David Kilgour

[Main Estimates, 2005-06, June 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I vote yea.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

[Alberta Scene, May 5th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, congratulations to the National Arts Centre on Alberta Scene. With 600 artists and 95 events at more than 20 venues throughout the national capital region, Alberta Scene is the biggest Alberta arts festival ever held outside our province, a perfect way to celebrate the centennial.

The artists will perform on a national stage, be introduced to new audiences and meet with more than 80 talent scouts, presenters and impresarios from across Canada. In alphabetical order, they include the following: Amir Amiri, Ann Vriend, Barrage, Carolyn Dawn Johnson, Crazy Horse Theatre, Corb Lund, Crystal Plamondon, David Hoffos, DJD, Gordie Johnson, Guys in Disguise, Ian Tyson, John Stetch, Nicole Mion, Oscar Lopez, P.J. Perry, Shani Mootoo, Shumka, SNFU, Terri Clark, the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, Tommy Banks, who we all know, Tri-Continental, War Party and Wil.

The reaction from Alberta's artist community since the Alberta Scene launch has been tremendous.

[Tibet, April 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, at this time last year we were in the company of His Holiness the Dalai Lama during his visit to Parliament Hill. On the first anniversary of the visit, all of us in this House hope that we can reflect on his message.

I can say that in my 26 years as a member of Parliament, I have never seen such a reception as was seen last year. The welcome His Holiness received was concrete proof that the values of the Tibetan people and their struggle have a resonance on Canadians.

The Parliamentary Friends of Tibet, which has parliamentarians from all parties as members, urges the Canadian government to speak out against China's incursion upon the Tibetan way of life and to condemn China's railway to Tibet.

In this week's international policy statement, the word “Tibet” did not appear once. Neither did the phrase “human rights in China”. This is not a reflection on the desires of the Canadian public or Parliament.

I also call upon Canadians, as shareholders of Bombardier, Nortel and Power Corporation, to voice their objection to the involvement of those companies in the construction of that railway.

At this critical juncture in Tibet's struggle, I hope that we will have the--

[Canadian Livestock Industry, March 8th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, there has been a large payout, but it is also the largest crisis we have had. It is fine to say we have done this, but it is raining now. It is not good enough to say we will wait and see. This is not an attitude the Canadian producers can take.

What should we do? Other countries, the United States and its heartland, folks in Manhattan or San Francisco, have a real concern, affection and anxiety to help their farmers. They are treated as a strategic industry, which they are, and they are given all kinds of help, and equally so in Europe.

I know the parliamentary secretary is fond of saying that we have given about as much aid as we can now into the WTO. As a matter of fact, Madam Speaker, in your home town tomorrow I am sending a paper, because I cannot go to give it, on what agricultural subsidies are doing in Canada today. As it turns out, and I only learned this recently, we can do a lot more subsidizing of our producers as long as we are not in the red light district under the WTO. However, under green and amber we can do things to help our producers. I am glad to see my knowledgeable friend is nodding his head.

[Canadian Livestock Industry, March 8th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I could not agree more with what the member for Blackstrap has said. She probably knows this far better than I do, but the losses of farm producers in Saskatchewan has been $900 million over the last three years. How many communities have seen their schools and stores close? It is simply unacceptable.

As a prairie Canadian like her, we have to do more. Prairie Canada and other parts of Canada are in crisis. This is the time when all the money we have for so many other things has to be focused on our producers. If we can get them through this, as I tried to say in my remarks, then we will be in a position where we can continue, as we are doing, to increase our exports of agricultural products.

This is the time. This is the rainy day. All the money that the Minister of Finance has been spending, and it seems to me a great deal more than has been committed to agriculture, should be going to help people like her constituents now. I see three other members of the agriculture committee as well as the chair here tonight. Their constituents are suffering enormously by what is going on right now. The Government of Canada, along with provincial governments, is supposed to help these people. They need it desperately, and I am sure members on all sides of the House agree with that.

[Canadian Livestock Industry, March 8th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, in this emergency debate I must, as an Alberta MP, add to what so many have said tonight. It is very unfortunate that the district court in Montana has succumbed to protectionist pressure. As my colleague has said, we should salute the Bush administration for appealing the decision.

The injunction comes despite the fact that the United States department of agriculture has said that Canadian beef is perfectly good and safe to eat. OISE has said it internationally. The United States DA's ruling that Canada is a minimal risk region was further reinforced, as members will recall, when the USDA technical team came to Canada to assess the risk in January this year. The team found that Canada's inspection program was robust and found compliance with Canada's feed ban regulations to be effectively curbing the risk of BSE.

The continued imposition of this scientifically unwarranted ban is a further blow to an industry that is only just beginning to recover from the fallout of the initial border closure.

The continued closure of the border reinforces the need for us to take immediate action. It has become quite obvious that the wait and see approach which has currently been adopted will not save our beef industry. We cannot be content to sit around and wait until the USDA has caught up in its legal wrangling to try to get the border open. Even though the USDA supports a science based approach and is pushing to get the border open, this will not help the thousands of producers.

Thousands of producers are slowly bleeding to death as they incur costs on cattle that they cannot sell at current prices. Since the crisis began in March 2003, it has become clear that increasing domestic processing capacity is of absolute importance in order to cushion the beef industry against further system shocks. Yet here we are in the same situation again and there has been precious little, if any, processing capacity added. Clearly, the loan loss program, which has been referred to by members opposite, has done nothing to decrease our dependence on American processors. Not a red cent has been advanced under this program.

We must all acknowledge that the loan loss reserve is an inadequate solution. It is abundantly clear now that the lenders will only lend to projects that meet their risk criteria in the first place. In other words, the processing plants that receive loans would have received them regardless of whether there was a loan loss program in place.

Financing processing plants in light of all the unknown variables and the tight operating margins that characterize these operations, constitute a level of risk with which lenders have clearly demonstrated they are reluctant to contend.

We all agree that increasing domestic processing capacity is of paramount importance. I believe this, therefore, leaves us with only one. The Government of Canada must make direct financial assistance, grants and loans, available for processing plants. My colleagues from the agriculture committee on the opposite side know that the two plants in Alberta were helped mightily to get going by the Government of Alberta way back.

We have paid a high price for our dependence on our neighbour to the south and we can no longer afford not to be self-sufficient in terms of processing capacity.

Although budget 2005 addresses some of the issues facing farmers by committing to eliminate the CAIS deposit requirements and providing $73 million this year and a total of $104 million over four years for agricultural cash advances, much more needs to be done. The magnitude of the crisis facing farmers today demands far more assistance than has been offered in the budget.

I do not know if members knew this, but Agriculture Canada was already predicting a drop in national net farm income this year of 34%, making it one of the worst year's on record. The farm economy in Saskatchewan alone will be experiencing its third consecutive year of losses, putting the total loss for the last three years for Saskatchewan producers at a staggering $900 million. That is unimaginable to me. What is even more alarming is that the farm income predictions for this year were made under the assumptions that the border would open to Canadian cattle and the Canadian dollar would remain in the 80¢ range. Clearly, neither of these assumptions is valid and so the decline in farm income this year promises to be disastrous if further support is not provided to our farmers immediately.

The Government of Canada needs to do much more to help our producers get back on their feet before our wealth of agricultural expertise is lost as more and more people pull out of the industry or are forced out by bankruptcy. Moreover, it is imperative that we continue.

A friend of mine, a three generation ranch farm, went into bankruptcy recently near Ponoka, Alberta. He has kids under 10, and his brothers are in difficulty. The whole community has been affected by the bankruptcy. To me it is an absolute tragedy that his financial institution could not have helped him get through this.

We have to support producers in this time of crisis so they can continue to leverage the competitive advantage in the production of capital intensive agriculture commodities and thus benefit from the continuing liberalization of global agricultural trade.

The competitive advantage of our producers is undeniable, especially when one considers that Canadians spend about 10.6% of their disposable income on food. The removal of trade barriers in global agricultural trades should be a boon for Canadian farmers and the Canadian economy, but this will only happen if we provide farmers with the support they need to get through the current crisis.

If this is not an emergency, then I do not know what is. I see no better time than now to take some of the $3 billion that has been earmarked for emergency situations and use it to alleviate the enormous crisis that farm families across the country are facing.

We can no longer stand by while an industry that provides the very nourishment that keeps us alive, an industry that makes up 8% of our economy and an industry that provides jobs for one in eight Canadians continues to be caught in this seemingly perpetual state of crisis. The time for action is now, and we must simply put a lot more money behind our farmers now.

[Food and Drugs Act, February 7th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, with great respect to what my colleague just said, the member for Mississauga South has written a book on the subject of fetal alcohol syndrome. He put an enormous amount of work into researching the matter for the book. It is an extremely important matter to an awful lot of people in this country. If he has put forward this bill in good faith thinking it would be part of the solution, with great respect to the hon. member from Toronto, to simply say we should not do anything until we have the perfect solution, which seems to be what he is suggesting, is not fair to the member's bill.

A lot of members this morning have said how the bill will be part of reducing the terrible toll of fetal alcohol syndrome. I would urge members to vote for this measure.

I was on a plane the other day with a professional pollster who told me that those horrible photographs on cigarette packages actually do work. There are 18 different photos. I do not know whether anyone knew that. She told me that some of the photos are much more effective than others; some work with certain groups and some work with other groups.

It is pretty clear whom we have to reach with these announcements or photos. If we could save one mother from doing something that would cause her to have a child with this terrible disability, I think it would be worth doing.

As part of the solution, I salute the member for Mississauga South for bringing forward this issue. I congratulate other colleagues in the House who have spoken favourably to it.

A colleague from the Conservative Party said that we should put warning labels on bathtubs, if I heard him correctly, because bathtubs can cause accidents. I confess that as a lawyer I have heard a lot of ridiculous arguments in the courts over the years, but I have never heard one quite that bad.

I hope colleagues will consider voting for the bill as being a step in the right direction.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2004, No. 2, February 4th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Windsor West and I were in Washington at a conference. Many people talked on the issue on which he speaks so passionately.

What can the member tell us today about the line-ups and that sort of thing that cause grief for Canadians?

[Canada Border Services Agency Act, December 13th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, would my hon. friend give us more of his thoughts about what additional measures he would like to see in order to deal with this very serious problem that he has been discussing?

[Parliament of Canada Act, December 8th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, would the member for Calgary Centre-North perhaps recall that the provincial judges in Alberta went to court over this very issue? Does he think there are any lessons that we might draw for the federal judges from the experience of the provincial judges in our province?