations, such as the Assembly of First Nations, have some specific and definite thoughts as to what constitutes genuine consultation. In their view it is key and paramount and fundamental, in a true consultation process, that there be no predetermined agenda brought to the table. In other words if it is a genuine consultation, if one is really seeking the input of the people that one is asking their opinion of one does not put an agenda on the table and say, “How do you like it?” The agenda is developed jointly. The parties, together, fashion the agenda.

I believe that is one of the things that was met in the Bill C-2 consultation process because they did not shop a finished document around. They took draft documents to the people, they listened to the input that they received, they took that input back and they implemented it into draft 2, draft 3, et cetera.

Another basic tenet for fair consultation is that the parties comprise federal and first nations governments meeting on a nation-to-nation, government-to-government basis. In other words, the historic imbalance in the power relationship between those two parties must be set aside for the consultation to be viewed as genuine, sincere and meaningful.

A third basic tenet would be that the parties exchange information, views and comments as equals and conduct their business with mutual respect and in good faith. There have been books written on what it means to negotiate in good faith. I do not have to cite the leading authorities on those legal definitions. In the House we all know what good faith means.

With regard to Bill C-2 and the consultations leading up to it, I have not heard anything in my experience after meeting in Yukon with the Council of Yukon First Nations and now meeting today with representatives from the Council of Yukon First Nations that would indicate that there was anything but good faith in the consultation process.

These consultations should be open and agreements be openly arrived at. In other words, there should be no selective or private side meetings, for example. If we are comparing a good consultation process with a flawed consultation process, like we saw in the first nations governance agreement, that is exactly what happened.

When the minister was finding that he was not hearing what he wanted to hear at the open consultation meetings, a bunch of side deals were made and groups were split off and hived out of communities. They were offered financial incentives to cooperate with the consultation process or even threatened with financial punishment if they failed to cooperate with it. That should stand as an example of what we do not want to see in present or future consultation processes.

Another basic requirement should be that first nations obtain and be given the fullest information to enable them to make sound and reasoned judgments.

The NDP caucus is satisfied that Bill C-2 is a bill that is worthy of our support. We see it as another step toward the realization of a dream for aboriginal people, for first nations communities in Yukon who are seeking self-determination and true self-government. The management of their own land and resources is key and integral to true self-government. Bill C-2, by putting the board in charge of the environmental assessment of developments, would go a long way to putting them in charge of the actual development of those resources.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to address the House on the second reading of Bill C-2, Yukon environmental and socio-economic assessment act, also known YESAA and formerly known as DAP. I am confident in seeking the support of hon. members to make it into law. I will spend the next 25 minutes giving a broad outline of the bill and how it will work.

The bill has been eight years in the making and I ask that hon. members give it careful consideration. My confidence in the bill arises from a number of factors.

The proposed legislation will fulfill an outstanding land claim commitment which is a priority of the government. In doing so it will establish a single development assessment process for projects on all federal, territorial and first nations lands in Yukon, which in turn will create certainty and promote sustainable development across the territory. I have great confidence in the bill because it was developed in Yukon by and for Yukoners through an extremely inclusive process.

Hon. members are well aware of the merits of the development assessment process. It helps us to identify a project's adverse effects on the environment, wildlife and people before they occur. This allows projects to be designed and regulated in ways that are not only economically efficient and rewarding but also compatible with a healthy environment and society.

Assessments can do more than avoid unwarranted consequences. They can also result in positive impacts. For example, development assessment processes can lead to lasting social and economic benefits in local communities, such as new employment and business opportunities. They can also help us to identify measures to protect existing livelihoods.

The practice of development assessment is not new in Canada. It has been around in one form or another for many years. It is now part of public decision making at all levels of government.

Federally the environmental assessment and review process guidelines order apply the principles of development assessment to certain projects that involved the Government of Canada as far back as 1984. In 1995 these guidelines were replaced by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, or CEAA, which hon. members know is in the midst of a statutory review.

When Bill C-2 becomes law it will functionally replace the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act for most projects in Yukon, although under certain limited circumstances the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act can still apply.

Why is this happening? The short answer is that chapter 12 of the Yukon umbrella final agreement requires that a new development assessment process be put in place for Yukon. This agreement was signed by the Governments of Canada and Yukon and the Council of Yukon Indians in 1993 and given effect in 1995 by Yukon First Nations Land Claims Settlement Act. The umbrella final agreement, UFA, is a template for Yukon first nations final agreements and self-government agreements which to date have been signed with 8 of the 14 Yukon first nations.

The first nations in Yukon are the Carcross/Tagish First Nation, the Champagne and Aishihik First Nation, the Teslin Tlingit Council, the Ta'an Kwach'an First Nation, the Kluane First Nation, the Kwanlin Dun First Nation, the Liard First Nation, the Little Salmon Carmacks First Nation, the Nacho Nyak Dun First Nation, the Ross River Dena Council, the Selkirk First Nation, the Vuntut Gwitchin Tribal Council, the Tr'ondek Hwech'in First Nation and the White River First Nation.

As a sign that this is a cooperative project between various levels and orders of government, I am delighted that today in Ottawa are Chief Eric Morris of the Teslin Tlingit Council, Chief Joe Linklater of the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation, Chief Darren Taylor of the Tr'ondek Hwech'in First Nation, the president of Air North and Vuntut Development Corporation, Steve Mills, and Daryn Leas another member of the team.

At the time of the signing of the umbrella final agreement the Council for Yukon Indians, now known as the Council for Yukon First Nations, or CYFN, and the Yukon territorial government, YTG, agreed to work with the Government of Canada to establish the development and assessment process called for in chapter 12 of the UFA. Bill C-2 is a product of that collaborative effort.

Fulfilling Canada's outstanding commitments to aboriginal people is one of our most important obligations as legislators. It is in fact the cornerstone for renewing our relationship with aboriginal people.

Bill C-2 would see Canada fulfill its promise to 14 Yukon first nations.

Besides the fulfilment of Canada's obligations under the umbrella final agreement, the bill pursues other worthy goals.

By establishing a process that will ensure that the development activities contemplated for the Yukon will not harm the environment, residents or communities in the area, Bill C-2 will protect the quality of life in the Yukon. It will help preserve the livelihood of individuals as well as the heritage and culture of the first nations people of the Yukon. It will help protect the land, water, air, fish and wildlife of the Yukon. These are all worthwhile goals which deserve our support.

As hon. members can appreciate, this is a detailed and technically complex bill. I do not intend to review it in detail today. Instead I would like to focus on some key elements to the process that would be put in place by Bill C-2 and its supporting regulations.

Essentially Bill C-2 would establish a territory wide process to assess the impacts of development activities in Yukon for which a federal, territorial or first nations government is a proponent and a regulator, and is providing discretionary interest in land or, in the case of the federal government, is providing funding.

Hon. members will recall the recent passage of Bill C-39 in the House. That new Yukon Act ratifies the devolution of many powers and responsibilities to the government of Yukon. Those authorities given to the territory ensure that Yukon will now be able to enact its own environmental assessment legislation to mirror the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. In this way Yukon will be in a position to ensure that development proposals are evaluated in the interval between devolution and the coming into force of the bill before us today. That territorial legislation will bridge the gap until the bill is enacted and implemented.

One must consider what might happen in Yukon without Bill C-2. There eventually could be as many as 16 development assessment processes in the territory, 1 for each of the 14 first nations, 1 for the federal government and 1 for the territorial government. With such a scenario a development process could be subject to not one or even two, but possibly three or four assessment processes, each with its own requirement, its own guideline, its own decision points and its own timelines. This single development assessment process is in the best interests of all stakeholders.

A known and consistent regime will provide greater certainty for project components which in turn will help encourage investment in Yukon. It will also provide more certainty for government and regulators and more consistent protection of the environment and the livelihood and culture of Yukon first residents.

How do we plan to implement such a regime? Allow me to take a few moments to explain how this new development activity assessment process will work and how it will be implemented under Bill C-2.

As hon. members can see, the bill has three parts. Part 1 will come into force immediately upon enactment and deals largely with the administrative aspects of the development process. For example, part 1 will establish the Yukon environmental and socio-economic assessment board to administer the development assessment process and ensure that assessments are conducted in a neutral and efficient manner. The seven member board will be an institution of public government with an office in Whitehorse. The Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development will appoint its members based upon nominations from the federal and territorial governments as well as the Council of Yukon First Nations which will nominate three board members. The minister will also select three board members to act as the executive committee, including an individual nominated by the Council of Yukon First Nations. Consistent with the principle of local people making decisions about local matters, at all times the majority of the board members must be Yukon residents.

Part 1 of Bill C-2 would also provide for the establishment of six assessment districts across Yukon, each of which would have a designated office to assess projects. This decentralized approach will make the process more accessible to those people who are most likely affected by a project. The Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, DIAND, currently is working with the Yukon government and first nations to establish the boundaries for these districts within input from Yukoners.

Part 2 of Bill C-2 describes the assessment process. To provide for the smooth implementation of this new assessment regime, part 2 would come into force as much as, but no longer than, 18 months after part 1. This would give the board time to hire and train staff, to establish bylaws for the board and designated offices, to develop budgets and to establish procedural rules and public registries of information about development assessments.

Part 2 broadly describes the types of projects that will require an assessment, which, as I noted earlier, essentially includes any project in Yukon that is proposed by the federal, territorial or a first nations government that requires a decision from one of these governments or that requires federal funding. Specific activities that would be assessed under the act are identified in the project proposed list regulations, which also identify activities that would be exempted from this assessment.

Hon. members who have reviewed Bill C-2 will know that it provides for three types of assessments. The most basic is called the designated office evaluation. This is where most projects will enter the assessment process. At this level, the development assessment professionals will evaluate a proposed project and will either decide that it needs further assessment, or will recommend that the project be allowed to proceed, or that it be allowed to proceed with terms and conditions to mitigate adverse effects, or that it should not be allowed to proceed. If a more detailed analysis is required, the project can be referred by this designated office to the board's executive committee.

Certain large projects will be subject to an executive committee screening belonging to the process at this second level. Activities to fall into this category will be clearly identified in the project list regulations.

The executive committee will also screen projects referred to it by a designated office. In most cases the executive committee will make a recommendation on whether or not the project should proceed either with or without terms and conditions. However where the executive committee determines that a project might have a significant adverse effect, raise significant public concerns or involves untested technology, the project will be referred for a panel review. This is the third and last type of review. The small projects locally go in the designated offices, the bigger projects to the executive level screening and the very large and complex projects to the panel review.

The panel review is the most detailed level of assessment under Bill C-2 and would probably be used for only a few projects each year. A panel would be established by the executive committee to conduct an indepth assessment of the proposed project. As is the case with other levels of assessment, at the end of the review the panel would recommend that the project proceed, that it proceed with terms and conditions or that it not proceed. Regardless of the assessment level, all assessments must consider the same basic criteria. These include the purpose of the project and all its stages.

As well assessments must consider any possible environmental or socioeconomic impacts in Yukon or elsewhere and any possible cumulative impacts from a combination of the project and any other existing or proposed activities in Yukon or elsewhere. Assessments will also consider whether there are other ways to carry out the activity that might avoid or reduce these impacts. Protecting the rights of all Yukon residents will be an assessment criteria.

An underlying principle of this new process is that everyone with an interest in the project, including the general public, must have the opportunity to participate in and be informed about these assessments. One way this will be achieved is by placing the information and notices about assessments on to the public registries that I mentioned earlier and inviting comments from all parties.

Input will also be sought from government agencies and first nations that have provided notice of interest in assessment and from relevant land use planning commissions in Yukon. This early input should help smooth the project through subsequent regulatory processes.

It should be clear now that designated offices, the executive committee and panels can only make recommendations. The final decisions on projects would be made by decision bodies as defined in this bill. Depending on the projects location, category or authorization required, a decision body could be a first nation, the territorial minister, a federal agency, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development or another minister designated by the governor in council. The appropriate decision body would consider the recommendations of the assessment body as well as any information and traditional knowledge accompanying the recommendations. At the end of the process, the decision body may accept, vary or reject the recommendations arising from an assessment.

The new process ensures a high level of transparency by requiring both the assessors and the decision bodies to report publicly in writing to explain their assessment recommendations and decisions.

The period of time within which a decision body must release this report, called a decision document, will be specified in the proposed time lines, decision body's coordination regulations. Public input into those, as with all regulations, could be made when they are gazetted. There are also provisions and regulations to provide time lines on the various assessment processes.

Hon. members should also know that a project approved by a decision body will not necessarily proceed. There may be regulatory or policy reasons why it would not be authorized. A decision body is under no legal obligation to authorize a project, regardless of an approval made under the Yukon environmental and socio-economic assessment act.

If though a decision body does authorize the project, it must do so consistent with the decision document issued. However a project that has been turned down in a decision body will not be allowed to proceed.

If a project goes forward, decision bodies must each conform with their own decision documents when issuing authorizations or carrying out the project. Any violation of a condition imposed by a decision body will be subject to penalties under the existing laws and regulations found, for example, in the Fisheries Act or Yukon's Environment Act.

As I said at the outset, the development assessment process described in Bill C-2 will be the only assessment process that will apply once enacted to most projects in Yukon.

Having said that, if a proposed project is referred to a panel review, the Minister of the Environment, who is responsible for the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, could become involved in selecting the type of panel and setting its terms of reference, or in establishing a joint panel with the Yukon environmental and socio-economic assessment board.

Bill C-2 also includes provisions to encourage cooperation and coordination of assessments with the Inuvialuit Final Agreement, Screening Committee and Review Board, in the North Slope of Yukon. The legislation would preclude duplication with that review board and provide several other mechanisms to avoid or minimize process duplication.

Under certain circumstances, Bill C-2 would allow for assessments of activities outside Yukon for which effects would likely to occur within Yukon. The bill also identifies circumstances in which the executive committee would have the authority to establish a request by the responsible government, a panel, to review an existing project, or to review plans, or programs, or policies or proposals that were not yet considered to be projects for the purposes of the bill.

Once part 2 of Bill C-2 comes into force, an activity prescribed under the bill and its regulations will not be allowed to proceed until an assessment of its environmental and socioeconomic effects has been completed and decision documents have been issued.

However, to facilitate the transition to the new process, part 3 of the bill stipulates that any assessment that was initiated prior to part 2 coming into force will be exempted from the new process unless a subsequent CEAA referral is made to a higher level of assessment.

Part 3 also contains consequential amendments to the Access to Information Act, the Privacy Act and the Yukon Surface Rights Board Act. There is also a consequential amendment to the Yukon First National Self-Government Act to ensure the first nations have adequate tools, primarily fine levels, to effectively implement and enforce their YESAA decisions.

As I note at the outset, the umbrella final agreement was signed in 1993 and implementation began in 1995. As hon. members can see, it has taken some time to address the agreement's requirement for a territory wide development assessment process and it was time well used. Much of that time has been spent in consultation with stakeholder groups and, as a result, we have a much better bill and a much better process than might otherwise be the case. First nations in particular will have a more meaningful role in assessments in Yukon.

It is safe to say that virtually everyone in Yukon had an opportunity to comment on the bill and many did. The department released drafts of the legislation in 1998 and in 2001 for public review. It has since undertaken two separate tours of Yukon to meet with Yukon first nations and other residents to review and discuss these drafts.

This took time but it was time well spent. Those in Yukon who participated believe the process was inclusive, transparent and worthwhile. I am confident in the merits of this proposed legislation. I believe that a single assessment process is by far the best approach for Yukon given the unique circumstances of land ownership and governance in the territory.

I believe this process will provide certainty for all parties and that this in turn will encourage investment in Yukon while protecting the environment and first nations traditional livelihoods and culture.

Settling claims eliminates an enormous barrier to economic development and in turn improves the quality of life of first nations communities and that of their non-aboriginal neighbours living in the Yukon.

Investors can then proceed with confidence and first nations can negotiate from positions of strength. Bill C-2 represents an important step forward in implementing a commitment to first nations under the Yukon umbrella final agreement which is a priority for the government and for Canadians.

The proposed legislation deserves our support on all counts. With that in mind, I ask all hon. members to join me in voting to send it to committee for review.

[Pierre Pettigrew, Liberal, for the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development]

moved that Bill C-2, an act to establish a process for assessing the environmental and socio-economic effects of certain activities in Yukon, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Business of the House

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, obviously the government will not stop functioning. It works all the time, seven days a week.

This afternoon we will continue with Bill C-4, the nuclear waste legislation. It will be followed by Bill C-2 respecting the Yukon and Bill C-3, if we have time available, respecting the Canada pension plan investment legislation.

Tomorrow shall be the sixth and final day of the address debate. This will result in a deferred vote until our return. Next week is a constituency week for all hon. members. When we return we will pick up the legislative agenda where we left off today. I will add that Bill C-14, the diamonds legislation, was introduced earlier today.

I should like to announce that the first allotted day shall take place on Thursday, October 24.

Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act

[Bob Nault, Liberal, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-2, an act to establish a process for assessing the environmental and socio-economic effects of certain activities in Yukon.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)