Debates of Oct. 29th, 1996

Committee Of The Whole

[Elwin Hermanson, Reform, Kindersley—Lloydminster, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to this motion. It is interesting that it is the appointment of a replacement for one of your deputies that has sparked this very interesting debate in the House.

I am pleased to speak regarding the appointment of my hon. colleague from Kingston and the Islands to the position of Assistant Deputy Chairman of Committees of the Whole.

I have the honour of knowing the member. I worked with him on the procedure and House affairs committee when I was first elected and served as Reform's House leader. As a parliamentarian, of course, I have no objection whatsoever to the hon. member's holding the position of the Assistant Deputy Chairman of Committees of the Whole. I would hope that the hon. member is following the debate. I am sure he is watching this debate with great interest.

In a report released in January 1993 regarding the independence of the Chair, the authors firmly stated that the assistant deputy speaker should be alternated between government and opposition parties, citing the Westminster model as an example. By using this model, they said that their authority would be greatly enhanced and the non-partisan nature of the Chair would be greatly augmented.

Most ironically but not surprisingly, the report is titled: "The Liberal Plan for the House of Commons". The authors are the current Minister of Health, the labour minister, formerly the government whip and the opposition whip before the last election, the Minister of International Co-operation, the former government whip who was recently appointed to cabinet, and even the hon. member who is being considered for the appointment, the member for Kingston and the Islands.

The member for Broadview-Greenwood paid quite a tribute to the hon. member and suggested that somehow Reform was going beneath the dignity of the House to even have a debate on his appointment to the Chair.

He talked about the wonderful qualities of the MP for Kingston and the Islands and what a great parliamentarian he is. I do not quibble with those observations.

Then he went on to somehow suggest that we should not review the hon. member's statement here, his paper, about opposition members being appointed as deputy chair.

He got into the whole issue of question period and my leader's statement that we wanted to make this House work better, that we want to be a constructive opposition. We are still a very constructive opposition.

I want to talk about the early days, because I remember them very well. I remember coming into the House and at times even giving the minister opposite previous notice of what the question would be, in good faith, in an honourable way. We would ask a minister of the crown a question and the minister would get up in shock and dismay and ridicule the questioner. He would be very undignified about it.

I suddenly realized it takes two to be honourable and to function in a very dignified manner in the House. We found it did not matter how we asked the questions, what our decorum was. The Liberal respondents, ministers of the crown, were lacking in respect and dignity when they answered our questions; very seldom did they answer our questions.

Then he talked about the tacticians. He said question period is run by a bunch of tacticians. Opposition people sit in their little rooms planning their questions and then unfortunately the government has to respond with its tacticians. It just so happens that one of those tacticians was the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands when he was parliamentary secretary to the government House leader. I knew he was because we would talk about it. He would tell me they were in their rooms cooking all this up.

This is same hon. member who the hon. member from Broadview-Greenwood said is above all of this and here he had been involved. The picture that the member for Broadview-Greenwood painted was not an accurate picture whatsoever.

I hope that the member for Kingston and the Islands is paying close attention to this debate. He has been very aggressive in debates in the House and we have had a good time debating many issues. Every once in a while he will take the opportunity to quote from the New Testament. He did it very recently.

I would like to remind the hon. member-because I am sure he is listening-about a story where a father had two sons and he asked the two sons to go out and work for him. One son said sure he would go do it. That son went out, forgot about obeying his father and did not do the job he was told to do. The other son said he was not going to do it but then he thought carefully about his decision

and he said, yes, he would obey his father and carry out the task he was given.

I hope the member for Kingston and the Islands reads the report he authored some time ago that said opposition members should have two of the four chair positions. I hope he is the son who said he would go sit in the chair. I do not care about promises made in the past. I hope he will reconsider. I hope he will do the honourable thing tonight as he thinks about his commitment to democracy in this place and he will say that he will not accept that. It is not the right thing to do until the Liberals have kept their promise to make sure that two opposition members are appointed as deputy speakers sitting in the Chair. I trust he will do the right thing.

If the hon. member does not he is open to criticism. I guess we cannot use the h word in the House but we can certainly talk about the h word outside the House. That is what the member for Kingston and the Islands will be if he accepts the position that has been offered to him by the government.

[An hon. member]

What is the h word?

[Elwin Hermanson, Reform, Kindersley—Lloydminster, SK]

Mr. Speaker, the word is hypocrite.

This demonstrates to Canadians that the Liberals say one thing during election campaigns in opposition and then they slap us in the face and do exactly the opposite. This is not only apparent with protocol and House affairs but in all sectors.

I must speak about agriculture because I am the agriculture critic for the Reform caucus. I love agriculture and I am dismayed with the broken promises of this Liberal government with regard to agriculture.

The Liberals have been patting themselves on the back over this past weekend saying they have been keeping promises. Reform looked at their promises with regard to their agriculture platform document prior to the last election and they made 28 promises.

[An hon. member]

They have kept them all.

[Elwin Hermanson, Reform, Kindersley—Lloydminster, SK]

The hon. member says they have kept them all. I will bet that the hon. member does not even know what one of those promises are.

The Liberals made 28 promises with regard to agriculture but have kept only 7. That means they have failed with only a 25 per cent mark. No matter how you look at it, that is pretty dismal.

I will mention a couple to put them on the record. Liberals promised that they would provide a greater commitment to research and development, both applied and basic. The opposite is true. They cut funding for research in agriculture by 16 per cent.

The fresh start proposal that the Reform is taking to Canadians in the next election calls for an increase in spending for agriculture research. We would find the savings by streamlining the department in other areas.

A Liberal red book promise says that they would use GATT negotiations to aggressively defend and clarify article XI to maintain supply management. The Liberals were barely in office when they scrapped article XI. Everybody knew that was a promise they could not keep but they made it anyway. That is disgraceful. They should not be allowed to get away with that.

[An hon. member]

Hear, hear.

[Elwin Hermanson, Reform, Kindersley—Lloydminster, SK]

The hon. member opposite is saying hear, hear. He thinks article XI is still there. He thinks a different government signed it away. It was his own government that signed article XI of GATT away after it promised Canadian farmers it would defend that article to the death. Not one of them died or even lost a night's sleep over the loss of article XI.

The Liberals broke their promise when it came to standing up for Canadians in their trade relations with the United States. I happen to be a durum grower and I know they put a cap on durum exports to the United States. They did not have to. We have a trade agreement that says that we do not have to put a quota or a cap on our exports of durum into the United States. It does not matter.

The Americans put a little pressure on and said: "You be good boys up there in Canada, you Liberals, you co-operate with us. We do not want any more of your durum for a while". The agriculture minister said: "Okay. We'll just close off the flow of our high quality durum that is bringing a good return to Canadian farmers. We'll oblige you. To heck with these trading arrangements we made. We'll punish our own farmers just to help you poor Americans out". That was the response of the Liberal government.

The Liberals made promises about agriculture stabilization that they did not keep. They promised a whole farm NISA for all of Canada. They failed to deliver. There were two provinces that were not interested and they forgot to ask the provinces whether they would go along with their proposals for agriculture stabilization.

They promised a spring cash advance. They just reneged on that one the other day.

They did keep seven promises. One of them was to establish an Agri-Food Development Council to improve Canada's competitive position in the agri-food industry. I expect they kept it because it is a council. They had some Liberals who needed a job and they want to create jobs. So they said: "We'll create a council and we'll put some Liberals on this council. In that way we have kept our

promise and have also dished out some patronage at the same time". That is agriculture.

The Liberal government made a whole lot of other promises. That is what this debate is about, keeping your word, keeping your promise. If you say you are going to appoint deputy speakers from both sides of the House, you had better do it, Mr. Speaker. Canadians are not going to take being lied to any longer.

The red book is full of promises that have not been kept. The success rate is just about as dismal as it was with their agriculture promises. Let us go to promise number one: "We will restore Canadians' faith in themselves and their government". They failed dismally. In stark contrast Reform has offered in its fresh start proposals a guarantee that we will listen or we can be recalled.

Promise No. 2: "We will work with the provinces to redesign the current social assistance programs so sorely tested in recent years to help people on social assistance who are able to work to move from dependence to full participation in the economic and social life of this country". Nothing has been a more dismal failure than this promise.

They go on to say in promise No. 4: "We will exercise unwavering discipline in controlling federal spending". What a laugh. The recent contracts offered by the former and disgraced minister of defence are a testimony to the failure of promise number four. That is in stark contrast to the fresh start promise of things like balanced budget legislation that would prevent the foolish spending that we have seen from the Liberals.

Promise No. 10: "A Liberal government will replace the GST". My colleagues have talked about that, so enough has been said.

Promise No. 12: "A Liberal government will work closely with provincial governments to achieve the maximum possible co-ordination of tax policies". That one was a blow-out too. Only three provinces agreed to any kind of co-ordination of tax policies. For those three provinces to agree they took a $1 billion pay-off. That is a broken promise and again is in stark contrast to Reform's fresh start proposals that take seriously-

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

A point of order, Mr. Speaker. The member from Kindersley earlier said that the public is not going to take being lied to any more. I believe that is unparliamentary and should be withdrawn.

[Ray Speaker, Reform, Lethbridge]

Mr. Speaker, speaking to the point of order, the hon. member that has just raised this matter should understand when one is not imputing any kind of motives or not speaking of the motives of any one individual in this House that the word that was used as my hon. colleague has used it, is acceptable. There are no grounds at all for this point of order.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Mills (Broadview-Greenwood))]

I have listened to both comments and the context. I understand the member for Lethbridge. I would ask the member for Kindersley-Lloydminster to continue.

[Elwin Hermanson, Reform, Kindersley—Lloydminster, SK]

Mr. Speaker, you should come and join the opposition benches. Maybe you could get appointed to the Chair.

I was at promise No. 12 where there was a billion dollar pay-off to get three provinces to co-operate on a co-ordination of tax policies between the federal and provincial governments.

I could go on, there are a lot of promises here. There is promise No. 19 which deals with NAFTA. We do not need to talk about it because that has already happened.

I want to talk about promise No. 26 which states: "We will better prepare for the transition from school to the workplace, provide a constructive outlet for the skills and talents of younger Canadians, the innocent victims of Canada's prolonged recession, enhance the opportunity for job training and improve literacy and numeracy skills of Canadian workers and improve access to employment for women and single parents by making quality child care more available". There are so many broken promises in that one promise alone that I do not know where to start.

Let us talk about youth unemployment. Conservative estimates have the unemployment rate for young Canadians at 18 per cent. One of my colleagues mentioned that there are 1.4 million Canadians unemployed at the current time. The member for Broadview-Greenwood indicated that two million Canadians are currently unemployed.

Then we could talk about all the day care spaces that were promised by the Liberal government. The Liberals had no hope of ever fulfilling that promise yet they made it to young single mothers and others who needed help with child care. What an irresponsible thing to do. How can Liberal MPs look their constituents in the face when they make promises they do not have a hope of keeping?

That is in contrast to our fresh start proposal which recognizes child care whether it is in the form of day care or care in the home or care by other trusted caregivers. There is no discrimination based on the type of child care. That would create far more child care than the broken Liberal promises could ever have hoped to accomplish even if they had been able to keep their promises.

There are pages of broken promises here. There is No. 41: "A Liberal government, if it can obtain the agreement of the provinces, will be committed to expanding existing child care in Canada by 50,000 new quality child care spaces each year that follows a year

of 3 per cent economic growth up to a total of 150,000 new spaces". A broken promise again.

Here is a kept promise, No. 56. Every once in a while we come across a promise that the Liberals kept and it is quite notable when we do hit one: "The Liberal government will enhance the role of the trade commissioner service by adding to its staff qualified technology and science attachés who can gather information for diffusion back in Canada and identify opportunities for Canadian exports abroad". Here again the Liberals were able to add some positions and increase the spending of government. We are not sure how effective it has been but they were able to keep that promise.

I must mention promise No. 71: "A Liberal government will work with the provinces and the territories to provide Canada's natural resource industries with greater certainty by co-ordinating a specific system of land access, settling aboriginal land claims and resolving delays and uncertainties in current regulatory processes".

At the Liberal convention last weekend, aboriginal people were outside burning the red book because the Liberal government failed to keep its promises to aboriginal people. The aboriginals were pulling the red book apart page by page, using it to light a bonfire. That again is in stark contrast to Reform's fresh start proposals based on our aboriginal policy task force, which consulted with aboriginal and non-aboriginal people alike to put forward some very solid proposals.

There are a hundred and some promises here. I am trying to get to the last one. "A Liberal government will also expand the rights of Parliament to debate major Canadian foreign policy initiatives such as the deployment of peacekeeping forces, the rights of Canadians to regular and serious consultation on foreign policy issues".

We all know that the take note debates happened after the decision was made. It was another slap in the face of Parliament just like we have been slapped around by not having the Liberals fulfil their promise of appointing two deputy speakers from the opposition benches. This has to change. The Liberals are not going to change it. The alternative is to start with a fresh start, a new opportunity for Canadians, one that is offered by Reform.

[George Baker, Liberal, Gander—Grand Falls, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I have just a few words to say after listening to the hon. members opposite concerning promises.

It is a funny thing that the Reform and the Tories in this House do not talk about the promises they have made. Perhaps it is because if they talked about the promises they made in the budget they presented and in their policy statements, nobody would vote for them.

The hon. member a few moments ago was talking about infrastructure, about airports. They promised to pass all the airports in Canada to private enterprise. Imagine going into an airport anywhere in Canada and having a policy of the money bags, the multimillionaires in Canada owning all the airports. That is the policy of that opposition party.

Not only that, but they make a very big point of it in their promises. It is all there in black and white. The hon. member obviously has not read it lately. If he wants to hear the exact words, I can read it for him.

If someone picked up the policy papers of the Reform Party and the Tories, what would they see as far as infrastructure and highways are concerned? They would see that party is suggesting that the Trans-Labrador Highway be built by private individuals. Then in order to get their money back, toll gates would be placed on those highways. How else could they get their money back?

Imagine people driving along a highway, the Alaska highway or the new highway going up to Labrador, and having to pay for the highway and the bridges and then a profit over and above that for all time due to multi-multi-multimillionaires and the big banks in this country. That is the promise being made by the Reform Party of Canada and the Tories.

Even worse than that, let us get to the real promise they have made as far as ordinary Canadians are concerned. It involves medicare. Let us read the promise. They have been talking about promises of the government, this great administration. Now let us read from their budget.

It should not take me very long to find it. It is on page 24: "The public may in time agree that although access to a broad range of basic health care should be guaranteed to everyone, the original medicare model in which everyone received everything health care professionals wished to deliver is not only intolerably expensive, it is undesirable for other reasons". Awful. Just imagine.

What about that promise? It would mean one health care system for the rich in Canada and another health care system for the poor in Canada. They do not even hide it. They even put it in their policy book. The Tories have done the same thing.

I know the Speaker would rule me out of order if I used a prop. I am not supposed to do that. Anyway, it is called the taxpayers budget. It is the Reform Party's plan to balance the federal budget.

Let us understand this completely as far as the promises are concerned. Let us understand the Liberal promises versus the promises of the Tories and the Reform Party of Canada. It is no

wonder they are so low in the polls. It is no wonder the government remains so high in the polls.

Hon. members opposite keep referring to our great deficit problem. What country are they talking about? The recent analyses have not been done in Canada by the chambers of commerce or by any Canadian economists. Look at the great analyses on the economic performance of the Government of Canada in the past three years. What do they say?

The OECD is made up of 28 nations. Its head office in Paris, France. Its job is to analyse the economies of the countries of the world. What does the OECD say about the great G-7? Which country is it that leads the G-7? Is it Japan?

[Some hon. members]

No.

[George Baker, Liberal, Gander—Grand Falls, NL]

Is it Italy?

[Some hon. members]

No.

[George Baker, Liberal, Gander—Grand Falls, NL]

Is it France?

[Some hon. members]

No.

[George Baker, Liberal, Gander—Grand Falls, NL]

Is it the United Kingdom?

[Some hon. members]

No.

[George Baker, Liberal, Gander—Grand Falls, NL]

Is it Germany?

[Some hon. members]

No.

[George Baker, Liberal, Gander—Grand Falls, NL]

Is it the United States?

[Some hon. members]

No.

[George Baker, Liberal, Gander—Grand Falls, NL]

There is only one country left in the G-7 and that is Canada.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear.