Debates of Nov. 30th, 1998

Royal Canadian Mint Act

[Rob Anders, Reform, Calgary West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a crown corporation. Whether it borrows that money or however it comes by it, that is eventually a public debt.

This country has a number of other crown corporations. For somebody to stand here today and say that crown corporations do not somehow involve public money, that is not the definition I understand crown corporations by. Ultimately if they have problems, it is the taxpayer that is left holding the bag.

[Gilles Bernier, Progressive Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I said that we are debating Bill C-41, an act to amend the Royal Canadian Mint Act and the Currency Act. I am not talking about other corporations. I am talking about the Royal Canadian Mint which is a crown corporation.

That corporation itself does not get money from the government. The mint has borrowing authority from the government to go outside and borrow the money it needs. I do not know where the hon. member from the Reform Party is coming from when he says it is the taxpayers' money. It is not taxpayers' money. It is borrowing money from a bank. It is the bank that owns the Royal Canadian Mint until the loan is paid. What is wrong with that? It is a business deal.

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am again honoured to stand in my place here in the House of Commons to represent my understanding of what is good for Canadians and to represent also the needs and aspirations of a number of people in my riding. That certainly does apply in the case of Bill C-41.

I cannot help but begin my speech by saying that the member from the NDP who spoke sure did drift a long way from the intent of what the bill is about. I was very disappointed that he allowed himself to be reduced to getting into a whole bunch of innuendoes that does not fit this place. It is disrespectful of what the House of Commons represents as well as what we as individual members are to do here.

I want to talk about the various implications of the bill. I am sure most members are well aware that as with almost any bill there are some good parts and some bad parts. I would like to use the first few minutes of my time to talk a bit about the process in terms of how bills are brought in and how these decisions are made.

It is very important for the government, whichever party it is that is governing at the time, to listen very carefully to people who have problems with a bill or motion. Usually it is government bills. The government should pay close attention when we have some legitimate concerns.

I would like to congratulate the hon. member for Tobique—Mactaquac. He is indeed an honourable member of the committee. It has been good to work with him, although I will admit that I was there as a substitute and I am not a regular member of that committee. The member, by compromising, did win one point.

I want to throw out the question: Is that really what we ought to be doing? Should we really be selling out on five items in order to gain one? That is what we are reduced to. It does not matter whether the members are on the opposition side or whether they are backbenchers on the Liberal side. The instructions that come to the committee are from the minister, the deputy minister or whoever it is in the department. We detected that in this bill as we have seen it so often before.

Yes, this amendment was put forward and yes the hon. member talked to other members about it and he was able to persuade them. But the member himself said that he would like to thank the minister for being open to his amendment. One person. I know, we balance this. The minister is ultimately responsible for the operation of the department. That is true. There is a lot of obligation on his part. But in this particular instance we also need to recognize that there are some concerns beyond just this one that got horse traded into existence. I wish there would have been a greater openness.

I hesitate to do this so soon before the joyous season of Christmas, but I have to admit that I sometimes despair of the process used in this place. I really wish we had a much more open and more democratic way of doing these things.

Speaking about this bill, the first issue I am going to talk about is the one that causes me a great amount of concern. The mint is a crown corporation, but this bill gives to the mint new rights and powers which exceed what it had in the previous act. It might be illustrative to read the amendment which we know is going to be passed. Once the government decides that it is going to do something, that an amendment is no good and another one is okay, we know the Liberals will pass it based on previous experience and knowing how they operate.

The bill says that in carrying out its objects “the mint has the rights, powers and privileges and the capacity of a natural person and may in particular” and then there are several things listed. One of the things the mint may do in particular is it may procure the incorporation, dissolution or amalgamation of subsidiaries and acquire or dispose of any shares in them.

The mint as a mother corporation may have a whole bunch of subsidiary corporations. To me, that is fraught with danger. When there are subsidiaries and subsidiaries and so on, it removes accountability further from the minister and hence from this place and hence from the people.

The bill will permit the mint to acquire and dispose of any interest in any entity by any means. When somebody says “I am going to give you the right to do anything that you want by any means you choose” I have a bit of a problem with that.

Of course, the preamble says it must use this power in order to promote the well-being of the mint in order to carry out the objects of its incorporation. The mint may buy a corporation or it may set one up by any means it wants. Perhaps it would pay $29 a share for a little subsidiary corporation that it wants to own. Then it can dispose of it by any means that it wishes. All one has to do is use one's imagination on how this could happen.

The very subtle thing here is it would permit the mint, using the backing of the government as its financial base, to procure anyone who dares to compete with it and then to dispose of them by basically shutting down the business. That is scary. We need to be careful about that.

The next thing listed that the mint might do also has all of these all-inclusive terms. The mint can generally do all things that are incidental or conducive to the exercise of its powers and the bill talks about the coins of the currency of Canada, the coins of the currency of countries other than Canada, gold, silver and other metals, and also metal plaques, tokens and other objects made or partially made of metal. Generally the mint can do all things that are incidental.

If I were to allow my imagination to run freely, and I do not do this often, I usually have a disciplined mind, but if I were to just let it run a little freely, one of the things the mint has to do is to move its product from place to place. I can see that it might want to have a subsidiary trucking company or perhaps it might want to buy a railroad or two. I am exaggerating of course, but this bill would allow the mint to do that if it so chose. It is something we really need to guard against in giving a crown corporation this kind of power. There has to be a continued line of accountability and approval related directly to what is good for the people.

There is a section that has to do with non-circulation coins. We know there are a number of coins produced every year, coins for medals and coins for commemoration. I imagine we will be inundated with coins at the millennium. I have read a few articles on that topic. In 1867 the country was born and in 1967 we had coin for each province to commemorate. It was a series of quarters. I imagine this can happen again.

Medals and non-circulation coins and collectors coins may be determined both in characteristics and denomination by governor in council, which means the minister can authorize it. It can be announced and that will be the end of it.

When it comes to circulation coins, happily the amendment from my colleague from the Conservative Party did gain approval and certainly with our support as well. There is a danger when circulation coins are brought in or removed that the people could be ignored in the decision. One thing does concern us, the amount of public debate and accountability when characteristics of coins are changed. As the coin business goes this also is very important to Canadians. There are literally thousands of people use coin operated equipment. When a coin is changed in design or structure, that has implications to machines that accept coins as payment.

There is a cost saving measure now to steel plate coins with nickel on top of them so they would be nickel plated steel. When that happens the density of the coin changes. Any mechanism in the machines to detect whether this is a genuine quarter or just a slug will be affected. I have talked to the administrative people in the mint. They are fine people. They are friendly. I found them very easy to talk to and I am sure they would make sure that when they changed the composition of coins or the shape of coins they would pay attention to this. But there is nothing here that requires them to so. It just says they can do whatever they want to in order to pursue their own objectives, presumably to make money for the mint.

Our penny has changed in the last couple of years. It went from a 12 sided coin to a fully round coin. Of course we do not use pennies except in Swift Current, Saskatchewan. I do not know if they still do.

In places around here you can pay one dollar for 10 minutes in parking meters. Swift Current had 12 minutes of parking for a penny. I could not resist the temptation, though I was just going into the post office and back out, I plugged in five pennies because it felt so good to get an hour of parking for five pennies. That was several years to.

Municipalities that have parking meters need those meters adjusted if the coin composition changes, if the shape changes or if the weight changes in order that the parking meter will accept the appropriate coin.

I think it is a ripoff at Ottawa's airport right now where it wants us to put our credit card in and then dings us for a dollar every 10 minutes. To me that is a huge ripoff because we only go there to pick someone up. To rip people off that high is not acceptable.

That is a diversion almost as far away as my NDP member so I had better get back on to the list of things I am concerned about.

Included in this act are a definition and a few little changes on what constitutes legal tender. Everyone once in a while we hear someone who is fed up with a big bill they got so they pack up five big pails of pennies and pay the bill with pennies. The person to whom they are paying it really does not have to receive it because legal tender is limited, as it always has been. Usually they accept it and the guy gets his day in the sun and his picture in the paper.

However, the limits are also given. For example, Mr. Speaker, if you owed me $40 you could pay that with $2 coins but you could not pay it with $1 coins. Those limitations are given here. Using $2 coins is limited to $40 and using $1 coins it is limited to $25. Using 10 cent pieces, quarters and 50 cent pieces is limited to $10. Using nickels is limited to $5 and using pennies is limited to 25 cents. The person can actually demand currency other than pennies for any debt owed which is greater than 25 cents. I expect that sometime soon we will have a move to remove the penny since I think its usefulness in this inflated era is reduced in value and I am not sure we should maintain it. Perhaps it should become a giant collector's item. I would certainly favour that.

I want to say something now about the mint and its production of its own blanks. This does impinge on the Westaim Corporation which operates in my riding. I have spoken on this topic before and it is a continued distress for me. I have talked to both sides. I have talked to people from Westaim and I think they are very fine people just like the people in the mint.

There are certainly two sides to this debate but there is one side I think really needs to be emphasized. Even though one can argue it is not borrowing from the consolidated fund nor is it taking money directly from the taxpayer, it is a government guaranteed loan. This legislation states that it may borrow now instead of a maximum of $50 million up to $75 million and may get it from either the consolidated revenue fund or from any other source.

Of course for the building of the plant in Winnipeg it did use other sources. It borrowed $31 million through the sale of regular financial instruments and received a very good rate. Why not? If I as an investor wanted to put some money somewhere I know the mint is a really safe place to put it. I am willing to accept a lower rate of interest. The mint gains by that and by being backed up by the government and the investor is a beneficiary because that investor knows the mint is not going to go broke unless the whole country goes broke. I suppose that is always a possibility but it is much more remote than for other corporations.

The coin plating plant is competing with private enterprise, competing with the job that 100 people in my riding have been doing successfully for 30 years, with the backing of the Canadian dollar, including the taxpayer dollars that have been collected from Westaim and its employees.

They are forced as taxpayers to back up their very competition that is driving business elsewhere. I find this very distressing. It is a faulty principle. The government is getting out of business. It has privatized with NavCan. It has privatized a whole bunch airports. We even have portions of the military forces being run by private groups on contracts. In this instance it is going in the opposite direction. It is wrong headed. It is wrong for the government to be in competition.

[Philip Mayfield, Reform, Cariboo—Chilcotin, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I compliment my colleague from Elk Island for his thoughtful and disciplined look at this bill and the explanation he has given.

A number of thoughts came to my mind that I would like to raise for his consideration. He mentioned NavCanada coming out of Transport Canada. In that instance we see private pilots who will begin to pay $60 per year for their airplanes to use the navigation system. But they are not getting anything back for that. They are still paying the same amount of taxes on aircraft fuel.

Another instance is the post office. We have seen how that crown corporation has gone into the courier business in direct competition with other couriers. It has the advantage of being the only corporation that distributes first class mail. It has the resources of the government to compete.

There is a general thrust of the federal government taking more and more discretionary and using that power to open up a competitive force against private business. My colleague mentioned the discretion of the minister in this legislation to make decisions without reference to parliament. The other side to that kind of discretionary action is it diminishes the powers of the parliament which is directly responsible to the people.

This lack of discretion and this opening up of the competitive front against private industry is something that truly concerns me. It seems to work against the best interests of not only corporate Canada but individuals who are attempting to make a living and support their families and their children.

I would like the member to comment on this whole thrust of the government's increasingly taking more and more discretionary power and by the same token reducing the authority, responsibility and accountability of parliament to the Canadian people.

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, there is a balance to be reached here. I am not one to say the government should not do anything. I spoke against it building this coin plating plant because there is a very fine plant in business. It has a very long history of producing excellent coin blanks not only for Canadian use but across the country. I do not see any need for the government to get into that business.

There are things that government should be doing. As a people there are things we can do collectively through our government more efficiently than having everything privatized. For example, the post office as a crown corporation is an entity that can do a good job for the Canadian people. In some instances the individual outlets of the post office have been privatized. They are put out to tender.

I have heard both sides of the story. Some people say that it is great they can go to Shoppers Drug Mart at 10 p.m. and can get postal services, something they could never get before. Yet there are other people who say they cannot get the service they used to have because the people sometimes are not trained, their regular post office people have gone away and somebody else from cosmetics is filling in and they do not know the answers. There are some problems.

As parliamentarians and as a government we have an obligation to account to the people of Canada how we are administering their tax dollars and how the corporations that are run on their behalf are operated. It is not totally one side or the other.

I would not want to see everything in the country privatized, but I certainly have objection to the government using income from taxpayers and from corporations to run in direct competition with the people who have paid the taxes in the first place.

I remember many years ago there was a move in Saskatchewan where I grew up. There was a guy who had a good business—he supported his family with it—running a bus from Battleford up to Meadow Lake. He made a run a day and he always had enough passengers and freight that he could fill up his bus. He made the run and everybody was happy. He made a living on it.

Lo and behold the Government of Saskatchewan, the NDP government that likes to run everything on behalf of the people, bought the business. It gave fine service as far as I know. The service was not diminished but it lost money ever after that. Every year it posted a loss on that run and put this guy out of his job. That was a wrong decision.

[Werner Schmidt, Reform, Kelowna, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was pleased with the hon. member's comments, particularly the rational way in which he analysed the bill.

How would he apply the general principle that government should do those things and only those things that the people cannot do as well or better themselves? This is a fundamental principle. The government should do things. I agree with the hon. member that there are things the government can do which the people cannot do for themselves or cannot do as well for themselves. Could he elaborate on that a little more?

Some of the crown corporations become an end unto themselves. They serve their own ends. They are no longer filling a gap or doing that which the people cannot do as well. They are taking jobs away from people.

It is this principle we have to look at, particularly with regard to proposed clause 2 of the Royal Canadian Mint Act which expands those powers to where the act says the mint can buy anything, do anything, and so on.

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, this is a real challenge because it is a balancing decision.

A couple of general principles could be applied. One I would use is that if there has been or is already a private firm or competition among private businesses, the government should stay out of it. If it is already being done and done well, the government should simply stay out of it as a matter of principle. That is a principle of government. It is in place but the Liberal government is ignoring it.

It is supposed to be a principle of governing that it does not compete with private enterprise. On the other hand we have those situations where the government can do best. I think of an example which relates back to my youth a long time ago. I remember when I grew up in Saskatchewan that my dad was the chairman of the Bode telephone company.

Members have probably heard of Alberta Government Telephones and B.C. Government Telephones. Now they are evolving into the different names and we have Telus. Before Saskatchewan Government Telephones ever came along there were literally thousands of individual telephone companies spread around all the provinces. My dad was the chairman of the local one and there were five subscribers. It was a big company. We had five people on the line and two longs and a short was us.

My grandfather was with a different company, the Peel telephone company. If we wanted to phone my grandfather we had to dial one long, which was the operator. She would hear this as sat in her little office in Swift Current. Everyone has seen Lily Tomlin do this. Well there she was in Swift Current pulling the cord out and connecting our line to Peel. Then she would dial grandpa's number. He would answer, or grandmother would answer, and we would be able to talk to them.

That was very inefficient and going nowhere. What happened in each province at least out west is that all these little individual companies got together and formed an organization that would allow the whole province to do it together. It was done under the auspices of the government. It was a fine co-operative effort on behalf of the people. At that stage it was a totally legitimate way of doing things.

That is probably no longer the case. With communications being what they are, it is probably better to let free enterprise and competition rule.

[Rob Anders, Reform, Calgary West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I had to get in my two cents worth on this issue. I had to listen all day to members justify how a crown corporation should have access to consolidated revenue funds. This is my duty day so I had to get up to give my piece.

There are three reasons I have problems with the bill as it stands. Under the bill $75 million in taxpayer dollars will be used for a guaranteed loan through the consolidated revenue fund or any other source. That is how it is worded. At the end of the day that means taxpayer dollars are being used to prop this up. If it were to go belly up, the taxpayers would be left holding the bag.

What is so insidious and evil about these types of things is that it is actually taxpayer money, money people pay out of their own wallets, that is being used against them. I have often maintained that it is actually better to burn a million dollars than it is to give it to the government. This is a small insidious case but nonetheless it is a classic example of what happens in this place.

People pay their good hard earned money into this place and it is used against them. The people who are employed by a company like Westaim will see government dollars being used to try to shove them out of the marketplace. That is what is evil about it. There is a private sector company performing the task of producing blank coins and the government is going ahead and putting it out of business, shoving it out of the way.

If this were just one example it might fly and people would not pay it any heed or any attention. People like me would not get up to speak. Unfortunately this is just one among many examples. There is the Royal Canadian Mint. Canada Post is trying to shove out people with e-mail. Canada Post is trying to shove out private sector competitors for parcel delivery. Canada Post is trying to shove out courier competitors. Canada Post is shutting down Overnight Express in Calgary. It was delivering mail in the T2P area code downtown for a fraction of what Canada Post does it for and guaranteeing mail delivery overnight. Canada Post shut it down because it has a monopoly.

There is another example in training programs. Henderson Business College was operating in the city of Calgary. For decades it provided good training for those who were looking to improve their typing skills and their abilities in various business related areas. The government subsidies came in and the universities and colleges that had access to all the public funds in the city of Calgary, in the province of Alberta, were edging out private sector businesses. It kept going ahead and developing curricula and programs. It ate away at private sector businesses and eventually shut them down. Henderson Business College shrunk. It shut down. It used to have two offices. It went down to one. Then it went out of business. That was because of the insidious type of thing we have where the government uses people's money to put them out of business. It uses their own taxpayer dollars to put them out of business.

I remember this only too well in the city of Calgary when Petro-Canada was nationalized and Petrofina was brought together with some other companies. The government went ahead and used government dollars to establish the tallest oil and gas building in the city of Calgary just so that the prime minister of the day, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, could remark with pride that Petro-Canada towered above its private sector competitors that did not have access to the type of dollars and the endless taxpayer pocket to which the Liberal government, the Liberal administration of the day, had access.

That is the type of problem I have with the bill, with guaranteed loans and with shoving out private sector businesses. It hurts private sector businesses with their own hard earned taxpayer dollars.

Another aspect is that the government is trying to establish an arm's length relationship. It is doing it time and time again, whether it is with Revenue Canada or a whole host of other things. It does not like the idea of ministerial accountability. It does not like the idea of parliamentary supremacy in being able to question the government on some of these things. It continually goes ahead and moves them further down the line.

Liberals like to put them at a further and further distance from themselves so that when problems arise and the opposition points them out and puts forward amendments they can say “Don't worry. Trust us”. Years down the road once it has established an arm's length relationship we see problems that we said would happen. Then the government says it is not its problem any more, that it is an agency or something beyond a crown corporation. We cannot touch the government any more. The minister is not accountable.

There are three good reasons to oppose the bill. The first is taxpayer money being used as a loan guarantee. The second is public dollars, taxpayer dollars, business dollars, being used to shut down private enterprise to be able foist the public sector on them. The third is the whole idea of lessening accountability and creating a greater distance with arm's length relationships and cutting down on ministerial accountability.

[Carolyn Parrish, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Public Works and Government Services]

Mr. Speaker, in the last hour I feel like I have sat through the good, the bad and the ugly. The good is over there and the bad and the ugly are over here.

I do not understand if the corporation is being defended so severely and is being put out of business why—and perhaps the member can answer this—it can only produce about 20% of what the mint needs. In actual fact the mint has to go outside Canada to buy plated blanks to do the job. If we are shutting them out of business, perhaps the member could explain to me why the corporation cannot supply 100% of the blanks we need at this time.

[Rob Anders, Reform, Calgary West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, as I understand it, Westaim could produce all the blanks the government needs but right now that contract only takes up about one-third of its capacity. The parliamentary secretary should not try to use the capacity of Westaim as an excuse for trying to shut it down and put it out of business. That has nothing to do with it.

[Werner Schmidt, Reform, Kelowna, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for entering into the debate in the direction that he went. I thought his arguments were rather lucid and very concise on the three points. I thought they were excellent.

I would like him to explain a bit further how he accounts for the potential shift in terms of administration in the mint today. I think he would agree that the mint administration today is exemplary. It has turned the mint around. It is now a profitable organization. It has good personnel relationships. It has a good operating plant. It is doing the job correctly.

With that kind of consistency and quality of management all the way we would not have to be too concerned about the policy, but the bill shifts the policy and gives all kinds of power to anyone.

The question becomes what sort of person will take over the management of the mint which is operating very successfully today. I have nothing but respect for the mint master, but the question is what happens if the mint master moves aside.

I wonder if the member could talk about that a little.

I would also like him to address the question of what happens if something goes awry and some of the things we have mentioned here today actually take place. How does one reverse legislation once it has gone to a point where this becomes a pattern, almost a culture that develops within a crown corporation? How does one change that culture once it is in place?

[Rob Anders, Reform, Calgary West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, that is part of the problem here. The government always thinks that more government is the answer and the solution. Too often we find that it is actually government that is the problem. It thinks that by expanding it and making it bigger somehow it is going to make the problem go away. Often we find that more government involvement makes the problem bigger rather than smaller.

My colleague raises a very good point. What if a very competent mint master moves aside and somebody else comes into play?

The government and the taxpayers then stand up and proudly beat their chest and say that this is an entirely profitable venture, for who better to loan money to than the mint, the one making the money. I guess there is not a much better loan than that. One cannot have more security on one's assets than from the people who actually produce the money themselves.

However, that is based on the current mint master. If that person moves along and somebody else who is not as competent takes over that administration then the taxpayers are the ones who are left holding the bag for any problems or mishaps.

It wants to go ahead and create this system that will shove out and hurt a private sector competitor. I remember the talks we had over hepatitis C and tainted blood and whether the government should be able to, in a sense, operate in monopolies like this. When the government does things like that, ultimately the culpability, the responsibility, falls entirely on it.

Private sector competitors have the ability to operate in the marketplace but if there are problems with the marketplace it is not entirely the government's fault, for there are other players in the field. However, if it is the only player in the field then it is the government that is entirely culpable and responsible for what goes wrong.

I do not think the government wants that responsibility but today in this bill it is going to grab for it.

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have one more little comment that has to do with the actual competition.

What would happen if the mint were to produce all its own coinage out of the Winnipeg plant? We hear that it took only 20% of its supply from Westaim and 85% from elsewhere. That is because of the bidding process, NAFTA and other suppliers. There have been a few occasions where I understand the timeline given was insufficient for Westaim to deliver on a timeline that was not usual. It had a real fast order and Westaim said it needed a little longer to fulfil it so it went elsewhere. That is fair but that has happened very seldom.

The problem is that by building this plant in Winnipeg, Westaim thinks it can supply all its needs with this plant that has only one-third the capacity of the present Westaim plant in Fort Saskatchewan. The arithmetic just does not add up. The fact is it is competing.

The other thing that really bothers me is that the minister said we would not be competing. The documents from the mint itself said it expects to make $3 million in revenue not from Canadian sales but from sales to foreign countries buying these blanks.

The concept of not competing is very inconsistently communicated. I think it is going to happen and it is wrong.

The other thing we need to recognize is that many foreign countries actually like to deal with governments and it gives them a tremendously unfair advantage.

[Rob Anders, Reform, Calgary West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, this type of insidiousness, this type of evil of shoving out private sector money with public sector money expands beyond our borders. Not only will it go ahead and pick up market shares and help to frustrate a private business in Canada that provides jobs in ridings for some of my colleagues and fellow Canadians, it will eat into private sector jobs overseas. It is not just about beating down the private sector businesses in this country. It is about beating down private sector businesses around the world.

The parliamentary secretary is shaking her head with glee. The Liberals have no problem competing with private sector businesses and beating them about in the marketplace with the very dollars they pay into the tax coffers of the government in overly generous surpluses, overpayments in employment insurance, the Canada pension plan and a host of other programs. The Liberals are only too happy to take these dollars from private sector industries and use them against them to cut them out of their marketplace and market share whether here or abroad. Shame on them.

[Carolyn Parrish, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Public Works and Government Services]

Mr. Speaker, the other member talked about having one or two companies out there doing a really good job of something and the federal government should not get involved.

I would like to hear how the member would expect the mint that produces coins to survive if those companies doing a really good job of making the raw materials decided to raise the prices, triple or quadruple what they are now. What controls would we have over that? It sounded like a fairyland over there.

[Rob Anders, Reform, Calgary West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the one thing the Liberals do not understand is competition. It is called open bidding. If they are willing to generate $3 million in revenue from foreign sales, they can just as easily go ahead and purchase through foreign sales the products they need.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

All those in favour will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.