Bill Blaikie

[Cn Commercialization Act, May 15th, 1995]

The fact that this is now happening under a Liberal government is proof positive to me of the consistency and the continuity of the corporate agenda which involves deregulation, privatization and free trade. I have to say that even I, and I have been here for a long time and know just how devious and how flexible shall we say the Liberal Party is, find the initiative taken by the government for the privatization of CN to be deeply surprising and deeply wounding.

In my own case, I do not think there is a person in my family for three generations who has not worked for the CNR at one time or another or worked there their entire life. That is true of a lot of people in my home town of Transcona where the main back shop for the CNR is.

I understand the position of the Bloc Quebecois in defending that part of the legislation which calls for the retention of Montreal as the location for the headquarters of the new privatized CN. However, I hope it will be equally understanding when it contemplates my anger that my community is not protected in the same way. Transcona is every bit as much a part of the history of the CNR as Montreal, going back to pre-CNR days when the shops began to be constructed in 1908 and 1909 around which the town of Transcona was created.

I object to the notion some people are protected by this legislation and others are not, that Montreal is protected; where the headquarters of the CNR is and will be is protected. Transcona's role in the life of the CNR is not protected. Presumably Transcona shops can be sold, cannibalized, balkanized, anything can happen to them. This legislation does not even acknowledge the existence of that place. Therefore I would like to register my objection to that.

I find it doubly insulting, offensive and tragic that not only is CN to be privatized but it could very well be sold to a variety of foreign interests. I see the solicitor general across the way. I remember being inspired when I was yet a high school student by the Gray report on foreign ownership of the Canadian economy. We have come a long way since then. We have come a long way since we hoped to repatriate elements of our economy that were under foreign ownership. Now we have a Liberal government, of which that same member is a member, privatizing and at the same time making it possible for foreign interests to own significantly Canadian National.

There is nothing in the bill to prevent the wholesale dismantling of the CNR or its being broken up into a number of fragments and sold off. I just finished reading this bill carefully and there is nothing in it to prevent an informal alliance of interests by which four or five American railways or other companies could buy 15 per cent each of the CNR and through that natural convergence of interests that does not fit any of the legal descriptions we find in the bill manipulate the future and the nature of the CNR to their own advantage in a way that may not be to the advantage of Canada.

Perhaps that is the point. Perhaps it is passé to talk about Canada. Perhaps it is passé to talk about making the economy or the marketplace accountable to something called the country or something called the public interest. Over time we have seen that notion erode and finally, I think with this bill, completely fall away so that voices like mine sound vaguely romantic or unrealistic in this context.

Nevertheless, I think I speak for a notion of the country which many people still cherish and which they regret seeing disappear as a result of this.

There is no provision in here for the future of VIA. It says the new CN can continue to charge VIA whatever it pleases. I would like to have seen something in here which would have demanded some accountability for what the new company would charge VIA. Is this to be the way VIA will disappear because the new company will charge VIA rates not tenable and therefore the next thing to go will be VIA? I would like not to have seen any of this but if it has to happen I would like to have seen consideration of the notion of having all the track in Canada owned by the government so that at least the government would continue to have a stake in our transportation system.

Finally, I believe none of this had to happen. I believe with the proper reregulation of our railway system the CNR and the CPR could have been healthy and viable. Instead, thanks to deregulation, thanks to imitating things happening south of the border we allowed ourselves to evolve to a point at which our railways are no longer viable.

With the appropriate policy changes on the tax side and various other changes we could have built a transportation system publicly owned on one side by CNR and privately owned on the other by CPR which would have been environmentally friendly because it would have been in favour of the railways. We have failed to do that. This will only lead to more trucking and to a transportation system which in my judgement will be less fit for the future than the one we have now.

[Cn Commercialization Act, May 15th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by commenting on the process here. As I understand when the procedure for referring a bill to committee before second reading was thought about in the standing committee on procedure some time ago, frankly I do not think this was the kind of bill we had in mind for referral to committee so early on. In my judgment this is the kind of bill on which there should be a full second reading debate on the principle of whether or not CN should be privatized.

I would like to register my objection to what I would consider to be a misuse of this particular procedure. Presumably it is in order to avoid just that kind of full scale debate about the privatization of CN, although I do not know why the government would bother to avoid it. Obviously there is a great deal of agreement between itself and at least the Reform Party on this measure.

Also, the government has an obligation to instruct or ask the committee, whatever is appropriate, to consult with the communities and other stakeholders that will be affected by the privatization. Just to have the hearings in Ottawa without going to Winnipeg and other places where people have good reason to be anxious about the effect of the privatization of CN is a mistake. It is certainly something the government should reconsider although I do not expect it too. It seems to be in an unholy rush to have this all over and done with, a rush which I do not understand.

This is a very sad day for me. I will have been in this House 16 years come next week. I have spent those 16 years defending and promoting the role of CNR as a publicly owned railway compa-

ny. I had hoped and for many years I had thought that this day would never come. I certainly did not expect it to come under the auspices of a Liberal government.

At times I felt if the Conservatives had been re-elected that at some point they would have done this. I remember back in 1978 when I was just a candidate for Parliament and had not yet been elected. I was critical of Harvie Andre, then a Conservative member of Parliament for Calgary for his proposal to privatize the CNR. I always thought that this was something in the back of the collective Conservative mind. The fact that it is happening now under a Liberal government to me simply makes the point-I wonder if the Bloc Quebecois could have their caucus meeting somewhere else, Mr. Speaker. I am trying to make a speech.

[Petitions, May 4th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I would like to table two petitions. They call on Parliament not to amend the human rights code, the Canadian Human Rights Act or the charter of rights and freedoms in any way which would tend to indicate societal approval of same sex relationships or of homosexuality, including amending the human rights code to include in the prohibited grounds of discrimination the undefined phrase sexual orientation.

[Infectious Diseases Protocol, May 2nd, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the government.

As the government knows, the international firefighters are having their convention in town, and they are very frustrated by the lack of progress with respect to the setting up of an infectious diseases protocol. There is wide support for this protocol in the House, and I would like to ask whoever is speaking on behalf of the government on this issue today why there has not been progress. When will there be progress? Will the government commit to bringing in this protocol before the end of the year?

[Child Poverty, April 6th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the National Council on Welfare reports that the number of poor

people in Canada has increased dramatically and child poverty has reached a 14-year high.

For many years, successive Canadian governments have followed policies designed to reduce the wages of working Canadians and fatten incentives for wealthy Canadians. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and there are more of both of them. Middle income Canadians are being driven to extinction.

Deregulation, free trade, privatization, contracting out, and union busting are driving down the private incomes of working Canadians. At the same time, their social benefits are being reduced by cuts in health care and education, justified as a means to pay off a deficit caused by a high real interest rate policy and tax loopholes that favoured the rich in the first place.

Children are poor because their parents have no money. Case in point. Famous Players Theatres, owned by Viacom Blockbuster, wants its projectionists to take a 60 per cent wage cut and is using scabs to enforce its will. Government should act to protect the children of people who are on strike to protect-

[Budget Implementation Act, 1995, April 6th, 1995]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are many other things I could have talked about, but ten minutes only permits so much.

[Budget Implementation Act, 1995, April 6th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to participate in the debate on the budget. I am certain 10 minutes will not be enough to cover all the ground I would like to cover. I will outline in point form some of the major concerns I have with it.

I have concerns about the fairness of the budget. I would like to debate at greater length the question of fairness with the member for Haldimand-Norfolk but I will not have the time to do that.

One of the reasons the budget has been received as well as it has is the fact that the government has given the impression there have been no tax increases. In many respects there were not the kind of tax increases that had been flagged prior to the budget. The trick, which is as old as the hills, is to get people worried about a bunch of measures and then when the measures are not included in the budget, people are relieved.

The fact is that Canadians will have to fork over more out of their own pockets in a variety of ways. It may not come through taxes but it will certainly come from having to spend more money on services that were previously provided by the government, whether it is in the form of user fees for national parks, decreased health care availability or whatever the case may be. We ought not to be under any illusion that Canadians got a free lunch out of the budget. Hardly.

I am concerned about a number of things in the budget. First and foremost in my mind and in the minds of my constituents is the privatization of the Canadian National Railway. This is something, given the location of the main repair shops of CNR in Transcona, in the riding of Winnipeg Transcona, that is of obvious concern.

It is a measure of how far to the ideological right this Parliament and the Liberal Party in particular have swung. We see the Liberal Party bringing in a measure to privatize the CNR which is something that previously would not only have been thought out of character for them but which goes against the promises many Liberal MPs and Liberal candidates made to railroaders in Winnipeg, and to Manitoba as a province, during the election of 1993.

Many people were under the illusion-I was not-in 1993, given some of the things that have been said by the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre, the Minister of Human Resources Development, that if the Liberals were elected the bleeding of rail jobs away from Winnipeg toward Edmonton and other places would stop and that Winnipeg would be restored as a transportation hub.

The very opposite has happened. The Minister of Transport makes former Tory ministers of transport almost look like friends of railroaders with some of the things that he has said about railroaders and certainly the policies that he seems to be following.

The privatization of CN in the budget is just the final icing on the cake of the things that have been done to rail by the previous Tory government and now by this government. It is a betrayal of Liberal promises and Liberal policy. It shows just how ideologically bent the Liberals are and how, in spite of everything they said in opposition, once they got in government picked up where the Tories left off and accelerated what used to be known as the Mulroney agenda.

With respect to the Canada social transfer and the block funding of all social spending, again it is a total betrayal of the things the Liberal Party has stood for in opposition and previously in government.

Perhaps the Minister of Finance should have waited until May 8 to have given his budget. Then we could have celebrated the 50th anniversary of the end of the second world war and the end of post-war Canada the same day.

That is basically what the budget did. It declared an end to the kind of society we have been able to build up over the last five decades. It is no coincidence that the end to that era comes at a time when the NDP is severely weakened in Parliament.

The government has no pressure from the left, no criticism from the left, no opposition from the left, at least not the kind it used to have. It gets pushed to the right by my Reform colleagues here. The Bloc Quebecois is preoccupied with its own agenda.

The government and the right wing business Liberals who for so long have had to contend with a left wing contingent in their own party, and with the NDP on their left flank, now are having a heyday. The Minister of Finance is one of those right wing Liberals. He is having his heyday.

I do not know what the Prime Minister is doing. He is letting the Minister of Finance do whatever he likes. It does not matter how much it contravenes what the Liberals have said before.

I am particularly concerned about the effect this is going to have on health care. When does it end? When will the Minister of Health and the Prime Minister get up and say to Ralph Klein in Alberta that enough is enough, that the Canada Health Act is going to be enforced, that we are going to have national standards in the country, and that all this talk about enforcing the Canada Health Act flexibly and the other kinds of things that have been spoken about will come to an end.

It is not going to come to an end. It seems to me that the Liberals have decided that the Canada Health Act is passe and that in various ways they are going to allow it to fade away. They are going to permit provinces to experiment with the dismantling of medicare.

This is something I predicted in 1984 in my final speech on the Canada Health Act. I said that if the federal government was not going to sufficiently fund medicare, sooner or later there would be pressures both from the public, from provincial governments and then in turn from the federal government to dismantle medicare.

Medicare has to be adequately funded if it is going to succeed. That is an insight which in some ways others have brought to bear on this debate. It is not just a question of having national standards. One has to have national standards and appropriate funding. If there is not the appropriate funding, for one thing the federal government cannot withdraw that funding in order to enforce standards, and for another people become disillusioned about the health care system if they feel that in spite of the standards it is not the kind of health care system they expect.

With respect to the Crow benefit and its elimination, again it is another blow not just to railways, farmers and railroaders, it is another capitulation on the part of the government to the global opposition to anything that comes in the form of a subsidy. This ideology against subsidies and against taking into account the realities of a country like Canada is something that is very dangerous for us. In many respects, Canada was built along east-west lines against natural north-south forces. If we are going to cut all the things that bind us together east and west and if we are not going to take them into account any more, we are going to end up with an entirely different country.

Maybe that is what the government wants but that is certainly not what its members said in opposition. It is something that they should be held to account for by the Canadian public.

Even in the administration of the elimination of the Crow benefit, I hope the government will soon tell us how it intends to make absolutely sure that it is the producers who receive the money that is going out as compensation for the elimination of the Crow benefit and not landholders, as may well be the case given the current state of the legislation.

It is not enough for the government to say that the Farm Credit Corporation will make sure that producers get it. The government has to make sure that producers get it, no matter who they are, no matter who owns the land that they rent.

My final point is with respect to the deficit. I listened to my Reform colleague talk about the need to get a grip on the deficit and to take the deficit a lot more seriously than the government is doing.

What I would like to see both the Reform Party and the Liberal government take more seriously is the need to address the real causes of the deficit. In the judgment of NDP members, the real causes of the deficit go back to the tax loopholes which were created in the mid-1970s by a Liberal government and to the high real interest rate policy which has been followed in the country for the last 15 years. It is a combination of those tax loopholes and the high interest rate policy that has created the deficit.

It is not social spending. Social spending has not grown in the way which some have suggested. It has not been the cause of the deficit. It may well be that it will have to be part of the solution, in the sense that it is an obvious area to look at, how we spend the money and whether we could spend it more wisely. However, unless we deal with the high real interest rate policy, unless we deal with monetary policy, unless we deal with how we finance the debt, we are going to continue to have the problem. We will continue to pay out $50 billion in interest every year.

If the interest is the problem, let us look at the interest rate policy which creates the interest we have to pay. Let us look at the role of the Bank of Canada and ask if there are not ways in which it could finance a greater portion of the national debt than it does now in the way that it used to. Let us look at the way private banks have been allowed to print and lend money to the government, at a great profit to them and at a great expense to Canadians, without having to put up the appropriate deposits.

[Money Speculators, March 29th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, it was interesting to note the governor of the Bank of Canada said he was opposed to the Tobin tax. He did not think there was anything wrong with the effect that money speculators were having on national and regional economies.

I wonder whether this reflects the real position of the government. Over the last little while I have been asking the government to show some leadership at the G-7 in Halifax in trying to bring about a tax that might dampen speculation and in making some proposals for a new financial world order. It would be a sort of second Bretton Woods that would prevent money speculators from doing this kind of thing to our economy, to our dollar, or to anyone else for that matter.

What is it the governor of the Bank of Canada has in common with the money speculators? I think it is this. We could ask these questions of both of them: Who elected them? Who elected the governor of the Bank of Canada to make the policies he makes? And who elected the money speculators?

It is a democratic question. Who really runs the world, the money speculators and the banks or democratically elected parliaments like this one here?

[The Economy, March 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, while the debate continues I wonder if the minister could tell us what the Canadian position is with respect to how the debate should proceed.

Will the Canadian government be looking for ways to do this that meet some of the concerns of the minister? Will the Canadian government, when it gets to Halifax, and in other international fora, be putting forward proposals for creating a financial world order in which the power of speculators to destabilize national and regional economies will be contained?

[The Economy, March 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. It has to do with the call that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has made with respect to the Tobin tax.

Given that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has called on governments of the world to introduce the Tobin tax in order to finance human rights work around the globe, I wonder whether the minister is now prepared to endorse this concept and say that at the G-7 meetings in Halifax the Canadian government will be putting forward a proposal in this regard.