Bill Blaikie

[Health, February 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure Canadians would have felt more comfortable if the Prime Minister would have at least flagged these issues in his Speech from the Throne. He is good at flagging other things. He could have at least flagged this.

The other thing he never flagged was the Romanow report, not one mention of the Romanow report.

We had a little exchange on this earlier. The Prime Minister did not commit to meeting the Romanow gap, to meeting the Romanow recommendations with respect to the kind of money the provinces need, not a one shot $2 billion payment, but meeting the 25% goal, for instance, that Romanow recommended, and also other things having to do with privatization. What is the Prime Minister's position on that?

[Health, February 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister found $100 billion to reduce taxes when he was the finance minister, but now he is dropping his progressive ideas from ten years ago, such as home care and pharmacare. There was not a word on the topic in the Speech from the Throne.

Why can the Prime Minister always do the right thing by the corporations, but he does not even appear to have given a thought as to how Canadians can deal with the rising price of drugs?

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, February 3rd, 2004]

I use that term broadly speaking. The parliamentary secretary is there as a kind of coach as to how to vote. Take the coach away and let people think for themselves on committees. Take the coaches out. Take the parliamentary secretaries out of there and that would go a long way toward actually reforming Parliament.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, February 3rd, 2004]

That was in the McGrath report. The member is right.

We tried that for a couple of years but Prime Minister Mulroney did not like it because prime ministers like to have their coaches on the committees so that when the guys are sitting there they will know how to vote.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, February 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I have no intention of withdrawing the remark because I was not wrong.

It is the Prime Minister who appoints the whip who exercises that power on behalf of the Prime Minister and it is that power that I think is ultimately destructive. Whips can pull people from committees. In fact, they did that just recently, just in the last Parliament. I have to disagree with the hon. member.

While I am on my feet, one of the other things the government could do is take the parliamentary secretaries off the committees.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, February 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I know that the hon. member always gets excited when I mention the McGrath report. I am not sure that he ever read it but I have recommended it to him over and over again. Of course the Lefebvre report was before that, in 1983-84.

I think all of us here would like to see some kind of process, a citizens assembly or whatever. We need to have something happening on the ground that engages citizens on how we can change our democracy, our electoral system and make it more representative of what the people actually want.

People want to be able to vote for something and they want that reflected in their Parliament and legislatures. I think what is happening in these other provinces is a good thing and I hope it eventually happens right across the country.

I do not think that the provinces should necessarily have to show leadership on this. The national government should be showing some leadership on this. That is why I mentioned it to the Prime Minister. I asked his predecessor this question once and he just made fun of the whole idea. He said, “Well, you know, the NDP, they don't like the system because they always lose”.

It is not a question of losing and winning. It is not a question for the NDP, for the Liberals or for anybody else. It is having the population win. It is having them win in seeing what they vote for reflected in their Parliament and legislatures.

It seems to me to be a perfectly harmless and advisable idea to set up some kind of parliamentary process for looking at the issue.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, February 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure what ghosts the Prime Minister sees in the chamber here, but I hope he does not end up like Ebenezer Scrooge, some day confronting a ghost that has much to tell him about what he should have done when he was Prime Minister.

I am happy to hear the Prime Minister say what he said about the Romanow report, but I do not think he actually said, and we will have to check the blues, “I intend to cover the Romanow gap”. Yes, the report does have to be taken in its entirety.

I would hope that the Prime Minister would pay attention to that part of the report which is particularly praiseworthy of non-profit public health care and talks about how the privatization of health care is not a good idea. It is not enough for the Prime Minister to just get up and say that we are going to abide by the Canada Health Act because the Canada Health Act was not designed to deal with that issue and I am sure the Prime Minister knows that. We need to have a debate in this country, not just about the Canada Health Act because that is not good enough. If we actually want to stop the privatization of our health care system, then we may need to amend the Canada Health Act, or go beyond the Canada Health Act in some way. It would be interesting to know the Prime Minister's views on that.

I take his point about the Canada corps. I hope that we are going to learn more about that in the days to come. Perhaps that could be an initiative that all would want to support. We will have to know more about it.

The five per cent on research and development is about research and development. It is not a commitment to development assistance per se, and so our criticism still stands.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, February 3rd, 2004]

My colleagues are getting very excited, Mr. Speaker. It is hard for me to contain them, but let me deal with another subject.

Let me turn to the theme of democracy. If the Prime Minister were really sincere, he would hold a referendum on the principle of proportional representation instead of just making minor and superficial adjustments in the chairmanship of parliamentary committees.

There have been some other little tinkerings that the Prime Minister has been able to wonderfully spin over the last six months as real parliamentary reform. I happen to be one of the last surviving members of the 1986 McGrath committee and the things that we recommended then have still not been implemented. Also, what the Prime Minister has suggested as part of his package--unless he surprises us tomorrow with something real--does not come anywhere near what we recommended back in 1986.

The guts of our recommendation with respect to committee reform was that when members are appointed to committees they should be appointed for the duration of a session or a Parliament and they should be beyond the reach of the whip: no more goon squads.

If the Prime Minister can do that tomorrow, he will have done something. If he can say that from now on when Liberal members begin to have independent thoughts they will not be yanked from the committees, and that when they leave or have to be replaced, they can replace themselves, that they, not the whip, will decide who their replacements will be, that is what the McGrath committee recommended. That then would give true independence to committees, or at least a kind of independence that committees have never had.

So I urge the Prime to take seriously that recommendation as well as others. Otherwise, if the whips, and ultimately the Prime Minister, retain that leash, if at any time the people on the committee can be yanked if they are threatening to make a career ending move, this is not parliamentary reform.

But democratic reform, and the Prime Minister used this phrase, is not just about the House of Commons. We all love this place, some of us more than others, but it is not the only thing happening. How we get here also counts. That is where electoral reform comes in, I say to the Prime Minister. Why could the Prime Minister not have announced--and perhaps he is willing to consider--an all party committee to look into electoral reform, to look into forms of proportional representation? It does not have to be a commitment to a particular kind of electoral reform. Why not allow a debate to take place either here in the House or across the country about ways in which we can make every vote count?

If the Prime Minister is concerned about the health of Canada as a democracy, then he should be concerned that there are so many people out there who feel that their votes do not count. In various first past the post scenarios that voters encounter, they feel that it does not make a difference. We could design a system where it did make a difference and where everybody wherever they vote would be contributing to the ultimate makeup of their Parliament. I commend that particular suggestion to the Prime Minister.

Again with respect to the democratic deficit, I did not really expect the Prime Minister to deal with this one: the trade agreements. What is more antithetical to a healthy democracy than to have more and more decisions made not in legislatures, not in parliaments and not by elected people, but behind closed doors as a result of arguments being made by high-priced trade lawyers, bean counters or whatever? That is not democracy. For more and more of the things that we were able to decide in this House when I first arrived here almost 25 years ago, we are not able to decide those things anymore. They are decided somewhere else. I say that is the real threat to democracy.

The fact is that we cannot decide what kind of drug patent legislation we want to have. We must have the kind of drug patent legislation that conforms with trade agreements. The fact is that apparently we could not allow a Canadian company to do a portion of the census work that is now being done by Lockheed Martin because a former minister of industry, now the ambassador to the UN, said it was the trade agreement that made him do it. When it comes to sovereignty, when it comes to culture, when it comes to all kinds of things, we have seen the ability of this House to make decisions constricted by trade agreements.

Again I would say to the Prime Minister that if he is concerned about democracy he should look at the way in which the trade agreements are taking away the power of parliaments to make decisions in the public interest. Nothing could be more threatening to that ability of countries or parliaments to act in the public interest than chapter 11 of the NAFTA, the investor state dispute settlement mechanism. While the Prime Minister was part of the last government, I thought for a while that the former minister of trade, now the Minister of Health, at one point was actually coming around to the view that there was something wrong with that investor state dispute mechanism.

But now he defends it--although now he does not have to defend it anymore as somebody else has the job of defending it, of defending the indefensible--and we in Canada are left as one of the few countries in the world that has this mechanism built into an agreement with our biggest trading partner. It will never be in the FTAA. It will never be at the WTO. The European Union and others have seen what a threat this is to their ability to act in the public interest, particularly with respect to the environment, which the Prime Minister expresses a concern about. Is the Prime Minister not concerned that if we act in the best interests of the environment, and if that act conflicts with the profitability of certain corporations, if they are foreign corporations they can they take the Canadian government to court? Should that not be a concern? Is that not anti-democratic?

So I will say to the Prime Minister that I think he should be looking at the trade agreements but I do not really expect him to, because I remember 1988 when the Prime Minister first came here. It was right after he was first elected that we had the final debate and vote on the free trade agreement. I do not know if the Prime Minister remembers this, but just after the vote I remember stepping into an elevator with him right out here--with the Liberals of course voting against it--and saying, “You're not really against this thing, are you?” Because he was a right-wing business Liberal, the Prime Minister, and he still is. He knew enough not to answer the question. He just smiled and got off the elevator.

The Liberals have been, after Mulroney, the architect of more and more free trade. They have shored it up politically and rhetorically and with more agreements. So it is hard to take all this democratic deficit stuff seriously without some kind of commitment to electoral reform, without some kind of re-examination of the trade agreements, particularly chapter 11, and without real parliamentary reform that actually puts members beyond the reach of the whips when they are on committees.

There is a lot more I could say. Right now the steelworkers in Hamilton are worried about their pensions. They are worried about the future of Stelco but they are also worried about their pensions. Was there some kind of commitment in the throne speech to do something about safeguarding the pensions of the workers who count on these pensions? I would have thought that the Prime Minister might have had a passing interest in Hamilton. Maybe he just does not want to even think about Hamilton, and the steelworkers get sideswiped because he does not want to think about Hamilton so they do not get thought about. But we should be thinking about them. We should be thinking about workers all over this country who are insecure about their pensions and about what happens to their pensions when the companies that they work for go under.

What about the strategy for the auto industry in this country? Nothing was mentioned. There was no hint of an industrial strategy. Perhaps the auto strategy has to be left up to one of the leadership candidates for the other party, who seems to have her own auto strategy.

In any event, as I have said, I have heard a lot of throne speeches and I would say that this one was particularly light on details. Maybe that is because we are so close to an election and the Prime Minister does not want to have to defend anything in particular.

But I will say to the Prime Minister through you, Mr. Speaker, that the NDP is on the move. And the Prime Minister knows it. That is why we have had this sort of fake to the left while he is going down the political football field, but it is not going to wash, because there is no Romanow and no debate on missile defence, and a whole lot of other things are missing. If the Prime Minister really wanted to be authentically moving to the left, we would have seen it in this particular Speech from the Throne.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, February 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, may I begin by breaking a rule and noting the presence of the Prime Minister in the House. I wish to thank the Prime Minister for sticking around to hear what we have to say to him.

I want to congratulate the Right Honourable Prime Minister. He has been a conservative politician for a very long time, but there is no way he can suggest he is progressive.

What counts is not what is in the throne speech, but what is not there. This speech does not reflect the Canadian values, and it offers no assistance to Canadian families.

This to me is a good example of what is wrong with this attempt by the Prime Minister to sort of fake to the left as he is going down the political field. It is a fake. It is not just a fake to the left. It is a sort of fake left. We see through it and many other Canadians will see through it as well.

The word “Romanow” does not come up in the throne speech even once. The Liberals have been talking for 10 years about the need to modernize medicare. How is it possible that the throne speech would not mention a home care program, a drug insurance plan, and the Romanow commission recommendations?

I thought that the Prime Minister might make up for the absence of the word “Romanow” in the Speech from the Throne today. I listened carefully what he had to say about health care. Still, it was as if there had been no royal commission on health care by the former Premier of Saskatchewan, Mr. Roy Romanow.

This was something that was commissioned by a government that he was part of. The Prime Minister will have a chance to comment after I am finished. We will have a 10 minute question and comment period. I am sure he is skilful enough that he could get up and in the form of a question, answer my question or make a comment as to why he did not mention the Romanow report and why there is not a commitment to closing the Romanow gap.

I am sure all the premiers have told him behind closed doors, even though they have to sing his praises when they come out, that they want Romanow. They want what Roy Romanow recommended, particularly with regard to funding of health care.

The Prime Minister talked about long term stable funding for health care. Why not Romanow? I would hope that the Prime Minister at some point answers that question. He says he wants to debate, let us have one.

What is it that he has against the Romanow commission that he did not mention it in either the Speech from the Throne or in his speech here today? Is he committed to meeting the recommendations of the Romanow report, particularly with respect to the fiscal recommendations of the report? That is very important to us. If the Prime Minister is not prepared to do that then this faking left leaves something to be desired. Of course, it leaves something to be desired in any event.

As concerns foreign affairs, it is strange that the throne speech would not mention the missile defence system project put forward by George Bush, even if this is the Prime Minister's top priority in foreign affairs.

Here is a good example. The Prime Minister has made a career lately--just lately because I do not remember him saying much about this before, but in the last year or so--of talking about the democratic deficit. Why not a commitment in the Speech from the Throne to have a real meaningful debate in the House sponsored by the government.

We could have the government put down what it thinks about star wars or national missile defence. Let us have a debate and let us have a vote on it. Will we have a free vote like the Prime Minister promised? He promises more free votes. Will we have that kind of free vote on something as significant as whether or not Canada will participate in something that the Liberals have always said they are against, which is the weaponization of space?

I say to the Prime Minister, why not? Why no commitment to this kind of debate? That would be a real commitment to dealing with the democratic deficit.

The leader of the Bloc mentioned a whole lot of other things that he would like to see Parliament deal with: the ratification of treaties and all kinds of things.

Here is a topical example for the Prime Minister. I would hope that he might get up at some point and say to us whether or not he agrees with the idea that this should be decided on the floor of the House of Commons and not revealed by stealth over a period of time by various statements made by the Minister of National Defence or others that they have just eased a little bit more into national missile defence but that they still have not had a debate in the House of Commons nor have they consulted Canadians.

The Prime Minister likes to quote Bono: “The world needs more Canada.” I agree. But the Prime Minister will not commit himself to increase our international development assistance, which is one of Bono's proposals.

There was not a word, not a commitment. It might have been a kind of a tip of the hat rhetorically, but there were no commitments there to international development assistance or to meeting those goals. Maybe we could say this about the Prime Minister: at least he is not being a hypocrite.

I think I am on my 14th throne speech, Mr. Speaker, and I have seen a lot of commitments to increase development assistance that never ever got realized.

Now maybe the Prime Minister is just an honest guy; he is not even going to pretend. And of course, as I am reminded by my colleagues, the Prime Minister when he was the minister of finance was responsible for cuts in development assistance and of course for cuts in many other things.

This strikes me as odd. I am sure that somebody watching might wonder how the Prime Minister can pretend that he has somehow landed here from another planet and has come upon the crime scene. He is able to pretend that this is a shame, that this should be done and that should be done, all these things that were promised in the red book. They have not been done during the 10 years when he was the minister of finance. He is prowling around in a crime scene that has his fingerprints all over it and he is saying, “Terrible. We have to do something about this”. Maybe the Prime Minister has something theological to tell us about this incredible power to forgive himself that he has been able to muster.

[The Right Honourable Prime Minister, November 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, as the Prime Minister prepares to take his leave as leader of the Liberal Party and soon thereafter as Prime Minister, although we still do not know exactly when, I am pleased to be able to, on behalf of the NDP, congratulate him on his obviously very successful 40 year political career and to wish him and Madam Chrétien well in their post-parliamentary life, whenever that begins.

As one who has been in the House for 24 of those 40 years, I cannot share the view of the hon. member for Davenport that the Prime Minister is infallible, but I can say that he has always been a worthy and challenging opponent.

This is not to say that sometimes, particularly of late, as I have had the opportunity to ask him many questions here in the House, his talent for ambiguous and even incomprehensible non-answers has left me breathless in frustration.

Sometimes it has been hard to know where the right hon. member was going on an issue, but I know I speak for many Canadians when I say that he found his way to the right position when he decided that Canada would not participate in the war on Iraq. We hope that this significant act of Canadian independence in an era otherwise marked by an increasing loss of sovereignty will be an inspiration to other Liberals, and I do not have anybody particular in mind, as they navigate the new world order.

Indeed, as the Prime Minister neared the end of his career, we felt that sometimes he was secretly listening to the far off, not far out, beat of an NDP drummer. Who knows what he could have done if he had started this sooner? If he had been freed from the conservative influence of the member for LaSalle—Émard even earlier, we might have been able to have sold him a membership, provided he changed his mind on free trade, national missile defence, and the list goes on.

Like the PM, I will soon be working on my seventh prime minister, or being stonewalled by my seventh prime minister; it depends on how one looks at it. I will remember this Prime Minister, not so much as the street fighting Prime Minister but as the street fighting Minister of Justice who aggressively put forward the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and defended it against all comers, not always gently, not even always elegantly, but persuasively, with passion and with conviction.

I will also remember his insistence and determination about the need for the clarity act, a view not shared by all in my party, but it remains a fact that Canada is much less likely to be broken up as a result of an unclear question and an unclear majority.

In 1986 I had the opportunity of spending some time with the then future prime minister as part of a Canadian delegation to Greece and Cyprus.

We registered those trips, Mr. Speaker, with the clerk. At least I did. I had to, as I was a member. He had already resigned. It was shortly after the right hon. member left the House for a time.

I knew then, after that trip, that we had not seen the last of him. Just making money and playing golf was not going to cut it. Indeed, Don Johnston was also on that trip, another leadership contender of 1984. When we talked into the night about Liberal leadership politics, I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the Liberal Party. It continues to be a subject that should not be visited without parental guidance or some other warning as to its content.

The Prime Minister's imminent departure marks the end of an era for the little guy from Shawinigan, a man proud of his roots and proud of his hometown of Shawinigan. He did a lot for his riding. There was an inn and a golf course.

He is also proud to be a Quebecer. However, knowing the Prime Minister as long as I have, he feels at home anywhere in Canada.

He is a true blue Canadian, who loves the Rockies, the beaches of New Brunswick, the wheat fields of the Prairies, the big cities of Toronto and Montreal, and the aboriginals of Canada's north.

The Prime Minister is entitled to a significant place in Canadian history, and that same history will ultimately be his judge, as is the case for all of us.

We wish him well and we issue a warning to all Canadian golfers: keep your eyes peeled for someone who says he once was the Prime Minister and do not get in his way if you value your neck.