Mike Scott

[Fisheries, November 18th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans defends his decision to open up the food fishery this year saying that it is based on scientific evidence. However, I have in my hand an internal DFO document written by the minister's own bureaucrat responsible for counting fish in Newfoundland. It reads: "I know of no subsequent scientific analysis that has updated the assessment of 2J-3KL stocks. I was therefore quite dismayed that a recreational food fishery will be allowed".

Now that we know that no scientific evidence exists to justify the food fishery in the largest fishing areas surrounding Newfoundland, why does the minister continue the crime of ravaging what is left of the Atlantic stocks simply to buy votes?

[British Columbia, November 18th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, it is time for a fresh start for the next tiger on the Pacific rim, British Columbia. But predicted growth for B.C. this year is a sum total of zero. This can be directly attributed to the Liberals' high tax, high regulation and big government attitude toward one of Canada's most economically successful provinces.

The government is choking one of the strongest regional economies in this country due to its unwillingness to listen and respond to the concerns of British Columbians. Generations of Liberals and Tories have sought to deny British Columbia its rightful status as an international trading power. They view B.C. as a hinterland which must fend for itself during the bad times and be exploited during the good times. Take from British Columbia and spend somewhere else.

British Columbians know that electing Reformers to the House of Commons in the next election is in their best interests: people who are committed to delivering tax relief and who have a vision of British Columbia as Canada's economic tiger, the next tiger of the Pacific rim.

[Speech From The Throne, November 1st, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, after listening to the member's intervention I am reminded of the immortal words of Forest Gump: "Blah, blah, blah, blah". That is all I have to say about that.

Throne speeches are an opportunity for the government to chart a course and lay out its plans for the country, for the people and for the government for the ensuing months.

Different kinds of thrones often produce different results. I am afraid that the Canadian people have received a vastly inferior product with this throne speech.

Let us examine the facts. The government talked about all the wonderful things it was going to do for Canada. It talked about all the wonderful things it was going to do for the coastal communities of Canada, for example. The reality is vastly different.

The government has made vicious cuts to essential services such as the coast guard, search and rescue, fish hatcheries and light stations, to name a few, in the pursuit of saving a small amount of money in comparison to total government spending.

In the case of fish hatcheries we are talking about $3 million to $4 million a year. In the case of light stations we are talking about $3 million a year. In the case of the coast guard we are talking about $7 million a year. That is the coast guard; not for aids to navigation, but search and rescue. Those are coast guard services that actually are there to prevent the loss of Canadian human life, mariners and fishermen on the high seas.

We are told that these services have to be cut. We cannot afford them any more. The government just does not have the money.

We agree that this country has a serious deficit and debt problem. However, we say that the places where the government ought to cut last is where the government is actually delivering a service in the field to Canadians.

I have told people in my riding that if they want to find out where the DFO office is in Ottawa, they should fly to Ottawa, take a cab, drive around the downtown core and when they find the nicest, biggest, shiniest ivory tower, get out of the cab and walk over to the front door. I guarantee they have just found the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

The building is full from the top to the bottom with bureaucrats. A whole floor is dedicated to communications. What is meant by communications? They are talking about spin doctors. The whole floor is designed to sell the minister's decisions to the Canadian people. That is what the government considers to be an essential service. It is not the coast guard boats that are out there to save and preserve Canadian lives during problems, storms and so on. No, that is not an essential service.

The government uses the throne speech in a despicable way. It tries to convince Canadians that it is actually concerned about their welfare. In reality it is more concerned about its own welfare and places that as a much higher priority than any of the other priorities it has.

Let us examine for a minute the fact that after all these cuts the Government of Canada turns around and gives an $87 million no interest loan to its corporate buddies over at Bombardier. If the people at Bombardier wanted my money as a taxpayer, could they not ask me for it? Could they not knock on my door and say: "We would like to have some money. We need to do some R and D. You are a Canadian citizen and we think you should contribute to this cause". They could but they do not. Do you know why they do not? Because I would tell them to go play in the traffic. I would tell them they do not need my money because they have $6 billion in assets. They are making millions of dollars in profits and there are Canadians who do need my money. I would tell them to get lost.

However, Bombardier does not have to come to me or to the taxpayers of Canada to get permission to steal my money. No, it comes to the government and gets permission to coerce money out of me and all of the other taxpayers across this country to support its corporate objectives.

When I was first elected and came here I was absolutely dumbfounded one day when I opened the Financial Post and read that the government had made a $60 million U.S. loan for the construction of an aluminum smelter in South Africa. Think about this for a minute. Canada is one of the leading producers of aluminum in the world. There are 10 smelters in Quebec. There is one world class smelter in my riding in Kitimat, British Columbia. Not only the company, but the people who work in those companies are all contributing to the tax base here. The government does not ask them: ``Do you think we should send $60 million to South Africa to build an aluminum smelter down there?'' No, it does not ask anyone; it just says it is doing it.

And what is SNC-Lavalin? Just another corporate buddy of the Liberal government. It is another corporation which happens to make hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to the Liberal Party.

When we look at the record of this government and consider its approach to issues, it does not take very long to come to the conclusion that the Liberal government will put the priorities and the interests of Canadians behind its own political interests every time out of the starting gate. Frankly, it is starting to really annoy me and a lot of other Canadians.

The Liberal red book is a Liberal dead book. The speech from the throne is nothing more than a pompous, self-inflated statement designed to mislead Canadians and has no real intent to serve their interests.

[Fisheries, November 1st, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, when the fisheries minister for Canada suggests that the Fraser had a record return this year, I wonder what he is smoking.

The legacy of the government is broken promise after broken promise. Outraged fishermen will not forget how the Prime Minister preferred to cut coast guard services from B.C. to the Gaspé to the east coast to pay for million dollar grants to rich corporations. Take from the poor and give to the rich, that is the Liberal way.

If the coastal communities of the Gaspé had given $170,000 to the Liberals in political donations would they have had their coast guard services cut?

[Fisheries, November 1st, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government says that it cares about coastal communities but let us look at the record.

The Liberals have cut back funds to search and rescue, fisheries surveillance and enforcement, TAGS benefits and fish hatcheries in British Columbia.

The Liberals have hurt coastal communities, not helped them. They say that taxpayers cannot afford these services any more, but they say that taxpayers can afford an $87 million corporate handout to Bombardier.

Why is the Prime Minister more concerned with the corporate welfare of multibillion dollar companies than the welfare and safety of our coastal communities?

[Committee Of The Whole, October 29th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, it is a well established fact that most governments are not defeated but in fact defeat themselves. Let us just think back to the Trudeau government. The Canadian people finally got tired of this arrogant, spend thrift government after 15 years and booted it out in 1984. When the people threw it out they turned to the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney. They said they would give that government a chance: "We are tired of the amount of overspending this government does, the fact that it does not consider the best interests of the Canadian people, and we are going to give the Progressive Conservative Party an opportunity".

The people gave the Conservatives a huge majority in 1984. They told the Mulroney government to clean up the mess. Mr. Mulroney and his government were only in power a short while before it became obvious that they were not going to do things much differently from the Liberal government before them. If anything, they were worse, if that is possible.

The result of nine years of the Mulroney government was that in 1993 the Canadian people were so absolutely fed up with the

Conservatives that they decided to get rid of it. And this government across the way, the Liberal Party, did not win that election; rather, the Conservative Party lost it. These people are sitting in government now almost by default. In getting to government, the Liberals offered Canadians a booklet of promises they refer to as the red book.

I knew a fellow in my riding who passed away some time ago. I knew him for a long time. I was in the construction business before I became a member of Parliament. I remember this fellow by the way he did business. He used to say: "I really like to do business with people I can shake hands with, look in the eye and feel that the commitments we make to one another are going to be respected and honoured without going to a lawyer and getting a seven page legal document drawn up so I can go back to court and enforce it. I like to do things on a handshake. I like to do things on the strength of people's words. Their word is their bond".

I always had a great deal of respect for that gentleman because I knew that I could go to him on a construction project, on a business deal, we could sit down and negotiate a deal. We could shake hands on it, without ever going to a lawyer, without ever having to rely on the systems in place to enforce agreements. I could sleep at night knowing that he would respect the agreement we had between us.

I wonder how my friend would view the Liberal Party on the strength of the book of promises it gave the Canadian people and on its performance.

Let us examine some of the promises that have been made. My colleagues in their earlier interventions highlighted a number of them, but I will talk about some of the promises in depth. This government campaigned-it started before the campaign-that it would scrap and abolish the GST. It did not say that it would try to deal with it, that it would try to find a replacement tax, that it would try to find a way to soften the blow for Canadians. The Liberals were unequivocal in their statements and in their promises: "We are going to scrap and abolish the GST. We are going to get rid of it".

That was a very ill advised promise to make, and I think many of them knew that at the time. Evidence that has come to light in the last few months reveals that there were advisers within the Liberal Party who said they should not make that promise, it was a dumb promise to make. I agree that it was a dumb promise to make but they went ahead and made it anyway and now they have to live with it.

What did the Liberals do? They came back three years later and said: "Sorry. First, we did not really mean we were going to scrap and abolish it. We just meant we were going to replace it. Maybe we did say that we were going to scrap and abolish it but we are sorry about that. We can't meet that promise. Canadians understand". Frankly, I do not think Canadians understand.

They understand that getting rid of the GST, put in place by Brian Mulroney and his government, is a very difficult thing to do. What they do not understand is why a political party made this a major plank in its election platform, in its bid to win Canadians' votes in the 1993 election then turned around and said "shucks folks, we made a mistake".

The Liberal government in its red book campaigned on a promise to reform MP pensions. Canadians from one end of this country to the other were livid when they came to understand the terms of the MP pension plan. Canadians were absolutely beside themselves. How is it that the richest pension plan in the private sector pays benefits on a scale of 2:1 and yet parliamentarians, politicians, can go to Ottawa for six years and collect a benefit package on a ratio of 7:1?

This government made a solemn promise to the Canadian people in its red book to reform the pension plan. It left no doubt in the voters' minds that the government did not mean it was going to tinker with it a little bit, that it was going to reduce it a little bit. It was made very plain that what it intended to do, what it was promising to do, was to get the MP pension in line with private sector pensions. Three years later we see that the government tinkered around a little and left it at that.

My colleagues, 51 Reform MPs, looked at the pension plan and said when they had an opportunity they were going to opt out. As a result, Mr. Speaker, all the MPs you see here tonight are not going to get an MP pension regardless of how long they serve in this Parliament.

With regard to the member for Beaver River, she had already qualified and was fully vested in the pension plan. If she had resigned and left office she would be collecting her pension the next day. Mr. Speaker, you and I both know that. Her pension was worth approximately $1.4 million.

It would have been easy to say: "We disagree with the MP pension plan but under the circumstances until we can form a government and actually change it ourselves we are all stuck going along with it. I do not agree with this but until we have an opportunity to change the system there is really not much we can do about it". No, she took the high road.

I ask every Canadian watching tonight to think about the integrity, the ethics, for somebody to turn around and walk away from $1.4 million simply because they know it is not right. This government could learn a lot from this lady from Beaver River. Obviously it has not.

This government campaigned and attacked the Reform Party: "The Reform Party is going to kill medicare. The Reform Party is out to gut medicare. Do not vote for Reform, they are bad people, they have no scruples when it comes to budget cutting, no scruples

when it comes to spending cuts. Reform is going to cut you out of medicare". Three years later the reality is the Liberal Party has done far more cutting in the area of medicare and education than the Reform Party ever proposed in its campaign in 1993.

When it comes to ethics the Liberal Party in the red book said: "We are going to restore Canadians faith in their government and their politicians. We are going to make Canadians feel good about politicians, about Ottawa and the federal government. We are going to restore integrity". Let us look at the record there.

Without tender, Liberal cabinet ministers hired consultants at hundreds of thousands of dollars. Is that ethical? It might be technically legal, but is it ethical?

Liberal junior cabinet ministers are flying around the world with a government credit card, on holidays purchasing clothes. Is that ethical? Then they say: "Oh, I am sorry. I am going to pay it back. It is okay because I meant to pay it back". It may be technically legal, although I question whether it is even technically legal. But it is a big stretch for anybody in this country to believe that it is ethical by anybody's standards. Yet this is the record of the government.

Let us examine the $87 million no interest loan to Bombardier. I cannot suggest that the fact that Bombardier made a $170,000 donation to the Liberal Party over the last three years was the reason it got the $87 million loan. What I will suggest is that there is a longstanding cosy relationship between Bombardier, SNC-Lavalin and the Liberal Party. It goes back many, many years. We know that. We also know that the Liberal Party defends this no interest loan by saying it is doing it in the interests of providing research and development.

In the same week that the government went to Montreal and announced the $87 million loan to Bombardier, it announced a $7 million slash in the coast guard budget in British Columbia and $30 million across the country. It announced that it did not have enough money to fund fish hatcheries in British Columbia. It announced that it would have to destaff light stations in British Columbia. Let us examine the cost of those three items alone.

Light stations in British Columbia cost $5 million a year. Destaffing them does not mean there is no cost. It means that the cost will be reduced by about $3 million. So it is saving about $3 million by destaffing light stations, maybe.

The cuts to the coast guard are about $7 million a year. I assure the House that the coast guard presence in British Columbia was razor thin prior to the cuts being made. The search and rescue capability of the coast guard on the north coast is virtually non-existent. I do not know how many fishermen I talked to who fish out of Masset, Prince Rupert and Port Simpson, who tell me that they are sure happy that the American coast guard is not far away because that is who they rely on to pick them out of the water if their boats ever go down. It is not the Canadian coast guard. There is no presence capable of doing that for Canadians. And what is the government doing? It is cutting more.

The government has destaffed light stations and has cut money from the budget of the Canadian coast guard, $7 million, in the same week it announced the $87 million loan to Bombardier.

The Liberals said they had to cut back on the funding of fish hatcheries in British Columbia. In the fall last year they announced they were going to cut $4 million out of the budget. Thankfully, there was a huge amount of pressure from elected representatives and from the people of British Columbia in the face of the fisheries minister saying they had to downsize the fleet in British Columbia because there were too many boats chasing too few fish, the Mifflin plan. Then in the same breath he said that by the way, at the same time they were going to cut back the funding to hatcheries.

In the case of the community of Kitimat where I live, there is a world class fish hatchery which is extremely productive. It costs the Canadian taxpayers about $850,000 a year to own and run that hatchery. But no, the government had to cut that. Maybe not specifically that hatchery. We do not know which hatcheries because they were never announced. The Liberals did not go ahead with the cutback in 1996 but we are now told it is back on the books for 1997.

The people of British Columbia are losing valuable and in some cases essential services as a result of government cutbacks. Let us not forget that British Columbia is a net contributor to this federation and it has been for a long time. It puts more money in than it takes out every year. Then the government turns around and punishes the people of British Columbia and at the same time gives an $87 million interest free loan to Bombardier. Bombardier is a company that has accepted $1.2 billion in corporate welfare over the last 15 years.

That kind of announcement does not play too badly in Ottawa or in Montreal, but if we talk to the men and women on the street in British Columbia we will find that their blood is boiling. The people of British Columbia have suffered government cutbacks. They have seen the government make a loan to a company which has made hundreds of millions of dollars in profit in the last several years. It is one of the wealthiest corporations in Canada. It has billions of dollars in fixed assets. The people of British Columbia have lost their faith in the government's commitment to restore ethics and integrity.

The government also promised in the red book to appoint deputy speakers from the opposition benches. It is another promise that is going by the wayside.

The premier of British Columbia set up a forest renewal fund two years ago. He promised the people of British Columbia that he would under no circumstances touch the fund. It was going to be there for silviculture, for the restoration of B.C. forests and for no other purpose. They are now dipping into that fund because there is a big budget shortfall.

I was interviewed recently by an announcer in northern B.C. who said: "I suppose this is probably good news for you". He was thinking cynically that anything which tarnishes the NDP will help me in my bid to be re-elected. I said: "On the surface it appears that way. Yes, it may as a result tarnish the NDP and make my re-election a little easier, but in the long run it hurts me". It hurts anybody who runs for public office in Canada because it is yet again a politician who is not keeping his promise, who is not ethical and who is not prepared to act with integrity. That is what we have with this government.

I started out by saying that governments usually are not defeated, that they defeat themselves. This government and this Prime Minister are so afraid right now that they have to put out memos to their supporters across the country trying to counsel their friends on how to slander and libel the Reform Party of Canada. That is how concerned they are about the position they are in. I know that their polling numbers do not look very bad right now, but I believe their support is a mile wide and an inch deep. If it is an inch deep, we are bailing out right now and it will not be an inch deep by the time the next election rolls around.

[Committee Of The Whole, October 28th, 1996]

To look at the Liberal Party.

[Fisheries, October 22nd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, this was not a loan. The government has disclosed that it made $1.7 million in non-repayable TAGS contributions to Bombardier in 1988 and 1993. There was not a TAGS program in these years. In fact, this Liberal program only came into existence in 1994.

Can the minister explain why $1.7 million in retroactive TAGS payments were made to Bombardier many years before there was actually even a TAGS program?

[Fisheries, October 22nd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, look who is robbing the poor to pay the rich. Devastated fishermen in Atlantic Canada were appalled to learn that the government has siphoned $1.7 million of TAGS money to give to its friends at Bombardier Incorporated.

Can the Minister for Human Resources Development explain to the House and these fishermen how giving $1.7 million of their TAGS money to Bombardier Incorporated, a manufacturing company located in central Canada, is going to help the devastated Atlantic cod fishery?

[Petitions, October 21st, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to table a petition containing 76 signatures on behalf of petitioners in the community of Terrace in my riding.

The petition reads as follows: We the undersigned citizens of Canada draw the attention of the House to the following: whereas, the majority of Canadians believe that the justice system in Canada is not fair and the system does not demand that criminals pay for their crimes and, whereas we would like to see an end to plea bargaining and life sentences, therefore, your petitioners pray and request that Parliament recognize the need for change within the justice system to work to put the rights of the victim ahead of those of the criminal.