Bob Mills

[Royal Canadian Mounted Police, October 1st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, on Friday a constituent of mine called the RCMP asking for protection from her ex-husband. Two days later, Mrs. Fekete and her three year old son Alex were dead.

The RCMP is doing everything it can and the best job it can, but the Red Deer RCMP detachment is short-staffed because of a chronic lack of money for RCMP training. When will this government restore full funding to the RCMP?

[Petitions, September 26th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition, signed by 71 constituents, calls upon Parliament to pass legislation to recognize the institution of marriage in federal law as being the lifetime union of a man and a woman.

[Petitions, September 26th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions from my riding of Red Deer today.

The first group of 359 are petitioning the government to retain the protection in the Criminal Code for freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

[Amendments and Corrections Act, 2003, September 26th, 2003]

Not in my area, sir. They are a rare breed. They are an endangered species in some parts of the country.

The other problem is that those people are appointed by the Prime Minister. Again, we have this top down process where the Prime Minister has all of the power to name this particular group. I suppose it follows that he is going to name his friends.

Therefore we see people like Mr. McGuinty, people like Quebec lawyer Alfred Pilon, career politicians like Mike Harcourt and so on. As I say some of them do a very good job but the problem is there is not that broad base which really would be a better way to do it.

We are really saying that it should be based on a person's qualifications. It should be a wide range of people. It should be open and accountable. The budgeting should be done up front so we know exactly what these things are going to cost.

Let me relate a couple of experiences that I have had over the last 10 years with similar types of government boards and meetings. The first one was in Vancouver. I was there as a critic and sat at a table. It is very interesting because around that table of 10 people, nine of them were Liberals. Eight of them had been candidates who had lost in the previous election. They had come with their wives to Vancouver. They were staying in a five star hotel. They complained rather bitterly that they had been forced to come to the banquet because it really interfered with some of the other activities that they and their wives had planned to do while visiting Vancouver.

They had absolutely no interest in the topic of discussion. They had absolutely no concern for what it was about. They were on a two or three day paid junket to Vancouver. That was what it was all about. They were very clear and open. This was early in my political career and they probably thought I was one of them as well. It was interesting rather than to talk to listen to what they had to say.

They had a lot to say about what they expected. I recall one fellow saying, “If I run three times for the party, even if I lose I will get a really good appointment, so that is my motivation for running”. I would hope most people in the House had a better motivation than that for wanting to be a member of Parliament.

As well, I am pleased that we can debate the environment and speak about the Kyoto round table. That was very interesting. There was an invitation list primarily of people who supported the protocol.

The media were not allowed in. No one who was not on the list basically at the beginning was allowed in. Eventually I said that I was the official opposition critic for the environment and it would seem that maybe I should be there. I was advised by the bureaucrat I was talking to that they would see if I could come in but if I did come in, I could not talk, I could not ask questions and certainly they would not expect me to be politically partisan out in the coffee room.

It was a set up deal. It was a bunch of supporters who were out getting public opinion at 14 meetings across the country with a set list of invitees who were all on one side of the issue. There was no media allowed in and it was paid for by the Canadian taxpayer.

That is the problem with these round tables. They are not for the public. They are a way of rewarding political people for whether they run, whether they raise funds or whatever they do.

While the change in title from executive director to president is what Bill C-41 talks about, that is not the issue. Should we have round tables? Yes, I think it is good that the minister wants to hear from the Canadian public, from all of the interest groups on all sides of the issue, but I do not believe that is what the round table is all about. As a result obviously I think it is time that the Canadian public engaged and said “Look, if we are paying the bill, we want to be sure we are getting value for money. We don't particularly care whether you call him an executive director or a president. That is not the point”.

A good example would be a report that came out this week which was done by the University of Alberta and was commissioned by the Alberta Chamber of Commerce. It was a three or four month study. It was very in-depth. A lot of Canadians would have liked to have looked at all of those things. As the member for LaSalle—Émard has said, we need much more discussion. Canadians need to understand what it means.

The government says it will ask every Canadian to reduce by 20% and that it will pay $64 million per carbon credit. Of course, the plan is not totally in place and it really does not know. If it is like the REDI program, for every dollar that is spent on the environment, $4.35 will be spent on bureaucracy and administration. That is just an example of what happens.

The government does not engage with Canadians, that for $64 million per megatonne, it may reduce a maximum of 20 megatonnes. The forest fires in B.C. produced a 100 megatonnes. Our commitment is 240 and the government plan at very best would hit 170.

Would it not be better to engage Canadians and ask them what they really want for the environment? I think the answer would be, if we had that round table of all Canadians, that they want clean air. They want clean water. They want us to emphasize the smog days in Toronto. They want us to talk about the smog that one can literally chew in places along the border and in the Fraser Valley where the Americans are building power plants.

They want us to talk about those issues. They want that out in front where they can participate, not simply a bunch of political people getting together to be rewarded with a nice long weekend in Whistler, Banff, the Gatineaus or wherever. That is not what Canadians want to pay for. That is not what they should get.

While our party is supporting the bill and we are supporting the change in title of the executive director to president, we certainly would have a much better way of conducting national round tables on the environment than the way they are being done at present.

[Amendments and Corrections Act, 2003, September 26th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to Bill C-41. I will just go through the area that relates to the environment.

This omnibus bill does nothing substantial to the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy Act. It simply changes the title of the executive director to president. I would like to take this opportunity to talk about this national round table and what I feel it stands for and let Canadians know some of the problems with it.

First, I do not think the job title particularly matters. The current president, as he will now be called instead of executive director, is David McGuinty. That probably says quite a bit currently. It tells us who has to be named to the position. The person obviously has to be a good Liberal.

Like most publicly funded Liberal boards, there are a huge number of Liberal supporters on them. The national round table is no different. I am not saying that many of these people are not qualified; some of them do an excellent job. The problem is they have to be Liberals in order to be there. That is pretty much a major problem.

[The Environment, September 25th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, this week the University of Alberta released a study in which it said that Kyoto would dramatically increase the price of electricity and transportation, drive away billions of dollars in investment in the oil patch, cost the Canadian economy billions of dollars and we would be unable to reach our Kyoto targets.

Will the government replace the failed Kyoto plan with a made in Canada plan that will ensure Canadians have clean air and clean water?

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, September 19th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I think we should talk a little about what has just happened. We heard the member across describe the various legal things that caused this to happen. All of that sounded really good. We understand it and we could live with it, but in reality, and I will use my own riding as an example, public hearings were held and well over 20 briefs were presented by interested people from the riding of Red Deer.

Along with that, all the mayors and councillors put a motion before their councils. They all voted on the motion and unanimously said that for a number of good reasons they felt they should stay within the riding of Red Deer. We were within the numbers and so on.

In its deliberations the committee decided that 10 years from now there probably would be that much more growth in the city of Red Deer and it would be a riding unto itself. I did not think they were looking or supposed to be looking at 10 years from now. They were supposed to be looking at the year 2004.

The arguments put forward by these people had to do with it being a trading area; that the highways all go east and west to the city of Red Deer from the west country, from places like Rocky Mountain House, Nordegg and Caroline and those communities to the west of Red Deer. As well, they belong to the same hospital and medical unit, the David Thompson health unit, so all their medical needs are taken care of collectively.

The Red Deer College is in Rocky Mountain House and it deals with Red Deer and the students and professors interact. The social services of the province are delivered from the city of Red Deer to the circle around the community. The recreation facilities and so on in Red Deer are utilized by the people of the west country.

As well, Mr. Speaker, and you would understand this, the Rebels hockey team is highly supported by the people of the west country. Many of them are season ticket holders. The highway is good and it is easy to relate to the city of Red Deer.

The committee initially had ruled out a number of residents of the city of Red Deer on the east side. In fact, what was interesting was that where I live three sides was the constituency of Red Deer, but I was in the constituency of Drumheller. I am eight minutes from downtown Red Deer. They did rectify that but they did come up with a situation where they would exchange the east country for the west country around the city of Red Deer.

Most of the people in that east country also have dealings in Red Deer, so that was not a problem. The problem was that they took the people in the west and divided them into three different ridings, all of them not where the highways go, not where the health unit is and not in relationship to any of those communities.

It was then appealed before an all party committee in Ottawa and it was unanimously supported by the all party committee. They said that our arguments were strong. All the elected people, the mayors, the reeves, all those people sent letters and had motions with 100% support that this is what the riding of Red Deer should be like.

Then it was sent back to the committee in Edmonton. We must remember that these are unelected, unaccountable political appointments. These people, in their wisdom, these unelected, unaccountable political appointments, or hacks as I might call them, made a decision for the whole province of Alberta pretty much--and I know the riding of my colleague from Elk Island was totally eliminated--that they did not have to listen to elected, accountable members of Parliament from all parties on a committee here in Ottawa who said that the arguments were very reasonable and that they should go along with them, that in fact would not put us over the numbers, would not do anything.

I believe political mischief is going on whereby the government is taking a riding that is functional and working well, and all of a sudden is swapping all the people out west for all the people in the east. What kind of logic is there in that? This creates huge rural ridings which can take a member hours and hours to cover from north of Camrose down to south of Calgary.

It seems obvious to me that some of the urban ridings, such as mine primarily, could easily be larger and have more people than some of the widespread rural ridings.

Obviously, from Alberta's point of view, it is great that we are getting two more seats but I keep reminding everyone that two more seats for Alberta, two more seats for B.C. and three more seats for Ontario does not really equal everything out. It does not give the west much more representation unless I do not understand the math. Of course, the future prime minister says that will give the west a lot more voice here. I guess we gain by one but I am not sure in this place if that will make a difference, except on Tuesday night when it may have made a difference.

However the real thing is that here we have again an unelected and accountable group making the final decision on important issues, such as the boundaries of ridings. It affects people. It affects the way they live, the way they shop, the doctors they go to, the recreation they use and the social services they use. That is just wrong and someone should be looking at getting a non-partisan group to make these decisions.

[The Environment, June 11th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, obviously the future potential prime minister does not think there is any plan, so it is not just us. The government rolls out this dartboard of things with money for this and money for that. What that really leads to is patronage and corruption in the spending of this money.

I think we need to see exactly how this $1.7 billion will be spent, not this hodgepodge that the minister talks about.

[The Environment, June 11th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday in the industry committee the environment minister gave no details on the spending of $1.7 billion on climate change.

It is not just the opposition who are critical of the government not having an implementation plan. This past weekend the former finance minister said “We didn't have an adequate plan then and we don't have an adequate plan now”.

Why is the government forging ahead spending $1.7 billion when it does not even have a plan?

[Environment Week, June 5th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, like my colleague from the Bloc, we are glad to celebrate World Environment Day. Our environment is one of our greatest assets. It is our duty to be good stewards of our environment and to make certain that we do all we can to keep it healthy.

The government's report card would include many failures: smog days continue to grow in our cities; asthma cases rise yearly; boil water orders grow across Canada; no action on major transborder pollution issues which occur in southern Ontario and the Fraser Valley; invasive species increase in our great lakes; contaminated sites are not prioritized and no cleanup plan is in place; and sewage is dumped into our oceans in Victoria, Halifax and St. John's.

The Liberals, for all their talking about the importance of the environment, have done very little to help our environment. These issues are serious and must be dealt with soon. When our environment deteriorates, the health of our people deteriorate.

How much longer will the Liberals neglect our greatest asset? How much longer will they neglect what is good for the health of all Canadians?