Mr. Speaker, I rise today as the elected member for the Oxford riding to make my maiden speech in this elegant and venerable chamber. When I visited this place as a high school student some 50 years ago, I little thought that I would have the opportunity to address my hon. colleagues as a member of Her Majesty's government. However, that day has arrived and it is an intensely moving experience for me.
I am proud to represent all the citizens of Oxford riding and Burford Township and I thank them for giving me the opportunity to serve them and Canada.
Oxford County and Burford Township, which make up the riding of Oxford, are situated in the agricultural heartland of southwestern Ontario. It is not as rugged as Alberta or B.C., or as expansive as Manitoba or Saskatchewan, nor does it have the rocky coasts and oceans of maritime Canada. It does have the pastoral beauty, character and history of many predominantly rural ridings in central Canada.
Agriculture is the backbone of our communities. We have tobacco farms in the southern part of Oxford around Tillsonburg, which is a progressive town, supporting factories, supplying parts to the automotive industry. Tillsonburg is also the headquarters of the Flue-Cured Tobacco Growers' Marketing Board.
About 25 kilometres north of Tillsonburg is the town of Ingersoll, the home of the huge, modern General Motors Suzuki automobile plant known as CAMI.
The county seat is in the city of Woodstock, population 30,000. It is the administrative centre of Oxford County and has many factories serving the automotive and trucking industry, as well as several concrete fabricating plants, foundries and metal machining factories. The linings for the new Detroit River tunnel are being fabricated in Woodstock.
Woodstock is proud to be called the dairy capital of Canada and its symbol for the last 50 years is a holstein cow, Springbank Snow Countess, owned and milked by Tom Dent, a former Speaker of the legislative assembly of Ontario between 1943 and 1955. A life size statue of Snow Countess stands proudly beside the highway just as one enters Woodstock from the east.
I could wax eloquent about the hundreds of well kept dairy farms throughout Oxford County and Burford Township. There are also cash crop farmers, pork producers and chicken farmers. In fact, Cold Springs Farms of Thamesford is one of Ontario's largest turkey producers and processors.
Burford Township boasts some high tech factories and an outstanding research farm. Just north of Woodstock is the Western Ontario Breeders Incorporated which collects, tests, stores and sells semen around the world for the artificial insemination of cattle.
Oxford, my hon. friends, was the birthplace of some interesting historical characters. Aimie Semple MacPherson, the California evangelist, was born and raised near Ingersoll. A woman with a less admirable but no less colourful life was Cassie Chadwick, the famous con artist who lived very high off the hog in Cleveland, Ohio by pretending to be the illegitimate daughter of the New York City millionaire Andrew Carnegie of library fame.
On the male side, "Colonel" Joe Boyle, the saviour of Romania, was a Woodstonian who made a fortune from hydraulic placer mining in the Klondike following the gold rush. He equipped his own machine gun battery of ex-mounties and miners and transported them to France in the first world war. He was sent to Romania and Russia to reorganize the railroads. He rescued the crown jewels and 20 million in currency for Queen Marie of Romania from the Kremlin during the Bolshevik revolution.
His bones were returned to Woodstock several years ago and reburied. The Reverend John Davies of old St. Paul's Anglican Church in Woodstock, who lived to be 101 and who had known Joe Boyle in the Klondike, presided at the reinternment.
I will just mention some other heroes. The Mighty Men of Zorra, the tug-o-war team which won the world title at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, was commemorated last year on July 1 at the Annual Highland Games in Embro by an international tug-o-war contest. The anchorman on the 1893 team, Robert MacIntosh, had a chest expansion of 52 inches.
Last year the unlimited class hydroplane, Miss Canada IV, was returned to Ingersoll to the Centennial Park Museum by Harold Wilson, its owner and driver. Miss Canada IV broke Sir Malcolm Campbell's world speedboat record in the 1930s.
I want to share with my hon. colleagues some of the things I believe about this country. I believe passionately in this country. I agree with the view expressed two weeks ago by one of the hon. members opposite who said there were three founding realities in Canada's past, the aboriginal people, the French and the English.
My hon. friend from the Bloc went on to point out very rightly that now more than one-third of Canadians, 12 million in fact, are neither aboriginal, English nor French, but come from many cultures and races.
I would like to remind all hon. members that 52 per cent of Canadians are women.
I am proud to espouse the Liberal philosophy and to be part of this Liberal government. Our members represent people from one end of this great country to the other, both ways, and bottom to top.
Just look at the diversity along these government benches and across the way in the rump corner. Nearly every one of the ethnic groups which make up this country is represented in this government. We have not yet achieved parity in representation for women. Yet, 37 Liberals out of the 52 women members in this House is a great improvement over the last government.
I believe that Canadians want this government to succeed. They want to help Canadians get back to work. They want an equitable tax system in which everyone pays their fair share.
They want a revised safety net of social programs which is affordable, makes sense, and serves all those who need it but not those who do not. The people want us to govern firmly. They want peace, law and order. They approve of the Prime Minister's multifaceted and firm approach to the tobacco smuggling problem. They want a searching review of the Young Offenders Act and our parole system with respect to serial killers and violent sexual offenders.
This government committed itself in the throne speech to a more open process and more power to the backbenchers on both sides of this House. I would remind the hon. members opposite that provincial governments are just as guilty of overlap and unnecessary duplication of programs as the federal government ever was.
In this first budget presented by the hon. Minister of Finance we have fulfilled another promise from our famous red book.
This budget will stimulate small and medium size businesses to undertake new ventures and test new markets. It will reduce significantly government spending on inefficient and non-productive programs. It will force a thorough review of all our social security programs and our defence department's role to make sure that we can deliver the programs we need efficiently and effectively.
The budget does broaden the tax base and stops up loopholes in the tax system. It collects more taxes from large corporations and the rich. It will reduce the unemployment insurance premiums to help small business expand.
It lengthens the minimal work requirement and lowers the percentage benefit for all except those who have dependents and need.
There are many other provisions which reduce government spending.
In conclusion, I give a quotation from Sir Wilfrid Laurier which I would ask all hon. members to ponder, particularly those in Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition from Quebec.
In 1911 Sir Wilfrid said:
I am branded in Quebec as a traitor to the French and in Ontario as a traitor to the English. In Quebec, I am branded as a jingo and in Ontario as a separatist. In Quebec I am attacked as an imperialist and in Ontario as an anti-imperialist. I am neither. I am a Canadian. Canada has been the inspiration of my life. I have had before me as a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day, a policy of true Canadianism, of moderation, of conciliation.
I honour the spirit of Sir Wilfred and I commend his balanced and zealous view of this great country to all honourable members.