Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of the New Democratic Party to speak to the motion from the hon. member for Cumberland—Colchester.
I will read the motion just so that everybody can hear it. My hon. colleague from the Bloc had some issue with the provinces not being acknowledged. Personally, I do not see anything in the motion that negates the provinces from being involved in this.
However, I think it is extremely important for the government side of the House to hear and think about the motion because the minister said that he could not support it. I am at a loss to understand why he cannot support it because if the government is not doing these things it has a serious problem.
This is what the motion states:
That this House recognize the urgent need to address the serious transportation problems facing the Canadian people, and call upon the government to establish a comprehensive national transportation policy that demonstrates leadership on this issue and which provides solutions to the problems shared coast to coast by all Canadians.
How on earth can the government not support that motion? If it is not doing that, what the heck is it doing there? If it is not doing that it should not be there.
If the members on the government side vote against this motion, everybody in Canada better be giving their heads a knock in the next election. If the government cannot address this issue and have a transportation policy in place, we have serious problems. It would be like the finance minister not having a plan for what we will do years down the road.
Before I go any further, and before I get too involved in the whole issue of transportation, I want to mention that I will be sharing my time with my hon. colleague from the Yukon.
Without question, my fellow New Democratic MPs and I will be voting yes to this motion. There is also no question that the Liberal government has completely dropped the ball when it comes to transportation, and we will see that clearly tonight for sure.
There is also no question that Canada needs the federal government to show leadership in dealing with national transportation issues. As the New Democratic transportation critic, I have been saying this for a long time, and I am glad to see that the Conservative Party has been listening.
I have to say that it seems very odd that this motion today is coming from the Conservative Party. After all, when that party was in power during the Mulroney years—and the transport minister mentioned this as well—it was just as bad in transportation policy as the Liberal government is today. In a lot of areas, the Liberal government has just continued with the policies put in place by the Mulroney Conservative government.
All of a sudden the Conservatives say that the government has to show leadership on national transportation policy. Where was the leadership when the Conservatives were in power?
Let us look for a moment at the Mulroney Conservative government's record. This is the party that deregulated the airline industry in Canada causing the crisis we have today. Of course the Liberal government continued the deregulation so it is just as much to blame. It can go ahead and blame it on the Tories, and go back and forth, but the bottom line is that it is just as much to blame.
As a result of deregulation, Air Canada drove its only competitor, Canadian Airlines, out of business and now we have a monopoly, making things very tough for Canadians to get around and to fly.
Where was the reform alliance? Where were its members through all these last six or seven years while all this was going on? They were there cheering the Tories and the Liberals on deregulation and privatization and not doing anything to force the government into going against the policy of privatizing. They were doing nothing to force the government to come up with a transportation policy that addressed the social needs of Canadians as well as just making a buck.
The Mulroney Conservatives were also the ones who made the deepest cuts to VIA Rail. Of course the Liberal government continued that policy too which has caused a lot of problems for communities in my riding of Churchill and many others across the country.
When we look closely we see that the Liberal government did not change much of anything when it replaced the Mulroney Conservative government in 1993. It reminds me of a fable Tommy Douglas used to tell, the story of Mouseland. Many New Democrats and people with any kind of social conscience in Canada have heard the story of Mouseland, but I would urge those who have not to take the time to watch it on video or read it. It is fairly easy for people to understand if they are willing to take the time to view it.
The mice in Mouseland always elected cats to parliament. There was one party of white cats and one party of black cats, and we all know who those are, the Tories and the Liberals. But no matter which party the mice elected, the government always made laws that benefited cats instead of mice.
For anybody out there who has not figured it out, all of those ordinary Canadians out there, the everyday people putting in their 8, 10, 16 hours of work every day toiling to make a dollar, and all those people out there fighting to improve things for all Canadians are the mice that are not being represented by those parties and not having policies come forth that benefit all Canadians. What the mice needed to do was elect a government of mice instead of cats. It seems pretty obvious does it not?
The point Tommy Douglas was making is as true today as it was 40 years ago. There really is not much difference between the Liberal government and the Mulroney Conservative government. The Liberals are red, the Conservatives are blue, but they are both cats. That is why no one should be surprised when the Liberal government gets elected and continues Conservative policies.
While we are talking about cats, we now have the green cats, the reform alliance. I mention reform alliance because although the party has changed its name, people still see the Reform Party. The Canadian Alliance tries to get them to not think of reform because a lot of Canadians now realize that what the Reform Party did was to continue to support those policies. Those members will try to fool a few Canadians as to who they are voting for in the next election, but Canadians are a whole lot smarter than that. They will know, and we will make sure they know, that the reform alliance party is still the party that supports Conservative and Liberal policies that do not benefit all Canadians.
The man who set most of the Liberal government's transport policies was none other than Doug Young. Doug Young was a minister in the Liberal government until he lost his seat in the 1997 election. For a lot of that time he was the transport minister.
One of the first things he did as transport minister was to eliminate the Crow rate subsidy for western farmers. There was no question the Mulroney government would have eliminated the Crow subsidy. It would have taken a period of time to eliminate it, but the bottom line is that it would have eliminated it. This was the single biggest blow to the western farmers. It is one of the biggest reasons for the crisis facing so many farm families on the prairies today.
It is pretty obvious that if we do one thing downward, we see the crisis that develops as a result of it. What did members of the Reform Party say when Doug Young and the Liberals got rid of the Crow rate? They supported it. The Reform Party out there fighting for farmers in Canada supported the elimination of the Crow rate. Meanwhile other countries were still receiving subsidies. The party which says it supports the west sided with the Liberal government, the big banks and the rail companies against farm families.
Whatever happened to Doug Young? We all know what happened to Doug Young. He is with the reform alliance. What is extremely interesting is that Doug Young, the former transport minister who set all these policies the Liberal government is following is now with the reform alliance. And the Liberal government continues with the policies he set as transport minister. Is there any difference? Not a bit; Canadian Alliance, Conservative or Liberal, there is no difference. As Tommy Douglas would have said, a cat is a cat whether it is red, blue or green.
I want to talk about the New Democratic Party's transport policy. The most important thing is that our transport policy benefits ordinary Canadians, not corporate special interests. Canadians pay millions each year in fuel taxes and only a tiny fraction of that money goes back into transportation. The roads and highways in many parts of the country are in terrible shape because of federal neglect. This hurts our economy because most trade in goods is conducted by road and it makes the roads less safe for Canadians to drive on. For the amount Canadians pay in fuel taxes, they deserve quality roads.
It also goes beyond that. We heard my hon. colleague from the Bloc talk about it. The people of Quebec have given up hope on the federal government because they have seen that unless there is a federal government which supports all communities and all the provinces, we cannot survive. They have given up hope on Canada. The rest of us have not. We are not going to give up hope. We are going to fight. We are going to keep the federal government honest and make it put some dollars back into all of Canada.
I am going to conclude my remarks by reiterating that the New Democratic Party believes the federal government has a vital role to play in transportation. Federal investment in transport is important for the economy as well as the safety of Canadian travellers. Transportation is vital to linking the communities in our country from coast to coast to coast. It has been falling apart under the Liberal government. Train stations are closing, airlines are shutting down, communities are being cut off and highways are crumbling. The federal government has to make a commitment to ensure that our country has a safe, effective and efficient national transportation system and it has to do it now.
If the government does not agree it has a part in that, it will vote against this motion tonight. But if it truly is a government that is out there to ensure we have a national transportation policy, I cannot see how it could possibly not support this motion.