Mr. Speaker, I rise with some trepidation on Bill C-4. It is not particularly controversial; in fact it is anything but. The reason I am concerned is that the Liberal government is making this place completely irrelevant.
I call them the green foreheads over there. We look at the chairs over there and we see that they are green. I am speaking to many green foreheads over there, the green party over there which maybe we should call the brown party because there is as much brown over there too.
Of course Bill C-4 is important. It shows the priorities of the government both in spending money and in using the time of the House for debate. I guess it is good because it is an indicator. It is like a red light on the dash. I wish every Canadian would wake up right now, look at the red light on the dash and realize that the red light or the red book is giving them big problems.
When we ask for an opportunity to debate an issue of terrible importance to the people of British Columbia, of immense importance to all Canadians across the country at the present time and of increasing importance for generations to come, when we ask that we in the House and throughout the country have ample time to debate such an issue, the Liberals invoke closure and say no. They will not talk about that. They want to talk about Bill C-4, an agreement on an international space agency.
That tells us something. I do not want to be disrespectful. I think the technological advancements we are participating in as Canadians are wonderful, but this shows that the government is totally spaced out.
It is right out of it when it comes to evaluating what is important to Canadians. It is right out of it when it comes to trying to figure out how to spend money. It is right out of it when it sets the agenda for what is debated in the House and what is debated among Canadians.
Canadians from coast to coast would like to engage in a debate on the future of the country. Right now we have a government with its dictatorial powers and its majority that it uses so blatantly. Where does the government stand on the issues that are important to Canadians? It is pulling the strings of its members and getting them to vote the way they are told on all sorts of issues.
It is Bill C-4 today. It is a very small bill. The Liberal government has chosen to debate this bill today instead of the Nisga'a one. It is an agreement between Canada and a number of other countries. It is an agreement to co-operate on building an international space station and operating it. A number of elements are involved. A number of elements require co-operation among different countries. It is probably a job that is too large for one country to bear. The two elements of greatest importance to us are our contribution of personnel and our contribution of dollars.
Bill C-4 is an act to implement the agreement among the Government of Canada, governments of member states of the European Space Agency, the Government of Japan, the Government of the Russian Federation and the Government of the United States of America concerning co-operation on the civil international space station and to make related amendments to other acts.
If we look at the more detailed list a number of countries in the European Union are involved. When I saw the bill I was absolutely amazed. The government hammered out an agreement behind closed doors and signed it on January 29, 1998. This is almost the end of 1999. We are approaching two years since Canada signed the agreement. To show its total disdain for parliament, having signed the agreement almost two years ago, it now has the gall to say that it would like parliament to ratify the agreement. It would like parliament to give its consent to an agreement that it has already signed.
A couple of things come to my mind when I hear that. One is how Canadians through their parliament and perhaps directly in debate were not involved previously. Why were they not informed that the agreement was being considered? It is a tremendous expenditure of money.
It is a strange coincidence that the cost of this program, $1.4 billion, is pretty well the cost of the immediate implementation of the Nisga'a agreement, although that agreement has the potential with its spin-offs across the country to cost the country in excess of $200 billion or more than the annual budget of the Government of Canada right now.
The government is willing to cut off debate on the Nisga'a agreement and deal with Bill C-4, which shows that it does not want to deal in any real or substantial way with anything of any relevance to Canadians. Government members want to sweep the big problems under the rug and try to get them jammed through before anyone wakes up and realizes what they are doing. I guess they learned from the Charlottetown accord that they could not trust Canadians to be totally ignorant. They want to keep them ignorant by ramming through those things really fast so that no one has the time to become informed and react. They want to do it quickly and let the consequences of the future be as they may.
I have a firm belief that in a true democracy, which we do not have in Canada, once we have debated an issue and have come to an agreement it would have been because of the fact that we were promoting a sensible idea. When people consent to it, of course, they would support it and our country would remain strong and unified. That is not so with this government. It will not debate an issue which has the potential of costing $200 billion, but it will talk about this, which will cost about $1.5 billion.
I taught mathematics for a number of years. I have with me a trusty calculator which I always have with me as my auxiliary brain. I will give a perspective on what $1.5 billion means.
We have approximately 15 million taxpayers in the country. That $1.5 billion means that every taxpayer will be contributing $100 to this project. That is an immense amount of money.
I should not have admitted that I had to use my calculator for that division, but I was not thinking that these numbers were the same. I am now a little red faced and embarrassed. However, it is a lot of money. Taxpayers are being pushed.
Meanwhile, do we have $1 billion to support Canadian farmers? No. Instead what we get from the government is the hauling out of a bunch of statistics which show that the government has no interest at all in western Canadian farmers. It has let them go down the tube.
One of the advantages of the space station is that we should be able to send more people up there. When we look at our planet from space, I think it would give us a perspective on what is important down here. We as Canadians, and the Liberal people as parliamentarians, should value Canadian society and Canadian farmers. That might come to our minds if we looked at it from a different perspective.
With this agreement the government has made some unilateral decisions and is now coming to parliament for approval.
In a lot of bills there is a great deal more power being attributed to the minister. That is also true of this bill. This is amazing. Clause 7 gives a lot of power to the minister. It reads:
The Minister may send a notice to any person that the Minister believes, on reasonable grounds, has information or documents relevant to the administration or enforcement of this Act, requesting the person to provide, within any reasonable period that the Minister specifies, that information or those documents to the Minister or any person that the Minister designates.
That is pretty scary stuff, which is actually standard in a lot of the bills the government brings in. Basically the minister has the power to do anything he wants. If he believe it is the right thing to do, the bill will give the minister the ability to do it. If the person objects to providing or fails to provide the information, then the minister can take the person to court.
Has anyone had a fight with a schoolyard bully? I have not because I was always so cuddly. I did not pick fights a lot. I was the brunt of a lot of teasing and every once in a while people would attack me, but I would not call those fights. However, when we take an individual and put the weight of the government behind a lawsuit, I do not think that individual has a chance of winning. All of the resources of the government would go behind the lawsuit and the funds of the poor individual, who is usually limited to whatever he can borrow against his house, if the government permits that, would be eaten up very quickly.
We have an agreement. I like the concept of agreement. It says in the schedule of this bill that this is an agreement among the government and all of these different countries. It adds the Kingdom of Belgium, the Kingdom of Denmark, the French Republic, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Italian Republic, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Kingdom of Norway, the Kingdom of Spain, the Kingdom of Sweden, the Swiss Confederation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Add to that the list of all of the parties I read before.
This is a multilateral agreement. Is it not interesting that the government is willing to go through the work of arranging an agreement that these different parties can agree to? When it comes to an element as important as Nisga'a, does it make sure the parties come together? No. It totally fails to do that. It has not recognized that when it comes to an agreement like the Nisga'a agreement there are two parties to it. Sure it has the Nisga'a people, but it also has all of the non-native people who are a party to that agreement. The only difference is that this Liberal government does not even want to discuss it with the other members of the agreement. It wants to unilaterally impose it on them and hopefully keep them in the dark and ignorant about the terms and issues in the agreement.
Today we are debating the space station when we should be debating the importance and the relevance of probably the most important piece of legislation to hit this country in the last 30 years. Instead the Liberal government is saying “That is the end of that debate. We cannot let members talk for more than fours on that, but go ahead and talk all day on the international space agreement”.
Here we have an example of an agreement which was reached among all the parties, but the government is imposing on Canadians an agreement with the Nisga'a in which one party to the agreement is not allowed to be involved. The terms and conditions are being dictated to them. They are not allowed to have any input. If anything, the government would like for them to have no understanding of it. That is atrocious. As far as I am concerned that is a serious aberration of what we call democracy. With this kind of contempt for the House of Commons and the people of Canada, I do not believe the Liberal government has the moral authority to stand in governance over us. It has failed us. It continues to fail us because of the fact that it does not want to engage in democratic debate, democratic give and take, on an agreement which will so vitally affect both parties.
While we are in principle in favour of Bill C-4, because it ratifies an agreement, we think it should have been done in advance of the agreement's being signed. It is arrogant of the government to go ahead and sign the agreement and say that it can get it through parliament. All sorts of things could prevent this from happening. For example, the government may simply not be re-elected. It could well be that the next government would have something else on its agenda besides this agreement and that it would not necessarily pass. I am not predicting this because I do not think that is my role. I am not able to see the future that way, but I think it is going to happen. For the sake of Canadians, the sooner it happens the better.
We need to make sure that Canadians are represented and that the wishes and will of Canadians are represented in this parliament. Without that we are not going to be successful as a democratic society.
I have one more item to talk about which relates to Bill C-4.
Mr. Speaker, I am sure you are very pleased at how relevant I am remaining. By the way, I should add in passing that it has become a practice in this House that wide ranging debate be permitted. As the Speaker ruled a couple of days ago, when we have wide ranging consensus and practice over a period of time, then that sort of becomes the operating method of the House, and I appreciate that freedom.
At page 16 of the bill we have article 12. It has to do with transportation. It says that every country which is a party to this agreement shall have right of access to the space station. That is sort of cool. It means that I can go, maybe with some of my friends, up to the space station if I happen to be selected and trained. It indicates once again some of the countries. Then it states that there is an obligation on the part of the participating countries to provide launch and return transportation services for the space station and, in addition, other space transportation systems.
I could not help but remember something that happened in my riding a couple of years ago. Because of a very weak showing by the Liberal Party in Alberta, it decided to make some changes. Without a great deal of thought from a military point of view, it decided to move the air base from Namao to never-never land and to bring in the army to that base instead. The result is that the longest and strongest runways in North America, which were at the Namao air base, have been changed into streets leading up to warehouses for the army. There was not even the foresight to keep the buildings far enough away so that in an emergency that airstrip could still be used. It has often been said that this was one of the collateral runways that was available to spacecraft returning.
We have an obligation to provide and to do our share in providing transportation to and from the space station, which in an emergency would necessitate the use of those long runways, but we have disabled them. Again it shows a total lack of foresight on the part of this government. I am absolutely disgusted that those decisions are so often clouded with political ramifications instead of being made on a rational basis.
I look forward to questions from the green foreheads.