Mr. Speaker, I congratulate you on your appointment to the Chair. It is a great pleasure to be here with you.
I would also like to thank the electors of Victoria for returning me to the House of Commons or to the legislature of the Province of British Columbia for the sixth time in eight elections. The confidence of my fellow citizens of Victoria is extremely gratifying and I am very humbled by the support they have given me.
The Speech from the Throne is a general document that lists various objectives of the incoming administration. I had the advantage of listening to the speeches of the four party leaders yesterday. As one would expect their speeches were somewhat more substantive than the Speech from the Throne. With the House's indulgence, my comments today will be somewhat broader than strictly the Speech from the Throne itself.
First there was the speech of the Leader of the Opposition. It was with surprise that I heard the Leader of the Opposition propose the novel theory that the throne speech should somehow be a document including all political opinions represented by the four parties of the House and of course the opinion of the party that did not get people elected, the Green Party as well.
His position would be more understandable if he had attempted to obtain a role for himself or for some of his supporters in the executive of the government, but he did not, preferring quite correctly to remain Leader of the Opposition rather than become part of the administration.
In that role, he presented an amendment which is essentially a non-confidence motion. The amendment made by the Leader of the Opposition is thus quite proper and quite traditional. What is quite contrary to tradition and to common sense is the specious argument advanced that the Speech from the Throne is a document for all parties in the House to write. It is not. It is a speech for the administration to write giving a proposal regarding what the administration would like to accomplish before the next election. It is quite appropriate that the Speech from the Throne be written and delivered by the executive. I trust that the government will reject the opposition amendment.
The second notable feature of the speech from the Leader of the Opposition is that while he spoke of the need for the opposition to be considered a government in waiting, his speech lacked the intellectual consistency which would allow anyone listening to it to take that assertion seriously. However, I commend him for that because this is the first time in 11 years in the House that the official opposition has apparently understood the importance of that role.
More specifically, the bulk of the speech consisted of pleas for greater expenditure or transfers to provinces, municipalities, industries and of course to individuals, but concluded with proposals for tax cuts which combined with those spending proposals would inevitably mean expenditures in excess of revenue or as we know it, deficits. This of course is the policy of the neo-conservative republicans in the United States whose disregard for massive deficits is, in my opinion, one of the greatest threats to global economic stability and prosperity.
I was surprised to hear the Leader of the Opposition continue in this line. There is a long way to go before the Leader of the Opposition can be considered a prime minister in waiting. He still appears to be infatuated with the US neo-conservative ideology and lacks an appreciation of Canadian mainstream political realism.
The first item in the Speech from the Throne is the economy and I applaud that. It was similar to the first item in the Prime Minister's speech and I applaud that too. The House will forgive me for reminding the campaign handlers, the advisors and speech writers of the Prime Minister, that when I and some other experienced Liberal MPs and Senators urged the leader's campaign team to stress the economic success of the Chrétien government, and of course the Prime Minister when he was finance minister, we were given very short shrift indeed.
It was only when the possibility of defeat became strong did they realize that Canada's successful economic performance did interest the Canadian people. Only then was the economy discussed and only then did the campaign regain some possibility of success, but better late than never. If I may judge by the speech given by the Governor General and by the Prime Minister yesterday and the day before, at least the lesson appears to have been well learned.
With respect to that speech, however, I would like to mention on the economic side that there was a reference to the deficit being reduced to 25% of GDP in 10 years' time. I certainly accept that as a long term goal, but I have heard the finance minister say time after time that there had to be two year rolling targets to keep the government's feet to the fire.
I certainly hope that this target over 10 years will be fleshed out in the budget to be a target every year: a minimum $6 billion of debt reduction every year. If we do not do that, our children will face remarkable increases to expenditures for a wide variety of subjects, the so-called implicit deficit, as well as the explicit dollar deficit, and they will have great trouble handling future financial requirements. I hope we will see the return to the approach of the Minister of Finance, which was of course keeping the feet of the government to the fire and not having simply long term targets.
A second issue on the economy is the reference to in-house science and technology activity, which is in the seventh paragraph on page 4 of the Speech from the Throne. This is described as substantial and that word troubles me. At least in part, the part with which I am familiar, it is simply incorrect. The Canadian government's in-house science capacity in the areas with which I am familiar has substantially declined over the past 20 years. That is particularly true of ocean science and of Arctic science.
It is true that more is being done at Canadian universities through the foundation for innovation, one of Prime Minister Chrétien's most successful initiatives. However in-house government science, which was referred to, has declined and, in my mind, it has declined to disastrous levels. There are many things that university scientists will not do and which, therefore, must be done by the government. We simply will not be able to recruit and keep good scientific people if we continue to pare away at their budgets and, thus, at the work they are able to do.
Mr. Speaker, I follow the member for Yukon and would remind you that 2007-08 is the International Polar Year. Other nations will be expecting Canada, a leading member of the Arctic council and a leading polar nation, to be there and to be ready to do a large number of scientific tasks. If we do not now restore funding and dynamism to the excellent people we have working for us in this area, this country will simply be greatly embarrassed.
The western Pacific countries, the Koreans, the Chinese and the Japanese, are all expanding their activity dramatically. The European northern countries are doing the same and the European Union is following suit. They are all doing excellent work. I certainly discovered that when I visited Svalbard in the European Arctic last summer. The US also has a very extensive scientific activity, both in Antarctica and in the Arctic. The laggard on the scientific activity is Canada.
This is not just a science issue. While I applaud the Prime Minister for visiting the Arctic this past summer, I was concerned that his strong statements on sovereignty in that part of Canada was not followed up by a commitment for Canadian scientific research in the Arctic. Strong statements from the Prime Minister are of course important and welcome but they are no substitute for coherent policy approaches.
I am sure that Mr. Putin, the leader of another important Arctic power, will be listening with interest to what the Prime Minister will say in the next few days in Moscow. I believe he would pay even more attention if we were doing more and talking less.
On this last point I will add another concern, namely, the lack of coherence in our Coast Guard icebreaker fleet maintenance and procurement policy. As part of successive cost cutting programs, maintenance on our northern icebreakers is not optimal. They do not have the level of dry docking and refitting that is required to give them maximum reliability.
Surely, speaking as I do on the day after the tragic loss of life of a Canadian naval officer in a fire aboard a Canadian naval vessel, I do not have to stress the importance of keeping ships in first class condition. Even with the best of ships, in the best of conditions, accidents happen.
However they happen more frequently and the possibility of serious accident is greater when maintenance, which means dry docking on appropriate schedules and refitting, is not the best possible. Further, when ships are older other problems multiply. Over the last 35 years I have studied tanker traffic quite extensively and know the tanker area better than submarines or icebreakers. That said, the principle is the same. Ships are ships.
As icebreakers are used in the north in summer, and as they and not the military are the appropriate uniformed service of the Canadian government to show our determination to maintain sovereignty against whatever threats--