Mr. Speaker, I would like to have my name recorded with the government on this vote.
Lost his last election, in 2006, with 40% of the vote.
Criminal Code June 15th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, I would like to have my name recorded with the government on this vote.
Rural Development June 9th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, the government believes that rural development needs to be a bottom up and not a top down driven process. The communities themselves must establish their priorities and establish the strategies to pursue community development.
The federal government acts as a means to provide a set of tools for these communities. I was pleased to announce, along with my colleague on May 25, the Canadian agricultural rural communities initiative which will provide $9.3 million to rural communities to assist them with community development. It is a great example of the bottom up approach to community development.
Rural Development May 4th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, I was pleased today to table the first ever report to parliament on rural Canada called “Working Together in Rural Canada”.
It is part of our rural dialogue where we have engaged some 7,000 rural Canadians to tell us what their priorities are in rural Canada. This dialogue was continued this past weekend in Magog where we had an opportunity to bring in 500 rural Canadians from across Canada. In fact we had representatives from all political parties, except the Canadian Alliance which did not show up.
Quite frankly, rural Canadians themselves are telling us what their priorities are. The report indicates how we are responding. I look forward to the comments from rural Canadians and parliamentarians on that report.
Interparliamentary Delegations May 4th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to table the first ever annual report to parliament on rural Canada entitled “Working Together”.
The Budget March 27th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, I am happy to hear from the member for West Nova. I have had an opportunity to travel to his riding and to work with him there. He makes a very good point. There are different challenges in rural Canada than exist in urban Canada which require the participation of the government to deal with them. I send a very clear message to the former Reform Party, the Canadian Alliance Party, that government has a role to play in dealing with rural Canada.
I was pleased to see as part of the criteria for the government's own billion dollar infrastructure program, that is the infrastructure under its own auspices, that wharves was one of the items listed as an example of things the particular funding could deal with.
The Budget March 27th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that the hon. member is very concerned with his riding, as are all hon. members in the House.
On the four occasions in the last four months that I have been to Saskatchewan I have had an opportunity to talk to a wide range of individuals. I am a little surprised that the hon. member speaks that way. When his party was campaigning it talked about taking money out of the agricultural budget but now that it seems to be politically expedient it encourages it.
The reality is that not only did we put a billion dollars into a farm aid disaster package in 1998-99, but the minister of agriculture announced another billion dollars for 2000 and 2001. Then we announced another $240 million specifically for Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Just last week the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, along with his 10 colleagues from all the provinces including the minister from Saskatchewan, signed an agreement on how to deal with the basic safety net package.
This is a government that cares about the farmers of western Canada, cares about farmers right across Canada and is taking concrete action.
The Budget March 27th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to address the February 28 budget, a budget full of good news for all Canadians, including those who live in rural areas.
I know Canadians have responded well to the budget put forward by the finance minister on February 28. That has been evident in the House in the weeks since the budget was tabled as we have seen very few actual questions from the opposition. In fact people who have been around this place a lot longer than I have expressed absolute astonishment on the general acceptance of the budget by the opposition and, indeed, the general acceptance by Canadians.
I believe that has occurred because the budget, in essence, dealt with the priorities of Canadians. It dealt with the issue of tax reductions. The budget put forward a plan of tax reduction of some $54 billion. Canadians had indicated that one of the objectives that needed to be addressed in this budget was tax reduction.
It also dealt with the issue of debt reduction. At the high point a couple of years ago, as a percentage of our GDP, the debt in the country, thanks to the mismanagement of the Tory government for years and years, had risen to a little over 71%. As we follow through on the budget plan, the debt to GDP ratio will drop to below 50%. In fact, over the last three years close to $20 million in marketable debt has been repaid. This is a far cry from what we saw from the Mulroney Tories.
This budget has also gained general acceptance among Canadians because of the types of investments it has made and will continue to make. We saw $2.5 billion being invested in health care, adding to the $14.5 billion the year before. Transfers to the provinces went up this year to the highest level, to some $43 billion over two or three years.
We saw the commitment of $2.6 billion to the infrastructure program to partner with other levels of government, $1 billion for the federal government to deal with its own infrastructure and, as we have heard from some of the previous comments made in the House, some $700 million being invested into items to do with the environment.
I am very pleased and most importantly I would like to talk today about this budget in terms of rural Canada. I will quote a piece of the speech that the Minister of Finance made. He said:
—there are major differences between urban and rural communities.
The concerns of rural Canadians are those shared by all Canadians—quality health care, the best education for their children, a good job. The difference is that, in the case of rural Canada, a hospital closing, a school cutback or the loss of a major employer threatens the very life of the community.
Therefore, we must expand economic development in smaller communities right across the country, north and south, east and west. We must recognize that in the years ahead, all orders of government have to come together, as never before, to broaden opportunities right across the country.
With those words, I think the Minister of Finance spoke clearly to the needs, concerns and issues of rural Canada. What the budget does is it recognizes, as this government began to recognize and first enunciated in the Speech from the Throne in 1996, that the realities faced by rural Canadians are indeed different than those faced by urban Canadians.
We simply have to take a look at some of those issues. Let us take the issue of geography. If people live in a rural area there is so much more geography. Let us take a look at the distance from markets. If people are operating in a rural marketplace, they often have added transportation costs and added issues because of the distance from the market.
Let us look at the whole issue of population density. If one is looking at investing in a rural area, often times there is not the same potential market size that may exist in an urban area.
Let us look at the economy of rural Canada. When people operate in rural Canada, it is, in most cases, a natural resource based economy that is normally cyclical in nature. It is very different from an urbanized, diversified, manufacturing based economy.
The fact that urban and rural Canada are different, the fact that the challenges are different and the fact that the circumstances on the ground are different, requires the government to respond differently in both areas. One of the great strengths of this budget is that it realizes that we do need to respond differently. The budget puts forward very clearly what is a basic debate in this country: Does government have a role to partner with communities, to partner with individuals and to partner with businesses where circumstances call for an improvement in the quality of life of, in this case, rural Canadians? I believe it does.
Members across the way have stood in the House day after day enunciating that the government does not have a role when it comes to dealing with the regions. In question period today we heard criticism after criticism piled on the minister responsible for regional development in Quebec. Day after day we hear criticisms when HRDC partners with rural communities and rural citizens to help improve the quality of their lives.
The budget has clearly stated that we recognize there are differences in rural Canada. We recognize there are different challenges faced by rural Canadians. We are going to work as a partner with those institutions, with those communities and with those people to help improve the quality of life.
If we look at some of the specific points made in the budget, some of the specific measures, we can see that the budget does deal with some of those differences I talked about.
If we look at the issue of geography, we see an initiative there of $160 million to ensure that we will be able to deliver all government services on line. Those who live in a rural or remote community often do not have the ability to access government services in the traditional way of going to a particular office or some place made of bricks and mortar. Here we have a government understanding that specific issue in rural Canada, understanding that rural Canadians need to have access to their government, and we see an initiative of $160 million to provide that type of access to them.
When we look at distance from markets we look at the $2.6 billion infrastructure program that we will roll out in conjunction with other levels of government. This is our own billion dollar program. Something which is very important and which rural Canadians saw clearly is that a component of the infrastructure program has been specifically directed to rural Canada, to the needs, the criteria and the challenges facing rural Canadians in terms of developing their infrastructure.
Not only is the program there but it is being designed in a way that will address the needs of rural Canadians and deal with the difference in distance from markets.
The whole issue of population density is important to those who live in rural Canada. The private sector often goes to an urban setting, where it has a very vast market, and makes an investment on its own because it can get a quick return on its investment. Trying to make that same investment, for example, in telecommunications infrastructure or in energy distribution, in a rural area where we do not have that population density, requires another partner. Often times that partner can and should be a level of government. Sometimes is it is the federal government, sometimes the provincial government and sometimes even the municipal government, but it is an appropriate role to play.
We see in the budget a $54 million commitment to community futures which can take an innovative approach to assisting communities. It takes an approach that I like to call a bottom up and not a top down approach. Community futures are run and operated by local boards of directors, selected from local individuals who make decisions on how they will go about community development, not based on some decision that may be made in Ottawa, Toronto, Edmonton or Victoria, but based on the needs of that rural community.
We also see the government dealing with the cyclical nature of our resource based economies with assistance to agriculture, forestry and mining. This is a budget that demonstrates clearly that this government understands the needs of rural Canadians, that it is addressing those needs and that it cares about rural Canadians. That is why I believe this budget deserves the support of all members of the House, and particularly those members who represent rural constituencies.
The Budget March 24th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, there is a number of very specific initiatives in the budget: $54 million for community futures; $160 million to connect rural Canadians to the Internet; a $2.6 billion infrastructure program, a large portion of which will go to rural Canada; and $30 million to assist our natural resource industries both in forestry and mining.
Most important is that the budget recognized that the circumstances of rural Canadians were different from those of urban Canadians. Unlike the Reform Party there is a recognition that government will work in partnership with rural Canadians, communities and businesses to better the lives of rural Canadians.
Human Resources Development February 28th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, as I explained in the House on Friday, Treasury Board guidelines and the agreement with the local organization allow for loans in excess of $125,000.
If the hon. member would do his work and not just read the newspapers he would know that, or if he had bothered to listen to question period on Friday he would have known that as well.
Kenora—Rainy River February 25th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, once again that member and that party are absolutely wrong.
First, treasury board guidelines and the agreement signed between the federal government and the particular local agency allow for loans over $125,000. If the hon. member did his job and actually did his research instead of just reading the paper, he would have known that.
By the way, that is a loan given on a commercial basis with repayment and with an interest rate much higher than what someone would pay in the private sector.