Lorne Nystrom

[Supply, February 28th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, that is a very thoughtful and insightful question and one that is extremely important to our sovereignty and electing a parliament that is a reflection of all Canadians.

We need serious parliamentary reform. In terms of reforming this institution, too much power now rests with the Office of the Prime Minister and far too little power with parliamentary committees and ordinary members of parliament. When we talk about parliamentary reform, we should also reduce the power of the PMO to call an election whenever it wants. We need fixed election dates and fixed budget dates.

We should take away the power the Prime Minister's office has for nominations and for nominating committee chairs. We had a big crisis in the finance committee last week where the finance committee wanted to elect the member for Etobicoke North as the chair. We have nothing against the current chair but we had interference from the whip of the Liberal Party in terms of imposing the will of the Prime Minister's office according to Liberal members of parliament on the finance committee. We need serious parliamentary reform.

On the electoral side, we need electoral reform. This parliament does not reflect at all how the Canadian people voted. Forty per cent of the people voted for the Liberal Party and it has 60% of the seats in the House of Commons. That happens time and time again. In fact we have had very few majority governments elected by the majority of the people.

Most countries in the world do not have our kind of electoral system. In fact if we look around the world, only three democracies use our first past the post system, and we are talking of democracies with more than eight million people: India, the United States and Canada. We saw what happened in the United States in the election a year ago in November. Al Gore got 550,000 more votes than George W. Bush. Who is the president of the United States? George W. Bush. We have those distortions in every first past the post system.

What we are suggesting is that we strike a parliamentary committee that will look at aspects of proportional representation so that when people vote in election campaigns their vote will count, that no vote is wasted, and every vote is counted equally, so if a party gets 10% of the votes in the country it would get about 10% of the seats in the House of Commons; if it gets 20% of the votes it would get 20% of the seats in the House of Commons.

We have to move that way in terms of making people involved in the electoral process. The turnout is plummeting. In the last campaign only 61% of the people voted. In the campaign before that it was 67%. Back in the 1960s and 1970s it used to be 75% or 80% of the people. People are disengaging from the process.

We need political reform in terms of parliamentary reform and political reform in terms of electoral reform so that everyone is equal, everyone's vote counts and no one's vote is wasted. That is part of saving our country and part of renewing Canada.

[Supply, February 28th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, the fundamental issue facing parliament is the sovereignty and independence of our country and what has happened to erode that sovereignty and democracy in the last 10 or 15 years.

When I travel across Canada I hear this raised by more and more people. I also see the pride of Canadians. Look at how proud we were when we won all the gold, silver and bronze medals at the Olympics. Canadians want to remain Canadian and have a distinct entity. However, we see the erosion of our sovereignty.

We have a government across the way that has sat idly by watching that sovereignty erode. We have a government across the way that is now actively talking about in some cases using a common currency, the common dollar. The former chair of the finance committee used to speculate about this quite often. The premier of Quebec has talked about a common currency. Now the chair of the finance committee is in the cabinet being rewarded for those kinds of views. We have members of the Alliance Party talking about maybe the possibility of a common currency.

It is about time we started raising these issues. The Minister of Finance tries to pooh-pooh this as a really serious discussion in the country. We now have the governor of the Bank of Canada saying that in five or ten years there may be integration to the effect where we would start talking about a common currency. The previous governor of the Bank of Canada, Gordon Thiessen, did not talk that way at all. He said no to the idea of a common currency. If we lose our currency we lose our country. If we lose our currency we lose our sovereignty. That is why this is a very important issue.

I fear the Minister of Finance pooh-poohing the idea. I remember back in 1984 or 1982 when Brian Mulroney was running for the leadership of the Conservative Party. At that time he took a very strong stand against free trade. I remember John Crosbie was very much in favour of free trade. I remember Brian Mulroney saying in response to a question by John Crosbie that free trade with the Americans was like going to bed with an elephant. “It may feel very warm and snuggly, especially on a winter night, until the elephant has a nightmare and rolls over and out you are gone”.

About two years later after he became Prime Minister, Mr. Mulroney went to Quebec City and met with Ronald Reagan. They came out on a balcony singing When Irish Eyes are Smiling . Everything had changed and we got the free trade agreement. The same thing will happen here unless we alert the Canadian population to the fact that this increased continentalism and integration with the United States will lead to a common currency, to the end of our country and to the loss of our sovereignty.

A common dollar in this country does not mean a new currency with the United States. A common dollar means the use of the American currency. It is not like Europe where the common currency is the Euro, with 12 of the 15 countries in the common market now using it. There is a Bank of Europe. There is an institution called the European Parliament which is the authority in terms of the Euro.

In this case, because the Americans are much bigger than us, the common currency would be the American dollar. The authority would be the federal reserve in the United States, answerable to the federal reserve and answerable to Congress in the United States of America.

Not only will it be the American dollar, but we will see also the privatization of the currency as well because the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England and most central banks are publicly owned. In the United States the federal reserve is privately owned in the shelters of the big banks on Wall Street.

This is the way we are going as a country. That is why it is important we put on the agenda today a debate about the very sovereignty of Canada and where we are going as a country.

In the 1980s Brian Mulroney became prime minister and made that great flip-flop from being worried about free trade to being an advocate of free trade instead of fair trade. They implemented the free trade deal and since that time we have lost some 13,000 companies in this country. Most of those 13,000 companies have been bought out by Americans. Among them are some very well known Canadian companies in terms of institutions.

I think in British Columbia, the big Canadian company of MacMillan Bloedel was sold to Weyerhaeuse a while back. Tim Hortons sold to Wendy's, the American company. Shoppers Drug Mart is gone to an American company. Gulf Canada Limited, which is the largest gas and oil company in this country, has now been sold to the Americans.

Laura Secord chocolates, a great Canadian institution, was sold to the Americans. Then we have the Montreal Canadiens.

The Montreal Canadians, that great Canadian institution in la belle province, the team of Maurice “Rocket” Richard, has been sold to the Gillette Company of the United States.

We saw the sellout of the CNR and pretty soon it will be the CPR.

The sellout of the Canadian economy goes on and on. As more money moves out of the country and more investment is placed into tax havens, more money will be drained out of the country and the Canadian dollar will become weaker. Canadian companies are selling their businesses at fire sale prices because of the value of the Canadian dollar and the weakening of the fabric and sovereignty of the country.

When we lose our economy, we lose the tax base we need for strong social programs like health care, public education and other social programs that are so extremely important. This is a very important issue.

When the president of the Royal Bank, Gordon Nixon, spoke in Regina last October he said that over the last two and a half years some 20% of the publicly traded companies in the Toronto Stock Exchange had been sold and most of them to the United States. He also said that of the 35 gas and oil companies on the TSE gas and oil index, some 23 had been sold over the last two or three years and mostly to the Americans. He also said in that speech that when we have the sellout of many large companies and corporations, we have the hollowing out of corporate Canada and the relocation of head office and R and D jobs into the United States of America.

If we go into a recession or have a slowdown in the economy and a company has to make a decision about closing a plant, where does it close the plant? It is not in the United States. It is in Canada because we have a branch plant economy. A good example is the very profitable Ford Motor plant in Oakville. It is being closed down because Ford does not close down American plants, it closes down plants in this country.

This is a big issue but where is the nationalist wing of the Liberal Party? Where is the Walter Gordon wing of the Liberal Party? Where is the Herb Gray wing of the Liberal Party from many years ago? Where is the Lloyd Axworthy wing of the Liberal Party from many years ago?

I see the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance across the way from the Toronto area. I remember a few years ago he was a great Canadian nationalist who was concerned about the sovereignty of the country and a strong economy. I want him to get up in the House today, endorse this motion and exercise some concern about the sovereignty of our country to build a strong Canada for each and every Canadian.

This is a very important issue. It is fundamental. What has happened to our country over the last 15 years in terms of the lack of sovereignty and democracy is a real scandal and a real shame. We have now lost many of the powers we used to have as a parliament.

The member for Winnipeg--Transcona said that the things we could legislate when he came here in 1979 we cannot legislate today. That is very true. Many things back in the 1960s and 1970s, let alone in the 1950s and so on, that were under the purview of a national parliament, have now been transferred to international bodies. However in the transfer of that power to those international bodies we have seen a lopsided transfer. It was basically a transfer of rights for the investor through large multinational corporations. We have no counterbalancing in the vision of globalization and rights for the ordinary working people of the country or indeed around the world in terms of minimum labour standards and rights, rights to collective bargaining and the ability to organize. There are no environmental standards and no standards in terms of health and social programs.

If we are to have a vision of globalization that is balanced for the ordinary people of the country there has to be something there for the common good of ordinary folks. That is what this debate is all about.

Today it is all a lopsided battle. We are seeing that in every aspect of globalization. It is all about profit for large multinational corporations. Let us take a look at currency. Today over a trillion dollars is exchanged in the world in terms of currency markets each and every single day. About 90% of the exchange of currency in the world is done solely for reasons of speculation. The big investment banks are speculating on very small margins with over a trillion dollars a day which creates nothing productive whatsoever in terms of jobs and benefits for ordinary people. It is hard to imagine how large a trillion dollars a day is yet we have a Minister of Finance who is not raising these issues in a very forceful way in the international community.

These are big issues and they are important. As the member from Burnaby said, we passed my private member's motion a couple of years ago to endorse the idea of a Tobin tax, which was a small tax on the speculation of currency. We should be taking it to the world forum and pushing it with all our might.

[Taxation, February 27th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. There is mounting evidence that Canada is losing revenue to tax havens. A recent security regulator's report found that the Canadian investment dealers are holding 13,000 accounts in OECD blacklisted tax havens. We have also seen the CIBC play with its profits to reduce taxes in this country.

Will the Minister of Finance show some leadership and hold talks with the provinces to create a national securities watchdog that would tighten regulations and require full disclosure of transactions with tax havens?

[The Environment, February 22nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the minister has had five years to put the facts on the table. He has been sitting there wringing his hands for five years. He is the minister. I am not the minister. Let us have the facts on the table. I want to know the specifics today.

There was a drought on the prairies last year. The agriculture committee is in Saskatchewan this week. They are predicting a drought next year in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta.

What will the cost be to the prairie farmers? How many billions of dollars will global warming cost the prairie farmers and other people affected? Please answer that specific question.

[The Environment, February 22nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of the Environment.

The Alberta minister of the environment said it will cost between $23 billion and $40 billion to deal with the fallout from Kyoto. These are exaggerated numbers. They are way out of line and the minister knows that.

Why does the minister not repudiate those numbers? Why has he not stood up for the farmers of western Canada and for other people affected and put the real facts on the table?

[Business of Supply, February 21st, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I would like to say a few words in support of the proposition before the House today. The proposition is one that is worthy of support by all members of the House and I hope all members support it.

It deals with the most fundamental part of a parliamentary democracy, namely the granting of supply. The granting of supply means the approval of funds, the approval of money, money paid by the taxpayers for the various programs, for the $150 billion or $160 billion that we approve in terms of expenditures every year.

It is quite shameful, if the Canadian people knew how quickly we approve the spending of billions and billions of dollars with very little scrutiny. Madam Speaker, you are a very credible intelligent person and I imagine even you could not explain all the billions of dollars that we vote and spend and approve without even knowing the details of what is going on in many cases.

I first came to the House in 1968 when I was 22 years old. I remember a great debate in the summer of 1969 when there were major rule changes made in the House. Pierre Trudeau was the prime minister. Bob Stanfield was the leader of the opposition. Tommy Douglas was the leader of the NDP and Réal Caouette was the leader of the Créditistes.

One of the things that was debated was the moving of the estimates out of the House into the committees. In those days estimates were dealt with by the committee of the whole. In 1969 as part of streamlining parliament the plan was to make sure that committees had more power and by moving the estimates to the committees, the estimates could be scrutinized more carefully in a smaller body with fewer MPs taking more time and therefore doing a better job on behalf of the Canadian public.

That debate went on for a long, long time. It was my first summer in Ottawa and it was a hot July. My recollection is the debate went on until the 29th or 30th of July. It went on day after day. It was a controversial debate as to whether or not we should move the estimates out of the House of Commons in terms of the committee of the whole to the various parliamentary committees.

I remember sitting in the back row. Once during a recess Réal Caouette, Bob Stanfield and other members of the Conservative Party walked over to our House leader, Stanley Knowles, and asked “What do we do next, Stanley? We are worried about the process, about taking the estimates out of the House”. For a while it seemed to be a pretty exciting thing to do. But after 1969 as time went on, it became more and more of a formality. As time went on the government whips, regardless of which party was in power, would crack the whip and steamroll the estimates through the various committees. There is very little scrutiny of the estimates and expenses in committees, to the point where I think this is one of the big problems in our parliamentary system.

I support the motion before the House. We are in need of serious parliamentary reform. We have to devise a system. Whether it is a special committee on the estimates or bringing more estimates before the House as my friend from the PC/DR Coalition has suggested, we have to do something to make sure there is better scrutiny of the estimates here.

Every year we approve spending for fisheries, agriculture and national defence. We approve $60 million for the other place, the Senate. At least when we get to most estimates in the committees, we call witnesses from the various agencies and government departments to justify what they are spending. It may be happening very quickly and it may be very superficial but in the case of the Senate, it refuses to appear before the appropriate House of Commons committee to justify the roughly $60 million it spends every year. Liberal members of the House of Commons have invited the relevant people from the Senate and they refuse to appear. Where is the accountability? Where is the scrutiny of the money that is spent here that is collected from each and every single Canadian taxpayer?

We should be moving toward more parliamentary reform, more openness, more accountability, more independence for individual members. There should be less control by the whips particularly on the government side of the House of Commons. There should eventually be more free votes, fewer confidence votes, more power for parliamentary committees and more independence for parliamentary committees.

My goodness, we cannot even elect a committee chair by a secret ballot even though we elect the Speaker of the House of the Commons by a secret ballot. That is how centralized and controlled we are.

There are some new cabinet ministers, like the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Hopefully he will bring some reforming zeal to the inner sanctums of government across the way. I hope in a year or two he will not become like most of the others and isolate himself because of all the awesome power or be intimidated by the Prime Minister and some of his advisers like Eddie Goldenberg.

We have to change our system. We have to reform it. No matter who sits on the other side, people elect members of parliament to scrutinize supply, to scrutinize the estimates, to suggest ideas, to make changes, to make laws, to vote freely in accordance with their conscience and in accordance with the wishes of their constituents. That really has not been happening in the House of Commons.

We are probably the most handcuffed parliament of any country in the democratic world in terms of the lack of freedom to speak one's mind and to vote one's mind. Even in Britain which we model our own system after, often the government will lose a bill in the British House of Commons despite the fact there is a majority parliament. When Margaret Thatcher was prime minister and at the height of her popularity I recall several times when Conservative backbenchers rebelled and defeated a government bill. The same thing has happened to Tony Blair, who is a very popular prime minister, especially in his first term. There were a number of cases when the Labour government in Britain lost a proposal in the House of Commons because members of the prime minister's own party stood up and said no.

If that were to happen here on even the most timid little measure, it would become a great parliamentary crisis. It would be a great issue of confidence. The Prime Minister talks about going to the country and having a brand new election. That is really a farce. We are shortchanging Canadians if we cannot organize our most powerful democratic institution to be truly democratic and representative of the people of Canada.

This motion is a very timid little step toward making this place more relevant to each and every Canadian citizen. I urge all members of the House to support the idea before us.

I urge the Minister of Foreign Affairs, being a progressive, bright, refreshing, young voice at the cabinet table compared to the seniority in the House, to take the bull by the horns and make sure he helps organize the government benches to accept this very worthwhile and credible idea. I look forward to hearing the remarks of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and I will cede the floor to him.

[Pension Plans, February 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister of financial institutions.

The $100 billion Enron bankruptcy in the United States is the largest in the history of that country and has shattered the confidence of many Canadian workers in the security of their pension plans.

Regulations concerning pension plan investments in federal jurisdiction do not allow for more than 10% of the holdings to be invested in any one company, but Enron's situation shows a need to enshrine this in legislation, not just in regulations.

Would the minister agree to table in the House a bill that would enshrine the 10% rule in legislation to provide more security for Canadian working people about their pension plans?

[Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, February 20th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of our party I wish to say a few words in support of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau foundation fellowship that was established today.

The foundation comes out of the budget with an allocation of $125 million over the next number of years. The idea is a superb one. The foundation would be comparable to Rhodes scholarships over the years and would retain a lot of bright people in the country. It would have people from other parts of the world come to Canada to study as well.

The foundation would have 80% of the students from Canada and 20% would come from other parts of the world. We applaud that. This is a great honour for the former prime minister. The pursuit of excellence is an excellent idea. This country needs to invest a lot more into knowledge, research and ideas.

Knowledge is power and ideas are power. Innovation, and the whole area of research and development, is extremely important. I also think it is a much more appropriate thing to do in memory of Pierre Elliott Trudeau than the naming of a mountain would have been about a year ago when that was suggested by the government across the way.

I knew Pierre Elliott Trudeau very well. I spent 16 years in the House of Commons with him from 1968 to 1984. I remember him as prime minister for almost all of that time. For a short while he sat as leader of the opposition when my friend from Calgary was the prime minister back in 1979 to 1980. When I think of Pierre Elliott Trudeau I think of a person who had a lot of courage, a person of ideas and perhaps more than anything else a person of great determination who had a vision and would fight for that vision. We would often disagree with him but we had to admire his courage and determination to succeed with the vision that he fought for.

I think of the Official Languages Act, which I supported; multiculturalism; and his fight for the patriation of the Canadian constitution with a charter of rights enshrined in the constitution. That was a very divisive issue that divided all parties in the House of Commons. We had differing ideas but it was his sheer determination that eventually got us a constitution with a patriated charter of rights. Even at that time he had to compromise on issues in the charter of rights and the amending formula. It showed he had some flexibility as well when he pursued his vision.

This is an appropriate way to remember Pierre Elliott Trudeau. He was a person who exonerated youth and exuberance. He was a great Canadian who loved this country, but he was also a great internationalist. This scholarship would also be available for people in different parts of the world.

My only regret is that this is a little late in coming. We should have had a foundation like this many years ago. When we look at the drop in our standard of living compared to the United States and many other parts of the world a large part of that is due to the fact that we have not been as strong in innovation, research and development and education, nor as productive as many of the other countries in the world. Over the past few years for example we have seen all of the cutbacks in funding of post secondary education. It is something like $5 billion since 1993.

When I look back when Pierre Trudeau enrolled as a first year law student many years ago the tuition fee was probably $200 or $300. It is worth about $3,000 today. Today there is a university in Canada that charges $12,000 for a first year law student. I understand it is considering doubling the tuition fee from $12,000 to $24,000 in the very near future. We are limiting the accessibility to education.

Even though it is late in coming this is an excellent idea.

I am very pleased to support the creation of this foundation in memory of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, former Prime Minister of Canada.

I can say to the family, to Sacha who was here earlier today, that they can be proud of the contribution their father made and that a foundation in his name would carry that memory forward in terms of looking for new ideas, excellence in research, and positive things to not just improve our country but to improve the world.

Often in parliament we have great political differences. We debate a great number of issues. However today we have parliament coming together to honour a great Canadian for a great contribution and we do that by establishing a foundation that would be there as a worthwhile cause for generations to come.

[Privilege, February 20th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I want to add a word in support of the suggestion before the House today.

I too was involved in the finance committee yesterday. At one stage before the committee meeting started, when there were going to be two candidates for the chairmanship of that committee, the member for Etobicoke North and the member for London West, I was called out by one of the staff of the chief government whip to see the chief government whip, at which time she asked me how I was voting. I told her I would be supporting the member for Etobicoke North. She told me that was not the government's choice, that the government's choice was the member for London West. I implied I had made up my mind to support the member for Etobicoke North. She said to me at that time “if that happens and if he wins the chairmanship, I may have to remove him from the finance committee”. I think that is a heavy handed approach to be used by a government whip.

Also, during a recess at committee one of the parliamentary secretaries was at the committee and the parliamentary secretary spoke to the chief government whip, came in from speaking to the chief government whip and was talking to some Liberal members from the government side of the House. Two of those Liberal members, or two of those government members, said to me that the parliamentary secretary had the whip say to her or imply to her that if she did not vote the right way, she needed to worry about her parliamentary secretaryship.This is what I heard from two government members of the finance committee.

There was also a great deal of confusion at the committee. I am led to believe that committees should be masters of their own destiny. That certainly was not the case. The chief government whip was also a member of the committee at that time, the only time she has ever been a member of the finance committee.

I think for these reasons and others, and I could go on at length, I support the suggestion put forth today in the House by the Leader of the Opposition.

[The Economy, February 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, when the Bank of Canada sold off to an American firm the administration of the Canada savings bond program, one of our crucial symbols of national sovereignty, the Minister of Finance turned a blind eye.

Now the Minister of Finance believes that Canadian companies are not smart enough to develop security technology for our currency. He wants to import paper from another country for the printing of our money here in Canada. Canadian paper, considered to be the best in the world, is not good enough for the Minister of Finance.

As well, by increasing the foreign content ceiling on pension funds and RRSPs from 20% to 30% the finance minister has caused the Canadian economy to lose $100 billion in investments and the Canadian dollar to depreciate even further.

I have a question. Is the Minister of Finance planning to run for president of the United States or is he serious about building our country right here in Canada?