Belinda Stronach

[Canada-U.S. Relations, March 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, just last week in Washington, the Prime Minister's parliamentary secretary for Canada-U.S. relations was talking sweet to the Americans about building long term relationships. This week in committee, she proposed a plan that Canada should slander the name of the United States around the world, our friend, ally and major trading partner.

Have the Prime Minister and the cabinet committee on Canada-U.S. relations approved a renewed strategic plan of embarrassment?

[Points of Order, March 9th, 2005]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to repeat the quote: “let's embarrass the hell out of the Americans. They want to expand their markets and other countries are going to be leery”if they hear of Canada's experience.

[Canada-U.S. Relations, March 9th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the following are the recent ramblings of the parliamentary secretary for Canada-U.S. relations, “let's embarrass the hell out of the Americans. They want to expand their markets and other countries are going to be leery”.

Could the Prime Minister explain how this will foster stronger Canada-U.S. relations to get the border open?

[Canadian Livestock Industry, March 8th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the point is well noted that our testing regimes are solid. In fact, as I can see, they are even stronger than the ones in the U.S. Why is it then that our beef remains shut out? It is not based on science.

I come back to the fact that the government has not done enough to build the face to face relationships on a general level to demonstrate why Canada is relevant, that 5.2 million American jobs depend on trade with Canada, and that 40% of the trade done with the United States is intercompany trade. This industry is interdependent and interlinked with the U.S. beef industry. The efforts that have been made are just not good enough.

Where is the major marketing campaign worldwide to create new markets for Canadian beef in the world? Why is this not done in Japan? Perhaps we need to increase our testing standards to open up new markets.

When I was in the U.S. last week, many of the congressmen and senators were oblivious to the importance of Canada-U.S. relations and how many jobs relate to a particular state. Not enough face time has been invested to build those relationships. We must make a much greater effort in that regard.

With respect to slaughter capacity, I have been out to Picture Butte, Alberta with my colleagues. I have talked to the feedlot owners and the ranchers. This is something that the government can do something about and increase the slaughter capacity. In my mind, as a former businessperson, it is a no-brainer.

When it costs $7 billion in damages to this industry, and one processing facility costs roughly between $100 million and $150 million, and those ranchers are prepared to invest hard dollars themselves, to me this is a no-brainer. It must be done and it is necessary to open up those new markets.

Further, we should be processing the beef that we have in this country and not just focusing on sending live cattle across the border. We should be creating more jobs and processing this product that we have in this country.

[Canadian Livestock Industry, March 8th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Battlefords—Lloydminster for proposing this emergency debate on this very important issue. I also want to acknowledge the presence of the Minister of Agriculture and the attention that he has given to this very serious matter.

We are rising in the House this evening to yet again examine the failure of the government to protect the interests of hard-working Canadians. It is truly unfortunate that we need to be in this position. I am sure that each and every hon. member would like nothing better than the prosperity of the cattle and dairy industry, but the border with the United States remains shut tight as a drum. March 7 came and went with not a single truck carrying cattle across the border.

The government will claim that it is not its fault. It will suggest that the problem lies in the decision of a local judge in a Montana court or with ill-informed and protectionist U.S. senators. These explanations sound more like excuses to me.

The Prime Minister and his cabinet are making excuses for their failure to get the basics of the Canada-U.S. relationship right in the first place. The border has been closed so long because of BSE that the Prime Minister actually inherited the problem from his predecessor. The Montana court decision last week does nothing but gloss over the facts.

The Prime Minister has been on this file for more than a year and a half and only got access to the President of the United States to talk about it four months ago in Chile. Every single day that the Prime Minister has been unable to contact the president costs Canadian ranchers and feedlot operators as much as $20 million per day, with $11 million lost in export revenue and the rest in lost value for the cattle they hold. I have seen estimates showing that the running total of losses for the beef industry is now at about $7 billion, and the cattle trucking business in Alberta may never recover.

With those kinds of losses and the amount of money at stake, one would think that the Liberals would have put some fire in their bellies and moved heaven and earth to get the border open, but no. The Minister of International Trade visited Washington for the first time officially less than a month ago, to meet with his new counterpart. The Minister of Agriculture just went to Washington for the first time a month ago.

This is just plain wrong and irresponsible with the livelihoods of so many Canadians at risk in the BSE crisis.

When the U.S. Senate voted to keep the border closed last Friday, it took our government by surprise. That says a lot to me about the government's complete lack of political intelligence on Capitol Hill. In business one always tries to know what one's competitors are doing in order to stay one step ahead, but here the custodians of Canada's relations with the United States were caught flat-footed and asleep. For $20 million a day, this performance by the government is just not good enough.

I have been out to feedlot alley with one of my colleagues to see the situation with my own eyes. I can tell members that the top priority for ranchers and feedlot operators is to get that border open so they can sell their products like before and like they do so well. That is really what they want.

Michael Ignatieff, the Harvard University professor, argued recently that Canada-U.S. relations is the defining issue for Canada in the 21st century, as Quebec-Canada was for the 20th century. The root of the problem is that the Liberal Party simply does not understand this, neither the Liberal Party of Jean Chrétien nor this Prime Minister. They are cut from the same cloth.

Is it the Liberals' anti-Americanism? Is it a belief that their polling tells them to pander to anti-Americanism because it will make them popular? It is a dangerous game. As a matter of fact, as this evening proves, they are playing a game of chicken with the national interests and livelihoods of our fellow Canadians.

The government should never have been so passive as this BSE crisis dragged on. Now there are some concrete things it should be doing. The cabinet committee on Canada-U.S. relations should be in an emergency session now to come up with a plan on how it is going to get this border open. When has it met? Where is the plan? If there is one, let us see it. Let us hear it.

Why is the Minister of International Trade not a member of the cabinet committee when the relationship with the United States is so driven by trade? This is amateur. It is just not serious.

The plan requires real resources dedicated to a strategic and sustained strategy to engage the United States on a political level, to build relationships with individual members of congress. A Canadian minister should be in the United States each and every working day to advocate and educate American lawmakers and interest groups, potential allies, not just a visit once in a blue moon.

The government should be launching a blitzkrieg communications effort to explain that the BSE testing regime is solid and as good as or better than the one used in the United States. The fact that the Canadian program tests on downers and dead-on-farm cattle, the types of animals hardest to obtain, led to the discovery of two additional cases in 2005. The U.S. department of agriculture has yet to identify the types of animals that entered the U.S. surveillance system, so we do not know whether in fact it is any superior to our own testing. Americans need to know this.

The government should be well advanced in a major international marketing effort for Canadian beef to demonstrate that Canadian beef is the best beef in the world. We should be innovating with beef in a box for new markets. The responsibility lies on the other side of the floor and instead, the border remains shut and the beef industry remains devastated.

[Justice, March 8th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister and the government are ignoring warnings from the U.S. ambassador that there will be consequences resulting from decriminalization causing costly cross-border delays.

Apparently the Prime Minister does not believe the senior U.S. enforcement official quoted in the New York Times who said that the criminal situation was, “getting worse and worse and we need to address it at every level”.

Is the Prime Minister willing to risk Canadian economic interest by proceeding with this misguided bill to decriminalize marijuana?

[Justice, March 8th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, on the weekend the New York Times reported that the marijuana grow op industry and criminal drug trafficking across the border were huge security concerns for the United States. In B.C. alone it is a $7 billion business.

However, the Prime Minister and that party continue to play fast and loose with the national interest by talking about decriminalizing and now even legalizing marijuana. Once again the Prime Minister is taking the country in the wrong direction.

Will the Prime Minister get focused, look at the cost to our economy and withdraw the bill to decriminalize marijuana?

[The Budget, March 7th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Red Deer.

This is the most Liberal of budgets in structure and intent. It uses the language of tax cuts and reinvestment in the military to attempt to satisfy one group, and child care and the environment for another.

However, at its core, the budget is flawed and defective on two accounts.

First, it is built on an accounting shell game that seems out of step with the revolution in corporate good governance following scandals like Enron and WorldCom.

Second, it is focused on spending taxpayer money with very little attention to enhance economic growth, increase competitiveness and create national wealth necessary to sustain the spending. This is very Liberal and one of the essential points of differentiation between the government and the Conservative Party.

Let us have a peak at how the government constructs its numbers. It has for years been underestimating revenues and expenditures. Examples are personal income and GST revenues which are $17 billion higher each year than reported, that is $85 billion over five years, with social spending understated by $17 billion a year.

For this current budget the government freed up $6 billion in planning surplus room in the next five years by re-booking certain health care and equalization expenditures previously booked over the next five years in the current fiscal year.

There is another example. It re-spent $2.5 billion worth of environmental funds that were booked in previous years but never spent, without revising its accounts.

There is another example. The $12 billion to be saved from the expenditure program review will be diverted to other spending but treated as zero activity. In the real world, auditors would never allow this sleight of hand.

What the Prime Minister has not told us is that he has now spent the entire planning surplus in a budget that is back loaded heavily into the final year; the windfall surplus will not be used to pay down the crippling national debt. What will he do when the fiscal climate of the country changes and he has spent the entire planning surplus? The promisekeeper will be forced to break promises.

With regard to the second flaw, the budget spends a lot on health care, for example, trying to reverse time to make up for the money the Prime Minister himself cut out of the same health care system when he was finance minister. With the exception of some relatively modest expenditures on workplace training, I see no strategic focus in the budget on making the country more competitive to keep jobs here in Canada and to create new ones. The key elements of an economic growth agenda are education and competitive corporate taxes.

In Ontario, for example, the provincial government allocates roughly 43% of its budget to health care but only 6% to universities and colleges. It is in large measure lack of federal leadership that has made post-secondary education the poor second cousin in public policy and the country will pay a price for that lack of vision. As a reflection of Liberal priorities, the budget abandons education.

The government remains fixated on lowering the marginal tax rate on profits as its approach to the corporate tax regime. However the key to competitiveness for advanced technology manufacturers is ongoing investment in continuous innovation. This is where much of the future success of Canada must lie. The government should be acting here to also make the effective tax rate on investment more competitive but the budget is silent on this critical part of the puzzle.

Before I cede the floor, I would like to pay attention to a specific policy area where the budget fails to deliver the goods, and that is the Canada-U.S. relationship. This relationship is complex and huge and is the backbone of our prosperity. At its nerve centre is the border, which is also the Achilles heel of Canadian prosperity. If that border does not work effectively or is shut down, it causes businesses to fail and costs jobs here at home.

Continuing blindly along in neglect, the budget promises some extra money for border personnel. This is helpful but the Liberals will spend more money on the Gomery commission investigating irresponsible government than they will put into enhanced border security each year of the budget. The real priority remains infrastructure. The border is fragile and very vulnerable.

What leads me to suspend belief in the Prime Minister's budget promises is that $600 million was allocated to border infrastructure in 2001. By March 2004, not a penny had been disbursed on new infrastructure. In its place was a lot of talk, studies, round tables and panels. Without the political will to treat the border as the single most vital piece of hardware in our national economic security, budget amounts are meaningless.

I might add that I find it ludicrous that the government proceeded to assign budget allocations to the military, development assistance and the foreign service before having completed its long awaited international policy review. I can think of no better example of putting the cart before the horse. It is bad public policy to spend money in the absence of objectives and priorities.

The Minister of Finance had promised us accountability and transparency. We received neither in this budget. This is a classic Liberal election budget based on spending.

[Agriculture, February 25th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, to add insult to injury each truck carrying live cattle into the U.S. starting March 7 will be inspected individually. This higher administrative cost will be passed on to the Canadian producer at between $5 and $15 a head extra. More holdups and more delays.

Has the minister negotiated with the Americans a special protocol for clearing our cattle faster and if not, when will he do that?

[Agriculture, February 25th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, in just over a week the U.S. border should open again for younger cattle, but the Prime Minister's failure for more than a year and a half to get that border open has caused devastating losses to the entire cattle sector.

Worse, the media report that Alberta truckers and feedlot owners fear there will be another six months to a year of harassment at the border. Many truckers have already gone to the oil patch and others will just not bother trying. The border will be open on paper, but not in practice.

When the trade minister was in Washington for the first time recently, did he receive assurances from the U.S. government that it will not harass Canadian truckers and open the border for real on March 7?