Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate today in this third and final hour of debate on the motion by my hon. colleague from Moose Jaw-Lake Centre. The motion reads:
That, in the opinion of this House, the government should immediately pursue negotiations with the provinces and agri-food industry in order to re-assign jurisdictional responsibilities in agriculture and eliminate overlap and duplication.
My colleagues who have addressed this motion have focused on how we can get the agricultural business in Canada done smarter, better and cheaper. We have said that we must focus on how the private and public sectors can work together more efficiently and effectively.
We have reached a time in our history when good economics and good politics can converge. Canadians want their political leaders to make the absolute best use of public moneys. They want all mismanagement and waste done away with. They want the political turf wars between the federal government and the provinces to cease.
They want politicians to go back to square one and ask: If we had to start all over again, how would we structure our collective affairs? That is not just in agriculture, but may be especially so today. How would we organize government departments at the federal and provincial levels? How would we create co-operation, not competition, between the public and private sectors? These are conceptual questions that my colleagues have tried to present answers to as applied to agriculture within Canada.
We have said that if we could take agriculture, which is probably the most basic industry, and develop a clear division of responsibilities between levels of government and the industry, we could save hundreds of millions of public dollars and we could unleash the private sector to grow to its complete potential. By taking one department of government such as agriculture and working through this redesigning or reconfederating process, we could learn lessons that could be applied broadly across all the economic and social portfolios within government.
A discussion of this nature deals not only with a clearer division of jurisdictions between governments, but also with a clearer understanding of the functions and the roles of both the government and the private sector.
My colleague from Moose Jaw-Lake Centre has suggested government has six roles most appropriate for it. First, there is basic precommercial research and development. Second, is a commercial role limited to providing only those goods and services that are non-rival, non-excludable and thus not captur-
able exclusively by the private sector. Third is a minimum level of regulation that ensures safety and health. Fourth is a role in educating and training our children, youth and adults. Fifth is a role in serving the private sector with suitable public programs. Sixth is a mediation role in helping to resolve conflicting and sometimes competing interests.
On the other hand, we suggested that the private sector is most suited to make the vast majority of decisions and have ultimate responsibility for organizing the production of private goods and services. The industry must supply the demand and provide goods and services that can be competitive and from which profit can be gained. For the most part, government should stay out of these business related functions. There may be niche roles, but they will be very few in number. These business functions include commercial research and development, production, processing, transporting, marketing, financing and insuring.
Without question, this kind of business led free market system is the best way we have found to distribute resources and wealth throughout an economy and a society. This is because a business-led free market system is an open social order where individuals or parties have the right to contract with others on legal and mutually agreeable terms based on free choice. This open social order must promote personal responsibility for choices instead of state protection, individual innovation instead of bureaucratic control, and the encouragement of voluntary contracting exchange between free participants.
We must also recognize that we want a free market system to provide protection for weaker partners so that they are not victims of unfair commercial practices. In other words, we want a free and a just market system. This issue is without doubt one of the most important things that we as politicians can discuss at this level. It has occupied the attention of legislators and economists around the world since the free markets began.
At the end of this millennium we are also finding new resolve to ask how we best ensure a free market system is both free and just. I suggest there is both a moral and a democratic answer to the question.
Because the tools of wealth and freedom are available in a free market system, participants in that system have a moral obligation to ensure that the creation of wealth and freedom are spread as far afield as possible. To whom much is given, much is expected. Our cultural values will determine how moral a free market system really is. Then a market system that is free and just will be based upon a genuinely democratic process of decision making in public and private policy, work and capital. In a free market economy, justice for all is best realized by ensuring that bottom up democracy characterizes all economic and political institutions.
The power and authority must be spread out as widely as possible. Organizations must be flat rather than hierarchical. People must be empowered to fully participate in the privileges and responsibilities of a productive economy. In a multitude of counsellors there is safety.
This is why my colleagues and I insist on the importance of direct farmer and business involvement in developing agricultural policy. We must work from the bottom to the top, not the other way around. We must get the maximum number of people involved in the decision making process. Business and governments around the world are realizing that the more democratic these institutions are, the more economically and socially successful they will be.
A parliamentary democracy must submit political party discipline to representation of the people if it is to maintain the loyalty of those people.
The private sector has other roles to perform in organizing for the supply of private goods and services within a free and just market economy. Industry stakeholders must have freedom of association. They should be able to democratically organize, carry out their activities and advocate their causes to other stakeholders and the public in whatever self-supporting and legal manner that best serves their interests.
The private sector also has a self-regulation function. A clear set of regulatory policies that is established internally by industry or externally by government should be binding on all. This system nurtures the natural expressions of differences and openly rewards success within that regulatory policy.
Obviously the private sector should also have some ability to mediate its affairs and reconcile its own differences. Where this is not possible, outside private or public mediators could be called on to help. The real need however is for all the stakeholders in a given industry to develop a collaborative approach to allow each player to do what it does best in order to realize the best possible good for all.
Finally the private sector has an information sharing function, which is to say that it should research, compile, analyse, interpret and distribute data helpful to its cause.
These basic ideas about the most appropriate roles for government and the most appropriate roles for the private sectors are crucial. We began this debate by saying that it is time to re-confederate agriculture in Canada. The time is right and the need is now. We cannot just tinker with policies here and there. We must think into the future and drive, not drift, into it.
There must be a whole new way of doing agriculture based on more distinct and more co-operative roles for both levels of government, as much as possible separate from each other and separate from private sector industry. These suggestions are based on sound economic, organizational and democratic principles.
The first act that our Fathers of Confederation passed 125 years ago was the Agriculture Act of 1868. At the end of the 1990s perhaps we as parliamentarians could have the foresight and vision for the needs of today. I have sketched out the modest skeleton of a proposal. I ask the House now to vote in favour of this motion.