Debates of Nov. 2nd, 1994

London Investment And Education Council

[Pat O'Brien, Liberal, London—Middlesex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, learning is a life long process and in a rapidly changing world our vision of learning must be constantly changing and evolving. I am proud to say that the city of London is developing into a learning community.

The London Investment and Education Council is a non-profit community based group committed to bringing together students, business, labour, government, families and social and cultural organizations to plan initiatives and share information related to education.

The federal government recognizes that learning is a life long process and encourages all sectors of our community to become involved in the learning process. London truly is a learning community, thanks to the innovative work of the London Investment and Education Council.

Deficit Reduction

[René Laurin, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, last Saturday, the Minister of Finance said in an interview published in Le Soleil that everything to reduce the deficit was on the table. In other words, the minister is simply ignoring the commitment made by the Prime Minister in the last election campaign that he would not raise taxes. On the expenditure side, the minister tries to justify additional cuts in social programs that might total $7.5 billion, arguing that everyone would have to do his or her share.

Instead of targeting the needy, the unemployed and the middle class, I suggest the minister take a good look at the government's operational expenditures, subsidies to corporations, Defence spending and duplication, and ensure that taxpayers who live on high incomes are the first in line to pay their fair share of taxes.

Organized Crime

[Bob Ringma, Reform, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, police sources state the hub of Asian organized crime for the world will be situated in Vancouver and Vancouver Island by the turn of the decade. This statement has been acknowledged in part by the Solicitor General who recently supported the deployment of extra drug enforcement officers to Nanaimo.

The situation requires more than just extra police. The government must get serious about reforming and strengthening legislation in the areas of immigration, customs, justice, fisheries and human resources development.

The Reform Party recognizes the need for these changes. In my riding I have already started bringing together concerned members of the immigrant population with municipal, provincial and federal authorities to look at ways to make the system work for all Canadians. Next week I will continue the process and will report the results of this truly grassroots consultation process back to the House.

Social Reforms

[John Finlay, Liberal, Oxford, ON]

Mr. Speaker, hon. members opposite often suggest that the views of Canadians are not taken seriously by the government. I want to tell my hon. friends that they are wrong.

Some of the suggestions made last April by my constituents appear in the discussion paper the Minister of Human Resources Development tabled in the House on October 5.

Oxford recommendations in this paper include: first, programs should be result oriented, with the emphasis on ending dependency.

Second, while everyone should pay into unemployment insurance, it should be structured more like private insurance so that those in higher risk areas of employment pay higher premiums. Third, to help those on welfare become independent the govern-

ment should subsidize those who choose to take low paying positions rather than remain at home.

I am happy to see that these recommendations were taken seriously by the minister and that they are now being discussed across Canada.

Remembrance Day

[Harold Culbert, Liberal, Carleton—Charlotte, NB]

Mr. Speaker, next week on November 11 members of the House will join with thousands of Canadians to pay tribute to those who fought and died so that we might enjoy democracy and freedom: freedom to hold democratic elections and the freedom to voice concern.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the second world war. It is a time to show that Canada remembers. Let us join with all Canadians on November 11 to renew our pledge to the many Canadians who fought and fell in battle.

Let us also remember the sacrifices and efforts made by those at home. It is through the efforts of these people that we have been able to build Canada into a country deemed the best in the world in which to live.

We shall never forget.

Pharmacy Awareness Week

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring to the attention of all Canadians that November 1 to 7 is Pharmacy Awareness Week.

The theme of the week is: "Talk to me, your pharmacist, your friend". The purpose of the week is to encourage communication between pharmacists and their patients. This week recognizes the important role that pharmacists play in health care, and in particular medication use.

During Pharmacy Awareness Week pharmacists across the country will be demonstrating their commitment to close the information gap on the safe use of medications.

I recognize today the work of pharmacists in the field of health. I encourage them to continue their work in ensuring that medications improve the health of all Canadians.

National Film Board

[Louis Plamondon, Bloc, Richelieu, QC]

Mr. Speaker, by not dismissing out of hand the recommendations of the SECOR report on the future of cultural industries, the Minister of Canadian Heritage knowingly supports the abolition of the NFB.

NFB productions are well received and win many prizes internationally. The minister does not seem to realize that closing the NFB would mean shutting down the production of documentaries and animated films.

How many artists and technicians have been able to benefit from this institution's training programs? Does the minister really understand the impact that NFB productions have on our cultural life?

The Minister of Canadian Heritage is obviously no longer competent to defend the interests of cultural institutions. The industry can do without friends like these.

Government Expenditures

[John Williams, Reform, St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance realizes he is over budget and will have to make deep cuts. The human resources development minister will also be making some cuts.

Now we find that Canadians are paying some $24,000 for the commissioner of official languages to drive back and forth between his two residences in a chauffeured limousine because he does not want to relocate from Montreal to Ottawa.

The Minister of Finance likes to give us the impression that he is attacking the deficit but now we find this example of scandalous spending. Canadians are outraged when they learn of this type of spending. How could the government dream of paying $15,800 for his apartment, $5,160 for his meals, and $3,000 for incidental expenses?

I call on the Minister of Finance to stamp out this spending. Let us hope that the commissioner is paying taxes on his benefits as are all other taxpayers.

Stay In School Initiative

[Maurizio Bevilacqua, Liberal, York North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to inform the House of the partnership being announced today in Toronto between the National Basketball Association and the stay in school program by my hon. colleagues, the Minister of Human Resources Development and the Secretary of State for Youth and Training.

The stay in school initiative has become a community success story. The program encourages young people who are at risk of dropping out to stay in school longer and complete high school.

Significant gains have been made in expanding knowledge, action, collaboration, and moral obligation among Canadians to find solutions to the disturbing high school dropout problem.

As the Toronto Raptors and the Vancouver Grizzlies become household names to Canadians, they will become synonymous with championing this important issue.

Service Kanada

[John Maloney, Liberal, Erie, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to acknowledge a pilot project for young adults that has commenced for the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority in my riding of Erie.

Service Kanada, an initiative of the Secretary of State for Training and Youth, brings 19 to 24 year olds and non-profit organizations together to provide labour for needed projects while offering the participants training and the opportunity to live in another community while learning another language.

Participants are paid $2 daily and will receive a $1,000 grant at the end of their six-month stint. Food and lodging are provided by Service Kanada.

There are four objectives for the participants: performance of valued work for the community, acquiring personal work skills, achieving an awareness of our environment, and learning a second language.

These energetic volunteers, these young adults of today from Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick will be the leaders of a strong and united Canada in the not too distant future. We all benefit from projects such as Service Kanada.

Entrepreneur Of The Year Award

[Dianne Brushett, Liberal, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday I had the great honour of visiting Rideau Hall for the presentation of the first ever National Entrepreneur of the Year Award by His Excellency the Governor General of Canada.

In particular I wish to single out one of the nine recipients, Mr. John Bragg, president of Oxford Frozen Foods Ltd., Oxford, Nova Scotia. John Bragg founded his company in rural Nova Scotia processing wild blueberries in a single plant. Today he has four processing plants and has capacity to process 1.9 million pounds of blueberries per day as well as other frozen foods. In peak season John Bragg employs 3,000 people throughout his diversified companies.

I salute John Bragg and the other eight national award recipients whose gross sales total more than $2 billion annually. The government is very proud of our entrepreneurs, the role models for all Canadians.

National Defence

[Jean-Marc Jacob, Bloc, Charlesbourg, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the co-chairman of the Special Joint Committee on Canada's Defence Policy is quoted today in La Presse as saying that this department exists solely to show our solidarity with the rest of the planet.

In the report that came out Monday, he defended the idea of acquiring new equipment, the purpose of which would be to enable Canada to defend, at great expense, its territorial sovereignty.

It would certainly take mental gymnastics to be able to see how buying tanks, not to mention submarines, is a way of expressing solidarity with the planet. On the contrary, it merely confirms the militaristic doctrine that pervades the report.

My advice to the co-chairman is that he would do better to strengthen his solidarity with Quebec, which is in great need of support, particularly his, if it is to hang on to what little it receives from the Department of National Defence, the Liberal Party notwithstanding.

National Film Board

[Myron Thompson, Reform, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the National Film Board of Canada's mandate is to produce and distribute films for Canadian audiences and foreign markets, to enhance knowledge of Canadian social and cultural realities and in so doing contribute to the development of a flourishing film industry.

The National Film Board receives over $80 million from taxpayers. I would like to outline for the House where some of those dollars are going. A film board promotion for a video says: "Compelling, often hilarious and always rebellious, the 10 women discuss lesbian sexuality and survival in Canada during the fifties and the sixties. This video brings lesbian history out of the closet and contributes to the viable history of sexuality in Canada". It also states: "Due to the explicit nature of certain scenes, viewer discretion is advised".

This is another example of hard earned tax dollars at work enhancing Canadian social and cultural realities.

By the way the current debt is $536,656,634,487.41.

Pharmacy Awareness Week

[Gurbax Malhi, Liberal, Bramalea—Gore—Malton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Pharmacy Awareness Week serves to draw attention to the very serious problem of over medication and cross-medication. Our senior citizens are at greatest risk.

I urge the members of the House to support Pharmacy Awareness Week and participate in making the issue better known.

Member For Laurier-Sainte-Marie

[Martin Cauchon, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, four times a year, the House of Commons meets the cost of publishing a householder prepared by each member of Parliament to keep their constituents informed.

In his latest householder, a Bloc member published a letter under the heading "Changes required at the CECM". In this letter, the member argued the need for a school that meets modern-day needs and one with a resolutely forward-looking curriculum, adding that in the current debate, only MEMO offered such a perspective.

I must admit that, on the surface, the connection between the member's mandate and school board elections is not obvious. However, we are not naive enough to believe that this statement has nothing to do with the fact that the member's spouse is a MEMO candidate in ward No. 9 in Montreal.

Taxpayers strongly object to their taxes being used to indirectly fund the election campaign of the wife of the hon. member for Laurier-Sainte-Marie.

Agriculture

[Vic Althouse, NDP, Mackenzie, SK]

Mr. Speaker, here is something I would like the ministers of agriculture, transport and finance to think about before they discontinue the so-called Crow benefit.

In my region the benefit is worth between $22 and $28 per tonne. We grow about one tonne of crop per acre and good land rents between $20 and $30 per acre.

If the benefit disappears and freight costs rise by a like amount, the cash rental value of those lands becomes zero. The financial effect on the region is to further deflate farm land values by several hundred dollars per acre. This equity, which will disappear with the decline and demise of the Crow benefit, is what farmers and their communities have been using as collateral to borrow funds for economic diversity.

The proposal to save some $600 million per year will take billions of dollars worth of value and equity from existing farms and businesses in western Canada and will trigger further bankruptcies and business failures.

How can the government justify that?

Cida Funding

[Jim Hart, Reform, Okanagan—Similkameen—Merritt, BC]

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to CIDA and our foreign aid program, the inmates are running the asylum.

Since 1991 the Canadian Wilderness Committee has received around $300,000 from CIDA. The Sierra Club of Western Canada and the Clayoquot Biosphere Project have also received CIDA funding.

To my best recollection, British Columbia is still a part of this great nation. Why then is nearly half a million dollars being misspent to bolster the efforts of anti-logging radicals?

This is blatant interference in British Columbia's jurisdiction over its natural resources. B.C. is battling to maintain the considerable lumber exports in the face of a concerted campaign of disinformation by these very groups.

We are neck deep in debt. What little foreign aid we can afford should go to those most in need. The federal government, which has not shown any great competence in managing natural resources, has no business interfering in provincial concerns.

Ethics

[Lucien Bouchard, Bloc, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, the ethics counsellor, Howard Wilson, said on television this morning that at no time did he receive from the Prime Minister or his colleagues the mandate to investigate the heritage minister's direct interference in the CRTC's business.

My question is for the Prime Minister. Does he confirm what his counsellor said?

[Jean Chrétien, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, all the facts relating to this issue were clearly put on the table; these are public documents available to all. The counsellor, Mr. Wilson, is aware of the facts, but he does not need to investigate. All the facts are public knowledge and have been discussed in this House for several days.

[Lucien Bouchard, Bloc, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, are we to understand that the Prime Minister deliberately neglected to ask his ethics counsellor to investigate last week because he did not want to have to justify the decision to overlook this matter which he had made a month earlier when he was informed of his minister's mistake?

[Jean Chrétien, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, we told the House of Commons and the public everything that happened in this affair and, as I said several times, the minister in question realized that his letter was interpreted as support. He immediately took action to correct the situation and we accepted this explanation. Then I personally took the initiative of asking all ministers to search their files to see if there was anything in them concerning the Radio-Television Commission, which itself asks for public opinion before rendering its decisions. Several members have written to this commission and several ministers wrote as they did when they were backbenchers. I asked Mr. Wilson to clarify the directives on this subject. I have had conversations with him and I hope that the new directives will be ready within a few weeks.

[Lucien Bouchard, Bloc, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, I ask the Prime Minister if he thinks that his minister again showed his lack of judgement yesterday when he said that he felt more and more at ease, although four of the largest newspapers in Canada and Quebec are calling for his resignation.

Does the Prime Minister, who has shown the virtue of forgiveness, not consider the penitent to lack firm resolve and to be insufficiently remorseful?

[Jean Chrétien, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, the Lord in Heaven decides whether someone has firm resolve, not I.

[Suzanne Tremblay, Bloc, Rimouski—Témiscouata, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. We learned that government ethics counsellor, Howard Wilson, was disciplined in 1992 for awarding almost $1 million worth of contracts without tender. His signing authority was suspended by the Deputy Minister of Industry after the Auditor General intervened.

How can the Prime Minister think that the government's ethics counsellor still has the credibility needed to occupy his position, whose incumbent must be above suspicion?

[Jean Chrétien, Liberal, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, there was an investigation on this matter and Mr. Wilson's signing authority was reinstated. All I know about this man is that he is honest, competent and very open. He readily makes himself available to the media and, under circumstances like these, he gave interviews.

Before appointing him, I asked both the Leader of the Opposition and the leader of the Reform Party for their opinion on his ability to perform these duties; they both agreed with me that he was an honourable man and that he could do an excellent job.