Charles Hubbard

[Address in Reply, October 5th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the member for an excellent reply to the Speech from the Throne. I welcome her to the House. Gatineau has an excellent representative here and her constituents can be very proud of the work that she has presented here today.

In our last budget we paid particular respect to the needs of cities by speaking of the GST portion that would be refunded to them. In the throne speech we have also indicated that municipalities and cities will get money back in terms of the gasoline tax. I know Gatineau will be affected by that.

Could the member please comment in terms of the attitude of the people in her riding toward the House and the government in offering greater assistance to our cities and smaller communities?

[Member for Vancouver Kingsway, May 11th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I had the pleasure of working closely with my colleague, the hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway, when we were both serving on the executive of the national Liberal caucus.

My colleague was first elected in 1997 as the member of Parliament for Vancouver Kingsway. She has brought to Parliament her vast experience in community service and the spirit of diversity. As a recipient of the Order of Canada, she also made history by becoming the first Asian female member of our Parliament.

As a true model in her nation she inspired young people from all over Canada. As the chair of the northern and western Liberal caucus she strongly voiced the important issues and concerns of western Canada. She courageously and persistently sought the attention and support of the Prime Minister, ministers, and other members of Parliament in our national caucus on behalf of western Canada.

I would like to pay special tribute for her seven years here as a member of Parliament on issues dealing with immigration, economics, finance, health, human rights, and education. I invite all my colleagues to join me in wishing her happiness and peace in her future endeavours.

[Petitions, March 26th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I have a petition on marriage.

The petitioners, in dealing with this after a long preamble, pray that Parliament pass legislation to recognize the institution of marriage in federal law as being a lifelong union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.

[Harrison McCain, March 22nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a great New Brunswicker and a great Canadian businessman, Harrison McCain, who passed away last week at the age of 76.

He was one of four brothers who grew up in Florenceville, New Brunswick. In 1956, they started what today is an international food processing enterprise that employs more than 18,000 people on four continents. Its annual sales exceed $6 billion. McCain's French Fries is a household word around the world.

Today, the small rural community of Florenceville, on the Saint John River, and the headquarters of his company, McCain Foods, mourns his passing.

On behalf of all members in the House, I extend my deepest sympathy to his entire family and to the community of Florenceville. Harrison McCain's success shows to all Canadians the product of hard work, vision and determination.

[Radiocommunication Act, February 17th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I will vote against that bill going to committee.

[Departmental Estimates, February 6th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, on the estimates, it has always been my impression from my years in the House that estimates go to committee and are subject to review by all parties in the committee. I do not think there is any great change that the member of the House has mentioned with this.

Could the government House leader further clarify for all members how estimates are dealt with, how they go to committee, how they are subjected to review and come to the House for approval?

[Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply, February 5th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot help but be enthused with the tremendous report that the hon. member has reflected from his own province. I see from the floor opposite the enthusiasm that members of other parties have toward the throne speech. I would like to comment briefly on health care which was part of the member's speech.

Across Canada we see a tremendous shortage of health care workers in the future. In my own province of New Brunswick there are many local concerns that we do not have general practitioners available to look after the many families in our province. Earlier this afternoon we heard a speech from an hon. member from Newfoundland who talked about education. Next week some medical students are coming to Ottawa to meet with us to discuss the future of training and education for future doctors in our country.

Would the hon. member comment briefly on the future of health care? What opportunities does he see to improve our health care system? Our government in the throne speech was certainly behind that initiative. We want to see a better health care service in which all people have ready access for their medical needs.

[Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, February 4th, 2004]

Mr. Chair, I certainly would agree with that. I believe this country produces enough vegetation so that we have good protein in our soy beans and so forth. It would improve our agricultural sector generally. We should get away from the concept of feeding parts of animals to other animals. I agree with that. It is only a suggestion to the minister but it is my position.

[Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, February 4th, 2004]

Mr. Chair, this certainly has been one of the problems in terms of the New Brunswick agricultural sector.

We did have a slaughter house in Moncton, New Brunswick called Hub, which did all types of slaughter, but it has recently moved toward hogs only. As a result, the provinces in Atlantic Canada, especially Prince Edward Island, are developing a new slaughter house which should be available some time later this year, probably toward the late fall. The ground has been opened, construction is underway, and it will be through a cooperative effort. Farmers are buying what they call hooks and by having hooks they will have the ability to send their animals for slaughter to this new slaughter house that will be located in P.E.I. It certainly will be advantageous for them and they are looking forward to that.

[Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, February 4th, 2004]

Mr. Chair, I listened with interest to the debate tonight. It is certainly a very difficult situation for many farmers across the country, not only for those in Newfoundland who are beyond midnight at our time here, but those from coast to coast.

As members of Parliament, we all share and hopefully can offer some suggestions that might improve the very difficult situation in which these farm families find themselves.

I will try in the very brief time I have available to provide a few statistics and also some suggestions that might be taken by our Department of Agriculture and by our minister.

It is encouraging that the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of International Trade were both here tonight to listen to the debate and hopefully become actively involved. I know the Minister of Agriculture already is, as was his predecessor. However, the situation is much greater probably than the sum of the solutions that have already been offered.

The dairy people, beef producers, the livestock producers and the businesses in the various communities are very much affected by these difficulties.

It is interesting to note that the first BSE problems developed in the United Kingdom back in 1986. Since then throughout the European community, country after country have found evidence and encountered situations where their livestock were affected by BSE. We also recognize that some cattle that came into Canada in the early 1990s from the United Kingdom were found to have BSE.

It is almost incredible that one cow in this country has created such turmoil and difficulty for Canada. In the weeks prior to the discovery of the mad cow in the slaughter house, which was brought to our attention, they were slaughtering some 70,000 animals a week. If we put that into a year's production, we find we have a lot of cattle going to our slaughter houses. After the discovery of the made cow, that went down to some 20,000 animals that were being slaughtered.

I am a bit disappointed tonight that in all our discussions we seem to say that it is a North American market. We know that of the livestock production and beef production around the world, the United States produces some 25% of the total beef production globally. Canadian production is some 3% so we are a very small part of that. We have to recognize that in terms of beef production and the consumption of beef around the globe, all of us, both Canadians and Americans, have to look at markets in Japan and in other countries that would be available to us.

When the minister went to Asia to try to open up those markets for us in terms of Japan, we certainly appreciated the fact that he was very active in trying to do so. In fact, with the Canadian export market of beef in the year 2003, 80% of our beef went to the United States. Mexico picked up some 7.7%, Japan some 3.3% and other Asian markets about 4.1%.

We certainly have to commend the Cattlemen's Association for its work along with our trade and industry minister in promoting Canadian beef throughout the globe.

We find that in terms of all of this, when we look at the problem that exists, Canada today we have some 14 million heads of cattle and with it we have a tremendous production each year.

We talked about the dairy industry. It has about one million cattle that are producing milk and calves each year. In the beef sector a little over 4.1 million beef animals were producing a calf each year. Therefore, we have an increased number of livestock that go into the farms and communities, and for which there needs to be a market.

I suggest what we have to do as a nation and as a government is look at three major things.

First, there is animal waste. I do not know how the Europeans and Canada go into what happened in this past year, but we have to avoid feeding animal waste to other livestock.

I believe we started the system of ruminants back in 1999, when we had a feed ban. However, we also have to look at what might happen in other sectors when bone meal and other animal parts are fed to cattle, hogs or poultry. We have to ensure that Canadian consumers and consumers around the world are sure we are producing a good product.

I say this to the minister tonight and I have said it before. In Europe nearly every animal is checked. When a carcass is put up, it has a stamp on it saying it is free from BSE. I know a tremendous amount of money would be involved, some $30 per animal. However, a dairyman today shipping a culled cow is getting probably about $150 for it, when last year he probably got $700 or $800. A $30 investment certainly would not be a tremendous burden upon that farmer or upon the slaughterhouse that is accepting the animal. That is the second thing we have to do.

The other thing we have to do is look at slaughter facilities. In eastern Canada especially, in my own province of New Brunswick, nearly every animal we try to send to market has to go to Quebec or to Guelph, Ontario. Last year many of the culled cows and some of our beef were going to Pennsylvania. We do not have enough slaughterhouse capacity in Canada, and we have to look at that fact. In terms of our cattlemen and our dairy groups, with incentives from our government, somehow we have to increase our slaughtering capacities.

We have a tremendous food inspection agency and we have always been very strong in terms of the products that we put into our food industry. We can show the world that Canadian beef, whether it goes to Japan or Europe, has been certified to be free of these diseases, just as the French do.

I will just finish with this. It is really a tremendous insult to our farmers in the beef sector, particularly A1 beef, when they are getting some 27% less this year than what they got a year ago, if we look at the CanFax figures of the past week. If we look at our dairy people who are shipping culled cows and if we look at the spread in terms of beef, the farmer quite often is getting about $1 a hundred weight. If we look at the retail sector in terms of the CanFax figures, it is about $500 a hundred weight. We have this tremendous spread between the retail value and what the farm groups get.

In closing, we really find that our Canadian people have great empathy with our Canadian farm community. In the last three generations, when we look back, nearly all of us came from a farm somewhere. We have a tremendous amount of support and I hope that tonight, as a result of our debate, we can encourage our industry to look forward to changes that will improve its capacity to develop a good economy. All of us as Canadians can certainly benefit from the very dedicated people that contribute so much to our Canadian agriculture.