Debates of Dec. 4th, 2001

Supply

[Alex Shepherd, Liberal, Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to deal with the issue of the flag because in spite of the member's comments I was not one of those people who had a flag on my desk. Indeed we had flags in the House of Commons. I believe that is a suitable display.

I was chagrined about the charade. I was even more chagrined when I tried to bring forward a private member's bill to create a flag day. I proposed to make February 15 a national holiday and some of his colleagues voted against making it a votable motion. That is hypocrisy if I have ever seen it.

Second, back in 1993-94 his party had a wonderful plan. It put out this little thing called fresh start or something like that. It had a budget plan which did not add. I got your leader to admit that it did not add. You could not even--

[The Deputy Speaker]

Order, please. Before we start firing comments and salvos at each other directly, I want to make my presence known. Please direct your comments through the Chair.

[Alex Shepherd, Liberal, Durham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I also had the member's House leader at the time confess that the original document did not add. If we want to get into the history of this, it was discovered on a flight back to Calgary with the House leader who noticed it at the same time. He confessed that it was true.

Here we have a party that cannot even add two and two but it was telling us how to balance the budget. It is pretty clear that just does not happen. People would be well advised to continue doing what they have done in the past, that is keeping the government in power.

[John Williams, Canadian Alliance, St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Speaker, today we are debating our opposition motion that lists a number of things. I want to go through the list one by one.

The previous speaker, the member for Durham, stated that we should avoid deficits at all cost. That is the policy of the Canadian Alliance. Why go into a deficit at any time if we should not? It bothers me that the government talks about spending and deficits as if they were outside its control. Yet today, as all members know, the auditor general tabled her report. The first thing it says in our motion is:

That, in the opinion of this House, the upcoming budget should:

(a) reallocate financial resources from low and falling priorities into higher need areas such as national security;

I do not think anybody would disagree with that statement. What did the auditor general say about that? Members may recall that two days before the election the Minister of Finance stood in his place and introduced a program that was to cost $1.3 billion of Canadian taxpayer money for the heating fuel rebate.

Today at 2 o'clock the auditor general told us that $500 million of that program was wasted. It went to people who did not need the money because they did not qualify as low income or even modest income people. It was $500 million wasted. Our motion says:

reallocate financial resources from low and falling priorities into higher need areas--

That is the type of waste, mismanagement and incompetence that is coming from the government. That needs to be fixed so that money is not wasted and we have the funds for higher priority items that we need. It is fairly simple.

I see the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance has now moved in to listen to the debate. When we are talking about the heating fuel rebate, 90,000 poor and underprivileged Canadians who needed the money did not get a dime. There was $500 million wasted on those who did not need it and 90,000 Canadians who should have got it did not get a dime. That is the type of mismanagement we have here. The next point is:

(b) reverse the unbudgeted spending increases to a maximum growth rate of inflation plus population;

The auditor general tells us today that the Minister of Health approved programs and spent money that was in direct contravention to the rules set down by treasury board and in direct contravention to the rules approved by cabinet. Why are ministers of the crown freelancing with taxpayer money, spending it as they see fit on their own pet projects, when it is in direct contravention to their own rules? How does the government explain that to Canadian taxpayers?

The auditor general's report states that the Minister of Canadian Heritage is doing what the minister of HRDC used to do, that is approving grants before she has an application. The minister is spending money with no authority and not even so much as a request from a taxpayer or an organization that wants to do something.

The Minister of Industry from Newfoundland is now getting his own public servants to start up a non-profit organization, finding a board of directors with half a dozen people. It is suggesting that these half dozen people be the board of directors of this non-profit organization. They would do all the paperwork so they could fill out an application for $1.9 million and send it to themselves.

These are Department of Industry officials setting up a non-profit organization. They are in essence the employees. They send themselves an application saying they think it would be a good idea if this organization got $1.9 million.

Guess what? They approve it. What is it for? It is to spend some money on some sand dunes in the riding belonging to the solicitor general. That is what the auditor general says about unbudgeted spending increases.

I see the Minister of National Defence is sitting right there, so what about our motion to increase national security and defence spending?

[Art Eggleton, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

I am all for it.

[John Williams, Canadian Alliance, St. Albert, AB]

The Minister of National Defence says he is all for it but he authorized $2 million out of his operating budget to finance the Downsview Inc. subsidiary to develop a little housing development in the backyard of the Minister of Transport. We should be spending our defence money getting our soldiers prepared and ready to defend the country, if that is what is needed after September 11, yet he is into a housing development with DND money. This cannot be allowed and the auditor general says it has to stop.

[Art Eggleton, Liberal, York Centre, ON]

It is housing for the troops.

[John Williams, Canadian Alliance, St. Albert, AB]

He says housing for the troops, my foot. This is $19 million on top of the $100 million. This is a park being developed by DND while it should be protecting Canadians. That is the type of thing the Minister of National Defence is spending money on, rather than focusing on national security and ensuring that we are well protected.

Of course the auditor general had the quote by the Minister of National Defence or his officials saying that the cold war was over, that they really did not need a military anymore and that they would wind it down. On September 11 they had to change their minds. They were caught flat-footed. They were caught with their pants down and the troops disarmed. Now we have to try and catch up. Our helicopters cannot fly, ships cannot sail and on and on.

We are also calling for a reduction in employment insurance premiums by at least 15 cents in the next year. I know that the Minister of Finance brought out the most meager of reductions this week, all of $20 per person per year. That is the maximum reduction per year. Yet the auditor general today said there is $36 billion in that account that does not need to be there. It is overtax. It is a payroll tax. The government suspended the rules so that cabinet could continue to collect the money outside the normal rules of the EI fund.

The government is killing jobs. We are in a recession, yet the government continues to overtax every job in the country through a payroll tax under the guise of employment insurance. It has set up this huge surplus so that it can balance the budget and allow the Minister of National Defence to spend money on his projects in Downsview and the Minister of Health to spend money on projects in his department. The Minister of Canadian Heritage and the Minister of Industry spend money on their projects. They all go around spending money with abandon because people are overtaxed through a payroll tax.

Sell non-core government assets and use the proceeds to accelerate debt reduction is also in our motion. Let me ask the Minister of National Defence this. Why does he not get out of the land development business at Downsview, sell that asset, use the money by putting it into the consolidated revenue fund and have the budget to run the military as he should?

I could go on and on, I am sure ad nauseam for the government side, but I sincerely wish that the government would spend taxpayer money as it would spend its own and not with abandon. If that were the case, we would have all kinds of opportunities and money to spend on the priority items. We would not have a deficit and the country would be a lot better off, if it would just do it.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, the member opposite reflects what might be called an accountant's mentality. One famous economist said some years ago, perhaps referring to accountants, that it was better to be approximately right than precisely wrong.

The home heating subsidy program was a good reflection of that because it was not perfect; 0.2% of the money went astray, therefore 99.8% of the money went where it ought to have gone. It was not precisely right but it was better to be approximately right than precisely wrong.

I would ask the member what the alternative is. If 99.8% of the money for fuel subsidies in the winter, which had to be sent out fast, went to the right hands and 0.2% went astray, was the alternative not to have anything? That would be the mentality which says that it is better to be precisely wrong than approximately correct. This program clearly was 99.8%, correct.

[John Williams, Canadian Alliance, St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad the parliamentary secretary used the phrases “precisely wrong” and “approximately correct” because he is dead wrong.

We are not talking about the 0.2% that went to the people in the graveyards, who could not send the cheque back because they were not really in a position to cash it in the first place. We are not talking about the money that went to the people in prison because they should not have got it either. We were talking about the 90,000 people, many of whom did not file a tax return, who were in no position to qualify for the rebate. We are also mighty upset about the $500 million that was wasted and sent to the people who really did not need it in the first place.

I know my son does not like me to talk about him, but he qualified for the rebate. He lives in a little house in a small town in Alberta. He has not paid a utility bill yet because all the rebates and so on are happening so fast that they are bigger than his actual utility bill. He has not paid a dime, he has a credit on his bill of $330, yet he got the subsidy.

What did he say about being approximately right or dead wrong? He was dead wrong.

[Howard Hilstrom, Canadian Alliance, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I think that fuel tax rebate was designed to buy votes and I am not sure if the member's son voted for the Liberals.

Could the member expand a bit on the capital tax reduction. This is tremendously important.

As an employer, I will use myself as an example. When I pay my employee, I first take a large amount off for taxes, than I take some for employment insurance and Canada pension plan. It is not the employee who is paying that. It is my money. I am the employer. I am paying that.

What is the advantage of having a capital tax reduction and the reduction in EI? Will that help employment and the economy?

[John Williams, Canadian Alliance, St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member is absolutely right. By the time the employer pays the CPP, the EI, the income tax and everything else, the only thing the employer is left with is the overdraft and the negative cash in the petty cash box. That is what is killing job creation in the country.

Nobody disagrees with taxing income and taxing economic activity to a certain degree. However by taxing people year after year on the money that they paid tax on last year, which they have it in a savings account, or by taxing the capital they use to create jobs and investment, their money will be gone. We should only tax economic activity. If we tax savings accounts and capital, we will destroy them and that is what destroys this economy.

[Monte Solberg, Canadian Alliance, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today and speak to this motion. The Canadian Alliance motion calls on the government to reallocate financial resources from low priority and wasteful areas into things that really do have an impact and meet the needs of Canadians, such as increasing security. It also calls on the government to keep spending in line with population growth and inflation, something it has failed to do over the past couple of years. We have seen spending increase dramatically under this government, even though it already has more than adequate money in the budget, especially considering how much money is spent on things that are wasteful.

The motion also calls on the government to reduce EI premiums by 15 cents per 100, which is only fair considering the tremendous amount of money it is taking out of the hides of workers and employers today. It is well beyond what is necessary to fund the EI account.

In the motion, we are also calling for a cut in capital taxes, something which was touched on briefly a minute ago.

It is often said that the falling dollar is both the cause of and reflection of where Canada's economy is today, and that is very true. I want to focus for a minute on the dollar as a reflection of the problems that we have today.

In November alone, the Canadian dollar hit five new lows. What is that reflective of? It is reflective of the Liberal recession which we are in now. It is reflective of an economy that chronically underperforms. Why does it underperform? Because the government when it wakes up every day, if it indeed wakes up, chooses not to make the right public policy decisions that would allow Canadians to become more productive, which would lead to a higher standard of living and allow them to realize their hopes and dreams.

There is a lot of talk in the country about issues like a common currency. While that is interesting, and I personally like to discuss these things from time to time, in some ways it allows the government to escape when we talk about it. It takes away from the analysis that should go on of the government's policies to date.

From 1993 until today, the Canadian currency has fallen 14 cents relative to the U.S. currency. It has gone down to under 63 cents today. Why is that? A moment ago I said it is a reflection to some degree of the performance of the economy. It tells us a bit about the government's ability to make public policy. It is bit like the canary in the mine shaft. When we see it falling as dramatically as it has in the last little while, that should set off alarm bells.

I would argue that there are things the government should be doing in the upcoming budget, but also it should be doing them day to day to ensure that our economy is more productive. This in turn will lead to a strengthening of our standard of living and ultimately to a stronger currency as well.

There is only one way to increase our standard of living and that is to our overall productivity. How do we increase productivity?

A minute ago we talked about taxes on capital. Capital formation is one of the critical elements when it comes to improving productivity and therefore the standard of living of a nation. However the government imposes tremendously high capital taxes, which prevents capital formation, which in turn prevents us from being as productive as we could be. This again prevents our standard of living from rising.

The government imposes high capital taxes, high personal income taxes and high corporation taxes. This in turn prevents the improvement of technology because we punish the activities that lead to improvements of technology. The improvement of technology is one of the keys to improving our productivity as a nation. Again, that is tied completely to our standard of living. We need to clear away the barriers to improving technology.

The same applies to the improvement of human capital. We need to remove the things that stand in the way of improving our human capital, our knowledge as a nation.

What are some of these things? A minute ago I touched on capital taxes. The government imposes huge, burdensome capital taxes which punish companies for the crime of collecting capital, which companies then use to innovate, to hire people and to do all kinds of things to secure their companies and to ensure that they are in good competitive positions. When they do that, the government taxes them and therefore makes them less competitive, which drives many of them out of the country or ultimately perhaps even out of business. It certainly impedes their ability to form capital and become innovative.

When it comes to the improvement of technology I want to talk for a moment about how the government punishes those who would improve our ability to compete in a technological sense. We have very high personal income taxes in Canada. They are still about 20% higher than those in the United States and are very high relative to anyone else in the G-7. In fact they are still the highest on average in the G-7, even factoring in the government's tax reductions which, by the way, are not $100 billion as it would like people to believe. They are about $47 billion over five years, which really is not a lot when we consider how high they have been.

Taxes were at record heights when the Liberal government came to power and it raised them even higher. Now the Liberals are reducing them a bit and they want credit. We should not give them credit because taxes are still extraordinarily high. They punish people for the great crime of working hard and being innovative and all those things that lead to improvements in technology. We have to start to lower those high personal income tax burdens much more aggressively than the government has already done.

Capital gains taxes are still way out of line. The government has begun the process of lowering them. Even the Liberals understand that we cannot continue to have high capital gains taxes when our competitors around the world have much lower ones, for instance in the United States. Of course when we have much higher capital gains taxes here, people who have the skills and abilities will move. They will go to some of the lower tax environments. Since September 11 it is even more important that we deal with that issue now. I will touch on that in a moment.

I want to say a word about high taxes on payrolls. Our party's finance critic has argued very strongly that we need to lower EI premiums by 15 cents per 100 at a bare minimum to ensure that companies and individuals are not penalized for the great crime of hiring people. That is important during a time of recession. Remember that we are in the Liberal recession right now and we need to find ways to climb out of it. One of the ways to do it is to stop punishing companies and individuals for the crime of hiring people, but that is what we do in Canada when our payroll taxes are too high.

The best way it has ever been explained to me is that every time we talk of a tax we should think of it as a price. Payroll taxes are a price on hiring other people to work. When we have high payroll taxes, there is a high price for hiring people. Therefore, we should lower them. This is a perfect time to begin that process, when we are in a recession that the Liberal government has helped to bring about.

I mentioned a minute ago that it is especially important to deal with these things now. Why? Because before September 11, companies were thinking of locating in Canada to set up business because we had access to the North American market and perhaps our cost of doing business was lower which in some ways had to do with our cheap currency. Many of those companies were considering setting up here, but since then, they have discovered that it is not as easy to move goods and people across the border into the U.S. and tap that $11 trillion market. They have suggested that perhaps they do not want to locate in Canada. I have heard anecdotally of half a dozen companies that have decided to go into the U.S. instead of coming to Canada and bringing all that tax revenue and those jobs with them.

It is critical that we start to address these things in an aggressive way and not just push them off to the back burner so they do not become critical problems any more, just ones we can push off for a little while. It is time for the government to address things aggressively with a mind to making Canada a world leader again as we used to be. Sadly, we are not seeing those types of signs coming from the government.

I urge members of the House to support today's motion. I urge them to remember that when the government sets out a budget, what it is really doing is charting a plan that will lead to the future prosperity of Canadians. Would it not be a shame if the government allowed this opportunity like so many others to pass it by.

[Roy H. Bailey, Canadian Alliance, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I would like the member for Medicine Hat to reflect back to 1993 and look at four categories: our health care, our military, our infrastructure, and our highways. I would like the member to comment on what has happened in the years since then.

[Monte Solberg, Canadian Alliance, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to do that. Let me start with health care which is the first item that the member raised.

In 1993 we saw a fairly high level of cash transfers going to the provinces in order to fund health care, but after the 1995 budget when the government realized that it was in straitened financial circumstances, it decided to cut. Did it cut the grants and subsidies that it used to curry favour with certain political groups? No, it cut the heart out of health care to the point where we have a crisis in terms of funding health care in many provinces today. The government deserves to be called to account when it comes to what it has done with health care.

In terms of the military, we have seen a dramatic cut to Canada's military. Many Canadians would argue that the Canadian military was reduced to the point where it simply could not do the job that was being asked of it. We were still sending people around the world to engage in peacekeeping missions. The heart was cut out of the Canadian military.

To be fair, and I see the minister is here, the Liberals have put some money back in but it is nowhere near where it needs to be. I think even the minister would acknowledge that. Why is that? Because government is all about making choices and the government continues to choose to fund patronage and pork barrel type programs ahead of other priorities including critical ones like the defence of the Canadian public, one of the highest priorities of any government.

In terms of infrastructure and highways, there is no question we have seen a deterioration which is sad when we consider that Canada depends so much on our ability to trade. Some 43% of our GDP comes from exports from trade and 87% of that is with the United States. We have not seen the type of investment in infrastructure, both to the borders and at the borders, that is needed to facilitate the type of trade that we should have.

I would argue that the government has missed many opportunities and I have just alluded to some of them.

[Jason Kenney, Canadian Alliance, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Medicine Hat for his eloquent remarks and particularly his focus on the debilitating effect on the ability to raise capital and generate growth in this economy as a result of our burdensome capital tax regime.

I wonder if the member could reflect for us on the experience of other jurisdictions which have lowered capital taxes and capital gains taxes. They have all found that revenues from those sources actually have increased as a result. Quite consistently, study after study by the Cato Institute and other free market think-tanks across the world have indicated that reductions in these rates result in higher revenues to the public treasury because of the expanded growth opportunities. Does the member think that would happen here in Canada?

[Monte Solberg, Canadian Alliance, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member really blindsided me with that one but I will see if I can respond.

Ireland is the best possible example. We will be welcoming a new ambassador from Ireland tomorrow and I look forward to that. Ireland has now surpassed Canada in terms of its standard of living. Why is that? Is it because it is blessed with all kinds of natural resources? Hardly. It is because Ireland got its public policy decisions right. It lowered all kinds of taxes and in doing that attracted all kinds of investment to the point where Ireland now has free university education for its people.

I love the example of the United States because so many members across the way hate the example. Today the United States spends more money on social programs per person than we do in Canada. Why? The U.S. spends more on health care. Why? The U.S. does that because it has an expanded tax base because the U.S. was enlightened enough to lower taxes to the point where it would create additional activity in the economy. The U.S. can now fund social programs, and the military as a matter of fact, to a much greater degree. The Americans were thinking when they did that and understood some fundamentals that this government cannot get straight.

[Steve Mahoney, Liberal, Mississauga West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am sharing my time with the member for Parkdale--High Park.

It is always quite interesting to hear members take selective issues and put their own twist on them. There was no mention about Ireland's success with the hundreds of millions of dollars invested in that part of the world by the EU. If we were to talk to people over there they would tell us that the capitalization of Ireland, the geography and the money invested by the European Union is clearly what has put Ireland in the position it is in today with regard to its quality of living. Having said that, I do not think we should denigrate Ireland's success. While speaking about quality of living though it would be nice if Ireland could also do something about the peace process.

I also find it quite interesting that the party putting forward today's opposition day motion lives by the credo that if it is in the press, it must be true, that if something is repeated often enough, people will believe it, and that the best way to draw attention to oneself is to create fear among the population of the country. We have seen classic examples recently in that party's call for more money to be spent on safety and security, the military and all kinds of issues in the opposition motion today.

For many years the Alliance has been saying that we need to actually cut expenditures. In fact it was part of its platform some five or six years ago, convenient memories today I suppose. That we should cut defence spending was actually a position of the Reform Party, the predecessor to the Canadian Alliance. Now things have changed. Members stand up in question period and say we should spend, spend, spend. Where do they get their figures?

[An. hon. member]

What was the administration?

[Steve Mahoney, Liberal, Mississauga West, ON]

The member opposite who is chirping, with due respect through you, Mr. Speaker, is not quite sure which party she wishes to be part of.

The point is that many of the policies that came out of that party were in fact put forward by that member and others. There is just no consistency in the opposition position that yesterday we should have cut and today we should pour money in. Where do the opposition members get their figures? Do they do their homework? I would suggest not.

Three billion dollars sounds like a good figure: $2 billion in defence spending, another $1 billion in security spending. Cut non-priority areas. Cut HRDC.

The damage that the official opposition has done to the economy of this nation with the attacks that it launched some time ago on the HRDC ministry is, frankly, immeasurable. The level of confidence of the people in the community about programs is evident in letter after letter I have received from people in my own community who have accessed HRDC programs to help them in job losses, to help family members in education. These are very positive programs.

One of the areas the Alliance would consider to be a non-priority would be something like ACOA, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. That agency sees that Atlantic Canada has opportunities for investment for young entrepreneurs to grow businesses and to create jobs. The Alliance would simply eliminate that. At the same time it would wipe out HRDC programs. It would eliminate FedNor, I am sure, or at least drastically reduce it. The work that FedNor does in northern Ontario is extremely important and is value added that can be seen on the ground.

We get general platitudes that somehow we should reallocate financial resources from low and falling priorities. Yet all the opposition is doing is seizing on the concerns in the media, the fear that is being propagated by much of the action and many of the questions in this place, whether they are about immigration, denigrating refugees or attacking bureaucrats. That is all we hear instead of the opposition actually being constructive and saying that it is going to support the government's efforts in the area of fighting terrorism.

Will we get credit in the follow up to the budget next Monday for money that has already been committed? We have committed $280 million to our fighting terrorists campaign, to $250 million that has been put into the system, to $47 million that has gone to CSIS and to our security personnel to try to boost them, the government having recognized there was a problem that led up to September 11 which was primarily south of the border but that we should not be blind to the fact that we indeed could be subject to similar kinds of attacks.

I think our government has reacted responsibly and calmly. We put forward the budgetary measures needed to give our people the kind of support they need, but what do we hear? We hear the Leader of the Opposition standing up and demanding that our troops be sent to war. There is a cost to that, of course, but it does not matter to the opposition that the United States and Great Britain said they will withhold their troops from the ground war until they get more secure knowledge and there is in fact an opportunity to do some peacekeeping.

No, they would just send them off. They are there. They have their boots on and they are all laced up, so send them off to war. Whose children do they think they are sending into harm's way? I think Canadians are very concerned about that kind of knee-jerk reaction, just as the motion suggests, that we should “reverse the unbudgeted spending”. Imagine if we did not have the flexibility in the unbudgeted spending areas within the control of the government following September 11. What would have been our option?

I think our only option would have been to spend it anyway and start running a deficit and if there is something that I do not believe any member around here can criticize it is the financial record of the finance minister. It is a fact that in 1993 when the government was first elected it was faced with the mountainous problem of a $42 billion deficit overdraft, with spending more than we were bringing in. The finance minister, the Prime Minister and the government have eliminated that and have started to run surpluses. As a result, we are in a position to respond when there is a crisis such as that of September 11 and we were able to do so.

The opposition once again chose to put forward a motion that it knows is not based on reality. First, opposition members know that the budget, given that this is Tuesday afternoon, in all likelihood has been put to bed and has gone to the printer, I would think, if we are getting it next week.

The opposition is picking out areas where it knows it will have little impact so that next Monday opposition members can stand and say the government did not listen to them, that they had asked to spend money here and there and to change the policy on unallocated moneys within the budget process and it was not done. It is a little bit of a mug's game. The reality is that the responsibility of the government is to say to Canadians that we are doing the things that need to be done to provide safety and security for them and their families and that at the same we will not run into the deficit financing that put such a great burden on previous governments. It is the only responsible way to go.

What would have been interesting with an opposition day opportunity like today would have been if the opposition had wanted to talk about the successful signing of an agreement yesterday between the two nations of Canada and the United States to try to improve the situation at our borders. Would it not have been interesting to hear stories being discussed in this place to inform Canadians about the IBET system, where we are co-operating on enforcement at our borders, about the fact that we are streamlining our visas, about the fact that we are signing a safe third country agreement between Canada and the United States? Would that not have been a constructive debate and a terrific opportunity for all of us in this place to inform Canadians about some of the successes?

It is very interesting to me that it took the attorney general from the United States to make the statement that Canada's borders are indeed not porous for us to get a headline in the media stating that. When we say it, it tends to get ignored. Now the reality is out and these are the issues that I think Canadians want to hear us talk about.

Committees of the House

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, following discussions among the parties I think you would find unanimous consent for the following motion:

That the Sub-Committee on Human Rights and International Development of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade be authorized to travel from February 9 to February 16, 2002, to Colombia in relation to its study of human rights, development and other matters in Colombia, and that the said Committee be composed of 1 Alliance member, 1 Bloc Quebecois member, 1 NDP member, 1 PC/DR Coalition member and 5 Liberals, and that the necessary staff do accompany the Committee.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

Does the hon. member have unanimous consent to propose the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

The House has heard the terms of the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

(Motion agreed to)