Lorne Nystrom

[Foreign Affairs, February 23rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the Government of Canada endorsed the cruel and useless bombing of Iraq by the United States and the United Kingdom without any regard for the consequences of those illegal bombings on the people of Iraq, wounding many and probably killing some.

Ironically, one of the consequences of our country endorsing that bombing of innocent civilians is that it has also thrown a financial bomb at Canadian wheat producers.

Last year our farmers exported 262,000 tonnes of wheat to Iraq, worth about $50 million, primarily from my home province of Saskatchewan. One of the results of the endorsement by our government of the bombing of Iraq is that Iraq has now informed our Canadian wheat exporters that it will no longer accept wheat from Canada. This has just driven another financial spike into the coffin of our prairie grain producers.

Our farmers are already suffering enough. They are in Ottawa today lobbying for better prices and for a better deal from our federal government and now they have lost yet another market because of the action of the government across the way.

Let us stop the bombing in Iraq. Let us lift the economic sanctions and save another market for Canadian grain producers.

[Canada Elections Act, February 23rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I notice the member took offence to some of the things I was saying. People who are watching and listening today should realize that the Alliance Party, through the hon. member, has introduced a bill stating that an official party should have at least 10% of the members of the House, which is 31 members, or should have members in three provinces. The Bloc, of course, comes from only one province.

The member would classify as a fringe party 63 members of parliament: all the Bloc, all the Conservatives, all the New Democrats, the voices of one-third of the Canadian people. Those three parties received about 33% of the vote. Is that democracy? Is that inclusiveness? Is that empowering people? Is that what the Reform Party and the Alliance Party stand for? Do they stand for excluding the voice of the people in the House of Commons?

There is the party with a former leader who went across the country talking about the equality of people, saying “Let the people in. Let the west in. Let the people speak. Let us treat everyone equally”. Now those members have a bill in the House of Commons that would mute the voices of one-third of the people in the country.

People should know where the reform alliance party stands. Never has anyone in the history of the House of Commons moved such a draconian bill. No one has ever tried to do this before. It would mute the voices of one-third of the people.

The left in the country will be around here for a long time after the Reform Party disappears. I do not know whether the member has any sense of history in terms of the contribution of the CCF and the NDP in health care, social programs, the mixed economy and the charter of rights, all of these institutions. Maybe he was not a very good student of history.

I want to ask him this: why would he propose an idea that is so contrary to what his former leader used to say about the equality of the people, which was that everyone is equal and should have a voice in the House of Commons in the Parliament of Canada? He wants to exclude 63 MPs representing a third of the electorate. That is the most draconian idea I have heard since the ideas that came out of the era of Joe McCarthy in the United States.

[Canada Elections Act, February 22nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I think the best way of doing that is by practising what we preach, by being true to our word, true to our commitment, true to our principles and true to our promises in a campaign.

The member summed up the Alliance Party. Its members said they would never move into Stornoway and they did. They said they would never take a pension and they did. They said they would never eat in the parliamentary restaurant and they do. They said they would never travel business class on an airplane and they do.

They think all voters should be equal, all people should be equal and all provinces should be equal. Then they introduce a private member's bill in the House which says that parties should not be equal, that the Bloc, the NDP and the Conservatives should not be official parties. Those parties represent one-third of the Canadian people and 63 members of parliament.

The previous leader of the Alliance Party, the member from Calgary, used to go across the country talking ad nauseam about the equality of the provinces and the equality of people being a fundamental value. He said he believed in the fundamental equality of the Canadian people.

Yet when it comes to putting its preaching into practice in the House of Commons, the Alliance comes up with a private member's bill that does not treat the people equally. If people vote for the Bloc, the NDP or the Conservatives, they will not be treated the same as those who vote for the Liberals or the Alliance.

How could we justify that? I have been challenging Alliance members to explain why they would breach their all important promise of equality for the people, but they are afraid to rise in the House to defend this private member's bill.

The people of Canada should realize what they said, that no party in the House should be recognized as official unless it has at least 10% of the seats. That would mean 31 seats for the NDP instead of 13, or 31 for the Conservatives instead of 12. They also said that the party should have members from three provinces. That would exclude the Bloc Quebecois, unless the Bloc elects somebody in Vancouver, Calgary and Yukon or somewhere else.

The Alliance Party is supposed to be a populist, grassroots party of the people where everyone is equal. That is the kind of party and vision its members said they had. That is one reason people are turned off by politics. They have another political party which, more than others, is old style and old fashioned. It practises old politics where it says one thing in the campaign and once elected does exactly the opposite. That is why people are cynical about the process. I want somebody from the Alliance Party to respond to my question.

[Canada Elections Act, February 22nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, once again, I know the member from Vancouver who just interjected would not agree with his party on this. He is more progressive than most of the sort of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble people who populate that particular caucus. That is an important issue. Some of them, not necessarily the ones who are there now, but some with cowboy hats sit right behind him during question period. That is the stance of that party. It pretends to be democratic and populist right across western Canada but it says and does exactly the opposite things when it comes to the House of Commons.

I would be very interested during questions and comments to hear whether or not the Alliance members will support the member for Saskatoon—Humboldt's private member's bill which would effectively deny the democratic rights of 63 members of parliament, representing one-third of the population, to be recognized as political parties. On the other hand, they get up in the House and say they would support this bill that would reduce the number of candidates needed to have one's name on a ballot from 50 to 12.

There are other items we have to deal with when it comes to elections. One is the whole question of the voters list. There were about a million people left off the voters list in the last campaign. Primarily, they were people from low income areas and younger people. We need legislation on that as soon as possible. We had a commitment on that from the government House leader, who was in charge of the Canada Elections Act in the House of Commons, about a week or so ago.

The final point I want to make is we should do what the Canada Elections Act says we can do. We should look at a different method of voting. If we look under clause 2 of the bill before us, it says:

The Chief Electoral Officer may carry out studies on voting, including studies respecting alternative voting means—

As we said on our opposition day on Tuesday, we should be striking an all party committee to look at incorporating some elements of proportional representation into our voting system like most countries in the world. Almost every country in the world with 8 million or 9 million people has some PR in the system.

This morning we heard from the prime minister of Great Britain, the mother of our parliamentary system. In the last few years Great Britain has incorporated some PR into the Scottish parliament and into the Welsh parliament. It elects all its members to the European community in Brussels through proportional representation.

According to the Jenkins commission, which was set up a few years ago to look at electoral reform, the British parliament will probably adopt very soon a method of PR, if not in the next election, in the election that is coming in about five years time.

If the mother of parliaments can do that, we should be modernizing our system as well by moving toward a system of proportional representation that will allow the votes of every citizen to be treated as equal: all votes would be equal; all votes would carry weight; people could empower themselves; and there would no wasted votes.

The irony of the present system is that often Canadians do not vote for their first choice. Canadians often vote for one candidate to stop another. A good example is my friend, the right hon. member for Calgary Centre. Thousands of Liberals, New Democrats, Green Party supporters and progressive people voted for him to stop the Alliance in Calgary Centre. They did so because he was more progressive. Obviously he is more progressive. I recognize that fact. He is a very progressive member of parliament. He is a red Tory. He is a progressive Tory, a very progressive person.

If we had a system of proportional representation we would have a system where people could vote for their first choice, vote for their philosophy, vote for the ideology. If it were a German type of system they would have a vote for their local MP and then a vote for their party preference in terms of a parliamentary list provided by each of the political parties. They could be voting for their first choice. Their first choice and vision would be part of the Government of Canada and the Parliament of Canada.

We should be looking at this as one of the possibilities in terms of passing the bill. The chief electoral officer could look into various systems of voting, different alternatives of voting and strike a committee to do just that.

We support the bill at second reading. The other parts of the bill are largely technical. Part of it is just making sure that the English version coincides with the French version and vice versa. We will be looking at some of those in more detail in committee.

[Canada Elections Act, February 22nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to say a few words in support of Bill C-9 which is before the House at second reading.

The bill, as my colleagues have said, comes out of an Ontario Court of Appeal ruling on March 10, 1999, almost two years ago. It suggested that parliament violated the charter of rights when it made a decision in the old elections act that before a name could be listed on the ballot, a party had to have at least 50 candidates. Now there has been a recommendation to change that from 50 candidates to 12 candidates, reflecting the ruling we have in the House of Commons that to be an official party of the House of Commons it must have 12 members in its caucus.

We certainly agree with that. We think it is the right way to go. In terms of the elections act, anything we can do to democratize the process, to make the process more inclusive and more empowering for as many Canadians as possible, is the right way to go. That is what this is doing in a very small way.

Before I go on I want to say, Mr. Speaker, that I am splitting my time with my colleague from Palliser.

Regarding inclusiveness, one thing struck me about the debate today. I wonder if anyone from the Canadian Alliance wants to comment on this when I sit down. A few days ago in the House, one of its members introduced a private member's bill that would go in exactly the opposite direction. That was the member for Saskatoon—Humboldt. His private member's Bill C-273, would amend the Parliament of Canada Act in terms of recognizing official parties in the House of Commons. The bill says: “This bill will provide that in order to receive official party status, a political party would at least have to have 10% of the seats in the House of Commons and members of parliament from at least three different provinces”. In other words, the Alliance bill would not recognize the Bloc Quebecois as an official party.

I know my good friend from Vancouver is a very progressive member of the Alliance Party, so I am not surprised he opposes this private member's bill.

However, maybe the party could clarify its stance. This bill, sponsored by the member of the Alliance Party, would exclude the Bloc Quebecois as an official party of the House because it only has MPs from one particular province. It would exclude the NDP because it does not have 10% of the membership of the House. It would exclude the Conservative Party because it does not have 10% of the membership of the House. That means it would exclude 63 MPs, so we would have 63 independents. Is that democracy? Is that inclusiveness? The three parties together received the votes of roughly one-third of the Canadian people.

I know the minister for financial institutions is scandalized by this kind of lack of democracy across the way. I would like to have the Canadian Alliance clarify where it stands on this very exclusive bill that has been put forth by the member from Saskatoon.

The bill we have before us today goes in the opposite direction. It says we should recognize an official party's name on the ballot that has at least 12 candidates recognized by the chief electoral officer. That is the way to go.

The goal is to have an electoral system in our country that is more inclusive, that is more democratic, that is more transparent, that is more available and that is more egalitarian to each and every single citizen regardless of who we are and where we come from.

Again, it is very strange to hear the Alliance Party criticize the Canada Elections Act for being tough on so-called third party advertising. Third party advertising should be regulated. Political parties represent different points of view and have strict spending guidelines at the national and the local levels. We must adhere to those guidelines and stipulations.

However, we have the Alliance Party advocating a wide open season, depending on how deep one's pocketbook is for special interest and lobby groups that want to get out there and spend a lot of money in fighting various political parties and political campaigns. Once again, this shows that it is not really concerned about basic and fundamental democracy which is so important to the ordinary citizens.

[Privilege, February 22nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I too spent the better part of two days on the subcommittee on private members' business and I want to concur in what the member for Dewdney—Alouette said. I do not want to repeat all his arguments. I want to confirm that this was a decision made by a consensus of all the committee members. There was no partisan nature to it whatsoever.

As a matter of fact, in our case there were eight New Democrats who presented motions to the committee and only one was chosen. There were no government motions. There was no Conservative motion. There were only two motions from the Alliance and four from the Bloc. This just shows there was a consensus. This time the Bloc had more motions chosen than anyone else. That was the result of a consensus by all members.

I can testify, after having spent two afternoons there, that no one on the committee was partisan in any sense, shape or form in terms of the selections that we made.

I think this is a genuine question of privilege. What the member across the way has done reflects on all of us who are on that committee. It really impugns all of our reputations as members of parliament who were trying to do a just and balanced job.

[Taxation, February 22nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. Soaring oil prices have resulted in record profits for big oil companies in the country. In fact, in the first three quarters of 2000, we had a profit increase in the energy sector of about $4 billion or a 127% increase over 1999.

In light of that, would the minister consider bringing in a surtax on big oil companies in order to use that money to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and invest in alternative energy sources?

[Fuel Price Posting Act, February 21st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I will say a few words on the motion by the Liberal member from across the way.

I certainly agree with him that we should have more explicit pricing of energy costs and should have the taxes listed. The intent of the bill is probably quite honourable.

I will throw out a couple of other ideas that we might want to consider.

When I look at oil companies today I see them making tremendous profits, higher profits than they have made in many years. I think the time has come for the federal parliament to look at the idea of a surtax on those excessive profits and of using the surtax to reinvest in renewable energy resources. We should start looking for alternatives to the internal combustion engine, such as wind and solar energy and other renewables that are clean. I think we could do that if we had more money to invest in those technologies.

I want to lay before the House today a couple of statistics that show we have room to put an excess profit tax or special surtax on the price of energy.

I have some numbers from Statistics Canada on the profitability of the energy sector: the oil, gas and coal industries. If one looks back at 1999, the after tax net profit was $3.1 billion. In the third quarter of 2000 it more than doubled to $7.1 billion. In other words, there is an awful lot of money, an awful lot of cash, in that industry.

The Alberta government does not seem to be putting much of a tax on the oil and gas companies in that province. A study was recently conducted by a university group in Alberta, the University of Alberta's Parkland Institute, in November of this year. It said that the Klein government had basically been giving away Alberta's oil wells.

Taxes now in Alberta are a lot lower on oil companies than they were during the days of Conservative Premier Peter Lougheed. Taxes are a lot lower in Alberta than in two other very oil rich jurisdictions in the world, Norway and Alaska.

The institute did the study before the increase in energy prices and before the huge spike in profits of the gas and oil companies. The study was done between 1992 and 1997. Between those years, if the Alberta government had taxed the oil companies as much as Peter Lougheed and the Conservatives did a number of years ago, it would have collected an extra $3.78 billion. The Alberta government would have collected $3.78 billion in extra money if it had had the same taxing regime, the same royalty regime, as Peter Lougheed, the Conservative premier of Alberta back in the 1970s.

If we compare a more modern regime in the world in terms of taxes to Alberta, let us use Alaska. Alaska is part of the United States. It is not exactly a socialistic country in terms of taxation regimes. Between 1992 and 1997, if taxes in Alberta had been the same as taxes in Alaska, there would have been an extra $2 billion for the people of Alberta in terms of revenue from the oil industry.

The tax regime is even higher in Norway. If Alberta taxes had been the same as the taxes in Norway, there would have been an extra $5.7 billion per year. I should make it clear that I am talking per year. If the same regime as the one in Alaska had been applied in Alberta it would have an extra $2 billion per year. If the same taxation regime as Peter Lougheed's it would have an extra $3.78 billion per year.

There is tremendous room for a tax increase on the oil industry in Canada. These numbers are from 1992 to 1997. Since then prices and profits have skyrocketed. The time has come for the federal government to act by putting a surtax on the excessive profits of oil companies and using those profits to invest in renewable resources.

Some oil companies in Alberta will scream and holler, but we have the jurisdiction as the federal parliament to impose a surtax. It has been done to banks and to other companies in the past. Let us take the leadership and do it in terms of oil companies and make sure the excess money is used for the ordinary people of Canada.

My old friend from Souris—Moose Mountain lives in oil country. I am sure he will agree that the profits are excessive and much too high. I am sure he will agree that the great Conservative leader Peter Lougheed taxed them at a fair rate back in the seventies and that the same thing should be done today. If Ralph Klein will not do it then we will do it in the Parliament of Canada for the benefit of all Canadians, for more money in renewable resources.

I say that as a westerner and I know there will be some people who will say that it is none of Ottawa's business to impose an excess profit tax on the oil companies. We can do it to banks; we can do it to other companies; but we must stay off big oil. That belongs to Alberta. That oil belongs in part to all people in the country as well as the excess profit they are gouging from consumers.

They are gouging the consumers when they go to the gas pumps. Some of that excess profit should be used to invest in renewable energy. They are gouging consumers in Regina, Macoun, Estevan, Weyburn, Montreal, Vancouver and even in Bengough. In Newfoundland it is about 80 cents a litre for gasoline. Big oil is bloated with humongous profits.

Let us put a special surcharge, an excess profit surcharge on these big oil companies and make sure that money is used on behalf of Canadians. I believe that is what should be done.

I am sure that all these right wingers in the Reform Party and my friend from Souris—Moose Mountain will get up and agree with that. As a matter of fact, if we did that we could lessen the tax burden from Ottawa on ordinary citizens, have a fair taxation system and collect the money on the basis of the ability to pay. I believe that is what should be done.

If we do that, I am sure about 95% of the Canadian people would agree that we are going in the right direction. Even my good friends in the Reform Party that come from the oil patch, the alliance reform or reform alliance party, would grudgingly agree that is not a bad idea whatsoever.

The last point I would like to make is that my good friend John Solomon, a member of parliament from 1993 to 2000, used to recommend an energy review commission to review energy prices and make sure consumers are not gouged. It is an idea we should look at once again.

I say to my Liberal friends that the Liberal premier of Newfoundland was on television at 5 o'clock this afternoon talking about how the Newfoundland government will control the price of gasoline in the province of Newfoundland. It will be tied to the world price. If the world price goes up, the price in Newfoundland will go up; if the world price goes down, the price in Newfoundland will go down.

Prince Edward Island does a similar thing. It is a little different in terms of how the price is set there. It is a little more arbitrary in Prince Edward Island, but at least it is the same principle and the same idea.

Maybe, as a federal parliament, we should be directing our government to try to co-ordinate efforts across the board, to have some regulations in terms of oil and gas prices.

These are just a couple of ideas. As I said, John Solomon often used to speak in the House of Commons about the need for an energy commission and doing what is now being done in Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island. Perhaps the federal government should lead in that direction.

In my last minute I once again recommend an excess profit tax and surtax on big oil. Let us have big oil pay its fair share. Ordinary citizens pay their fair share; in fact they pay too much in terms of taxes. How about big oil paying its fair share and using that money, the extra hundreds of billions of dollars to invest in renewable energy? Each and every one of us and the environment would be much better off. I am sure those words are supported enthusiastically by my friend from the alliance reform party from Souris—Moose Mountain.

[Supply, February 20th, 2001]

I rise on a point of order. Mr. Speaker, no wonder this institution is being degraded. There is irrelevancy, there is a motion before the House, the speaker must speak to the motion.

[Supply, February 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I want to make the same point the member from Ontario just made. The member across the way talked about certain MPs just being slotted in. I would certainly oppose that. It would be like the present Senate where senators are slotted in.

I think we could look at making as democratic as possible the single transferable vote, which is what I certainly favour as a member of the House, or a preferential ballot. We used that, by the way, in Saskatchewan for the NDP leadership vote about a month ago where there were seven candidates. People could mail in a ballot and choose their candidate among one, two, three, four, five, six or seven. A real consensus candidate emerged from the process.

We can use that as well in terms of PR. For example, in Saskatchewan right now we have 14 MPs. We could have seven ridings and have seven people elected riding by riding. We could have the other seven elected from democratically chosen lists and allow the voters to vote in terms of a single transferable ballot. I think that would be real democracy. I wonder if the member across the way would be open to that kind of idea.