House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2006, with 53% of the vote.
Fisheries December 10th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.
Seven months ago fisherman from the Seacow pond in Tignish were barred from fishing off their traditional grounds off MacLeod's Ledge.
What progress has been made over the past seven months to restore these historic grounds to the fishermen of western P.E.I.?
World Oyster Opening November 26th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate Mr. Patrick McMurray, who at the 48th annual World Oyster Opening Championship in Ireland, recently became the first Canadian to ever win the world title.
Mr. McMurray, from Toronto, qualified for the world championship by winning the Canadian championship this year at the Tyne Valley Oyster Festival, which is in my home village of Tyne Valley, where he needed only one minute and 32 seconds to open 18 Malpeque oysters. When he arrived at the world championship in Galway, Ireland, Mr. McMurray won by opening 30 European flat oysters in 3 minutes and 47 seconds, beating out national champions from 15 countries.
Finally, I commend Mr. McMurray for his desire to use his title to promote Canadian P.E.I. oysters. Islanders will be cheering him on at next year's championship in Tyne Valley.
Petitions November 26th, 2002
Madam Speaker, I have a number of petitions I would like to present on behalf of constituents from Summerside to Tignish who are concerned about non-embryonic stem cell research. They call upon Parliament to focus its legislative support on adult stem cell research to find cures and therapies necessary to treat the illnesses and diseases of suffering Canadians such as diabetes, muscular dystrophy and spinal cord injury.
Supply November 19th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, I would like to express my support for the principle behind the motion. Canadians with disabilities should be treated with more leniency than the current disability tax credit now provides. I congratulate the member for Halifax for bringing the motion before us.
The people we are talking about are some of the most vulnerable people in our society. While we have a duty to ensure that taxpayer money is well spent and that there is as little waste as possible in the system, surely we can prevent tax fraud while respecting the dignity of and understanding the special needs of our disabled citizens.
As a compassionate and caring government, we should acknowledge that the current method used to determine whether one is eligible for the tax credit needs improvement and should be reviewed and changed by the Minister of Finance.
I agree entirely with the member for Palliser. He touched upon the questions that are in the disability tax credit certificate for eligibility. The answers are yes or no and seem very restrictive. A lot of the situations with which we deal are not yes and no.
There is one question in particular which I would like to point out. It is can the patient dress himself or herself. The doctor then has to answer yes or no. If the doctor answers no, that the patient does not have the ability and if the patient falls or has a mishap while being dressed, then there is no leeway for the doctor to say that somebody should be supervising while a patient dresses. Pride sometimes comes into the act where patients will insist on dressing themselves, but they need a person either from the family or outside the family to be present just in case they have a mishap.
There is absolutely no discretion when they fill out this certificate application form for any amount of leniency at all.
Could the member for Palliser comment on the disability certificate application form and maybe suggest other areas where the certificate could be improved?
Canadian Coast Guard November 6th, 2002
Mr. Chairman, I am quite comfortable speaking from my own seat. I did not have to go up to the seat of the Leader of the Opposition to pretend that I am the Leader of the Opposition. He should have been over here opposite me. I know it will be many years before he has the chance to legitimately sit up there, but he will have to increase his numbers a lot more than they are now when his party is barely a party. One less seat and it would not be recognized as a party in the House.
The Conservatives get all excited about the great things they did when they were a government but they tripled the national debt. It went from two hundred and some billion dollars to over $700 billion. Now the member is taking credit for us getting them out of the hole. This is really unbelievable. It is new math, I believe.
One thing we can rely on our Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to do is to go to bat for the people for whom he is responsible in his department. I do not think anybody would undercut or second guess the minister in that regard.
We on this side of the House will be giving him every assistance possible through our Atlantic caucus or national caucus to assist him in his efforts to get more money for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and, in particular, the Coast Guard.
Canadian Coast Guard November 6th, 2002
Mr. Chairman, one place where the Coast Guard is spending some dollars is in Summerside, Prince Edward Island. A Canadian Coast Guard official said today in the local newspaper that the search and rescue station is a nice fit. It is in the process of building a search and rescue boat that is worth $2.5 million. One will be built also for the search and rescue station in Souris. A search and rescue station has been established for the Bay of Fundy and is situated in the City of Saint John. This is a brand new station, with brand new boats, and it is doing an excellent job in the Bay of Fundy.
Those services should be extended to the rest of Atlantic Canada. They should be extended to southwest Nova Scotia, to the new Coast Guard facility in Summerside and to a new boat in the Coast Guard facility in Souris. This is where resources are going. This is what we are doing to ensure that mariners who are in trouble will receive a quick response.
Canadian Coast Guard November 6th, 2002
Mr. Chairman, nobody said that the Coast Guard was fully funded or funded to the capacity that it could be. Neither is the military and probably neither are most of our government departments.
There is a problem. There was a program review. There was a reduction of 30% in the Coast Guard's budget. There were increased user fees. All these things had to be done because we had to deal with a $42 billion annual deficit and we did deal with it.
It was not the only service that had to tighten its belt, to find new, better ways and ways to cooperate with other agencies, whether provincial or private. It is great to come in as the opposition and say that there should be money for every possible thing under the sun, that everything that their constituents demand or say should be there, should automatically be there. That is not the way the world works.
If we are to stay in a surplus situation, we have to use our money as wisely as possible. We will have to use our cooperative resources as much as possible to avoid duplication, as we are with our armed forces, the RCMP and our navy. We are making do. We are doing a very good job. We have one of the better search and rescue, if not the best search and rescue service in the world. We are getting the job done. We should be proud of our service.
We should not be doing what those people over there are doing by trying to blow holes in it to get some brownie points from the people back home or those who may be pulling their strings.
Canadian Coast Guard November 6th, 2002
Mr. Chairman, the only bovine that I have heard bang here tonight is the member for Delta—South Richmond. The government has a very important service in the Canadian Coast Guard which works with our military and RCMP and that provides the best service possible under the circumstances. It is doing a very effective job.
To have its efforts and the risks it takes in its daily operations undermined and basically reduced to a statement by the hon. member does a great disservice to a very proud organization.
Canadian Coast Guard November 6th, 2002
Mr. Chairman, to begin my remarks I want to talk about some of the history of the Canadian Coast Guard and the role it plays and has played in Canadian life. I want to put these remarks in context.
I do not see very many people in the House right now, Mr. Chairman, with the exception of yourself and the member for Delta—South Richmond, who were around in 1994-95 when our government faced a $42 billion annual deficit. At that time we had what we called a program review, in which every department, with the exception of the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, I think, had 30% cut from its budget. This minister is living in clover compared to what his predecessors had to go through in 1994-95-96.
Those members over there were not around then. I think they came in as a result of some of the things we had to do, the hard decisions we had to make in those years, decisions on EI, Atlantic transportation subsidies, the elimination of the Holy Crow, et cetera. We dealt with it. The majority of us did survive. New members came in from the other provinces. We used to have every seat in Nova Scotia. We allowed some of the members from other parties to be elected and come to the House and represent their people.
Pretty soon those same members will be asking the government, because we have a surplus, for at least $5 billion more for health. It is a good idea. We should be putting more money into health. All the research says we should be putting more money into health and it is only $5 billion. Then the same people will say we will need $5 billion more for equipment for our armed forces. That is $10 billion more in spending right away. There goes our current surplus, but they will not stop there. They will continue to want services in every government department.
They have said they want to help the minister get some money for the Coast Guard. He has already been able to put back into the system over $100 million that was cut out in the bad old cutting days. If they really want to help the minister, they will have to moderate their demands for the other things they want. That would make our minister's job of getting money back into the Coast Guard much easier.
When the amalgamation occurred and the Coast Guard left the Department of Transportation and went into the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, I had the misfortune of being chair of the fisheries committee at that time. The member for Delta—South Richmond was one of the members of that committee back then. It was a pretty rough time trying to convince people that these moves had to be made. The Coast Guard and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans did not really jive perfectly. There was a lot of elbowing and a lot of territorial fighting between the two services, but we survived. We are surviving that. We are providing the services. The two services are getting more used to each other and getting back more money and resources. I certainly hope that the minister is successful in getting more resources from his cabinet colleagues to restore further money to the Canadian Coast Guard.
With that preamble, I would like to make a few more remarks. Even with the flaws that now exist with the Canadian Coast Guard, it is still one of the most effective and efficient marine search and rescue systems in the world. I will give members a little history. This system goes back to the time of Confederation, when the federal government accepted the responsibility to maintain lifeboat stations as detailed in the British North America Act of 1867.
Over the years, this system has greatly evolved and now includes the Royal Canadian Air Force and indeed all resources of the federal government that can be detached to the aid of persons in distress. Shortly after the second world war, the government appointed the Royal Canadian Air Force as the overall authority for commanding and controlling SAR missions in response to mariners in distress, while using all available government resources.
In 1962 the Canadian Coast Guard was created as a national institution, with its highest priority being to save mariners in distress. The Coast Guard has been saving lives ever since.
In 1976 to further increase the effectiveness and efficiency of Canada's search and rescue system, the government created the national search and rescue program, which is an inter-agency arrangement under the leadership of the Minister of National Defence, who is Canada's lead minister for search and rescue.
Planning is conducted through the interdepartmental committee on search and rescue to ensure the highest levels of cooperation between all agencies involved. This system is second to none in the world and the Canadian Coast Guard is a strong and key part of this search and rescue system. The safety of life at sea is the highest priority of the Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard, in cooperation with its partners such as the Canadian Forces, the volunteers of the Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary and others, responds to nearly 6,500 marine search and rescue incidents each year. Some of these incidents are distress situations where lives are in grave and imminent danger, while other incidents are less dramatic and may involve towing in a broken down vessel before the situation deteriorates into a distress.
Concerning the distress incidents, the Coast Guard, in cooperation with its partners, saves approximately 3,100 lives annually. Each year more than 97% of people in distress on Canadian waters are saved. This works out to be about eight lives a day, assisting a further 55 people each day in search and rescue missions. This record of success makes Canada's search and rescue system one of the most effective in the world. It is something of which all Canadians can be and are proud.
The number of lives that the Coast Guard saves is not an abstract number. These are real people who in many cases owe their lives to the Canadian Coast Guard's dedicated members.
If I may speak a little more specifically, I will give a few examples of where these people serve within the Canadian Coast Guard. At this very moment there are Coast Guard officers and crew aboard vessels and at shoreside operation centres providing a primary search and rescue coverage. This includes 31 lifeboat stations, 9 patrol vessels and one hovercraft unit which maintains the minimum half-hour standby posture or better, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We have 22 marine communications vessel traffic centres which monitor distress frequencies 24 and 7 and 5 rescue centres, three of which are jointly staffed with the Canadian Forces, which control all search and rescue missions under the authority of the Canadian Forces search and rescue regional commander.
Further to these search and rescue resources, it must be noted that any vessel within the entire fleet of 108 Coast Guard vessels which is at sea on another mission or available while secured alongside, is immediately tasked by a rescue centre to any search and rescue mission as required.
The Coast Guard, like all other government departments and agencies, has reduced its spending, but the CCG has done it in a careful manner, prioritizing its multiple missions and keeping search and rescue as the number one operational priority. As an example, I refer to the government's increased funding to the Coast Guard's search and rescue services as part of the program integrity funding initiative.
In 2000 the government injected $115.5 million in new funds into the Coast Guard to establish eight new lifeboat stations, increase the staff at our research centres, and to secure long term funding for our search and rescue patrol vessels. I am happy to report that two of these new lifeboat stations are in service and the remaining six will soon be in service. Further, the staffing levels have been increased in our rescue centres.
It is proof that the Government of Canada takes search and rescue services seriously. I can assure the House that in addition to further improvements in technology, regulations and operations, the CCG will continue to find ways to strengthen these services in the years ahead to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
In closing, I would like to restate that the men and women of the Canadian Coast Guard continue to deliver one of the most effective and highly respected search and rescue services in the world and that the Government of Canada remains committed to continuing its support of our search and rescue services.
Potato Industry October 30th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, the potato industry in Prince Edward Island is extremely important to the island's economy. It is its number one commodity and accounts for about one-third of Canada's potato production.
Two years ago the discovery of potato wart in a solitary P.E.I. field touched off a 10 month severe trade dispute, causing up to $30 million in lost U.S. and Canadian sales to the island's potato industry. Since that time P.E.I. has been chafing under severe export restrictions.
These restrictions are too severe. Both potato wart and the mop-top potato virus are soil borne and if potatoes are cleaned neither virus will spread. Neighbouring farms that are tested and found to be virus free should not have to face trade restrictions.
Canada and the United States need to work together to revise and refine our potato management plan. We need to protect potato producers from unfair trade restrictions while adopting a science based approach.