Reg Alcock

[Speech From The Throne, January 24th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I am not going to begin to respond to the specific question about some municipalities in the member's riding because I am not the minister responsible for the infrastructure program.

I would like to point out a couple of things to him. The previous member for his party who spoke on this issue made a comment that this sort of tripartite arrangement, federal-municipal-provincial, was unheard of. Certainly that is not the case in my province.

This kind of arrangement where the three levels of government come together to jointly share responsibility for major public works is quite common. Municipalities, Indian reserves and others are all participating in it.

On the allocation of funds, the one thing that is different about this government from the previous government is that these decisions are made on an open rational basis. In this case, it was a mixing of population and unemployment. There was a criteria set and not: How many Liberals did you elect?

This is unlike the previous government. I think we are further ahead for that kind of decision-making.

[Speech From The Throne, January 24th, 1994]

They could. They are approaching this new government, they are approaching the year 2000 with great optimism, and they are working very hard to meet the challenges that they are confronted with.

I spoke the other day in the House about a young business in my area. Four young graduates from the University of Manitoba-that is Manitoba, in the city of Winnipeg-had built a super computer. Not a good computer, a super computer, a 10-gigaflop massive computer. Not only have they built it from scratch in the city of Winnipeg, but they have successfully sold it to Korea, Japan, China, Brazil, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

There is a tremendous amount of energy and optimism and work going on in the province of Manitoba. But when I talk to people there, as I do every night from my office here, when talking about the problem with Canada, unlike the Leader of the Opposition who says the problem with Canada is Quebec, they tell me that Quebec is one of the great strengths of Canada. They tell me that it is the Canada we have built, the Canada that embraces diversity, the Canada that stands up for minorities, the Canada that has created a code of human rights, the Canada that embraces multiculturalism. It is that very diversity that gives them the strength to go out into the world and compete.

Out of these debates I take a couple of things that stick in my mind. There are two little statements that come to mind. One was told by the current Speaker who was recounting his first days in the House many years ago when he was taken aside by the Hon. Paul Martin Senior, the father of the current finance minister who told him: "Young man, whether you are here for 5 years or 20, remember that you are just passing through". I think about that statement and I think about a comment that the leader of my party, the Prime Minister, made in his speech when he spoke about about Canada as being a great work in progress.

Think about the work that we do here: pass some laws, amend some laws and rescind some laws. To tax or not to tax. We spend or we do not spend or we modify spending. Those are the tangible things we do. Those are the buttons we push or the levers we push.

However, there is an intangible thing we do in this Chamber and that is provide leadership to the rest of the country. I hear the talk about greater decorum and a more positive attitude. But when I read carefully through the speeches that I see coming out of the third party, I see very much the same kind of criticism I heard when I sat in the provincial legislature. They did not look at the throne speech and ask: "What is there and how should we discuss the things that are being committed to". They saw what was not there. They did not see the glass half full, they saw it half empty.

I hope that over the months and years to come we will have the kind of debate that is talked about. I hope we will have a competition in this House for good ideas. I hope we will challenge each other to see who has the best idea to solve a problem.

Would it not be wonderful if when our constituents watched television they went away saying: "Gosh, I learned something. I have been enlightened". I do not think that is the way they walk away from it now. It is going to take all of us to do that.

I hope that in the time I am passing through this Chamber that I can contribute in some small way to this great work which is Canada.

[Speech From The Throne, January 24th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, on this first occasion that I have had to speak in the House I want to begin by thanking the constituents who put me here.

I have been elected twice provincially. This was my first time running federally but never in an election campaign have I been questioned as closely and as carefully as I was in this one. The people in my riding wanted to know what I stood for, what I was going to do if I got here, and what I am doing every day I am here.

It is passing strange to me that it was such an unusual move to put a party's platform in a book. It is stranger still that people are surprised when the government acts on the promises it makes.

I also thank my wife, Karen, and my daughter, Sarah. The hardest thing I have to do as a member here is be away from them. It is something we are all going to have to adjust to. They make a big sacrifice. All members make that sacrifice and I do not think people realize that.

I thank the 1,400 volunteers who worked thousands of hours over the last 18 months so that I could get elected. They did not ask for anything in doing that. All they wanted and all they want today is a government that reflects their values. They are still coming around to my office. They are still looking for ways in which they can volunteer their time and energy to share in the process of governing. I am honoured by their participation.

Madam Speaker, I want to congratulate you and the Speaker and all members who were elected to serve this House, and through you I want to thank all of the staff that serve this House. As a rookie member here I have been remarkably well treated everywhere I have gone. I really appreciate the support of all of those who do not get recognized in the work that this House does.

I also want, through you Madam Speaker, to thank the many thousands of people who work for the federal government. There was a time not too long ago when the previous Prime Minister stood in front of a scrum and said that all he had to offer the civil servants of Canada were pink slips and running shoes. I thought then that that was a shameful experience.

How do you expect people to carry out the programs if that is the way you treat them? No company on earth would survive if it treated its employees the way the previous government treated the public service of this country. I caution some of the members opposite because I hear some of that same language coming through, as though somehow the people who carry out the work of this House are the enemy. We need to reflect on that.

I also want to thank Dorothy Dobbie and Mark Hughes. Dorothy was the member for Winnipeg South in this House prior to me and Mark was the Reform Party candidate who ran against me. We debated 20 times during the course of the election and we managed to keep every debate on the issues and never once resorted to personalities. I really want to thank them for that.

I come from the province of Manitoba. We talk a lot in this House about the upheaval that has happened in Quebec, the election of the Bloc Quebecois, or the upheaval that took place in Alberta and British Columbia with the massive election of the Reform Party. Well, an upheaval took place in Manitoba. We elected 12 Liberals. In fact we elected 21 Liberals in the prairies. Back when I was working for the Liberal Party in the seventies there was only one Liberal in all of western Canada. But it is no surprise that we did not elect a single Conservative in the prairie region.

I want to share a couple of facts with the House. They are facts that I hope members from the prairie region will reflect on and work with me on helping to right this. Do members know that if they look at the share of national wealth that is held in the prairie region, in the three prairie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, that if we just held the same percentage of national wealth that we held in 1984 there would be $26 billion more economic activity in those three provinces today? That is a staggering figure. That is more than the entire gross domestic product of the province of Manitoba. That is a fact.

In truth, a big chunk of that is the decline in oil revenues. But in my province of Manitoba, a small province, less than 4 per cent of the total population of the country, no oil revenues, we are $1.6 billion poorer and 42,000 jobs poorer today than we were in 1984-85. I believe that is because we had a federal government that had no understanding of the regional character of this country, no understanding of how to use government as an instrument in the regions of this country.

The people in my province are not blaming anybody. They do not even blame Ontario.

[Manitoba Hvdc Research Centre, January 21st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to draw to the attention of the House four Canadians: Rudy Wierckx, James Giesbrecht, Trevor Maguire and Rick Kuffel.

These four graduates of the University of Manitoba have successfully designed, built and now commercialized a 10 gigaflop supercomputer that is being sold in Japan, Korea, India, China and the U.K.

What is remarkable is that this supercomputer is being built not in the Silicon Valley, not in Tokyo, nor in Seoul, but at 1619 Pembina Highway in the heart of my constituency of Winnipeg South.