André Harvey

[Supply, February 10th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, before asking my colleague a question, I would like to apologize to the Reform Party for getting elected. During the last election campaign, the Reform Party and its leader recommended electing members whose leaders did not come from Quebec. I am even prouder that I was elected with the best leader of all this country's political parties.

Since the thinking is that we will get the courts to sort out the constitutional question, I would like to ask my colleague whether he still agrees with the advertising in the last election campaign that was critical of Quebec's politicians. It cost us at least 25 Conservative MPs in Quebec by polarizing the vote and insulting all Quebeckers and French Canadians.

[Supply, February 10th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, first I want to say that, as our leader stated this morning, we support the motion put forward by our colleagues from the Bloc Quebecois.

It is unfortunate that, once again, the Liberal Party of Canada has managed to focus the national debate on the relationship between Quebec and the rest of Canada. It is unfortunate—and I will say this before asking my question to my colleague—because, at a moment where Canadians have gone through successive serious crises over the past year and a half, that particular item is not on their agenda. Our priorities are definitely elsewhere.

Since Canadians are not sending us a clear message that a constitutional debate in the House of Commons is a matter of the utmost urgency, I would like to ask my colleague if he thinks that this debate has been fuelled for 30 years by irresponsible politicians who have made historical mistakes, especially over the last 20 years, that went against the objectives of Canadians as well as Quebeckers as a whole.

A survey released a few weeks ago showed that 80% of Quebeckers among those who voted yes have had enough and are sick and tired of the constitutional debate.

Is it an issue that is used and abused by politicians? I would like to hear what the member has to say on this subject.

[Pairing, February 6th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to congratulate my colleague, who introduced this motion in the House. I think it important to emphasize all the effort that goes into introducing a motion. You will understand, however, that I am not necessarily congratulating his party. I will come back to this in a few moments.

I would like to commend the parliamentary secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House, as well as our colleagues in the Bloc Quebecois and the New Democratic Party, on the quality of their speeches.

If it has done no more than clarify certain important principles, I think this motion was important. It gives us an opportunity to reflect on our role as parliamentarians, on the principle on which our fellow citizens rely and on which our work must be based if it is to meet the expectations of the public.

I am, nonetheless, a bit surprised at this motion, which alludes, among other things, to the formal disappearance of vote pairing and, obviously, to proxy voting. It is a bit worrisome to recall, but sometimes it is important, that, during the last election campaign, the Reform Party wanted to see the seven million Quebeckers and the eight and a half million French Canadians across the country all but unrepresented in the House. They practically wanted to exclude Quebeckers and French Canadians from the Parliament of Canada.

When there are suggestions such as this one about voting by proxy, we are aware that there are some things in life not properly done without direct contact with our colleagues, those within our own party first of all and then comments from MPs in other parties. A vote in the House of Commons represents a rather special dynamic.

There must be reflection. There must be exchanges with our colleagues. In our caucus meetings I am glad to be able to exchange views with my Newfoundland colleague, a former minister in the Peckford cabinet, who makes a huge contribution on certain specific issues, particularly natural resources, fisheries in particular.

Our Reform Party colleague must realize that the formula we have at the present time, of having an official register of paired members, is a very acceptable formula. If there is one important privilege for Members of Parliament, it is their attachment to their personal vote. The MPs' votes are not the responsibility of the whip, the party leader, or the Speaker of the House.

Members of Parliament must endeavour to be present here in the Parliament of Canada, both for the official vote and for all the proceedings leading to it. A vote is not carried out without reflection, without exchanges with our colleagues.

Huge progress has been made in this House in the past 15 or 20 years in speeding up votes. New parliamentary habits have developed. Thought is being given to electronic voting. Let me point out immediately that electronic voting does not mean remote voting. MPs must be physically present on the Hill for the proceedings leading to a vote and for the recorded vote itself, and this is a process about which our fellow citizens have strong feelings.

We were not elected to this place to let our whip vote for us. What would happen if there were surprise votes? Would the whip pull out his list of proxies and record the votes? That is totally unacceptable. I, as a whip, consider that this would be too much power.

The practice of pairing is a matter of honour and respect between MPs. Even if our colleague's motion were formally adopted, I am convinced that this privilege could not be taken away from MPs. That would be a change to the Standing Orders of the House of Commons which would be unenforceable and unacceptable. Even if it were adopted, it could not have any legal force.

I am convinced that my colleague, who is a conscientious member of Parliament, will reflect upon this. There is no way that two MPs could be prevented from working out a pairing arrangement.

The reality is that an MP is the only one responsible for his vote. It is not transferable. It would be quite unusual for a vote to come from a whip. The vote belongs to the MP, not his or her whip. It is a privilege conferred upon us by our fellow citizens. We may not transfer responsibilities to others, particularly not the responsibility to vote.

Proxy voting reduces MPs' freedom to vote. It could even go so far as to lower the quality of voting.

Nothing is more effective than contacts between parliamentarians of all parties, except between parliamentarians of the same party in order to take a stand on an important issue or even a less important one. I personally think that they are all important and that many members feel the same way. Mr. Speaker, because I know you, I know that you share this viewpoint.

There is a very special dynamic on Parliament Hill. Many meetings are held to ensure that members voting will do so in full knowledge of the facts of the matters, which are often very complex. Voting cannot be done at a distance, and, because of its importance, cannot be left to others.

It would be easy to argue on the subject of voting by proxy that it could mean significant savings, since members would not have to travel from Vancouver or Whitehorse simply to come and vote in Ottawa. If this is the intention of the motion introduced by the member for North Vancouver, I would submit that electronic voting would achieve the same result.

And so, if one day electronic voting becomes acceptable, I am sure that voting from elsewhere will be out of the question. This is where we vote. We must certainly not vote electronically from somewhere else and especially not hand over the responsibility to the whips or to others.

Be assured that I and my party will always be here to defend the importance of the privilege of pairing with a colleague. This is one of the members' important privileges. We will be here to defend the importance of being physically present on the Hill and in Parliament in order to vote, to take a stand on behalf of our colleagues and especially on behalf of our fellow citizens.

If there is one party that frequently speaks of its constituents, because they take a stand in voting, it is the Reform Party. It is an honour for them, I admit, but it involves being physically present here in Parliament.

I thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak on this important issue, which will be followed with interest in the coming months by all my colleagues.

[Saguenay Flood, February 6th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, emergency measures are covered by a federal-provincial agreement. Let me illustrate the problem, so you can see how serious it is.

I wonder if the federal government could ask the provincial government to at least make interest refunds eligible. Small municipalities with a population of 1,000 to 1,500 must currently pay interest on huge loans. This means monthly payments of $10,000 to $15,000.

[Saguenay Flood, February 6th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, given the series of disasters that have recently occurred in our country, the emergency debate held this week provided an opportunity to pay tribute to those who worked very hard and to also reflect on the measures that should be taken to deal even more effectively with such events.

I want to ask the Prime Minister whether it is normal for a small municipality like Anse-Saint-Jean to still be waiting for a payment of $2.5 million, one and a half years after the flood?

[Tribute To Senator Guy Charbonneau, February 4th, 1998]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for giving me this opportunity to pay tribute to Senator Guy Charbonneau.

The Hon. Guy Charbonneau made an important contribution to Canada as a captain in the Fusiliers Mont-Royal regiment during World War II, as an entrepreneur and as a senator. Indeed, he held the position of Speaker of the Senate for nine years, longer than anyone else since Confederation.

His dedication to and involvement in democratic life in Canada cannot go unrecognized. For 35 years, he was an active member of the Progressive Conservative Party. He believed in democracy and in the need for Quebeckers to have an alternative.

It has been said that, with his passing, Quebec lost a faithful son and Canada a loyal patriot. I agree.

I join with my colleagues in expressing support to his family and friends and, on behalf of my party, extend my deepest condolences.

[Ice Storm 1998, February 4th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, first, let me thank you for recognizing me at this late hour. I also want to mention that what you said last week about wanting to celebrate Quebec culture as one of the great human foundations was well received by a lot of people. I encourage you to try and share that new way of seeing things with all your caucus and I wish you luck.

First, I want to commend my colleagues for Shefford and Richmond—Arthabaska as well as our leader, the hon. member for Sherbrooke, for insisting on having this debate on the serious crises we have experienced over the last year and a half, particularly the recent ice storm.

I am very happy to have been able to come back to this Parliament if only to thank all our fellow Canadians who have helped us a lot during this extremely difficult period. The people of Chicoutimi and of the beautiful Saguenay—Lac Saint-Jean region know very well how desperate and frustrated you can be when nature wreaks havoc.

You saw the pictures at the time, a year and a half ago, of the area in the heart of the city of Chicoutimi called “Le bassin”, and what they called the little white house, which survived the wild and impetuous torrent. I am telling you tonight that this is the old section of Chicoutimi, my neighbourhood, where I grew up and where I was re-elected. I am very proud of it, and that period was a very difficult one.

At the time, we were all struck by the courage and the serenity of the victims and by the extraordinary spirit of solidarity among the people, first in the region, then in Quebec and then throughout the country.

It unfortunately takes a crisis of such magnitude to eliminate political partisanship, ideologies and racial prejudice. It is kind of crazy. Sometimes it looks like nature is taking revenge. Sometimes nature appears to be setting new priorities, because when everything is going well, both individuals and countries take the lazy approach. Laziness is sometimes called the mother of all vices. So nature sometimes decides to remind us of the real priorities and the basic necessities. I hope that all we have faced in the past few years will provide some inspiration for the future.

The great floods have left an indelible mark on our collective unconscious. I am sure that the constituents represented by my colleague, the member for Brandon—Souris, and others who have lived through events as serious as ours, and neighbouring ridings in Manitoba, share these same sentiments.

Yet, throughout these great and terrible tragedies, people's noblest qualities come through. Solidarity, compassion, mutual support, sharing and the desire to serve all flourish and make us proud to belong to the great Canadian family.

In my riding, people took charge immediately, when the gravity of the situation became apparent. People met and organized the distribution of essential supplies. We saw municipal councillors, to whom I wish to pay tribute this evening, Carl Savard and Jacques Bouchard, who directed the delivery of firewood. We know that firewood is a key element for survival in the dead of winter when you have no fuel.

While on this particular topic, I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate my colleague from New Brunswick, the member for Tobique—Mactaquac, who telephoned me at the height of the crisis, having heard that we in Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean had organized the collection of firewood. He called me and told me he would have a dozen truckloads of firewood. He asked me to help him direct this contribution that he wanted to send. I found that quite exceptional.

Naturally, we must take this opportunity to congratulate all the volunteers in Quebec and throughout the country who played a role, out of view of the cameras. We must also pay tribute to the work done by all our mayors, elected officials and municipal government employees. I think that the last crisis we have been through will certainly provide us with an opportunity to thank and congratulate the people who helped us survive in our region.

I am thinking of our mayors, among others. The mayor of Chicoutimi at the time; the mayor of La Baie, Claude Richard; the mayor of Ferland-et-Boileau, the municipalities that were almost destroyed, Léon Simard; the mayor of Saint-Félix, Jean-Marie Claveau; the mayor of the very tiny and now famous municipality of Anse-Saint-Jean, Laurent-Yves Simard; the mayor of Petit Saguenay, Hervé Lavoie; they all worked very hard; and the mayor of Rivière Éternité as well.

Interestingly enough, there are no sovereignists and no federalists when disaster strikes, only people who want to help one another. We should learn something from this. We witness this kind of solidarity only in times of crisis.

When there is no crisis, we go back to our collective passivity, to the same old arguments that may not always be a priority for our fellow citizens.

The lesson we should learn is this: Elected representatives should be able to present a constructive agenda to the whole country. We have been going on economic missions abroad. I have nothing against this. I am trying to find out the concrete results of this, and I may be able to come up with specifics in a few weeks. The first mandate for Canada, if we are to promote solidarity among Canadians, is to set up a Canadian economic mission.

I look forward to business people from Chicoutimi meeting with their colleagues in Toronto, Winnipeg and Vancouver. I know for a fact that good trade relations between business people in different regions will have a major cultural impact.

Since we have to deal with new natural phenomena, piecemeal emergency preparedness is not good enough. We need a Canadian plan to support the provinces. We need all the elements, federal and provincial. It is wrong that the Canadian Forces should not be officially part of the emergency preparedness scenarios in Quebec or Alberta. We have to wait for a request from the provincial government to deploy the young men and women of the Canadian Forces. In the future, they must be included in the emergency measure plans, because we are likely to be faced with other unusual weather phenomenons.

We will need different strategic plans. Our forces should also be provided with more modern equipment. I think that from now on we will be less fearful of investing in more sophisticated, more modern equipment for our forces, in order to make them more responsive and more efficient.

I think that the cooperation between the federal and provincial levels of government must also extend to unified emergency plans. Because of all the crises we had to manage during the last year and a half and the ones we can expect in the years to come, we have to opt for a more continuous type of consultation. We can no longer manage these crises at the last minute.

I think that all of the stakeholders would agree that everyone did their best. Things did not go perfectly well, and lessons have to be learned here.

For example, my area was hit a year and a half ago. Some of the smaller municipalities still have huge credit lines. I am thinking in particular of a small village. It has a credit line of $2.4 million since the flood a year and a half ago. That cost them $90,000 in interests last year and it still comes to $12,000 a month in interests for a small village that has yet to receive any compensation. So, there are still problems out there. There are problems because we are not well prepared for these types of emergencies. We have to do better.

This will give the provincial and federal governments a great opportunity to pool their resources together to further help our fellow citizens in times of need.

We cannot have gone through three crises in the space of a year and a half and still think that it will not happen again. These phenomenons are something new in our lives. We have to be better prepared.

I am pleased to give my colleague from South Shore the opportunity to talk about these new phenomenons and the extremely serious crises we have gone through these last few weeks and especially this last year and a half.

[Tribute To The Late Antonio Yanakis, December 11th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I did not know Mr. Yanakis personally. I arrived here in 1984. As mentioned earlier, Mr. Yanakis was a member of Parliament from 1965 to 1984. He was first elected at the age of 43.

I took time to read his first speech in the House of Commons. No one will be surprised to learn that he loved his riding of Berthier—Maskinongé—Lanaudière, which he described as a region of beautiful mountains and vast forests, with hundreds of lakes where summer visitors can relax in a beautiful setting.

He also said “as you probably know, I am the first Canadian of Greek origin to be elected to the Parliament of Canada, and in an almost exclusively French Canadian riding. This would indicate that Quebec is far from displaying the fanaticism it is sometimes accused of”.

Mr. Yanakis stressed Quebec's dynamism. He said that “the new, dynamic Quebec wants to be a leader and help shape a new and proud Canada. It is in the full respect of the rights of both official groups, anglophones and francophones, that Canadians are asking us to speak on behalf of the new Canada”.

On behalf of the Progressive-Conservative Party of Canada, and on my own behalf, I wish to offer our most sincere condolences to all those who knew Mr. Yanakis, particularly his family and friends.

[Committees Of The House, December 11th, 1997]

Let us talk about the Conservatives. I am not ashamed of the PC's record from 1974 to 1984, before we came to power. It could not be so bad if I got elected in Chicoutimi. That is reality.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague what is more important: to try to bring down one government or another or to try to set our main priorities together in such a way that we can meet them?

[Committees Of The House, December 11th, 1997]

Thank you Mr. Speaker. It is never too late to do the right thing.

Party politics aside, I would like to make a few comments and ask a question to the hon. member for Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques.

In this debate on issues which may enable the government to come up with a more rational budget, one that will better meet the needs of our fellow Canadians, the hon. member said a number of times that people told him this or that.

In the latest surveys, given that our colleagues in the Bloc continue to constitutionalize things here in the House of Commons and given that 86% of the people of Quebec are saying they have had their fill of the endless constitutional debates, does not, in fact, what we call Quebec's ambivalence concern the fact that what we put forward in the latest election campaign, the so-called Canadian pact, with the objectives of meeting the real needs of Canadians, not require us, rather than saying we are going to scrap one government and improve another, do people not recognize in this approach, in its ambivalence, which may not really exist, the fact that, when they find the two governments unsatisfactory, they can still, through their representatives define their priorities with one of the two governments and call for a consensus with the two levels of government to act in areas they consider important, such as industry, tourism, highway infrastructures and other urgent matters?

Quebeckers' common sense dictates that a balance be struck between the two levels of government. When 86% of Quebeckers tell us they are sick and tired of hearing about the Constitution left and right day after day, I think this means that we, as elected representatives, must try to act rationally, decide together what our priorities should be for each level of government and, if at all possible, put all available resources behind achieving objectives that they hold dear.

One can fake it only so far. In 1993, the Bloc Quebecois said it would get elected to hold real power. That is quite interesting. What is real power? Let us see the facts in two columns.