Monte Solberg

[Government Expenditures, November 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, just over a month ago we had the Prime Minister in Saint John saying there would be no more new spending for the Liberal government. Yet the estimates have just come out and they reveal that the government has gone on a spending spree with billions of dollars in new spending.

In fact the government at this point is $4 billion over budget.

Why has the Prime Minister broken his promise of no new spending?

[Government Expenditures, November 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, maybe they were smoking a joint. Maybe that was the problem.

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, October 29th, 1998]

The member mentions Ted Rogers. I am glad he pointed that out because under this legislation what this government is doing is pumping more money into the pocket of Ted Rogers, a media mogul in this country, a multimillionaire who hardly needs the help.

I wonder why it is that when the chips are down this government has to help out its billionaire friends? I think it is unbelievable.

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, October 29th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, the member threw me a hardball but let me see what I can do.

I have noted that Bombardier gets a little help from this government. I also noted that Bombardier made a profit last year in the range of $235 million. But we also know, thanks to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, that but several aerospace concerns have received not hundreds of millions but over $1 billion in subsidies. To me that is unbelievable.

How much of these repayable loans have been paid back? I see the minister of industry is in the House. A fraction get paid back, 2% or 3%. I think it is unbelievable that this government will slash health care, attack all the programs that are extraordinarily important to Canadians but still pump billions of dollars into corporate welfare for companies such as Bombardier and many others.

I hope I have adequately answered the question from my colleague for Calgary West.

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, October 29th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

This government thinks Canadian culture is what a lot of people might call high culture. Most people today make connections with their neighbours around their province and around the country through weekly newspapers and little publications like that. One of the things that works against them is the exorbitant prices they have to pay for postage today. The member is absolutely right.

The other point is that these companies are just like any other company. They struggle to make it with crippling payroll taxes. In many case they have a lot of employees. It is labour intensive.

They sit and they stuff flyers in newspapers. I have a good friend who is the publisher of the Brooks Bulletin . They have a big staff. This publisher would love to see EI premiums go down by $500 per employee. Those employees would like to see their premiums go down by $350 which is entirely within this government's ability to do if it would obey the law.

But sadly this government thinks the answer is to protect these business by putting up these high protective walls which ultimately are going to be challenged and defeated at the WTO. We are going to pay a huge price for it when we are retaliated against. Unfortunately the retaliation will not be in magazines. We will be hit where it hurts, in the big industries such as agriculture and lumber. My colleague shakes his head but I will bet him $20 that is exactly what is going to happen.

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, October 29th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I do not know what to say to that other than that is absolute rubbish.

If the government really is as brave as the member suggests, why is it putting up huge protection barriers around the magazine publishing industry in Canada? He just said we were cowering. It is his government that is putting up the barriers. It is going to impose huge fines on Sports Illustrated or whatever because the government would dare to allow Canadian advertisers in advertise in those magazines.

It is ridiculous. The member argues on the one hand that the government is going to protect Canadians. On the other hand it is denying Canadian advertisers a vehicle by which to promote their goods and services. He cannot have it both ways. We want these people to make money too. We do not make money by giving them a subsidy and protecting them from competition. That is how we kill industry. My friend should know that.

We had protectionism in this country for years. As an example, we had textile producers in southern Quebec. What happened to them? Ultimately they could not compete when the barriers came down. We need to get rid of those protectionist walls. We want Canadian cultural industries to make money.

I encourage the government to take some of its own advice and allow them to make money by allowing free competition so they can export around the world. What we want is to see lower taxes so they can compete. We want to see those people succeed like they have already done in other areas of Canadian culture where there is no protectionism.

I point out to my friend that we have many great Canadian novelists. They send their products far afield. They do extraordinarily well. We do not have protectionism for them. When they produce a novel they sell it around the world and those novels come back here. That is not what the government is proposing for the magazine industry. It wants to create a problem not only for the magazine industry by allowing it to atrophy because it does not have competition but ultimately it will cause all kinds of problems for the rest of the country by creating a trade war with our biggest trading partner. It is ridiculous that the government would do that.

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, October 29th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to address Bill C-55. I am a bit familiar with the bill. It first came into being three or four years ago in a different version. At that time I was critic of the Department of Canadian Heritage so I had the chance to explore what the government was up to at that point. As the Reform Party predicted, that legislation was ultimately defeated at the WTO.

I will go out on a limb and say that this will be pounded down again by the WTO, which will leave Canada wide open to retaliation on all kinds of trade fronts. I cannot believe the government is so imprudent that it would allow the legislation to go through and threaten in many cases other industries that are already in great peril. For instance, I point to the farm industry which is important in my riding. I will get to that in more detail later.

I want to address a couple of remarks made by my colleague who just finished speaking a minute ago. She mentioned that Time cares about Canada. I point out that it is the Time Warner corporation of the United States. I do not think anyone really believes that Time Warner Inc., a huge media conglomerate, cares about Canada. It cares about making money for its shareholders.

Incidentally that is exactly the same thing that drives Ted Rogers and the Canadian Magazine Publishers Association that are naturally in support of the bill. They do not care about Canada. They want to make a profit. If the government ensures that they can make a profit by protecting them with huge fines, contrary to what the member said we should not be very surprised. They do not care about Canada. They want to make a lot of money. That is their right and we understand it. We do not think there should be government intervention that allows them to do it. Let us see some real competition in this country.

I want to expand on that point for a moment. Recently the National Post was launched in Canada. It will be Canada's second daily national newspaper, which means that the Globe and Mail , an excellent newspaper, has some tough competition.

The Globe and Mail has improved a lot over the last several months as it has geared up for this launch. The National Post is producing an excellent newspaper. What we are seeing are the benefits of competition.

When we have competition, we have better newspapers all of a sudden. It is amazing but it happens over and over again. Everyone has to get better. I see the same thing happening on TV. We had News 1 launched on CTV and all of a sudden we see Newsworld is improving its set and changing its hosts. What would happen in Canada if we had wide open competition in our magazine industry? Canadian magazines would improve.

My hon. colleagues across the way know this is true. Otherwise they would not have reversed their stand on NAFTA. They know that real competition makes everyone stronger. They completely changed their stripes on NAFTA because they know that is true.

Now they want to have their cake and eat it too with protectionism of an industry as my colleague from Swift Current pointed out. They can cloak it in language about our sacred culture all they want, but this is about making money and my colleagues across the way know it.

I want to expand on a point I made at the outset. Under the WTO rules if a piece of legislation is struck down, goes back for a second time and is struck down, the field will be wide open for retaliation from the country which was the target of the legislation. In this case it is the United States.

My colleagues across the way have had some experience in dealing with the United States and trade problems in the past. It was not very long ago when we saw Canada get into some trouble with the U.S. over protection for poultry and dairy. As a result what did the United States do? It capped exports for durum in the west. It did not go after the industry it was concerned about. It picked another weak spot, one that it knew was politically sensitive.

What will happen when this is ultimately defeated again at the WTO? Will the Americans say they will ban our magazines coming into the United States? I do not think so. That would not be very much. They will go after wheat exports, cattle or something that has a profound impact on Canada. The government knows that. It has been warned about it for the last four or five years.

The government is going ahead anyway because the minister is so stubborn. Because she cannot spend a bunch of money any more on Canadian heritage she has to justify her existence somehow. She is going into this area willy-nilly, not caring one bit about the damage it will ultimately do to the rest of the country. She knows exactly what the outcome will be but she does not care.

When I go back to my home town of Brooks and sit in the coffee shop, in Aces Cafe; when I go to Bow Island and sit in Grandma's Kitchen; or when I go to Medicine Hat and sit in the co-op, I sit around the table with my constituents. We do not talk about the horrible tragedy of Sports Illustrated coming into Canada with Canadian advertising. They talk about the fact that they will not be able to make their payments for fertilizer, fuel and such things.

They understand what the government does not understand, that people have to make a living. When they see legislation like this which threatens their existence at a time when they are already in tremendous danger, they wonder what goes on in Ottawa. They call it the puzzle patch. I do not blame them because I am pretty puzzled about what the government is up to.

It is beyond absurd that the Liberals are preparing to endanger trade with the United States, a billion dollars a day, at a time when according to the finance minister we are facing an economic meltdown, an apocalypse of some kind. On the other hand they are endangering trade with the one partner we can count on. Eighty-five per cent of our trade is with the United States. Yet the government is setting us up for a trade war with the United States. How ridiculous can that be?

I wonder if my friends across the way, who are laughing right now, would like to come back to Brooks, Alberta, to Bow Island or to Vauxhall and sit and laugh when my constituents tell me they will not make it through the winter or be able to sow their grain in the spring. It is not a laughing matter; it is deadly serious.

The Liberals across the way had better wake up and understand that the bill has implications far beyond magazines. It does not make sense to subsidize Ted Rogers. He already has enough millions in the bank. We do not need to subsidize Philippe de Gaspé Beaubien. He already has enough money.

It is ridiculous that the government has to try to justify its existence as a player in Canadian culture by putting in place a foolhardy piece of legislation like this one. It is absurd. It is no wonder Canadians are so cynical about this place.

I encourage government members to wake up, especially rural members who know how much this can damage their own constituents. I see the industry minister here. In the past he has had some knock-down, drag-'em-outs with the cultural minister on this issue because as a businessman he knows that this is bad business.

I encourage members across the way to wake up, defeat the legislation and ask the minister not to pursue it because it will damage Canada a lot more than it could ever help it.

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, October 29th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member mentioned a minute ago that magazines such as Time will be grandfathered in this legislation and therefore will not have to comply with these new rules that the government would propose to push through. I wonder if the member can explain why, if the principle of having American magazines in Canada not being allowed to pick up Canadian advertisers, she thinks that principle of allowing them to have Canadian advertising is wrong.

How in the world can she justify grandfathering in a magazine like Time which obviously would pick up a tremendous amount of Canadian advertising? How can she justify the double standard? If it is wrong, it is wrong.

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, October 29th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, my question for the parliamentary secretary has to do with the likely retaliation we will get for continually beating our head against the wall with this legislation. We know it was substantially defeated the first time it went before the WTO. Now we are trying a back door approach which we know will fail again. All we are going to do is incite problems with our biggest trading partner, a country we trade with to the tune of $1 billion every day.

Can the hon. member tell us why he thinks we are not going to face reprisals as we have faced in the past, perhaps in other areas such as farming where we already have a huge crisis in this country? Why would the government risk that type of reprisal to push through legislation it knows will ultimately fail?

[Petitions, October 29th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I have two petitions to present today on the issue of firearms registration. The petitioners call on the government to repeal Bill C-68 and to redirect the hundreds of millions of tax dollars being wasted on the licensing and registration of legally owned guns by responsible firearms owners to things proven to be more cost effective, such as reducing violent crime and improving public safety, having more police on the streets, particularly in British Columbia, having more crime prevention programs, more suicide prevention programs, more women's crisis centres, more anti-smuggling campaigns and more resources for fighting organized crime and street gangs.

These petitions come from my constituents in the riding of Medicine Hat.