Reg Alcock

[Borrowing Authority Act, 1996-97, March 21st, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, it has been interesting for me as a new member in this House to watch the business of budget creation.

I spent some time in the early eighties as a senior bureaucrat in the provincial Government of Manitoba and then some five years in the provincial legislature as the finance critic. I have participated in the creation of budgets from the perspective of a bureaucrat. I have participated in budgets from the perspective of a critic sitting on the opposite side of the House. For these last couple of years I have had the opportunity to participate as a backbencher of the governing party.

I would like to congratulate the Minister of Finance for his unprecedented openness in the budget development process. Never in my experience has a Minister of Finance been so willing to consult, to open the process up, to invite people in and to sincerely listen to and respond to their concerns.

After the last budget I sent out a letter to a cross-section of people in my riding which included individuals from a large university, small and large businesses, social services and labour. I asked them to take up the finance minister's challenge. He said to us at the end of the budget process last year that he would be as open to us as he could possibly be, that he would invite as many of us as possible into the process of examining possibilities and developing new approaches to the finances of this country.

I invited a large number of people from across Canada into those very discussions. We set up a series of working groups. We first spent some time looking at issues they wanted the finance minister and government to focus on. Over time we began to do more detailed research on the issues and worked them down. This fall we came up with a series of proposals which we presented to the Minister of Finance.

In my role as chair of the social policy committee of caucus I went through a similar process with a series of working groups in our own caucus. I want to reflect on some of that work today.

The people in my riding of Winnipeg South said this to the Minister of Finance: "Continue to meet your targets. We know it is tough. The deficit process has been a difficult one. It is not easy. Nobody likes the process of cutting but we believe that it is producing better decisions, more efficient decisions and in the end the pain will be worth it". That is exactly what we are beginning to experience as confidence has increased in the finance minister's ability to manage the financial affairs of the country.

The terrible fluctuations in interest rates, fluctuations in the dollar and the uncertainty about investment decisions has begun to diminish and we see a much more stable, secure investment climate for the people who are confronting those decisions in their lives today.

All of the indicators are moving in the right direction. The feedback response and the analysis of the course set and maintained by the finance minister has been extremely positive. I can tell the finance minister and the House that it meets with the complete approval of the people in my constituency.

There were some areas of concern. Seniors had a serious concern at the time of discussions on the reform of the pension program. I had a number of groups working on it, a number of people consulting with me on it. People were caught because they could see from the tables and the research produced that there was a serious problem with the Canada pension plan. They knew there were some serious inequities in the distribution of support under the OAS and the GIS. They had that information.

People who were on income support programs, people who were retired and receiving benefits or people who were close to retirement and close to receiving benefits were extremely concerned. These were people with very limited options. They had set their course, they had made their plans and to have those programs changed suddenly was very threatening and very frightening.

They have reacted to the finance minister's decisions with great support and great relief. He and the government are committing to no change in the benefit structure for people who are currently receiving pensions. The government has agreed to involve seniors in a process of change that will take some years. The idea that people can alter their planning as they approach their retirement has been received with great support and great appreciation.

Another great concern was the threat of very large cuts to social programs, particularly the plan to combine the EPF health, the EPF post-secondary education and the Canada assistance plan into the Canada health and social transfer. People understand we have to deal with the major expenditure programs in order to get a deficit of our magnitude under control. They know and accept that. There was a great deal of concern about the size of the cuts and what the eventual outcome would be.

There was much work done within the caucus committee and a tremendous amount of time put into this by the advisory committee in my riding. It came forward with a proposal much like the one that came out of the finance committee, that a floor be placed on these payments which could be maintained until such time as the deficit could be brought to zero and we could start to reinvest in health care.

We are delighted the finance minister has chosen to take that route. Not only are we delighted he has chosen to accept the recommendations to establish a floor but that he has actually set a higher floor than we thought was possible. People are absolutely delighted that we will continue to play a role in medicare, post-secondary education and social programs in this country into the foreseeable future and that now the real work has begun on determining the national standards and principles in terms of providing a true social safety net for all Canadians.

Another area provoked a lot of debate in my riding because I have a very large university, the University of Manitoba, one of the best universities in Canada located fully within the boundaries of my riding. Like all universities it is undergoing tremendous difficulty right now as it works to restructure its programming, upgrade its style of teaching and its technology. There is a tremendous amount of pressure on universities across the country.

The pressure is very difficult to understand in some ways when we think that Canada is at the forefront of countries in transition to becoming knowledge based economies. By their very existence universities are major producers of knowledge. They are net generators of new ideas, of information, of new approaches and challenges to the ways in which we think of doing business.

Yet those very institutions that are so vital to our growth and our continued economic health are currently under tremendous pressure at all levels. Students have felt the effects of many increases in their fees to the point where people are beginning to make decisions not to go to university because of the costs. The pressure from new technologies and the questions about the style, the nature and the goals of training have put enormous pressure on the faculties of universities across the country.

They have been looking to us, asking us what our policy is on post-secondary education. They note that in the red book on page 111, which all members have memorized by this point, the second largest cash commitment we made was $1 billion in new money in the area of research and development. They have also noticed that in the budgets of the past two years, the first two years of this government, did not live up to that commitment. Not only did we not make those new investments, but we began to cut support for science research in Canada.

I am delighted and certainly the people in my riding are delighted to see the government begin to act upon this very important promise. The decisions on research and development, the support for students, the greater involvement of business and universities in the economic life of this country are decisions that are broadly welcomed.

Finally, the decisions around youth job creation were central to the discussions I had in my riding. People wanted to see us give more varied opportunities and options to youth in their search for employment and opportunities for wealth and security.

The decisions the finance minister finally made, which are reflected in the budget in terms of student aid, summer help and entry into the labour market, have been broadly welcomed. By and large, the constituents of Winnipeg South have been delighted by

the budget. We wish the finance minister well and look forward to working with him on the next one.

[Tyler Keith, March 11th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, last weekend at the Max Bell Centre at the University of Manitoba a young man came second in an 800-metre race.

This would not be such a remarkable event except for the fact that less than a year ago this young man was a star hurdler. He was run off the road in an act of violence and rendered a paraplegic. Rather than giving up, he has worked very hard training over this past year. After entering his first wheelchair race last week, he came second.

We are all very proud of Tyler Keith and we hope he keeps it up.

[The Economy, March 5th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, we on this side of the House are very concerned about the deficit.

I would like to ask the Minister of Finance if he will meet his deficit target for this year and how far into his contingency fund will he have to go to do so?

[Business Of The House, March 1st, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his point. I listened and considered carefully what he said until his last couple of sentences. If he will permit me I will start there.

The Prime Minister of this country and this government does not go into western Canada and say one thing then go into eastern Canada, Quebec or any other place and say something else. That is a fact. The Prime Minister has not been afraid to take any battle anywhere in this country at any time in the some 30 years he has been in this House. I have seen him do it over and over and over again. I very strenuously reject what the member has suggested.

The fact is there are laws and there are rules and there are ways of procedure in this House that we respect. The member is simply not going to gerrymander his way out of that. The fact is whether I like it or not, the Bloc is the official opposition. We heard a very lengthy ruling by the Speaker who considered that question very carefully. That is a fact.

Having established that, let us get on with the business of the House. The tabling of a list of committee members is a trivial point. How does preventing the tabling of the list of committee members by one day further his cause or make him look any more intelligent or make his debate seem any more fulsome? If he wants to make the point about vice-chairs, make it. He should stand up in this House every time. On the many, many occasions he has to debate substantive issues he should stand up in the House and make that point. He should stand up in question period and ask those questions. He should make his case.

I am sure every member knows, particularly every western member, and I am sure all the members sitting there right now know the difficulty of finding a life within the travel and the time we have to spend here. So let us spend the time here to its maximum value. Let us not waste it.

I do not want to take an extra day away from my family and my children because somebody has played around with a procedural motion, but I will do it. I will come into this House to debate any issue I possibly can, but let us not play those games. Members of the Reform Party came into this House so full of the lofty principles of government and were so prepared to defend the rights of the people and honour what the people wanted to hear. I am appalled to see you playing those kind of silly, trivial games.

[Business Of The House, March 1st, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the point I want to make enlarges upon the question I asked the member from Rivière-du-Loup. In his response he has admitted that what he is attempting to do, and assuming he is representing his party, what his party is attempting to do is to use any device possible to delay further work on the bill.

If one stops to think about that for a moment, it contravenes one of the principles upon which the last election was fought. All parties and all politicians were told very clearly by the public that they wanted to see a change in how this House conducted itself. The public wanted to see reforms to the rules of this Chamber. They wanted to see politicians focusing more on issues than on technicalities. They wanted to see us focusing on the things that affected the lives of people and not simply playing the many games

that we can play within an arcane set of rules to disrupt the proceedings of the Chamber.

What has occurred here? The government came into office, laid a plan before the people and began to enact legislation that reflected that plan. After two years, which is the normal midpoint in the life of a government, it wanted to once more put before the people its plan for the next two years. This is quite common and is looked forward to. It is an opportunity for the government to reflect on what it has done and to come forward and state what it has learned, what it feels has worked and where it wants to go from here.

However, at any time when we reach that point, because of the processes that we use and the extensive consultations that we have undertaken, there are bills that are not complete. They may also not be unanimous, which is a fact of life in this Chamber, but at some point we come to a decision. We cannot simply say that because we had not come to that point on a particular piece of legislation that we should throw it on the rubbish heap and start over again particularly in light of the enormous cost. No bill represents that better than the unemployment insurance bill.

The hon. member opposite who spoke just before me was on challenged air, that old plane we flew in across the country. He sat in on the hundreds and hundreds of hours of consultation as people from every community across the country, including Rivière-du-Loup, came and spoke to us. Are we simply to say that all that work was for naught or are we to pick up where we were in the debate and continue to debate, continue to fight and continue to ask the government to move?

The member will have to admit that the government has moved a long way. The bill that is before a committee is very different from the initial thinking of the government. In fact, it is a bill that demonstrates very clearly this government's willingness to consult, to listen and to act on the wishes of people. It is because of the interventions from the member opposite as well as interventions from thousands of people across this country that there have been very significant changes. I would ask the member to remember that process.

The government put a green paper in front of the people of Canada and asked them to respond to it. The government in that green paper set out a number of proposals that represented its thinking about the reforms to UI.

We consulted broadly. The people gave us their responses and we put recommendations in our report that contradicted what was said in the green paper because we respected the consultations we held and we valued the input we received. It went on from there for further work by the minister. He worked very hard and struggled very diligently over the summer to work through each one of those issues and to present even further changes before he introduced the bill.

The bill he introduced was vastly different from the green paper because of the hundreds and thousands of hours of work by Canadians and by members of this House. Now we are in committee on that bill consulting on the details, looking at some final reforms. Even now we hear the new minister talking about further changes, further amendments, further refinements. That is the process of evolution of a very complicated piece of legislation. It is a good process and one that has stood us well.

What we should not do and I think people would not accept is to simply because of a technical game that is played within the House, throw out all of that work, go back to the drawing board and hold the unemployed in this country in limbo for another one or two years. Is that fair to the unemployed? Is that fair to seasonal workers? Is that fair to employers?

It is time to get on. Yes, I respect the hon. member very much. I have valued his input on the bill. I think he has a lot to say in the area of social services and I want to hear him say it. I want him to debate the bill strenuously and I want to benefit from his input. But what I do not want is to spend a lot of time on a procedural debate. I do not want to spend a lot of time arguing how the rules of the House run so that we can disrupt the order of business, or we can throw the government off track by what, one day?

We just saw an example of that with the Reform Party. Reform members refused to allow the tabling of the list of committee members. What nonsense. What has that accomplished? My gosh, it has disrupted the agenda of the government for a day. Is this the kind of message members are going to put in their householder and run home and say: "Look what we did. We disrupted the business of the government for a day. Aren't we heroes".

That is not what people came here to do. People came here to debate, to represent their constituencies, to see that the wishes of Alberta, Manitoba, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec and the maritimes were placed before the House. They came here to question the government, to ask ministers why they are doing what they are doing, and to hold them to account. They came here to vote, to represent their constituents.

That is why we are here. It is not to play silly games, not to spend our time, our energies, our talent and our creativity looking for little ways to put a stick into the spokes of government momentarily. Does that enhance any of us in this House?

If members want to debate the unemployment insurance bill, let us debate the unemployment insurance bill. If they want to debate

Bill C-7, if they want to debate changes to health legislation, let us debate changes to health legislation. If they want to oppose it, oppose it. Let us have a vigorous, hard fought debate. Let us hold the government to account and let us vote. But let us stop the procedural nonsense. Let us get on with the work of this House.

Let us do what the Reform Party campaigned on, what we campaigned on, what the Bloc, the Conservatives and the New Democrats campaigned on. Let us bring some order here. Let us show people that we are spending their money wisely. Let us show people that we take the business of this country seriously. Let us get on with the debates on the issues people want us to debate and stop the procedural bickering.

[Business Of The House, March 1st, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, this is the kind of debate that I think causes the public to scratch their heads and wonder a little about what we do here.

I am interested in the remarks of the member for Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup because for the last two years he and I worked together on the unemployment bill. We travelled across the country. We heard from hundreds and thousands of people through the mails, through surveys sent out and through personal representations on that bill.

We spent hundreds of hours looking at each clause and debating the provisions of that bill. We spent millions of dollars. If I understand what he is saying it is that we should be allowed, because of a technicality, to throw out all that work and start over.

How does he justify passing off all that expense and all that time?

[Trade, December 8th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, when one listens to what comes across the floor of the House, Canadians might get the feeling that Canada is not doing so well in export markets.

I would like to ask the Minister for International Trade if he could share with the House Canada's performance in international trade and demonstrate clearly to Canadians how we are winning markets every day.

[Recognition Of Quebec As A Distinct Society, December 6th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to tell you that I am splitting my time with the member for Ottawa-Vanier.

I have been torn as I thought through what I might say tonight on this resolution. I am profoundly saddened that I am standing here and talking on this issue at this time in our history. We have so many issues to deal with in this country. However we are once more drawn back into a debate that at its roots is not going to put

bread on the table, is not going to do anything to alleviate poverty, is not going to create a job, is not going to enhance the capacity of people to work, to learn or to earn. It is a debate that if I understand what the members of the Bloc have been saying tonight is based on a constant bringing forward of a history that has not served them or the rest of Canada particularly well.

What confuses me as I think about it is that shortly after I was elected to this Chamber I had several opportunities to travel into Quebec; one as a student in Jonquière. I spent some time there at the CEGEP studying French and meeting with the Bloc member for Jonquière who most hospitable. He took me around, showed me his constituency and introduced me to people there. We had wonderful discussions about what Canada needed to do to deal with the debt, with social programs and with all of the kinds of things that we talk about all across the country.

Some time after that I had an opportunity as a member of the HRD committee to go into Montreal, Quebec City, Lévis and Rivière-du-Loup to talk to people and receive submissions, in particular, about unemployment insurance but really all of the social programs that were encompassed in that rather large review.

Three members of the Bloc toured with us across Canada as part of that committee. We started in Vancouver and travelled right across the country. What struck me about that experience is that when we got away from the opening moments of the hearings, when the organized groups would come in and demonstrate, wave and shout and scream in Vancouver, in Toronto and in Montreal, and sat down with people to talk about what they were concerned about and what did they wanted to see the government do and what were the issues they wanted us to confront, I did not hear the word "Constitution", I did not hear the word "embarrassment", I did not hear the word "insulted".

I heard people talking about how we can help our kids get an education, how we can build skills, how can we find jobs. I heard people in Lévis and Rivière-du-Loup talking about being very concerned about their future and about the fact that their children were having to move out of town to find work. I heard unilingual French people saying the same things in those communities as unilingual English people were saying in Saskatchewan, Alberta and in my own province of Manitoba.

I do not mean to make light of what occurred. Any time 50 per cent of any area votes to leave a country that is as strong and wonderful as Canada, there is a problem.

I have talked about this with members of the Bloc. Lots of conversations go on in this House, some of them across the floor like tonight. I have a conversation two or three times a week in the gymnasium with the member for Quebec-Est. We talk about what is at the root of the concerns that is driving people in Quebec to want to leave Canada. I have had many long talks with the member for Mercier about her views of social programs in Canada or in Quebec. Frankly they are very consistent with my views of social programs in Quebec. To try to understand what is driving this desire to break up this country is something that has been very difficult for me.

I want to share with the members of the Bloc something that I hope will help their understanding of the feelings in other parts of Canada about this issue. When the Meech Lake accord failed to pass the Manitoba legislature, I was the House leader for the opposition. When the constitutional amendment was brought to Manitoba, there was a very detailed and thorough public examination of the proposals.

A committee was struck, with representatives from all three parties in the legislature. That committee travelled all over Manitoba. Committee members went to Indian reserves in the northern part of the province. They went to small rural communities in the north, the south, the east and the west and they spent many days in the city of Winnipeg, allowing Manitobans to come forward and speak to them about their feelings on the Meech Lake accord.

As a result, Manitoba put forward some amendments to the accord as it was then struck. When I hear the language used by previous speakers here about how people did not respect Quebec and how that was an insult to Quebec, I want to tell them that subject never came up in these hearings.

The Meech Lake accord says in subsection (2)(i):

The Constitution of Canada shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with

(b) The recognition that Quebec constitutes within Canada a distinct society.

(3) The role of the legislature and Government of Quebec to preserve and promote the distinct identity of Quebec-

That was what the Meech Lake accord said if I understood the members opposite correctly.

After holding hearings all over the province, after researching it, considering it, debating it, this is how the three parties in the Manitoba legislature said the clause should read:

The Constitution of Canada shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the recognition that the following constitute fundamental characteristics of Canada:

(d) Quebec constitutes within Canada a distinct society;

In the Meech Lake accord the recognition is that Quebec constitutes within Canada a distinct society. The recommendation of all parties of the province of Manitoba was that Quebec constitutes within Canada a distinct society.

My province has recognized and supported that fact since 1990. This resolution, which calls on the House to recognize that Quebec is a distinct society within Canada, is simply consistent and affirms the very statements that the member holds up as an example of the things that Quebec wanted. It is the very thing that the three parties in the legislature and the people of Manitoba were prepared to support and the very thing that the Prime Minister asks us to support now.

When I look at the role we have as legislators, there are six practical things we do. We pass, amend or rescind legislation. We deal with expenditure or the withholding of expenditure, the cutting of expenditure. We regulate. However, there is an intangible thing we are called on to do in this Chamber and that is provide leadership.

It is time we began to talk about not how we drive this country apart, but how we pull it together, how we collectively provide some leadership that will improve the lives of people in this country, not harm them.

[Bankruptcy And Insolvency Act, December 1st, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Industry.

Recently, Quebec's environment minister wrote to the federal Minister of the Environment suggesting amendments be made to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act to improve environmental protection. Can the minister tell me whether any action has been taken to prevent the dumping of contaminated buildings and worksites on local governments?

[Controlled Drugs And Substances Act, October 30th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, in listening to the remarks of the member for London West we see the excellence that is brought to the work of this Chamber.

I want to speak very briefly on the process rather than the substance of this bill. For me the bill personifies and represents everything that is good about what we said we would do when we came to this House.

The very low number it has, Bill C-7, should indicate to members that a considerable amount of time has elapsed between the time this bill was introduced and today. The reason for that is quite simple. We said when we campaigned in the election in 1993 that we would introduce processes that allowed backbench members to get involved in a hands on way with the drafting of important legislation, which is exactly what happened with this bill.

The members for Vancouver East, Beaches-Woodbine, Oakville-Milton, Fredericton-York-Sunbury, London West, Etobicoke-Lakeshore, Saint-Denis, Lachine-Lac Saint-Louis and many others spent hundreds of hours arguing through the articles of this bill. They were concerned. This bill is a holdover from the previous government. As many members have said, when they first heard the testimony they thought something was wrong, that the bill did not meet the test that we campaigned on.

Members of this House worked exceptionally hard with the full support of three ministers, the Minister of Justice, the Solicitor General of Canada and the Minister of Health. They struggled to improve the bill and have it reflect the principles and the values which our party brings to this House.

In so doing, we received tremendous support from staff in the various ministries. I want to single out an individual, Mr. Paul Genest, from our research bureau who put in all of those hours with each of these members as they thought through, argued through and worried about the details. It is not easy being a backbencher and approaching legislation in the face of a cadre of experts, lobbyists and in this case people from other countries who come in and say that the legislation must be written in a particular way to meet their particular needs. It took a long time. It took much thought. It took very hard work.

I believe we have produced legislation that will, as the member for London West has suggested, put Canada in the forefront of leading the war on drugs from a perspective of harm reduction and not simply following the U.S. model that was established earlier in the eighties under Ronald Reagan.

This whole process has been an exercise in excellence and one in which our caucus should be very proud. I want to thank those members on the staff and in this caucus who worked so hard to do what we said we would do when we came here and that is allow every member of this House a hand in drafting important legislation.