House of Commons Hansard #49 of the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was hunting.
The Speaker Liberal Peter Milliken
Subject to the reservations or conditions expressed by the parliamentary secretary, is it the pleasure of the House that Notice of Motion No. P-7 be deemed to have been adopted?
Tom Lukiwski ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform
Mr. Speaker, I would ask you to be so kind as to call Notice of Motion for the Production of Papers No. P-1, in the name of the hon. member for Malpeque.
That an Order of the House do issue for copies of all audits, evaluation reports or analysis of the Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization Program (CAIS) program conducted by or for the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food from its inception until January 23, 2006.
Tony Clement ConservativeMinister of Health
Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise and request that the motion be transferred for debate.
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
Mr. Speaker, I ask that all remaining Notices of Motions for the Production of Papers be allowed to stand.
Questions on the Order PaperPoints of OrderRoutine Proceedings
September 20th, 2006 / 3:35 p.m.
Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre Saskatchewan
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform
Mr. Speaker, may I direct the Chair's attention to today's notice paper where the hon. member for New Westminster—Coquitlam has given notice of a written question, Question No. 90, which actually is a notice not of one question, but rather of 47 questions.
Standing Order 39(4) limits the member to a maximum of four written questions at any one time. The conventions of the House, in my submission, do not permit a member to submit a series of questions under a general topic and to subdivide that question ad infinitum.
I respectfully suggest that questions addressed to the Government of Canada concerning the activities of other governments or armed forces of other governments are outside the administrative accountability of the government.
Finally, I suggest that Question No. 90 is out of order and I would ask the Speaker to so rule.
The Speaker Liberal Peter Milliken
The Chair will take the hon. parliamentary secretary's point of order under advisement and return to the House in due course with a ruling in respect of this matter.
I note that many years ago, when the member for London North Centre was a new member, members could put as many questions as they wanted on the order paper. The rules were changed to restrict it to four and the questions got a lot longer.
I will look at the issue the hon. member has raised here, where there are 47 questions in one, but it is a practice that has been going on for some time, perhaps not with 47 questions, but with less. However, the hon. parliamentary secretary had other points in the point of order, too, which I am quite prepared to consider. I will get back to the House in due course. I thank him for raising this issue.
The Speaker Liberal Peter Milliken
The Chair has notice of a request for an emergency debate. I will now hear submissions from the member for Windsor—Tecumseh in respect of that matter.
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Mr. Speaker, I reported this request to your office pursuant to Standing Order 52(2) for your consideration in granting an emergency debate. As probably just about every Canadian knows, the O'Connor commission issued its report, which was tabled in the House on Monday afternoon of this week.
In response to that, we have two points that I think support my request for an emergency debate. One is the absolute outrage in the country, both immediate and continuous right up to the present, as to the way Mr. Arar himself and his family have been treated by police authorities in this country.
In response to a series of questions both on Tuesday and again today in the House, we keep hearing from the government that it is going to respond. It is quite obvious that it is delaying this. The Canadian people do not want it delayed. I believe it is the responsibility of the House and individual members of Parliament to speak out on this issue. The opportunity for them to do so with regard to the way Mr. Arar was treated, the way his family was treated, and how we should respond to that and how quickly, all of this is the proper substance of an emergency debate. We should pursue that.
The secondary point I raised in my letter to you, Mr. Speaker, was with regard to the need for immediate attention by the House of Commons in terms of giving advice to the government and expressing its opinion with regard to the other three individuals who were named in Mr. O'Connor's report, but who were not the subject of the mandate the Canadian government had given him when the commission was originally established. Those three are Mr. El Maati, Mr. Almalki and Mr. Nureddin. Again, in the report, Justice O'Connor makes recommendations that something needs to be done on this and their cases taken up.
In regard to that, it is in the nature of an immediate response that is required, the nature for which we should be having input from members of Parliament. That would lead, I would argue strenuously, you to conclude that it is a proper subject of an emergency debate with regard to those three individuals and the comments and recommendations that Justice O'Connor made with regard to them.
In totality, if I may summarize, I am not seeking an emergency debate on the entire report. The government's position is fair that it needs more time to consider all of the report, but with regard to these two issues, because of the outrage this has caused in the country and because of the demand within the country that we respond quickly on both of these issues, we should be having an emergency debate. I urge you strongly, Mr. Speaker, to grant it.
The Speaker Liberal Peter Milliken
I thank the hon. member for Windsor—Tecumseh for his very able argument in respect of this matter. Certainly I am not in any way suggesting that the matter is not a serious one and something that is worthy of discussion. Of course we have witnessed considerable discussion on the matter in the House during question period for the last couple of days since that tabling of the report, and I am sure there will be more, but the difficulty the hon. member faces, I think, in making his argument is whether this is an emergency.
The report has been in preparation for a number of months, if not years. We have now received it and I am not convinced by the hon. member's argument that the tabling of the report has created an emergency that is worthy of being a subject of debate in the House on that basis. I would stress to him, as I did the other day in my ruling on the earlier request this week, that there are provisions in the Standing Orders for the House leaders to agree on a take note debate, which in my view would permit discussion on the subjects outlined by the hon. member. That is a matter that can be agreed to by the House leaders of the parties and carried on in this House at a time they choose.
I would invite the hon. member, rather than asking the Chair to declare this an emergency, to raise the matter there and see if he cannot arrange a debate through that medium rather than this one, which in my view is inappropriate in the circumstances, given, as I have said, my view that this report has not created an emergency in the country that ought to be dealt with in this way. I must therefore decline the hon. member's request and wish him well in raising the matter elsewhere.
The Speaker Liberal Peter Milliken
It is my duty to inform this House that a vacancy has occurred in the House of Commons for the electoral district of London North Centre, in the province of Ontario, by reason of the resignation of the Hon. Joe Fontana.
Consequently, pursuant to section 25(1)(b) of the Parliament of Canada Act, I have addressed today my warrant to the Chief Electoral Officer for the issue of a new writ of election for the electoral district of London North Centre.
The House resumed from September 19 consideration of the motion that Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Canada Transportation Act and the Railway Safety Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Mr. Speaker, I am indeed pleased to speak on Bill C-11. As others have stated, there is a lot in this bill that makes sense. In fact, it is the third time in the House for most of the contents of this bill. However, tucked within the bill is another huge loss, and this is new, a huge loss for the farm community.
The minority government opposite has taken to inserting in a lot of its press releases and so on, when it can, a quote called “the new government”, but like so much of what this minority Conservative Party does, it is all about deception. There is nothing new in the bill except the one section that I mentioned, clause 43. What this does, quite simply, is trample on the rights of farmers. Let me repeat that: clause 43 tramples on the rights of farmers.
The new government, the new Conservative government, has cut a deal with the big railways and the big grain companies to tear down agreements that the previous government had entered into, agreements reached by the previous government that would have given a little bit of leverage to the grain producers and more control over their destiny as grain producers in terms of dealing with the railways. The issue really relates to the transfer of hopper cars to the Farmer Rail Car Coalition, a cross-section of groups across the west that would have had those railcars turned over to them to manage in the interests of the transportation system and in the interests of farmers.
The provisions of this bill, then, particularly clause 43, are really symbolic of the government's real priorities. With the implementation of these two provisions, the Conservative government has, along with its decision on May 4, sold out the farmers of western Canada and delivered an asset of incredible value, once again, to the railways.
The two provisions in question come out of the government's betrayal of western farmers and a reneging on an agreement signed in good faith between the Farmer Rail Car Coalition and the Government of Canada. The agreement signed between the FRCC and the federal government in November 2005 would have seen the federal government hopper car fleet transferred to the Farmer Rail Car Coalition. The FRCC was committed to a payment of $203 million for the cars and had ensured that the maintaining of the fleet could and would be done at a competitive rate far less than the unaccounted-for costs of the railways.
The third report of the Standing Committee on Transport, on February 14, 2005, provided one of the key reasons why there had been a lengthy delay between the announcement by the previous federal government to dispose of the hopper car fleet in 1996 and the agreement with the FRCC in November 2005. It stated that “the railways had a right of first refusal to acquire the cars that did not expire until the summer of 2002”.
No action was possible until that arrangement lapsed. It was in a matter of months following that period that the federal government, in spite of less than enthusiastic support from within Transport Canada and continued railway opposition, had taken the final decision.
When it comes to Transport Canada, I have had the opportunity, in a previous life as President of the National Farmers Union, to deal with Transport Canada for some 30 years. Transport Canada has never failed in this country's history, in those 30 years at least, but to come down on the side of the railways as opposed to coming down on the side of the farmers. The previous minister of transport was willing to challenge Transport Canada and come up with a deal that worked for primary producers. The Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities over here in the so-called new government is selling out those primary producers and catering to big rail in the process.
That is not what we expect from a new government. We expect a new government to stand up for those with less power in this country. This new government in that regard has failed miserably and has really betrayed the farm community in terms of that deal that was signed by the previous government.
Before getting into the specifics of the issue, I would like to speak about accountability, something the government pretends is of importance. The railways, since the issue of the possible transfer of the hopper car fleet, have maintained one consistent position: complete and total opposition to any transfer or sale of the cars to the FRCC. Yet, the railways have never once, even to the Canadian Transportation Agency according to testimony before the agriculture committee, provided their costs for maintaining the hopper car fleet which had been in their control since the 1970s.
For the benefit of those who are not knowledgeable about this issue to a great extent, I want people to understand that the past federal government purchased hopper cars for the railways which the Government of Canada owned and controlled to a certain extent to provide the rolling stock in order to provide the capacity to move the grain out of the western prairie region because the railways were not providing the rolling stock in fact to do it. That is why it was necessary. It is the cars we are really talking about in this particular instance. As I said, the railways really did not provide the costs of maintaining that hopper car fleet which had been in their control since the 1970s.
A Canadian Transportation Agency representative at the agriculture committee stated that even though the CTA made serious efforts to work with the railways, the agency found that “--the railways do not collect detailed information with respect to the maintenance of the hopper cars, which made the assignment or study more difficult--”. That was said at the agriculture committee on May 16, 2006.
The members of the new government, specifically those from rural western Canada, have failed to protect the interests of their constituents. At a minimum, they should be able to stand in the House and state that the decision of the government to renege on the deal with the FRCC is supported by one set of simple facts: namely, that the railways can maintain the fleet of hopper cars at a rate which matches that of the FRCC. They have not and they cannot do that.
On May 4 the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities stated that the government's decision would allegedly benefit the farmers of western Canada due to the $2 per tonne rate reduction. The news release of course issued by the minister indicated that the rate reduction of $2 per tonne was a potential target. Really then, the $2 per tonne is not real. It is just potential. It may happen. There is no assurance to the western farm community that this reduction will in fact be made.
In an interview, however, with The Western Producer on May 11, the same Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities stated that “the reduction in rates would likely fall in the $1.50 to $2 range”. So even the minister himself is not consistent in terms of what he is saying the potential reduction might be.
The claim by the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities that farmers would realize an annual saving of $50 million is contradicted by his own news release and by his own statement to The Western Producer, but it is not unusual for the new government to be caught in contradictions. We have seen this from members in question period today. We see it every day. In fact, there is no industry which sees the contradictions as often as the agricultural industry.
During the election the Conservative leader left the impression that there was going to be immediate cash for farmers. Remember that last January and last spring? Did they get immediate cash for farmers? The Minister of Human Resources and Social Development says there was. There were moneys announced last November by the previous government and that is what is being paid out. There was less money in the budget than the previous government had paid out. There was no immediate cash for farmers from the government to this day other than what was announced by the previous government.
The minister may be talking about the options program but the options program is a blame the victim kind of program. Instead of compensating producers for low farm prices, Conservatives have come up with an options program for a farmer who has farmed for 40 years. Maybe HRDC is providing the skills development training program for farmers and they thought it was Agriculture Canada, but I can certainly see the bureaucrats of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada training a farmer who has farmed for 40 years to farm better. I can certainly see that because what the government is doing on the options program is blaming the victim. It is saying the farmer is losing money because his skills are poor. That is what the government is really saying.
May I remind the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development that the problem the farm community has is low commodity prices worldwide which are caused by subsidies by other countries around the world. Low commodity prices are what is wrong.
Just to sidetrack for a minute, the Minister of International Trade and the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food had the opportunity to be in Australia today to meet with the Cairns Group, the group that Canada was an original founding member of, at which meeting the United States and the European Union were going to argue the point that we need a WTO agreement in which there would be better market access and reduced export subsidies and to argue the points that would benefit Canadian farmers. Where were these two ministers? Sitting in the House here today and neglecting their responsibility to the farm community of this country.
When it comes to agriculture, I could go through a list of six items, but I want to deal specifically with Bill C-11. The fact is the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and the new government as a whole have failed miserably when it comes to dealing with the problems in the farm community.
The claim by the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities that farmers will realize an annual saving of $50 million is contradicted by his own news release. This means that the Government of Canada cannot stand by the figure it initially proclaimed as going to farmers in terms of a rate reduction and for this reason alone, these provisions of the bill do not merit support.
However, the FRCC has been more than forthcoming with respect to its position with respect to the costs of maintaining the fleet for producers, and this position has been supported by the findings of the CTA in a submission to Transport Canada on March 29, 2005. That document makes absolutely clear that the two major railways, Canadian National and Canadian Pacific, have been actively and intentionally overcharging, in other words gouging, farmers for more than a decade, and the government continues to support that gouging.
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
The member opposite asks who was in government. We made an agreement with the FRCC to prevent that gouging and the new government over there broke that agreement, violated that trust with western farmers and basically sold out to the big railways.
I would like to take this opportunity to read from this report, which incidentally would not have become public if it had not been for a reporter with the The Western Producer who obtained and published the report. The following are extracts from the report, sent by Neil Thurston, director of the rail economics directorate of the CTA, to Helena Borges, executive director of rail policy at Transport Canada. The report was in response to a Transport Canada request to the CTA “regarding the Agency staff’s assessment of CN and CP’s expenditures for the maintenance of the Government hopper car fleet in 2004”.
Based on the railway information, the CTA determined that maintenance costs on the hopper car fleet dedicated to grain transportation was $1,686 per car per year. Under the provisions of the revenue cap, the railways had been receiving $4,329 per car per year in maintenance costs.
There are currently more than 12,000 federal government hopper cars in service in western Canada. Members can do the math: 12,000 cars, actual cost $1,686, yet charging $4,329. Western farmers have been overcharged to the tune of over $30 million annually. The new government is going to allow those alleged overcharging costs to continue to go to the railways and continue to basically gouge farmers. The report I have referenced was tabled, reluctantly, by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food.
I would add that during the course of a meeting of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food on May 16, Mr. Sinclair Harrison, president of the FRCC, told the committee of additional Transport Canada reports, held in confidence, that support the position the FRCC has held for a number of years. Mr. Harrison stated:
At our request, Transport Canada commissioned a company called QGI, a consulting firm specializing in car inspections, to inspect approximately 1,000 of the 12,000 federal government cars, which is a representative sample. In our opinion, the confidential report prepared by QGI confirms FRCC's observation on the extent of programmed maintenance being deferred.
The dollar figure is in the report here and is in the hands of Transport Canada. Again, perhaps it should be released to this committee. The dollar figure put to the deficiencies in the cars, Transport Canada, and the FRCC agreed, was $35 million worth of work that has not been performed on these cars but was paid for.
The service not provided was purchased from the railways.
The facts are that there was an agreement by the previous government that would have benefited the farm community. The new government came to power and broke that agreement, which is what section 43 of Bill C-11 does. The government has sold out western farmers again to the big railway companies. It has a lot to answer for.
As I said, most of the bill is not new. It has the good points brought forward by the previous government but section 43 is doing what--
The Acting Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer
Questions and comments. The hon. member for Vegreville—Wainwright.
Leon Benoit Conservative Vegreville—Wainwright, AB
Mr. Speaker, the member for Malpeque has more nerve than most people in the House of Commons. For him to make the complaints that he has made against our government, which has been in office only a few months, when he was a member of a government that totally destroyed the transportation system for farmers in this country and who did very little that was positive for farmers and more things that hurt farmers, for him to stand in the House and say the things that he has just said is shocking.
He was a member of Parliament when the Liberal government put through three changes that affected transportation and affected farmers in such a negative way. The first was the privatization of CN Rail. It was not the privatization issue itself that was the problem, that was the right thing to do, but at the time that was being done many of our members were at committee and they were calling for the government to bring more competition into the system and to make improvements that would actually benefit farmers. The Liberal government refused to do those things.
The second change was the new transportation act that his government brought in. The Canada Transportation Act had a few things that improved the system but when we called for changes that would bring competition into the system and which would reduce prices for western farmers, it refused to do those things. As a result, things became worse for farmers instead of better when the Liberal government had a real opportunity.
Third was the elimination of the Crow benefit. The Liberal government took $800 million a year from western farmers and did nothing to improve the system. For the member to stand up and say the things that he said against our new government is shameful. The record of his government was atrocious and he should answer for that.
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Mr. Speaker, the fact is that when we look at the record in terms of support for the farm community, the new government does not have a leg to stand on. It does not compare at all with the previous government in terms of the positive things that we did for the farm community.
When it had the opportunity to do something positive, such as lowering freight costs and giving the farm community more control over transportation, what does it do in Bill C-11? It inserted section 43 which basically destroys the agreement that was established by the previous government and FRCC to give them some control over the transportation sector.
I would ask the member to go back to my remarks. The fact is that the biggest payments in Canadian history to primary producers came from the previous government. Were they enough? No, they were not. However, in its new budget the government did not even meet that standard even though Agriculture Canada's own figures indicated incomes were 16% lower.
I would suggest that perhaps the member from Vegreville should go back and look at his own comments on the Crow benefit and he would find some strange and startling statements by himself in terms of that debate.
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Mr. Speaker, if we were to look in Roget's Thesaurus for undermining infrastructure and destroying tracks across this country the words Brian Mulroney would come up, but I do not want to go into the deep, dark past.
I would like to ask the member about the issue of the hopper cars. I sat on the agriculture committee when this plan was brought forward, a plan that was viable, that worked and that seemed to have support everywhere except from the Conservative members on the committee. I was quite naive at the time thinking we were all working together, but it seemed more like a conniving cabal to undermine the transfer of the hopper car fleet.
In fact, the only area where I saw the Conservatives do more to undermine a fair deal for farmers was when we were attempting to find out why the packers got away with such outrageous profits in the worst farming crisis in Canadian history. I think it would be fair to say that the Conservatives on that committee would have taken a bullet for the packers.
I am trying to understand why they have taken such a position to undermine farmers' needs, especially in western Canada. We can look at the Wheat Board as another example.
I am wondering to myself whether this is a conspiracy, ideology or myopia. I am not sure what it is that drives the Conservative agenda to undermine farmers when we are dealing with the packers, when we are dealing with the farmer coalition and when we are dealing with the need to protect the farmer operated Wheat Board.
I would like to ask the hon. member what he thinks about that.
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Mr. Speaker, I know the member for Timmins—James Bay was a hard-working member of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food when he was there and he still remains very interested in the cause of primary producers in the country.
Simply put, he is right. What we saw in the agriculture committee a number of times when we were talking to the Farmer Rail Car Coalition, were the Conservative members on the committee, although I am not sure whether they were Alliance, Reform or CPC at that time but they are all one and the same, all from a neo-conservative party with neo-conservative ideas, being obstructionists in terms of giving farmers more power in terms of dealing with the railways.
It was a difficult issue because it was entrenched in the law that the railways did have a first right of refusal to acquire the cars and that did not expire until the summer of 2002. That moved the deadline back, although the intention of the previous government was announced to dispose of the fleet in 1996.
A simple answer to the question by the member for Timmins—James Bay is that the policies of the party opposite, the new government, are strictly based on ideology. That is what we are seeing with the new proposal it has now, which is to take marketing powers away from western producers by undermining the Canadian Wheat Board and taking the single desk authority away from the Canadian Wheat Board and doing it, if I might say, in violation of the Canadian Wheat Board Act itself.
