Charlie Penson

[Fisheries, March 13th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, last month a forest company in my riding was having a community meeting to discuss forest management planning with residents in the High Level area.

However, like a scene out of a Clint Eastwood western, in walked two Department of Fisheries and Oceans officials outfitted with flak jackets and sidearms. They pulled aside the forestry officials and the official from the Alberta government and notified them of a cease and desist order.

Why did the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans think that it was necessary to have a dramatic show of force in this matter rather than meet in their offices in a civilized way?

[Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, February 26th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the 14 fraud cases being investigated and a default rate by ACOA of 20% are simply not acceptable.

ACOA is not the only way the Liberal government wastes taxpayer money. It does that all over the country, not just at ACOA. According to the public accounts the three regional development agencies have written off over $300 million since 1995. Now the Liberals want to give ACOA another $300 million for the Atlantic innovation fund.

How could Canadians believe that ACOA would manage this fund any better than it has in the past?

[Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, February 26th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, according to news reports there are at least 14 RCMP criminal investigations into recipients of ACOA funding. That is three more cases than last year. The original 11 were said to be worth almost $4 million in taxpayer money.

Could the minister update the House on how many ACOA fraud cases are now actively being investigated by the RCMP? How many taxpayer dollars do they represent?

[National Defence, February 23rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am not quite sure how the government will do it. It is at it again over there. This is the same government that has not replaced all the helicopters needed to protect Canada's borders, the helicopters it cancelled in the military helicopter deal a few years ago.

The Export Development Corporation could find $65 million in its budget to loan Mexico money to purchase its helicopters. Is it not ironic? This pattern is becoming all too familiar. National interests are being sacrificed so those folks across the way can play international boy scout. When will they get their priorities straight?

[National Defence, February 23rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, this week we learned that Canada is mothballing almost half our military planes and helicopters. Ironically, at almost the same time, a Mexican newspaper reported that Canada has provided a $65 million loan to Mexico to purchase 29 military helicopters for them to fight crime in its country.

Does the government believe it is more important to fight crime in Mexico than it is to patrol our own borders for drug smugglers and illegal immigrants?

[The Economy, February 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, that does not explain why Canada's productivity is 20 points behind the United States and still losing ground.

The minister's pride should not get in the way of updating the budget just because we are suggesting it on this side of the House. That will happen sooner or later. Maybe it should be sooner.

The 10,000 jobs at Nortel are not theoretical, those jobs were lost. That is continuing to happen. It is very real to the families affected.

The Minister of Finance is not exercising his responsibility by pretending that everything is fine. It is not fine. Why is the Minister of Finance opposed to updating his plans in the face of the new economic circumstances?

[The Economy, February 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the government cannot afford to pretend that our economy chugs along in isolation. When the giant next door moves, we will feel it.

The Americans are about to deliver a massive tax cut that will increase the gap between us and them. Canadians will become even more uncompetitive compared with our American counterparts.

Why will the Minister of Finance not bring in a new budget which reflects the changing economic conditions?

[Agriculture, February 13th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, this is another emergency debate that many of us have taken part in several times before. I have been in the House almost eight years and it really disturbs me that we continue to go down the same road having to deal with these situations with agriculture in a knee-jerk fashion.

I would like to try to take the politics out of this issue because it has been a problem that has plagued us for a long time.

It seems to me that Canadian people have to be asked and have to answer a very basic question: Do we want agriculture in this country or not? That is what it comes down to. When it comes down to the oilseed and grain sector, that is the very stark choice that is happening in the prairies and other parts of the country these days because it simply will not be around unless we take a different approach to how we handle agriculture.

I have seen the devastation and we have heard about it here today. We have heard a lot of good comments summarizing the seriousness of the situation. I agree 100% that we have a very vital industry that is going down the tubes. People are losing their farms. I see it every day in my riding.

I suggest that we will have do something in the short term with emergency aid, but unless we have some kind of long term plan to deal with this and unless we have some appreciation by the Canadian people that it is in their interest that we have agriculture in Canada, we will lose this war. One of the reasons I say that is that we simply cannot compete with subsidies against massively populated countries like the United States or the European Union.

I should mention at this time that I will be splitting my time with the member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke.

We simply cannot play that game. We will lose every time. We have to do something today about the emergency crisis, but I make the case very passionately that we simply cannot win that game in the long term.

What could be done? First, I think Canadians have to decide whether they want this agricultural industry. We could import food more cheaply from other countries, I would think right now, with the subsidies out there. We could go that route and we would see the devastation that would happen in our rural communities. I am afraid it would not stop there.

I have one rural community that lost several farm dealerships last year. The community is in decline. I had a public meeting and there were grown people crying at that meeting. That is how serious it is. They are losing their farms. It is not just the farmers. The businessmen were losing their car dealerships. It does not stop there. It goes to the cities, because in western Canada in particular where I live, agriculture is a very big part. For every job in agriculture there are seven spinoff jobs. If we do not think this affects the entire country we are not living in a real world.

What could be done? We know some of the things that could be done. There is the short term aid I talked about. Others have suggested tax relief on excise taxes on fuel. Those are things we could do at home. We could have transportation reform to try to get the cost of delivery down. We will have to do that. There have been some good suggestions in that regard.

The real problem has to be addressed by the international community. Canada has to play a lot stronger role in doing that. After all, who else will do it if we do not do it? Canada has long been a leader in trying to get some rules around doing business and trade in the world. Right after the war we were one of the main proponents calling for trade rules. Agriculture was not included for a lot of different reasons, but we were there and we continue to push for that.

I suggest we have to be a lot tougher in those negotiations. If we want our agricultural industry to survive, we have to start looking after our national interests much more than we are doing today. When it comes to situations like NATO saying that Canada is not playing its part and that we have to up the ante and put more money into it, we should be saying to them that we are prepared to do that. We are prepared to talk about that, but not if countries that are part of that organization have policies which are destroying a vital sector of our economy. We have to look after the national interest first, and we are not doing that.

It goes beyond that. Europe spent $150 billion on agriculture subsidies last year. We know that it overproduces. It does not only supply its own markets. That was its goal to begin with, but it produces 10% or 15% overage from what they need. What does it do with it? It dumps it on to the world market just to get rid of it. Those depressed prices kill our agriculture exports because they have to compete against that fire sale price.

When Europe comes to us next time with a problem in its backyard saying that Canada has great peacekeepers that are needed again in Bosnia or some place, I would say we are prepared to do that but not if it continues those kinds of policies that are killing a vital sector of our economy and destroying a way of life in Canada, destroying our rural communities.

It just seems to me that we have to get more hard-nosed. We have to recognize that we have a vital industry that is important to us. We could probably import our food cheaper than we could produce it right now with the subsidies that are out there, but what happens in 15 years if those subsidies are no longer there?

What happens if the currency changes and there is a terrific devaluation? All of a sudden the price of our food becomes much more expensive. What will happen? Canadians will wake up and ask: what happened to our farmers; why were the policymakers not more responsible; why did they not encourage our farmers; and why did they not tell us about the vital need for agriculture and food security? Those are the questions they will be asking once the agricultural industry has gone.

I say we need some foresight. Collectively as a country we have to be much more hard-nosed. That is the long term answer. People say to me that long term is 10 years or 15 years and their eyes glaze over. This problem existed when I came here in 1993, which will soon be eight years ago, and we are still going along with a knee-jerk reaction. The sooner we start to realize that our national interests have to be protected, the sooner we can work toward some kind of solution.

I encourage all members of the House to work together to that end. I am sorry to say that the way we are going is not the answer. We simply will not have a grain and oilseeds sector left in the near future unless we do something very important like the move I am suggesting.

[Agriculture, February 13th, 2001]

Be a little more specific.

[Employment Insurance Act, February 13th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to take part in the debate today. The member who just spoke talked about the need for seasonal workers to be covered. I note that in Bill C-2 there has been a longstanding problem where farmers, for example, who work off the farm have always had to pay into the employment insurance fund but have never been able to qualify. That is seasonal work too. It should be one way or the other. If they cannot qualify, they should not have to pay into it. That is a needed reform that has bugged me and a lot of people in agriculture for a long time.

I want to ask why it is so important today to rush the bill through the House by using time allocation. This is a leftover from the last parliament. In fact, it probably was created as a result of the Liberals losing a number of seats in the Atlantic provinces in 1997. I think the member who just spoke would agree with that. He is one who moved over to the Liberal Party as a result of those changes, so it was politically motivated I suspect.

It seems to me that if the bill was so important when it was introduced last year, why did the government not see it through at that time? The question of how important it was did not seemed to deter the Prime Minister when he called an early election after only three and a half years. It was left to die on the order paper along with a number of other bills that the government had as its priorities.

Why was parliament not continued on at that time and allowed to have the kind of debate we needed to properly debate this bill? No, we had to have time allocation again today. I have been in the House since 1993 and I think it is the 69th time that the Liberal government has used time allocation on these types of bills.

The part that bothers me more than anything is this: what is so heavy on the government's agenda that it would force us to move this quickly on Bill C-2? There is a total of eight bills that have been introduced so far, hardly a heavy legislative agenda from my point of view. It is the first bill that was introduced by the Liberals this session and they are using time allocation to ram it through parliament. What kind of signal are they sending to the Canadian public?

Why did they call an election so early? Why did they not have it as a priority to continue on and resolve this last fall, instead of having to go to an election which caused the House to be dissolved? In fact, they were not in that much of a hurry to come back in January. If it was that important why did they not call the House back in January to get right at it? No, they did not do that.

Now we have this ludicrous situation where the Liberals have now exceeded Brian Mulroney's terrible record in terms of time allocation on bills. I noticed that they managed to be very critical of that when they were on the other side of the House, They said it was an affront to democracy. The Liberals have passed Mr. Mulroney's record in roughly the same amount of time. They are going to continue to use that as a club in the House of Commons.

This is not the first time it has affected me, either. On October 20, 1999, I spoke about time allocation and how it affected my ability and other members' ability to speak on the one of the bills in the industry category, Bill C-6, the privacy bill. I had just been appointed the industry critic for our party. I have the Hansard here. It was another bill the Liberals seem to have been in trouble with. They had not consulted the provinces to any great length. The Senate had to bail them out in terms of a lot of amendments that came through to pick up the bill and make it better. I give the Senate credit for doing that.

Yesterday Senator Grafstein was very critical of the House of Commons for running bills through this place without proper debate and proper consideration, in a hurried manner, and therefore leaving the Senate to clean them up. I suggest that this is one of those kinds of bills. Why the hurry? Why can we not have the proper debate in the House? It does not make any sense. This is the place to debate. I know a lot of our members would like to speak on it and are not being allowed to.

This is an old tactic. I was restricted in October 1999. I said at the time that it was the 65th time they had used time allocation. We are now up to 69. The clock is ticking. I am not sure why the Liberals have to do this, but they seem like they want to poke the finger in the eye of those people who want proper debate in the House of Commons. It does not make any sense.

We have the Canada employment insurance program. The government seems to think that it can put in a program that can substitute for a job. That is wrong. Thirty years ago it was an insurance program and the government has moved it away from being that. We would like to make changes to that and have the employers and the employees administer this program. However, that is not the case. In fact, I read in my notes that in Bill C-2 the Liberals even want to change some of the aspect of consultation and advice provided by the Employment Insurance Commission. Its advisory capacity is being taken away. It seems like the Liberals want to control this.

The government had a $35 billion surplus in the EI fund. The people who watch this said that we probably need $10 billion to $15 billion to be prudent. The fund is roughly $20 billion over those amounts. What is the government doing with the fund? It goes into general revenue and gives the Liberals a chance to play with the hard-earned money which has been taken off the paycheques of employees. It also affects employers as well.

Canadians would be far better served if that amount were lowered to a prudent calculation, roughly $10 billion to $15 billion, stop the payroll taxes on hardworking Canadians. The finance minister said that in 1994. When he needed more money to play with, suddenly it was not a payroll tax anymore. That is really what it is.

Some people would argue that the government has balanced its books on the backs of employees and employers who contribute to the fund. There is some justification for that and it needs to be reviewed.

There is no substitute in Canada for real employment. The employment insurance program that the government has been tinkering with will not do it. It has to get the fundamentals right and get taxes down, including payroll taxes, personal taxes and corporate taxes. We see the United States moving in that direction. Canada has not caught up from the last round in terms of corporate and personal income tax. We are at a real disadvantage. Our employers and companies are at a real disadvantage if we compare them to those in the United States.

Twenty years ago the productivity of Canada and the United States was almost exactly the same. What has happened in twenty years? The United States is still number one in terms of productivity. Where is Canada today? Canada is ranked 13th in the industrial world.

It is no coincidence that these things have happened. They have happened because of thirty years of mismanagement by the government across the way, a big interventionist government and growing government programs, programs which were financed with deficit financing. Increasing deficits require payments to pay off the interest on the huge national debt.

Canada is faced with a 30 year decline in our dollar. We have a 30 year decline in direct foreign investment in Canada. Even Canadians are looking outside our country for a place to invest because they cannot get the kind of return on investments they need. The EI fund is one of the funds responsible for this.

Up until 30 years ago, when Canada made those changes, Canadian and American unemployment rates could be charted. They were basically the same year in and year out, in good times or bad. Canada had a divergence in that 30 year period and we are roughly 3% to 4% higher than the United States all the time.

There need to be reforms. There needs to be proper debate in the House. I am very concerned that the government is moving so early in this new parliament to cut off debate on such very important issues. It should be chastized for doing that and should not follow that course of action in the future. Members across the way should be ashamed to support that kind of government intervention.