Andy Mitchell

[Resource Industries, April 24th, 2001]

Mr. Chairman, the member makes an excellent point. For rural development to work well, it needs to have as many partners at the table as possible. The provincial government is certainly one of those partners. I have had an opportunity to have meetings, not with the new minister in Quebec but with the previous minister in the region, Mr. Jolivet.

Essentially we agree that the orchestra leader, the leader of rural development, has to be the communities themselves. It is the federal and provincial governments which supply the tools. The hon. member is right. We have to make sure that we do not duplicate what the provincial government provides the community in the form of a tool. Obviously the federal government does not need to provide that tool or vice versa.

A good example, though, of where we work in co-operation with rural communities is the infrastructure program, which is a tripartite program with financial assistance coming from the municipality, from the provincial government and from the federal government.

[Resource Industries, April 24th, 2001]

Mr. Chairman, the member is quite right in terms of having a national conference in Magog a year ago this week.

This gives me an opportunity to make a distinction. It is not a consultation process. It is a dialogue process. It is an ongoing process where we reach out to rural Canadians from across Canada on an ongoing basis. We want to hear their perspectives and their suggestions and then in return to feed back to them our reactions.

Specifically the process during the off year, which is this year as we had the conference last year, is that there is a series of regional conferences. There will be another national conference next year. The action plan leading out of that, where we specifically committed to do the things that were brought forward to us in Magog, I expect and hope to have public within the next month or so.

[Resource Industries, April 24th, 2001]

Mr. Chairman, I am sure the Minister of Finance is familiar with the issues that the two members have raised. I am certain he will give them his consideration as he looks on an ongoing basis at reforms to the tax system.

[Resource Industries, April 24th, 2001]

Mr. Chairman, obviously specific tax policies fall within the purview of the Minister of Finance.

This gives me an opportunity to refer to a very important point that the member made. We need to ensure, as we deal with the comprehensive national issue of tax reform, that we do it in a way which makes sense for rural Canada and rural Canadians.

The woodlot situation is an example of that. That is part of what I talked about in terms of rural lens. Yes, we have to deal with taxation as a comprehensive issue for all Canadians, but we must make sure that even though woodlot owners are a small percentage of the overall economy they are an important part of the economy. They are an important part of the rural economy and their needs through the rural lens need to be taken into account when we undertake tax reform.

[Resource Industries, April 24th, 2001]

Mr. Chairman, it is quite true that in the case of northern Quebec and northern Ontario we do share many of the same issues when it comes to sustaining our mining industry. I know the member has worked hard in his riding and with his communities on their sustainability.

We have undertaken a joint initiative where we are trying to assist our mining communities in terms of recovering from low commodity prices and some of the ramifications. A regional development agency, CED, also covers Quebec.

Rather than creating a separate structure, we need to have co-ordination between the two agencies to ensure that we deliver the program in a unified and comprehensive way when we are dealing with a problem that really crosses provincial boundaries.

Regional development agencies are positive things. Although they are separate entities unto themselves, they are co-ordinated collectively through the Industry Canada portfolio.

[Resource Industries, April 24th, 2001]

Mr. Chairman, I am not in a position to get specific about what future announcements may be made.

I will come back to what I was saying when I was wrapping up my speech. The concept is to first empower communities, coastal communities being a good example because they have a set of needs and concerns that are very different than a prairie agricultural community, to establish what it is they need to do to sustain their communities. That process is taking place in many of our coastal communities.

The role of the federal government at that point would be to then listen to what those community needs are and then to develop a set of tools to assist them. Some of those tools have already been announced. We have talked about an infrastructure program that lays the basic groundwork. We talked about having the availability of the community futures program that provides access to capital. If we are going to diversify and grow our economy we need access to capital. That is another tool that is there.

As we move forward we will have additional tools that will allow these communities to sustain themselves.

[Resource Industries, April 24th, 2001]

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to rise in this debate and to recognize all parties for agreeing to this special format. It will lend itself well to a good discussion about a subject that is very close to my heart and I am sure to members who are gathered in the House. That is the sustainability of our natural resource economies which in essence is the sustainability of rural Canada.

When we take a look at rural Canada, it is not hard to realize that for the most part we are dependent on our natural resource industries for our economic well-being, for the wealth of our citizens and for the quality of life of those who live in rural areas. Whether it is depending on the agricultural industry or on the fisheries or on mining or forestry, in rural Canada we are very much dependent on our natural resource industries.

If we think about it, our natural resource industries account for more than 15% of our gross domestic product and close to 14% of the jobs in Canada are based on our primary industries. A large part of our trade surplus that we enjoy as a nation is as a result of our ability to harvest our natural resources.

This government, since it came to office in 1993, has a long and I think a very positive history of understanding and dealing with the natural resource sector.

I recall in the previous parliament the Speech from the Throne in 1996 speaking directly for the first time in many years to the needs of rural Canada, to the need to sustain our natural resource industries and to the need to sustain the rural communities that depend on those natural resource industries.

Leading out of those commitments that were made in the Speech from the Throne in 1996, I had the honour and the privilege of chairing the natural resource committee in 1997 when we travelled around the country and talked with rural Canadians and produced something called “The Think Rural Report”. I see the hon. member for Athabasca who was a member of that committee and who worked with me and I see others who were on that committee at the time to produce that report. I should also mention that the report was a unanimous report. All parties in the House that day agreed to the recommendations that we made in there about sustaining rural Canada, sustaining our natural resource industries and ensuring that they remained an integral part of our economy.

I was pleased that leading out of that report the government of 1998 brought forward the Canadian rural partnership, an initiative by which we were able to deal with the issues of rural Canada and the issues of our natural resource industries.

I was further pleased when in 1999 the Prime Minister created a separate position for rural Canada, a position which I occupy right now, secretary of state for rural Canada, to ensure that the issues that surround rural Canadians and surround our natural resource industries would be front and centre of the discussions and the debates that took place here in parliament.

I was also pleased to see in the budget last February some very specific commitments to rural Canada and some very specific commitments to sustaining our natural resource industries.

One of the most important things, and I hope we have a chance to talk about this in debate today, is the need for us as parliamentarians, for the government and for Canadians in general to understand that the challenges that rural Canadians face and that our natural resource communities face are unique. They are different from those that are often faced by an urban community from the urban parts of the country. We need to approach, from a public policy perspective, what we do in a way that recognizes and understands those unique challenges that we face in rural Canada and in our natural resource communities.

If we think about it for a second, we can clearly see those challenges. First, there is the challenge of geography. When someone comes from rural Canada there is a whole lot of geography. One of the issues concerns how we deliver services. How do we provide either public or private services over vast geographic areas? It is very different from how we may approach it in a very tightly populated urban centre.

We also have the issue of population density. When we are trying to attract investment to rural Canada and to communities that are dependent on the natural resource industries, we often do not have the density of population nor the market size where we can readily attract the private sector to make the same type of investments they may be willing to do all on their own in an urban area. We need to approach things differently where we often need to have public-private partnerships in order for that type of investment to occur in rural communities. Infrastructure is a good example of that.

Telecommunications infrastructure may happen all by itself in a large urban centre because the population density and the market size are there. That same infrastructure, just as essential in rural areas, will not happen through the private sector because the market size is not there. We need those types of partnerships, public and private.

Another issue is the distance from market. If people are dealing in rural Canada or in the natural resource industries, they have the unique challenge of distance from market. If one is a small entrepreneur or small business person trying to set up, that is a challenge that he or she may have to face in rural Canada but not one in urban Canada.

One of the most important differences and one that I am sure the members in the House know and the viewers from rural Canada understand is that our economies that are natural resource based tend to be cyclical in nature. They are very much based on commodity prices and commodity prices fluctuate. That means that we very often have a different type of economy than what we may find in a diversified manufacturing based or technologically based urban economy.

What that means is that we need to take a different public policy approach when we are dealing with rural natural resource based economies than we may take when we are dealing with the manufacturing diversified technologically based urban economy.

One of the successes of the government, and we could have a debate about the degree of that success I suspect, is that we have an understanding that there are in fact unique challenges that face rural communities and that we need to approach our economies in rural areas differently to reflect those challenges.

The approach itself has to be important. From my perspective, there are four major approaches that are appropriate. One of those approaches we call the rural lens.

The rural lens, which is one of my responsibilities as the Secretary of State for Rural Development, ensures that when we consider policy, when we consider legislation and when we consider responding to the issues of the day, we make sure that we do it in a way that makes sense for rural Canadians as much as it makes sense for urban Canadians, so that the solution does not just make sense in the big cities of Canada but that it makes sense in the small communities and the rural areas. The rural lens puts the responses that we are making, whether they be legislative or regulatory, through a lens to ensure that they make as much sense on Main Street, rural Canada as they do on Main Street, urban Canada.

Second, I believe that as we deal with the issues of rural Canada and the issues of natural resource based economies, that we must take a bottom up and not a top down approach. We must allow communities themselves to determine the best way to achieve their economic sustainability. It would reflect that the needs of the fishing community in Newfoundland are very different from a mining community in northern Ontario, an agricultural community on the prairies or a forestry community in British Columbia. Although they all face those unique challenges I talked about before, their solutions to those challenges will be and need to be reflective of their particular needs. That is why it is important that we have a bottom up approach where we empower communities to set their strategies and to move forward.

The role of the senior levels of government, whether that be provincial or federal, is to provide those communities with a set of tools that allows them to pursue their objectives in a way that makes sense for them. That is why we have such tools as the regional development agencies, in my particular case, in northern Ontario, FEDNOR. The reason we have the community futures program, where we saw a $90 million investment, and an infrastructure program that has a specific amount targeted for rural areas, is so we can help provide the tools to these communities as they pursue those plans.

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Hastings—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington. Given the formality of the debate tonight, I look perhaps to engaging a little later with my colleagues.

[Supply, April 3rd, 2001]

You besmirch somebody's reputation. That is what you have when you do not have the truth. You have the Alliance Party—

[Health, February 27th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the delivery of health care in rural Canada is a priority for the government. We recognize that the challenges that rural Canadians face are unique and that the solutions that we come up with must be unique as well.

This is why I was pleased to announce yesterday, on behalf of the Minister of Health, $1.5 million to help nurse practitioners have the tools to deliver health care in rural and remote Ontario. This is part of the government's 1999 budget commitment of $50 million being committed to rural and community health. The government cares about rural Canada and rural Canadians.

[Agriculture, February 13th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, allow me to say how pleased I am to see a colleague from northern Ontario in the chair. Congratulations on your appointment to your position.

I am particularly pleased to have an opportunity this evening in this special debate to talk about the issues of agriculture and agricultural producers, as well as to talk about the importance of the broader issues in the way that they impact on rural Canada and rural Canadians.

We are having a discussion tonight, but there are some things that I do not think are up for debate. One of them is the importance of the agricultural sector to Canada, to the Canadian economy and particularly to rural Canada. I do not think there is any question about that. The other thing I do not think there is really much debate about is the fact that there are serious challenges facing the agricultural sector and, as a result of that, challenges that are faced by rural Canada and rural Canadians in general.

I am pleased that we have the opportunity to have this discussion tonight and to have members from all sides of the House participate in the discussion. As the evening goes on and we listen to members from both sides of the House, I hope that we are going to hear suggestions, possible solutions and strategies.

I do not think that members of the House and Canadians watching are really overly interested in people pointing fingers and laying blame. There may be a place and a time for that, but what we are all about in the House, and what I hope the debate is all about tonight, is finding solutions for our agricultural industry, finding the ways that we as a government, that we collectively as members of parliament, can come together, as we need to, to find solutions. I hope that is what this debate is all about.

As the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food pointed out in his comments, a lot has been done in the last several years with respect to responding to the needs of our agricultural producers. The minister talked about the substantial increases in safety nets that have been put in place since he took over the portfolio. He talked about the agreement with the provinces. It was a very important step to bring all 10 provinces together with the federal government to sign an agreement on agriculture. It was an agreement that saw no province receive less funding and several provinces receive increased funding as part of that envelope, and of course last year we saw additional support specifically targeted to Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

As important as agriculture is, and it is extremely important, it is part of a broader context of rural Canada and rural Canadians. It is part of a very special part of the nation. Rural Canada is part of the social fabric of the nation. There are members on all sides of the House who come from rural Canada. It is special and unique place, a place of very special traditions and very special institutions.

When we talk about the agricultural industry, I believe we need to talk as well in the broader context of securing the future of rural Canada. It is important to see the scope and the breadth of rural Canada. Yes, it includes those rural agricultural communities of Saskatchewan and it includes the dairy producers of eastern Ontario. However, rural Canada also includes the mining communities in northern Ontario, as you know very well, Mr. Speaker, and the communities in the interior of British Columbia that depend on forestry or the outports of Newfoundland that depend on fisheries. Rural Canada is, in a large sense, based on our resource industries, including agriculture, and we need to deal not only with agriculture but with all of those issues that are faced by resource industries and by those communities that are dependent on resources for their livelihood.

I believe there is a very clear commitment from the government for dealing with rural Canada. The creation and existence of the position that I hold, that of Secretary of State for Rural Development, is something that had not existed in the government before the Prime Minister made the appointment. It is a belief that we can as a government, that we should as a government, that it is imperative as a government for us to work on the issues of rural Canada and to understand that the challenges faced by rural Canadians, although they share many of the same issues with urban Canadians, are different.

We have to deal with the issue of geography and what that means in delivering services over large distances. We have to deal with the issue of population density and what that means toward attracting investment into rural areas. We have to deal with the whole issue of the cyclical nature of our resource based industries and what that means in terms of the public policy that has to be pursued in order to sustain those communities.

That is what we need to do as a parliament to deal with those special circumstances that are faced by rural Canadians. That is a large part of what this debate is. It is about taking a particular industry that is predominant in rural Canada, understanding that it faces challenges that are specific to rural Canada and to that industry, and responding in a way that makes sense of those challenges.

In terms of dealing with rural Canada we have to make sure of two things. First, we have to make sure that we provide rural Canada and rural Canadians with the tools they need to deal with those challenges. Second, we have empower those communities with the ability to use those tools in a way that makes sense for them.

The government has provided a large number of tools to rural Canada and rural Canadians over the years. Take a look at the infrastructure program, the $2.65 billion. The fact is, when those agreements were signed with the provinces there was a specific amount that was set aside for the rural communities in those various provinces.

Look at the community futures program, which is a program that operates strictly in rural Canada. It is there to provide assistance for community development. It also provides assistance to ensure a strong and vibrant small business sector in those communities. There was a $90 million commitment in the last budget of the federal government to ensure that those community futures programs that operate in rural Canada are sustained and are able to do the work they need to do in order to help those communities.

There are several other tools that I could describe, but those are two very important ones. There are several others that are provided: the community access program, the CARTT program under agriculture and, as I mentioned earlier, the support that is being provided for farm incomes.

It is also important, as we deal with rural Canada and rural Canadians, that we empower communities to use those tools. That is why it is important in the approach that we take as the federal government to ensure something that we call the bottom up approach, one that ensures that communities themselves are empowered to undertake the decisions they need to take to sustain themselves.

It is an understanding that not every rural community is the same and that the challenges that are faced by a rural community in Saskatchewan are different from the ones that you and I face, Mr. Speaker, in northern Ontario and different again from what some of my colleagues face in Yukon, in central Ontario and in other parts of Canada.

That is why it is important to use a bottom up process, one that allows communities to set their priorities, one that allows communities to establish exactly the strategies they want to follow. The role of the federal government and, for that matter, of the provincial governments is to provide those communities with the tools they need to pursue their particular objectives and ensure that they are sustainable into the future.

We are here tonight to talk about agriculture. In a larger sense, we are here to talk about rural Canada, and in a larger sense than that, we are here to talk about Canada. We are here to talk about some very special values.

I have been very fortunate to have the opportunity to raise my family in a rural part of Canada, in my hometown of Gravenhurst in the riding of Parry Sound—Muskoka. It is a very special place and the people who inhabit it are very special people. In my community, we believe in the values of community and in the values of family. I believe it is absolutely essential as we have this debate in the House that we come together to find the ways to sustain rural Canada, to find the ways to ensure that this special way of life we all cherish is able to continue, not just for ourselves but for our children as well.