Debates of Feb. 13th, 1997

Supply

[An hon. member]

Statements by Ministers.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Milliken)]

I am sorry but he said members and I wondered what he was talking about.

He is asking for consent to revert to Statements by Ministers. It will take some persuading because Statements by Ministers are made by ministers, not by members of the opposition. If the member wishes to revert to Statements by Ministers, a minister has to ask to make the statement.

I want him to get to the point very quickly.

[Monte Solberg, Reform, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, as you are aware, the question has often been raised of whether parliamentary privilege imposes on ministers an obligation to deliver ministerial statements, to make announcements and communications to the public through the House of Commons, or to make those announcements or statements in the House rather than outside the Chamber.

Unfortunately we as parliamentarians have no such rights. Although we have no such right there was a Speaker who on February 9, 1982 suggested that it was a matter of personal ethics-

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Milliken)]

Order. I can see where the hon. member is going. The hon. member may be correct in suggesting some question of privilege can be raised about statements made outside the House, but there has been no statement made outside the House that he is complaining of. He is talking about something that may happen later this day.

His point has been noted, but I do not believe it is a question of privilege that the Chair can entertain at this time. There has been no breech of the privileges of the House and no question of order. Ministers are free to make statements where they want, and I know that previous Speakers at various times have made rulings to that effect.

I caution the hon. member that he seems to be anticipating a speech that may be made later somewhere else over which your Speaker has no control. The Speaker is not in a position to force ministers to come into the House to make statements after the time for Statements by Ministers is passed.

The hon. member's request is irregular, to say the very least, if not out of order. Perhaps he could pursue the matter later after the speech in question rather than now.

[Monte Solberg, Reform, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, if I might be permitted to put the question to the House I believe we could bring this matter to a conclusion.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Milliken)]

I would be happy to put the question to the House if it were a minister asking for consent. If we revert to Statements by Ministers and a minister does not wish to make a statement, we have reverted for no purpose. The hon. member is not in a strong position to request reversion to Statements by Ministers when he is not a minister of the crown. I do not propose to put the question to the House unless I get a request from a minister. It is only common sense that be the case.

[Monte Solberg, Reform, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on the same point of order. Perhaps the request really should come from the people of Canada who are being denied the chance to hear from the Prime Minister on the state of the nation.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Milliken)]

The hon. member knows that the people of Canada had the right, if the Prime Minister had chosen to come here this morning on Statements by Ministers to

make a statement, to hear whatever he had to say. It is not for the House, particularly the member or any member who is not a minister, at this stage to stand and request to revert to Statements by Ministers to have a minister who is not asking to make a statement then stand and make a statement. It is a voluntary time of the day and I think we can dispose of that matter now.

[Ted McWhinney, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Fisheries and Oceans]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the hon. member a question. He may recall that I was the special constitutional adviser to the Premier of Quebec when the decision was being made to construct the new Saint-Scholastique-Mirabel airport. I would like to ask him a question on his comments concerning the Mirabel affair.

Does he have any concrete recommendations to make on the substantive elements of this matter, or on the transfer of all international flights to Dorval and the closure of Mirabel to all but vacation charters and cargo flights? Does he want international flights kept at Mirabel, and does he therefore want two international airports for Montreal?

It is commonly felt that the commercial decline of Montreal is the result of the development of Mirabel and the lack of attraction for international air carriers to direct their flights there.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Kamouraska—Rivière-Du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member referred to the job he had when the airport was established at Mirabel. You know that, in Quebec, the memory of the airport's creation is rather sad, not because it was not a good idea to set up an airport, but rather because of the way it was done-by expropriating the people living in the area.

This period has caused those now between 40 and 50 in the sovereignist movement to say there is one government too many in Canada. This is a flagrant example of the situation.

Do we have a position on this? We have had one for a number of months, and it is to tell the federal government that here is an organization deciding to transfer Mirabel flights to Dorval without public hearings on the matter and without the government taking any responsibility as tenant in the contract between itself and Aéroports de Montreal.

We made these two positions known several months ago. We ended up as the Bloc feared. We said that, if no public hearings were held, the government would end up in a terrible legal mess. We may even be just at the start of the legal mess. In the decision before us the judge cites the same arguments as the Bloc, that is, that public hearings should have been held and that the federal government should assume its responsibilities as the tenant of the Mirabel facilities.

Our position is that, from the outset, before the need for transferring flights from Mirabel to Dorval was even considered, before any decision was made in this matter, given the major economic consequences involved, there should have been public hearings. That is what the judge said. He also said that, under the current lease between the government and Aéroports de Montréal, the government has responsibilities. Just yesterday, in spite of the court ruling and perhaps because he did not have the time to take a close enough look at it, the minister maintained that the federal government had no responsibility in the matter.

If he keeps stubbornly maintaining this position and taking a shortsighted view to managing, the minister will hamper the overall development of the greater Montreal area, including the Mirabel area. The people of Mirabel can rejoice over the yesterday's ruling, because it allows them to keep their airport longer. Choices have to be made, and I think they were justified in reacting the way they did, but on the whole of the issue, we are faced with a situation where the decision may well be deferred.

We know how important it is these days to be able to speed up the decision making process. Looking at all this, sometimes I get the feeling that this is somewhat machiavellian on the part of the federal government. By not taking its responsibilities, it puts Quebec at a competitive disadvantage, compared to Toronto. Is this a deliberate choice made by the federal government? These are some of the issues that would be raised if public hearings were held.

In any case, as long as the federal government does not indicate its intention to follow up on the ruling handed down by Mr. Justice Viau, we have no idea of what it will do, but we are certainly anxious to find out.

Will the government accept the ruling? How will it deal with this crisis? As things stand, everyone in Quebec is a loser: the people in Mirabel, Dorval and Montreal, the region's economic stakeholders, and those in the tourism industry. All these people are victims of the inertia of the federal government, which, like Pontius Pilate, simply washed its hands of the matter, and now we have to live with the consequences. It is imperative that the federal government react quickly and take its responsibilities, so we can get out of this mess, which is the worst possible situation.

[Bernard Deshaies, Bloc, Abitibi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague, who spoke about the federal government's many failings with respect to transportation policy, to talk about something he perhaps forgot, but since my colleague represents a region, I would like him to talk about the federal government's uniform policy of requiring regions to prove that they have a large enough clientele to support their airport, to maintain railway lines, when, in the regions, the means of transportation are related to regional development. So, if we do not have a uniform Canada--

because Canada is not uniform; there is an urban Canada and a regional Canada-the government's transportation policy should reflect this situation and provide the regions with the means to develop.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Kamouraska—Rivière-Du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I know that many Quebec municipalities are now trying to obtain the facilities they need to take over their airports, and the Bloc Quebecois supports them.

Take, for example, the creation of Nav Canada, the agency responsible for managing air traffic control. We tried, by proposing several amendments to the bill, to put the onus on the government to ensure that the facilities in these airports will allow them to be competitive, and that the decision will not be made only on the basis of the market. These amendments were systematically rejected by the federal government.

So the member is right to worry about this, and I think that people in the regions concerned must be very sensitive to these positions, continue their representations, get in touch with members of Nav Canada's boards of directors at the federal level, keep an ear out and call on their MPs so that they will speak out publicly about what is unacceptable, because airports are in fact one of the major tools of development. All transportation infrastructures are important, including airports. It is essential that our regions have the tools they need for development, particularly in a country as vast as ours.

All this is based on the assumption that the government is committed to developing Canada's regions, something we have never heard it say. For now, the government has simply said it will move people to where the jobs are. This creates major economic problem, forcing families that have been settled in regions for many years to make very difficult choices, when there is no future for these choices, for this approach.

If we hope to see detailed and concrete action concerning regional airports, there will have to be a commitment from the federal government to ensure the development of these regions. We have never been able to get a clear indication from the government in this regard.

[Stan Keyes, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Transport]

Mr. Speaker, I want to assure and remind the member and his constituents who are watching today that the Mirabel and Dorval airports were transferred to the ADM. The reason they were transferred to the ADM was to respond to those local initiatives and to ensure that each one of those airports is managed and developed in terms of the local needs.

It was the ADM that came forward and said: "In the best interests of the Mirabel-Dorval-Montreal area, this is the proposal we feel will best meet the needs of the public who are using the airlines, the airlines themselves and the division".

I just wanted to assure the hon. member that Transport Canada is doing a thorough examination of the court decision that was just rendered yesterday.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Kamouraska—Rivière-Du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I shall be brief. I would just like to remind the hon. member that representations have been made to the transport committee. Some months ago, I wrote to the chairman of the transport committee and to the transport minister to state that public hearings must be held on the matter of the Montreal airports, Dorval and Mirabel. The parliamentary committee must hear the stakeholders. No positive response has ever been forthcoming. The legal mess we are stuck with now is the government's responsibility, 150 per cent. Now there is a problem, and the economic development of Montreal is at risk because the federal government has not assumed its responsibilities in this matter.

[Mike Scott, Reform, Skeena, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Kindersley-Lloydminster.

In listening to the interventions thus far today, I am struck by the fact that we have a very clear example of the political debate that is taking place in Canada today. I think it is the debate that the upcoming election should largely be fought on, which is the competing visions of the political parties in Canada for what government should be in Canadians' daily lives.

One of the best descriptions I have seen of this, although it involves an American writer and a description of the American political system, is by P. J. O'Rourke. He observed once in trying to encapsulate the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, that the Democrats were the party that said government can make you straighter, smarter and taller and take the chickweed out of your lawn, and the Republicans were the party that argued that government does not work and they keep on getting elected and they keep on proving it.

The argument is: How big should government be? What can government do and what can people do for themselves?

It strikes me that the Liberals are captivated by a vision, a vision which American writer Thomas Sowell describes as the vision of the anointed. Convinced of their own moral superiority, they insulate themselves from the lessons of history. They insulate themselves from reality and they go on with program after program, expenditure initiative after expenditure initiative. They never seek to determine the results of these expenditures. They never seek to determine the results of the policies that they have put in place.

The result is we now have a $600 billion debt in this country. We are in jeopardy of being able to deliver the social services that Canadians want and need the most, those being health and education primarily, and old age security. We are in jeopardy of being able to deliver these services because the federal government has been following this vast array of public spending programs over the last few years.

The vision the Liberals have is based primarily on the premise that government is good, that big government is better and if only well intentioned, well meaning and intelligent people could get their hands on the levers of power-of course they mean themselves when they say this-that everything would be just fine. They can devise a program and a government policy to solve all the problems Canadians have. They are the anointed, they are the ones that have the vision of how this can be done and if only they could get into power and stay in power they could solve all of Canada's problems for Canadians.

I think it was "This Hour Has 22 Minutes" that reminded all of us over the Christmas break there was no session here for 51 days and guess what? The country just went running right along as usual.

The Tories and the NDP, while they are different political parties, represent substantially the same vision. They share largely the same ideas although in a different form as the Liberals do. Of course the Liberals more than being anointed with this vision have also come to believe-I guess history is on their side to some extent-that they are the natural governing party of Canada. The Liberals believe that they have every right and indeed a responsibility to be here for Canadians and to keep on governing the country.

The problem they have with the Pearson airport deal is not that there may be a $600 million expenditure coming out of the wallets of taxpayers. The fact is that the Liberals have objected strenuously to the deal because they did not negotiate the deal with their friends.

If the hon. member for Hamilton West who earlier talked about the $600 million expenditure was so concerned about political parties rewarding their friends and insiders, why does he not stand on his feet and object to the $1.2 billion, or twice the amount of money he is talking about, the government has given to Bombardier over the last 15 years? How can he talk about what the Conservative Party has done without recognizing what his party has done?

I invite the member to read "Above the Law", a book about Rod Stamler. I invite the member to acquaint himself with the history of dredging contracts on the St. Lawrence seaway when his party was in power. I invite him to look at the history of how concession contracts were handed out at airports across Canada. I invite him to look at his own party and at the way contracts were handed out for the last 35 or 40 years when the Liberals were in power.

This is hypocrisy. He cannot be against what the Conservatives did without looking at what his party has done.

Do we agree that what the Conservatives did was right? No. I cannot agree that the dying days of a Parliament, the dying days of an administration, is an appropriate time for a government to enter into negotiations of the magnitude of the Pearson airport deal.

There is a longstanding tradition in the country that successive governments honour the agreements put in place by preceding governments. If they choose because they believe it is in the public interest to abrogate the agreements, they ought never to pass legislation preventing those who either were or believed they were harmed as a result of the action from going to court to seek proper retribution through the court system. That is exactly what the government tried to do. That is exactly what was on its mind.

If someone does something which is harmful one has every right as a Canadian citizen to seek redress through the courts. It is arrogance in the extreme for any government to attempt to pass legislation which would prevent people from going to court to seek a judicial solution to the problems they face.

It is not for politicians to determine the harm suffered as a result of the abrogation of that contract. It is for the courts to decide. If the government has acted appropriately I am sure the courts will take that into consideration.

VIA Rail is another example of the Liberal government's vision of the anointed, its vision that VIA Rail should be the one to run passenger rail service in Canada. This is an example of a private company which actually bought the assets from the federal government going into business, running a railway and doing very well at it. The federal government is now saying: "Maybe we are missing something. Maybe we should get back into this business". The government wants to use taxpayers' money to compete with the people who are successfully running a business.

This business is paying taxes because it is successful. All the people employed by the business are paying taxes. Their tax dollars will be used to subsidize the federal government getting into competition with them. I ask Canadians if that is fair. Is that reasonable? Is that just? I think not. It is a manifestation of the vision of the anointed.

The Prince Rupert grain terminals are important to the people of Prince Rupert in my riding. It is very much a transportation issue precipitated by the actions of this and other governments.

The port of Prince Rupert has a very modern grain terminal, one of the most modern and efficient grain terminals in the world. If a ship comes in to pick up grain in Vancouver it may have to be berthed two, three or even four times to take on its full load. If it comes into Prince Rupert it has to be berthed only once. There is a cost associated with berthing, every time a ship has to be moved in a harbour.

Prince Rupert is about 400 miles closer to most Pacific rim markets than to the port of Vancouver. It therefore represents an efficiency in terms of getting grain to market. Prince Rupert has one of the fastest turnaround times for grain cars of any grain terminal in Canada.

Because of the way the movement of grain is structured in the country and because of government intervention over a long period of time, the port of Prince Rupert cannot take advantage of the efficiencies it offers to shippers.

The Canadian Wheat Board, for example, does not sell grain f.o.b. the country where it is to be delivered. It sells grain f.o.b. port. There is no incentive for shippers to turn grain cars around quickly because there is no financial penalty or incentive attached to the use of grain cars.

This is an example of how government intervention at this point is preventing the port of Prince Rupert from realizing its potential.

I will close by saying that I really hope the next election is fought on the issues. I really hope we as politicians can take our competing visions before the Canadian people and let them make a decision. Should it be big government or small government? Is it better for them to make decisions on how their money is spent, or is it better to have the money sent to Ottawa to allow Ottawa to determine how the money is best spent?

[Stan Keyes, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Transport]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member and his party are creating, in my humble opinion, unnecessary debate. The hon. member speaks highly political discourse that is quite frankly lacking in fact.

We are dealing with the transportation sector. The member speaks of spending, smaller government and government initiative. I remind the hon. member that this government inherited a $42 billion deficit in 1993. This government took that $42 billion deficit and in three years time turned it into a $19 billion deficit.

How was that accomplished? This government did it department by department, minister by minister. This government is talking about the issue of the day, the Department of Transport. In transportation the Minister of Transport and the Department of Transport have made an enormous contribution to that bottom line.

The member talks about smaller government. We have moved from 43 cabinet ministers in 1992 in the Mulroney era, down to 22 cabinet ministers. We reduced the deficit.

Because of the policies of the Department of Transport and the two ministers of transport, we have been able to privatize CN Rail and put it on a level play field with the CP rail systems. We have been able to take the air navigation system and put into not for profit hands called Nav Canada. That is a saving in those two area, CN and Nav Canada, of billions of dollars for the Canadian taxpayer. We acknowledge that reductions in government and reductions in subsidy have to occur, but it is a step by step process.

[Murray Calder, Liberal, Wellington—Grey—Dufferin—Simcoe, ON]

It is a fair process.

[Stan Keyes, Liberal, Hamilton West, ON]

The hon. member for Wellington-Grey-Dufferin-Simcoe has put it exactly right. It is a fair system. It is a responsible way to reduce the deficit, to remove the burden on the taxpayer's back and put it on entities like CN or Nav Canada. This government is doing what it can in a fair and responsible way.

Would the hon. member acknowledge we can do it the way Mike Harris, the premier of Ontario, has? We could use the Conservative slash, gash and gouge method of reducing the deficit, putting hospital care up against the wall, and putting education at risk in the province of Ontario. I wish he would acknowledge that we are reducing the deficit in a responsible, fair and progressive manner. Could he acknowledge that?

[Mike Scott, Reform, Skeena, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was a little amused to hear the questions and comments of my friend across the way.

First, the reduction in the deficit achieved by the government has been achieved largely on the backs of taxpayers by increasing revenues and furthermore by downloading on the provinces and municipalities across the country. That is how these people across the way balance their books. They do not cut their own spending.

Let me give an example. These people over there are totally enraptured by this vision of big government. If Bombardier wanted my money it could come and knock on my door. It could send me a solicitation in the mail. It could say: "Please, Mr. Scott, send a cheque, give us a donation, lend us some money because we want to expand our production facilities in Canada". The House probably has a pretty good idea what I would tell Bombardier if it asked me for money.

The hon. member may think it is funny, but these people do not need to ask me. They come to Ottawa and they get permission to steal my money. That is exactly what is going on. This is taxpayers' money that should be held in trust for the benefit of the taxpayers of Canada. It is siphoned off and given to the cronies, the friends and the insiders of this government. That is what is wrong with the

vision of the anointed. It leads to cronyism. It leads to insider manipulation of the system. It leads to abuse.

The Reform Party of Canada stands four square against this kind of action. It stands four square in favour of smaller government, a government focused in the areas where it can be effective, and of getting out of areas like trying to open up a new rail service to compete against private enterprise in British Columbia.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to speak to the Reform supply day motion which condemns the government for, among other things, costly inefficiencies in the grain transportation system.

I heard the parliamentary secretary to the minister of agriculture say that the motion was laughable. The Liberal response to it was to laugh. Farmers across the prairies are not laughing about the situation they are in. They are certainly not laughing about the transportation mess affecting the prairies in moving their grain to port position. They are certainly not laughing at Reform's motion in the House on their behalf. They are appalled at Liberal arrogance and lack of action.

They should not be surprised. The Liberals have failed to deliver on three-quarters of their promises related to agriculture, about which I have spoken in the House on past occasions.

I will explain the situation to the House because a lot of members in this part of the country may not realize how serious it is. Currently there are 46 ships-that is a lot of grain boats-waiting in English Bay. An article in the Western Producer this week compares English Bay to the world's largest parking lot for boats. There are 46 of them sitting there waiting to take on grain cargo. Demurrage is being paid at approximately $10,000 a day per ship. It means farmers are paying close to half a million dollars a day because of the inefficiencies in our grain transportation system.

Lorne Hehn, the chief commissioner of the Canadian Wheat Board estimates that farmers are out $65 million so far because their grain cannot get to west coast ports. He mentioned that number some days ago. I am sure the number is increasing and I would not be surprised if the next estimate is closer to $100 million.

West coast shipments are at their lowest level in a decade. World trade is increasing. We are approaching the next millennium and the transportation of grain is the lowest it has been in 10 years. This is unprecedented, it is unacceptable, it is indefensible and it is unforgivable. One of the results is that Japan's food agency has stated publicly that it is closely watching the situation. Clearly our reputation is at stake.

Farmers are very upset. I have received a letter from southern Manitoba which says that Canadian Pacific Railway officials have advised grain elevator operators along the southern line-Winnipeg, Borden, Deloraine-there will be no more trains until spring. As far as can be determined, they are blaming the snow. With the snow removal equipment available today, that is a lot of hogwash. All farmers along the line will now be second class citizens.

I called my own delivery point in Saskatchewan. There has not been a train for three weeks as of tomorrow and they do not expect another train to come into that delivery point for another three weeks. Usually if they say three weeks, it ends up to be five or six or seven or eight weeks. Basically they are saying: "No more movement of grain in that area until the spring".

This is not academic for thousands of Canadians. This is their livelihood. This is what puts groceries on the table. This is what makes mortgage payments. This is serious stuff we are talking about.

The Liberal member says that this motion is laughable. I am appalled at the arrogance of the Liberals who would suggest that our concern about a major industry which is suffering because of transportation inefficiencies, is a laughable motion. This is chronic. It keeps occurring. One year it is a labour shortage. Another year it is a shortage of hopper cars. This year it is weather related and lack of locomotive power.

There is never any accountability. All we have is finger pointing. The person who is the least responsible for the mess of course, is the farmer. If the farmers fail to deliver their grain or fail to meet their contracts, the farmer should pay the demurrage on the ships waiting in English Bay.

The farmers are crying to get their product moved to export positions. They are happy to move their product. They are happy to abide by the contracts they have signed, unlike the Liberal government, as we have heard earlier. As a result, farmers are losing millions and millions of dollars in lost sales and demurrage. They were counting on having this as income to prepare for the upcoming season.

Our system is full of costly inefficiencies. They suppress any incentive for companies to make new infrastructure investments such as new terminals or elevators. There are not proper incentives or penalties to our rail system to move grain efficiently and quickly to the port position. This affects our ability to compete with our largest trading partners in the United States and drives business out of Canada.

The Liberals have failed to create an efficient and responsive grain transportation system that responds to the needs of farmers. We have terrible rail service. We have awkward, antiquated terminal facilities.

Many of the boats have to berth several times to take on one shipment of cargo because our terminals, particularly at Vancouver, are not designed to load one ship at one time with the amount of grain that it is prepared to take on. We have the wrong grain at the wrong place at the wrong time.

What did the Liberal government do? It killed the Crow. As I mentioned at the time, that was easy to do. All someone has to do is remove the money from the budget. The Liberals did that but it was irresponsible to take away the Crow and not take away the transportation inefficiencies at the same time. The Liberal government had a chance to do that and it blew it. How did the Liberals have a chance? Initially they introduced Bill C-101 which became Bill C-14, with changes to the Canadian Transportation Act. Just about every representation we had from the prairies said that this bill would not improve the transportation system. It did not fix the inefficiencies and the costly mode of transportation we have in western Canada to move grain to port.

They implemented the CAPG, the Car Allocation Policy Group. It is really not much change from what we had before. They were not able to fix the problem before and the Liberal government certainly did not provide the tools and put the machinery in place to properly allocate cars to move grain efficiently.

We talked about final offer arbitration labour legislation many times and the Liberal government rejected the suggestion. Therefore, it is not for lack of constructive alternatives to the existing transportation system and it is not for lack of suggestions on how to improve the grain transportation system. It is a lack of willingness on the part of this Liberal government to effectively do something to fix the problem. All it has done to this point is offload the total cost on to the producer.

We understand the minister is holding meetings in Calgary later today. He is successful at arranging meetings. He has been arranging meetings ever since he became the minister of agriculture. He has round tables here and discussions there, but he does not do anything. I think I got his dandruff up a little bit the other day. I called him a third rate lawyer. We are very frustrated on the prairies because he is not doing anything but talking. He is not taking any action and not showing effective leadership.

In fact, on "Newsworld" this morning he said: "Let's not blame anybody. Let's talk about this but let's not blame anybody". I know why the minister did not want to blame anybody. It is because most of the blame falls on his shoulders and on the shoulders of his government. He did not want to have to point the finger at himself. That is irresponsible and shows a lack of leadership.

Farmers across the prairies are appalled that the government has been in place for three years and has refused to take responsible action to improve one of the worst grain transportation systems in the modern world.

It is not that the minister cannot act quickly, if he has the will. When there was a loophole in the grain marketing legislation regarding customs and moving grain across the border, within minutes he changed that through an order in council. The speed was astonishing. He must have had the bureaucrats turning cartwheels to accomplish it so quickly. Actually I think he had it prepared ahead of time. He thought he was going to lose the court case so he had all of his cards lined up and, bang, just like that, he had made the changes.

When it comes to making changes in the regulations to the Canadian Wheat Board, changes to the transportation system, changes to car allocation, the sale of the hopper cars which has gone nowhere, to allowing and defending our producers who want to sell their products into the United States-he allowed the Americans to put a quota on durum sales-the minister has done nothing positive or constructive. The chickens are coming home to roost. He is to blame but he refuses to accept that blame. That is irresponsible and unbefitting a Canadian minister of agriculture.

There should be incentives and penalties in the transportation system. If somebody does a good job there should be rewards. They should make a profit in doing what they are doing. However, if they fall short and if the railways do not have enough-

[The Deputy Speaker]

The hon. member's time has expired.

[Stan Keyes, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Transport]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member speaks of this government and, in particular, the hon. minister of agriculture, as if to say that it is all the minister of agriculture's fault that this thing is coming down.

Again the Reform Party focuses on rhetoric instead of the facts. The fact is that CN and CP are now private corporations. The fact is that winter has been very severe in western Canada and has affected the rails. He ignores those facts.

To quote the hon. minister of agriculture: "The government is interested in solutions". The member for the Reform Party has the opportunity to give us some ideas on how we can make this situation better.

He comes from the west. He knows how important it is to them. Instead he gets into political rancour and debate. We need solutions today. That is what the minister of agriculture is looking for. He is out there. He has been speaking directly with the players in the industry, in grain shipping and the rail sector.

He is trying to co-ordinate the three areas so a solution can be reached, not to lay blame, not to find out who was right or who was wrong or who was insufficient and who was careless. That does not accomplish anything. Let us get on with the solutions.

Could he stand today and give us some ideas on solutions to try to solve this problem, not the usual political rhetoric.

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

Mr. Speaker, I do not think the member was in the House listening when I gave my speech. I did mention some constructive alternatives that Reform had presented-

[Stan Keyes, Liberal, Hamilton West, ON]

Point of order.

[The Deputy Speaker]

The hon. parliamentary secretary on a point of order. This will not come out of the hon. member's time in reply.