Mr. Speaker, to respond to the last statement from the hon. member for Parry Sound-Muskoka, the answer to the question from the member for Capilano-Howe Sound was very revealing not only about the communications techniques of the government but about the character of the hon. member.
He was caught expressing, I suspect inadvertently, a falsehood regarding what was in Reform's budget proposal last year. He said the party had committed to cutting $20 billion out of social spending, something which by simply referencing the page can seen to be untrue.
Then having been caught saying that, his answer is the budget really did not specify the cuts at all. Now he says precisely the opposite. He might want to bother to check the documents before he makes statements.
Reform proposed in the last election precisely what it would cut. It expressed those cuts to the people of Labrador as well as to people in other parts of the country. It did the same thing in the taxpayers budget. The numbers add, up if the hon. member bothers to read them.
Where we will not find reference to cuts, reference to cutting seasonal workers on unemployment insurance, reference to the elimination of old age security, reference to the massive cuts in the order of 40 per cent to 50 per cent in transfers for health, post secondary education and welfare is in the red book. Nor will they be found in the document on which his party and this member ran in Newfoundland and in all other provinces.
This member will get up and pontificate so wisely on these issues but he ran on one thing and he will now vote for the precise opposite measure in every other category.
I am not afraid to say what I believe because that is the platform I ran on. Some of those measures are positive. We ran on those measures. That is what we said should have been done. However, this member who is enrolled in the MP pension plan had an obligation to tell his own electors the truth, but he did not do that. Instead he told people what they wanted to hear. Now he goes along with the party because he will go along with anything. That is what we have and that is precisely why in Labrador and in so many other parts of the country politics is held in such disrepute.
I repeat what I said in my budget speech. I honestly do not know how some of these socialist Liberals live with this. Some of them are sincerely committed to their principles. They have now proposed and enacted $25 billion in cuts. That is a figure from the last budget by the Minister of Finance; more cuts than were proposed by the Reform Party in 1993, the slash and burn Reform Party.
We still have a $15 billion deficit which is the real unknown figure. How are we to fix that remaining $14 billion, although they say it is $17 billion counting their reserves? How is that remaining $14 billion to be cut? We have not been told that yet. I suspect much of it will come near the turn of the century when they actually implement their cuts to old age security. Then we will find out what they really mean.
We found out on health care. We talked about cutting health care, saying we should actually spend zero in 1993. We said we should have cut about a billion last year. They said this was awful. Now the cuts in the health care area are many times that; $4.3 billion.
The motion today is:
That this House condemn the government for its neglect of Labrador, and for refusing to resolve the injustice of the Churchill Falls Hydro Contract, thus perpetuating interprovincial trade barriers and denying the residents of Labrador the right to enjoy the benefits of their own natural resources.
The hon. member sees this as a contradiction; another of his contradictions. He said: "I thought the Reform Party would stay out of natural resources. Now it wants to regulate natural resources". Nobody is proposing to tell the Government of Newfoundland how to run its power. We are proposing to open up
interprovincial trade. It is just a slight distinction but the hon. member may want to read the motion.
Reform has chosen this as its motion for supply day. In that regard the debate has been very interesting. We have been talking on this side about the Churchill Falls contract and about the situation of Labrador, Newfoundland generally, in Confederation, in interprovincial trade and in other arrangements.
The official opposition has had nothing to say. We are told this is the national opposition. It has nothing to say because it does not happen in Quebec and therefore has no relevance. It does address Quebec indirectly but it is of no relevance whatsoever.
In the case of the Liberal Party, rarely if at all today have we heard the issue addressed. Instead we have heard constant reference to the fact there are two byelections in Newfoundland, one in Labrador and one in the riding of the former minister of fisheries. That is what the Liberals' main concern has been, an election. The focus is that there is an election and there is electioneering. Who has been talking about elections here today? The Liberals.
There is a byelection in Labrador and those who say it is a terrible, dishonourable and despicable thing to somehow talk about the needs of Labrador at this time I think are wrong. I say byelection, why not? Why not talk about the concerns of Labrador when there is a byelection in Labrador?
Mr. Speaker, as you know and have written very eloquently on this problem, this is one of the perennially ignored backwater regions of the country, one that is always getting the short end of the stick and never paid any attention at election time.
The hon. member for Parry Sound-Muskoka is quite right that the Reform Party election platform never mentioned Labrador in the last election. Without having reviewed every page of it, any money Labrador is not mentioned in the red book either, from a party that has been in existence since Confederation and that has represented that riding for most of its time in Canada.
It has been ignored, not unlike the west, not unlike many of the ridings our members represent in western Canada, particularly in the northern part of western Canada. It has been viewed, as are many of the ridings of more remote areas, by traditional parties as really rotten boroughs, a place where a few handouts can be provided and the member can be expected to be re-elected until such time as he moves on to the other place.
One of my colleagues referred to the other place as his reward high above. I think that is a little different. The rewards may not all be high above. The place down there is on the same level as this, at least in terms of altitude.
I have mentioned many times in the House that we need Senate reform. Labrador is incredibly large. We need Senate reform so that important large resource producing regions have a meaningful long term role in the governance of the country.
A few people in the House probably remember that in 1971 the people in Labrador were so outraged by their treatment not only by the signing of the Churchill Falls contract in 1969 but by their general treatment from the Government of Newfoundland that they actually elected an independent Labrador representative, a representative from the New Labrador Party in 1971.
It caused quite a sensation at the time because the member very briefly held the balance of power between the two traditional parties. It was one brief attempt by the people of Labrador to assert their needs in the political system. It did not last long because frankly the system makes it very difficult for an area like that to play a meaningful role.
We have heard from the Liberals nothing but concerns about the election itself and electioneering. We have heard on the issue itself silence, particularly from Newfoundland members. I notice with some pride and gratitude that the government has agreed to make this a votable motion. It is now a votable motion. I am happy to see that.
I was in the House when consent for a votable motion was asked. I know the hon. member for St. John's West did not want this to be votable motion for whatever reason. I guess because she is such a well trained Liberal backbencher she was not used to shouting out her point of view. Mr. Speaker, you decided you had heard unanimity. I am glad to see we have a votable motion today.
It is very interesting to listen to the Liberals today bragging about their concern for Labrador and pointing to what they see as the Reform Party's lack of concern for this region and similar regions.
The bases for their accusations are the following. I will point out several things I have heard referenced. The Reform Party is not firmly supportive of the current system of unemployment insurance, particularly as it relates to seasonal industry. The Reform Party does not fully support all the workings and objectives of the welfare system. The Reform Party is not the strongest supporter of TAGS, the strongest supporter of subsidies to the beleaguered fishing industry.
The Minister of Health, in particular, went on at great length about how this illustrates the Reform Party's lack of compassion-words we heard a lot today-its lack of sympathy or its lack of pity for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador. I believe that, more than anything, illustrates the difference between these two parties.
It is true that this party does not want to view the people of Labrador and Newfoundland with compassion, with sympathy and with pity. These people, like Canadians in my province and elsewhere, deserve hope, deserve economic growth and economic opportunity. They are not pitiful and sympathetic characters just around for when it comes to some program the Liberals can point to and say: "We are giving you billions of dollars in your own money". That is a very different attitude toward not only how we deal with the remote and undeveloped regions of the country, but it is also an attitude which tells us why we have such large, remote and undeveloped regions in this country.
The Churchill Falls project in Labrador, which is at the centre of the motion, is also a very interesting topic symbolically because it underlines a perspective heard in Newfoundland and particularly in Labrador that is very different than the problems of Quebec separation.
The people from this part of the world, particularly from Ontario where I grew up, are very concerned that if Quebec leaves it creates this giant hole and a divided country. This is of course a concern we all share. However, when we look at what has happened with the Churchill Falls contract and what happened with Labrador's attempts to integrate its economy into North America, we see that already for those people the country is already divided and there is a giant hole between them and the markets in the rest of North America.
It goes back not just to the Churchill Falls contract but even before that. Despite the fact that Newfoundland and Labrador were knitted into this country in 1949 with an agreement that respected their territory, the province of Quebec has consistently not only used its geographical position to block Labrador but has even staked territorial claims on the province of Newfoundland. Frankly, I am not aware of anything resembling this in another federation, certainly not in the 20th century.
Newfoundland's territory was recognized in the 1949 terms of the union but that has not stopped provincial governments not only in Quebec from publishing maps which show all or part of Labrador as part of Quebec, but even in the case of the federal Progressive Conservatives. It actually in its own campaign literature in Quebec used to show Labrador as a part of Quebec. That was a federal political party.
Churchill Falls is, in my view, Newfoundland's national energy program. The national energy program was, as you know, Mr. Speaker, probably one of the most blatant attempts of a government, in the history of a democratic country, to plunder the legal resources of another part of the country through federal statutes. It was, as some will use the expression here, a contract. It was law. It certainly was law. It did a lot of damage. We know the numbers from Alberta. It did a lot of damage. In the case of the Churchill Falls contract, the damage has been longer, deeper and, in a sense, much more serious because although strictly the financial numbers are not quite as impressive as the national energy program, we are dealing with an economy that is much shallower and much less developed.
In a sense, because nobody would respect the rights of Newfoundland and Labrador under the Constitution, it was all legal, just like the national energy program was legal. It was just like the Pearson airport contract was legal but it did not stop that from being torn up. It was just like the EH-101 contracts were all legal. It was just like the red book made promises to Canadians about their health care, their pensions and the GST. We can tear all those up too. But this one is a contract. It is legal.
The fact is this contract was implemented primarily because Quebec was able to use its geographic position to block the sale of Labrador power and it was backed in doing so by the complicity through silence of the federal government, actually the Liberal Pearson government of the 1960s.
The contract was signed in 1969. It requires Newfoundland to sell power to Hydro Quebec at a flat pre-OPEC price. When it was signed Hydro Quebec would not permit Newfoundland to construct the hydro facilities necessary to send its power to customers in the New England states unless Newfoundland sold the power to Quebec which in turn sold it to New England.
The situation presents a clear trade barrier. At the time the agreement was signed the federal government knew that it was in a position to require Hydro Quebec to allow Newfoundland to wheel power for export to New England. It simply failed to do so.
In 1995 the net result of the power contract is that Newfoundland earns only $20 million each year from Churchill Falls electricity sales. Hydro Quebec, on the other hand, earns an annual profit of $800 million from the resale of Newfoundland power in New England.
This is an interesting statistic. This $800 million constitutes two-thirds of Newfoundland's entire equalization payments. Once again, there is the difference I was talking about. There is no problem with giving Newfoundland $800 million if it can be given in the form of a handout or a welfare cheque where they can then say: "See how dependent they are on the magnificent generosity of the federal Liberal government". When it comes to making sure Newfoundland has $800 million in economic opportunity it cannot do anything about that. That is business.
Patrick O'Flaherty of the Montreal Gazette wrote:
The only reason Newfoundland was forced to sell hydro power to a hostile broker in the first place was that the Pearson Liberals declined to force Quebec to accept a power
corridor through its territory-something Ottawa had the authority to do. Without such a corridor, the development of Churchill Falls could take place only on Quebec's terms which was exactly what happened.
I would like to point out the relevant sections of the Constitution if they had been enforced by the appropriate authorities. The federal government has the right to create a power corridor through the following sections of the BNA act: section 92(10), provincial legislative authority extends to the following; local works and undertakings other than such as are of the following classes: (a) lines of steam and other ships, railways, canals, telegraphs, and other works and undertakings connecting the province with any other or others of the provinces, or extending beyond the limits of the province; section 91, legislative authority of Parliament extends to the regulation of trade and commerce; and section 121, provides that all articles of the growth, produce, or manufacture of any one of the provinces shall, from and after the union, be admitted free into each of the other provinces.
The fact is that successive Liberal and Conservative governments over the past 27 years have failed to uphold Newfoundland's constitutional right to sell power directly to New England.
I would also point out that the recently negotiated internal trade agreement provides no such guarantee to Newfoundland in the future. The energy provisions of the deal are still under negotiation. Meanwhile the Churchill Falls power contract extends to the year 2041.
