Brian Fitzpatrick

[Tlicho Land Claims and Self-Government Act, December 6th, 2004]

Madam Speaker, I have been in the House since the year 2000 and there have been things that the federal government has done in the area of foreign affairs when there has been absolutely no consultation with anybody in the opposition or with this Parliament. They are done in the Prime Minister's Office or in cabinet and so on and that is the end of it.

There are over 600 first nations communities across the country. There are 10 provinces. There are large communities across the country, communities of 3,500 people and larger.

Is the parliamentary secretary suggesting that the precedent being created here in consulting a community of 3,500 people on matters of foreign affairs will become a kind of template for dealing with 10 provinces, the opposition parties and the 600-plus other first nations communities across the country?

What kind of massive bureaucracy is the Liberal government going to create if we follow that path in conducting foreign affairs? I really question the wisdom of this. It could be a bureaucratic nightmare if we follow this path.

I asked this question earlier today, but I did not get anywhere close to getting an answer to the question. I would give the parliamentary secretary an opportunity to outline how we are going to create a framework in this country to deal with all these communities across Canada and consult with them every time this country wants to conduct foreign policy.

[Tlicho Land Claims and Self-Government Act, December 6th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am certainly not an expert on this agreement so I rely on advice from the government spokesperson.

I read the Auditor General's report about the gap between aboriginal youth on our reserves in Canada and the non-aboriginal community. From the way I read it, the gap is getting wider, not closer. Obviously, one way of improving the lives of first nations people, long term, medium term and the short term, is through education. It is very discouraging to see the gap getting worse, not better.

We can all talk about objectives and where we want to go, but obviously we have not done that in this area. The system has failed aboriginal people. The Auditor General's report confirmed that whole aspect.

What does the treaty do for the educational needs of aboriginal people in the territories? Are specifics in the agreement to ensure that objectives are met rather than just stated. Could the member enlighten me on what is innovative or different about the treaty in the delivery of educational services to aboriginal people?

[Tlicho Land Claims and Self-Government Act, December 6th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, this question has twigged my curiosity. It is my understanding that we have over 600 first nations communities across Canada. We have provinces and territories and lots of communities across the country.

Is this a signal from the government that before it embarks on carrying out foreign policy or entering into treaties, it will consult with all of these communities to determine whether there will be any adverse effect on those communities or provinces or those other 600 first nations communities across the country? If the answer is yes to that, what kind of bureaucracy does the government intend to create to deal with something along that line?

[Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, November 29th, 2004]

I do not know. I wondered about that. Why would the government want to cut that one? When the judges independence was threatened, the government could not get there fast enough to pass legislation to set up a mechanism to ensure that judges would get increases. The judges got an 11%. increase. However, with the Auditor General, someone who needs independence just as much as the courts do, the government has no problem with a 15% reduction for the Auditor General.

I guess the government does not want to hear any more about EI funds, or HRDC boondoggles, or the gun registry or goodness knows what else is in this report. If it restricts the funding, the report will be shorter and we will not know what is going on in government. That is accountability? That is fiscal responsibility? Shame on that kind of comment. The government is not close to being fiscally accountable or responsible.

[Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, November 29th, 2004]

Madam Speaker, I happened to be reading through the report of the Auditor General of Canada. It seems we might classify this as a report card on the fiscal responsibility of the government. I made some notes: a billion to two billion dollars shot on the gun registry; a billion dollars wasted on the HRDC boondoggle; and goodness know how many hundreds of million of dollars on the sponsorship program. Mr. Justice Gomery will get to the root of that and we will get a total picture eventually, if we do not get any more interference from the member opposite.

There are two things in the report. The gap between aboriginal children on the reserves and the rest of the population has widened. The indicators of drug abuse under the drug plans are serious. The problem is triple what it was in 2000. The government is spending more money, but the results are poorer.

The thing that really takes the cake is $46 billion put into a fictional account, the EI fund. I say fictional because it does not exist. The government has taken that money from overtaxed Canadians, from workers and their employers and I do not know, but perhaps it has blown on the gun registry or the HRDC boondoggle or some of these other events. It is not there. It shows up in papers as an account, but there is no money in it. If the country heads into a recession or a slowdown where the unemployment figures go up, the government does not have a fund to take care of that.

The report card by the Auditor General is not a very good picture. In grade school I think most people would probably grade the programs I have just identified as an F minus.

The towns, cities and rural municipalities with which I deal are much more fiscally responsible with the dollars they manage than anyone in the government, by a mile and a half. I would even say the NDP government, which is an awful admission for me in the province of Saskatchewan, is even more fiscally responsible than that outfit over there.

I do not think any province or municipality has to take lectures from anyone on that side of the House about fiscal responsibility. There is a damning indictment of the government and its mismanagement of our finances from the Auditor General. What I find really amazing is this. Of all the government departments we have in Ottawa, what department did Treasury Board propose to reduce by 15%? The Auditor General's department.

[Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, November 29th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to make some comments about the Prime Minister. When he was in Newfoundland and Labrador, he made a solemn commitment to the people that the government would remove non-renewable resources form that formula, and a bunch of huffing and puffing went with it. When he came to Saskatchewan, which has the same sort of problem, perhaps even more serious than Newfoundland and Labrador, during the election campaign, he and his finance minister said that this was something the government would have to study. However, there were no details committed at all.

That election campaign was full of those kinds of promises. They would go to one area and promise one thing, then go to another area and not even say anything remotely close to the same thing. The one difference is he had a chance to get Liberal MPs elected in Newfoundland and Labrador. However, in Saskatchewan there was not a light at either end of the tunnel in 13 out of 14 ridings. Why would they make that kind of promise in Saskatchewan. When the election was over, he broke his promises.

I have a comment that I want to make. The godfather of equalization payments is a professor from the U.S. by the name of Buchanan. Mr. Trudeau employed his wisdom to set up regional development and to come in with these ideas of equalization. He now is a huge critic of these Canadian programs, He has said that they have been a failure. He points to a couple of very good examples.

In 1986 Ireland had an unemployment rate of 17% and its per capita income was half of the Canadian standard. Today, Ireland has a 4% unemployment rate. People are going to Ireland from all over the world and investing there. Its standard of living is not only higher than Canada's, it is well above the EU average.

Ireland went a totally different way than what we did in this country. Our have not provinces are still the same have not provinces that we had when Mr. Trudeau thought this was such a great idea.

Another example that he uses is the State of Georgia. In 1970 the State of Georgia had a standard of living which was 70% of the U.S. average. Birmingham, Alabama was a bigger city than Atlanta, Georgia. Today Georgia has a standard of living which is 15% above the national average and Atlanta is the hub of the entire U.S. southeast. It is the major centre of that area and a far bigger place than Birmingham, Alabama.

Those sorts of things are not happening here.The Irish example and the Georgia example are not happening in Saskatchewan. Mr. Buchanan has said that his own proposals for equalization and regional development have failed Canada. The same provinces that were haves when he proposed this are still the have provinces and the have nots provinces are still the have nots. His argument is that rather than even trying to converge or get closer to the haves, the gap in many ways is wider.

I guess this is something the Liberal government, which hatched all these programs, has failed to ever address. Maybe at some point in this country's history we will have to seriously re-evaluate the effectiveness of these programs and see if there is not a new and better way of doing things, and maybe listen to people like Mr. Buchanan.

[Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, November 29th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to comment about this panel of experts as well. I had the opportunity to speak to some of the NDP members or people tied with the NDP government in Saskatchewan and I encouraged them to pick some experts to put on that panel who really understood the problems of non-renewable resources. However they told me that the instructions they had received from the federal Liberal government was that it did not want any experts who had preconceived ideas on this subject. In other words, it wanted experts that knew nothing about the topic.

To me experts are people who have studied something, understand it very well and have some well thought out ideas on the matter, but apparently that is not what the government wants. It wants people who do not know anything about the issue to be on the panel of experts, which is quite amazing.

I can think of Mr. Mansell at the University of Calgary who would be an excellent person to have on the panel. Brian Crowley from the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies would be an excellent person to have on that panel. Mr. Courchesne at Queen's University would also be an excellent person to have on that panel. They have all spent a lot of time studying this formula and criticizing the defects in it, but I doubt whether any of these people will be appointed to the panel because they have preconceived ideas on the topic.

The sort of sentiment here in Ottawa is that things should be controlled and run out of Ottawa because everyone in Ottawa knows best. I have the suspicion that what would really trouble the centralists, the Trudeau types of people who wanted everything run out of Ottawa, is that it would be dangerous if a province like Newfoundland developed its non-renewable resources and became an economic powerhouse in Atlantic Canada, became a true major have province, a place for investment where people could go, and a collection point for economic activity.

The people of the Trudeau centralist idea of government would find that whole notion dangerous and would not want it to happen. They would not want people to get on their own two feet, really be in control of their own destiny and maximize all their abilities and talents in that region.

I wonder if the member would be able to respond to that kind of concern.

[Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, November 29th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I have a comment. The formula is there to determine the fiscal capacity of the provinces. I would suggest to the member who just spoke, that the formula is kind of like using a barometer to measure the temperature outside. It is an inaccurate device.

I want to give an example. Over the past 10 years, the province of Manitoba has received on average $1.1 billion a year in equalization payments. The province of Saskatchewan, which has the same population and sized economy, has received on average $300 million a year. If we cranked out the numbers, the best indicator internationally to measure the standard of living is to take the GDP, divide it by the number of people in that country or province, and come up with a per capita income. Guess what the difference was on per capita income for that 10 year period between the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. It was roughly $1,000, give or take a few dollars, in favour of Manitoba. Saskatchewan receives $800 million less a year than Manitoba.

Now the government and the Minister of Finance declare Saskatchewan as a have province. I have a lot of problems with that. The waiting lists in Saskatchewan for health care are double the national average. The MRI wait is 25 weeks, where in some provinces the wait period is six or seven weeks. The infrastructure in that province is falling apart before our eyes. There is only one other province than Saskatchewan that loses a higher percentage of its young people on an annual basis. They are leaving in droves. The university is a factory for students to go to other provinces to pursue their careers.

As a person who lives in Saskatchewan, to say that Saskatchewan has reached a have status is a joke. Saskatchewan has major fiscal problems. If it were not for royalties from non-renewable resources, Saskatchewan's tax base would be just about non-existent. Finding net taxpayers would be a challenging job.

I will mention something else. I have gone through the formula. Four or five major academic people across the country have looked at that formula and have condemned the emphasis on non-renewable resources for determining fiscal capacity. At least five or six very knowledgeable academic people could give us a dozen reasons why that should not be in the formula. With 13 components out of 33 tax bases, they are focused on non-renewable resources.

If the government would just listen to what the Conservative Party proposed in the last federal election, which was to go to a ten province formula and phase out non-renewable resources, the Prime Minister would not have the fiasco he has in Atlantic Canada nor would he have the fight with the premier in that province. The problem would be addressed. As far as I am concerned, what is going on in Saskatchewan is a temporary buy-off for that province, which really got his back against the wall, instead of seriously addressing the major problem we have in the country.

I am sure the member is a very knowledgeable person. Could advise the House how much money the province of Manitoba is receiving in fiscal years 2004-05 and in the 2005-06? What is the exact amount is so I can compare it to our Saskatchewan figures?

[Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Act, November 22nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I took note of the member's comments about skills development and the EI program. The government likes to brag about its performance in so many areas, and economic indicators, but one area that I think is sadly lacking compared to our chief competitors is our unemployment rate.

The unemployment rate in this country is something like 7.3%. The unemployment rate in the United States is 5.3%. Also, the government should be taking a good hard look at the success story of Ireland. With the economic policies the Irish have there, the unemployment rate is something in the order of 4%.

If I understand it correctly, if we went from 7.3% unemployment to only 4% unemployment, we are talking about 500,000 to 600,000 people, the population of Winnipeg, Manitoba, a gigantic number of people.

I would like this member to try to explain to me how this government has had a real problem getting its unemployment rates down to the levels that we see in the United States and Ireland. Maybe he can explain what structural problems we have in this country such that we cannot get it lower.

[Office of the Auditor General, November 19th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, instead of reading newspaper accounts, the minister should be reading the records from the committee yesterday.

During the last election the Conservative Party proposed increasing the Auditor General's budget by $50 million. What is the member's solution to the problem, the Liberal position? It is to reduce the budget by 15%. That is appalling.

What is the Liberal government afraid of? Is it afraid the Auditor General will find more Liberal corruption? Is it afraid that we will find more billion dollar boondoggles, more gun registry scandals and more sponsorship scandals?