Madam Speaker, I will sharing my time with the member for Saskatoon--Rosetown--Biggar.
I appreciate this opportunity to participate in the debate regarding the sustained legislative and political attacks on the lives and livelihoods of rural Canadians and on the communities where they live.
The current federal government is the most anti-rural Canadian we have ever seen. Policies and programs of the government consistently undermine our rural communities on a daily basis. What has evolved in Canada today is a two tier government, one for urban Canadians and one for rural Canadians. This divisiveness is not helpful for Canadian unity. While the government may trumpet the death of separatism in Quebec, the rise of a new separatism stalks the land as one group of Canadians is pitted against another group, all for short term political gain.
Whatever happened to statesmanship and nation building? It died the first day the Prime Minister encouraged his cabinet ministers to cry racism and resort to personal attacks rather than being held accountable for government policy. No wonder 70% of Canadians think this government is corrupt.
One way the government has assaulted rural Canada has been through the policy of military cutbacks. Most Canadians are familiar with the cutbacks to the military that have resulted in severe equipment shortages and the need for the military to continually fix old equipment rather than receive the equipment it needs on a timely basis. This has led to delays in purchases, like the 40 year old Sea King helicopters to buying second-hand equipment, like submarines that turn out to be junk. The reduction in our military has led to base closures which have had a devastating impact on the local economies where those bases were located across rural Canada.
Now a new threat looms in the remaining communities where bases are still located. It is called the supply chain project, or ASD, alternative service delivery. The minister of defence will tell us that this project is not to contract existing DND developed civilian jobs but to match the current chain of supply in DND with cost savings. I would be very interested to hear the thoughts of the member for Simcoe--Grey on this issue and what the supply chain project did to Meaford when the base staff there went from 150 employees to less than 50.
The Union of National Defence Employees contacted the head of the business association in the town of Meaford and it was confirmed that since the supply chain process started the downtown had become a ghost town; another ghost town created thanks to the Liberal government policy.
What is particularly tragic about this example is that under the guise of cost saving there is no indication that the taxpayers are saving money at all because of the job losses due to the contracting out of base services. Research into the contract revealed that it was awarded to a company called Black & McDonald, which is 20% based out of Australia and 80% based out of the United States. It was awarded the contract to run all the services on the base at Meaford which had previously employed about 150 local people for $25 million.
Overall the Meaford area training centre was being operated under a $40 million five year fixed price contract from 1995 to 2000. Jobs were cut to 50 employees and most were identified as being pensioned off ex-military personnel at a wage slightly better than the provincial minimum. What this amounts to is a foreign company profiting by putting Canadians out of work with no financial commitment to the community or to Canada itself.
Requests to DND show any cost savings to taxpayers have not been provided. The auditor general had this to say about the ASD program at national defence:
Many of the business case analyses for the 14 projects we audited were poorly done. Options were not always adequately assessed or the best option chosen. Personnel appeared to lack the necessary skills to undertake analyses...
We could not find a formal business case analysis or any other supporting evidence to justify the ASD contract at Meaford Area Training Centre.
The audit found that rather than the DND projected savings of $200 million at that point, the estimated savings were $68 million primarily at the expense of the local community. This represents a 70% failure rate to meet the savings target.
Finally, the audit revealed that the competitive process was not always followed in the awarding of contracts and that contracts were let with no competitive bids at all. Sole source contracts mean that there is no way to know if the taxpayer is getting the best service at the best price.
The problem with ASD, in addition to their questionable value, is that the companies who do get the contract buy their goods in large cities like Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal with a loss of millions of dollars in the local rural communities where the bases are located.
In my riding of Renfrew--Nipissing--Pembroke, base, now ASU, Petawawa is an important generator of economic wealth to the area. When the government directs procurement out of the rural communities where the bases are located, everyone suffers. Our retail stores, restaurants, service stations, grocery stores, the local housing market and so on all have trouble making ends meet.
Less money circulating in a community means support for sports, like hockey, baseball, soccer and figure skating are no longer available and the quality of life suffers as a consequence.
The federal government's neglect of our military has a human cost that is largely being ignored because government has felt a greater need to pander to the urban vote. The time to stop underfunding the military is now.
The ASD program led to a 20 year $2.8 billion untendered contract for a flight school being awarded to Bombardier. However when it comes to providing much needed infrastructure dollars to repair our nation's highway system, rural Canadians receive nothing.
Personal transportation in rural Canada is not a luxury. It is a necessity. In the case of the Trans-Canada Highway, Highway 17 from base Petawawa to Ottawa, upgrading the highway from two to four lanes is not only an issue of public safety, it is one of national security. The provision of safe, efficient transportation networks is at the heart of prosperity for rural Canada.
This also includes the skies. The decision of the Liberal government to implement the air security tax on a flat tax rate penalizes small rural airports. A $25 surcharge on a $150 ticket is a bigger burden than the same flat rate surcharge being applied to a $2,000 ticket from a big city airport for an international flight.
The Liberal government tells us that by providing government services over the Internet it can shut down government offices in rural communities. What the Liberal government has chosen to ignore is the fact that in Canada today there are still individuals who live in areas that do not have basic land line service. How can someone go online for service with no phone or cable with which to go online?
To rub salt in an already open wound, rural and small town phone subscribers recently received a CRTC sanctioned rate increase for long distance service. Apparently this was approved to pay for the lost business from urban phone users who switched to using one of the savings plans offered by Bell's competitors. Now a surcharge of $1.50 a month may not seem like a lot to some people, but for a senior on a fixed income, all these increases add up.
I have a letter from constituents who wrote to tell me that they moved out of the big city because rents were too high. Having left the city and friends of a lifetime, the phone was an important way of keeping in touch. By allowing the CRTC to approve the surcharge, it was as if the Liberal government was penalizing people for not living in the city.
I understand that the surcharge only applies to small town and rural customers. Therefore, when rural members talk about rural Canada, we are not just referring to Canadians. We are talking about an entire way of life.
In my limited experience as a member of parliament, nothing is more distorted or portrayed in a negative fashion that is completely unfair than is the whole issue of hunting and gun control. Gun control is a prime example of the cookie cutter approach to legislation. Problems or concerns in urban Canada are not the same as in rural communities. The decision to make law-abiding citizens into criminals and spend or plan to spend $1 billion to do it has been one of the worst decision that this government has ever made.