Charlie Penson

[Supply, May 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. In view of the fact that my colleague from Yorkton—Melville is making some excellent points which need to be brought out in terms of this debate, it seems to me it would be in order to ask for unanimous consent that his time be extended.

[National Hockey League, May 14th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Minister for International Trade what the government is going to do about the unfair hockey subsidies of the United States.

Is this government going to request a chapter 20 dispute panel under the NAFTA or is it going to force struggling Canadian teams like the Senators and the Oilers to fight these unfair subsidies on their own?

[Supply, May 14th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would like to listen to the debate that is happening here today. My colleague from Calgary Northeast is making some excellent points but it is very difficult to hear because of the heckling from the other side. It seems to me that the member should reserve those comments for debate or questions rather than the strong heckling.

[Canada Labour Code, May 12th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to take part in this debate today on report stage of Bill C-19, specifically Group No. 6 amendments.

Unfortunately I am not happy about the way this is proceeding. In the last five years since I have been involved we have seen all too much of this in the House of Commons, that is, the use of closure to shut down debate on very important issues. It is very ironic. The Liberal government across the way was very critical of the Mulroney government for the use of closure and time allocation when the Liberals sat in opposition, but this is the 40th occasion where it has been used in the last five years.

It is a misuse of power by the government to use it in this manner. There is a very important principle involved, which is that all members should have the right to debate these important issues. This is the first opportunity I have had for a 10 minute debate on Bill C-19, the changes to Canada's labour code.

The area I would like to discuss stems from my role as critic for international trade. It deals with the Vancouver terminals, specifically section 87.7 under Motions Nos. 22 and 23 being proposed by my Reform colleague, the member for Wetaskiwin.

I am concerned that if the principle of allowing movement of grain for 72 hours after a strike or lockout notice has been given is such a good principle, why it is not applied to all commodities.

As recently as Wednesday last week, I had a meeting with the hon. Pat Nelson, the minister of economic development for the province of Alberta. She wanted me to bring the point to the floor of the House of Commons that it is very important to ensure we have good movement of our commodities through the terminals, through the port facilities, so we can continue to have good service and enjoy a good reputation worldwide. I am concerned that our reputation for delivery is not as good as it should be.

It is important also to note that Canada had the most time lost to labour-management strikes and lockouts of any industrial country except for Italy in the last 10 years. It is a deplorable state for a big country like Canada which relies on exports, on international trade to supply the world.

I am aware that the member from Regina, the former minister of agriculture, accompanied a group to Japan a year ago. They were trying to reassure the Japanese of Canada's ability to deliver in a timely manner products through our ports both in Vancouver and in Prince Rupert.

My concern has to do with grain itself. The Minister of Labour and others in the government are trying to win support from grain farmers across Canada by saying that if something happens and there is a strike or lockout at the Vancouver port, they will continue to load grain into an ocean-going vessel for 72 hours. This is true. However, it does not deal with any of the problems originating from the farm gate to the terminal. It does not deal with any problems in the railway system. There are something like 20 different labour-management units along the way that can disrupt the flow of grain during that time. It does not deal with things that my colleague from Prince George—Peace River, the critic for agriculture talked about.

When it says grains, the grains identified do not include alfalfa pellets. In my riding of Peace River, we have the world's biggest alfalfa pelletizing plant, Falher Alfalfa. It is very concerned that this section does not deal with Neptune terminals. It does not deal with Vancouver wharf. There is a $25 million operation that can be shut down.

If this principle is the sound principle the government is putting forward, why would it not extend it to things like specialty crops, like alfalfa, peas, lentils and all the other grains?

There is a real problem here and we have an opportunity to correct that problem. My colleague from Wetaskiwin has said that this is the first time the Canada Labour Act has been opened up in 25 years and it probably will not be opened up again for some time.

We are looking for this opportunity to make substantial changes now when the debate is happening. We encourage members in the Liberal government to listen to some of the reasoned amendments we are putting forward with a view to trying to improve Canada's delivery out of our port system.

A lot of other products are being handled in Vancouver. In Prince Rupert there is coal. We have sulphur. One of my colleagues has already mentioned that lumber is one of our biggest ones. Chemical potash and various other products are being exported worldwide. This legislation does not deal with that.

Our party thinks a more reasoned approach to this would be to go to final offer arbitration. What it does is it allows for the parties to negotiate for some time before the labour-management contract is finished. I would think negotiations should start if it is a three year contract a year ahead to see if they can come to some kind of an agreement. If they cannot, having a strike or lockout and withdrawing services has the effect of shutting down the terminal and in some cases shutting down the port.

As a grain farmer myself in the Peace River country I know the devastating effects of having some 20 ships sitting in English Bay harbour at Vancouver and paying demurrage of about $60,000 a day for each ship. It is a very big bill, millions of dollars. Last year it was approximately $60 million that grain farmers had to pay because of the ships that were waiting for product because there was a strike lockout situation at the Vancouver terminals.

We have to correct that. Canada has a reputation that has to be enhanced otherwise we are going to be bypassed. Products will be bought from the United States. I suggest we look at final offer arbitration as one way of resolving this.

Final offer arbitration needs to be explained a little. In a labour-management contract quite often when the contract is being negotiated the two parties will start a long way apart. If a labour union wants a 5% increase quite often it will ask for 7% or 8% knowing it will probably be negotiated down and it will be settled somewhere in the range of 5%. On the other hand the company quite often starts at a position recognizing that it is going to be a 5% settlement and starts negotiating at 3%. This goes on for months and months before they finally come to some kind of a settlement. Often there is time lost in that bargaining unit where labour is withdrawn or there is a lockout. This has a very devastating effect on the Canadian economy.

Final offer arbitration is a reasonable way to approach this. Approximately one month prior to the contract expiring if a settlement had not been reached by negotiations, each party would have to submit a reasonable final offer. I suggest reasonable. They would not have to submit a reasonable one but an independent third party looking at it would choose the more reasonable of the two. It would be in their best interests to submit a reasonable final offer. The arbitrator would decide which one looks more reasonable than the other and would choose that one and the parties would have to live with it.

In the event that did not happen, if one party put in a very unreasonable final offer and the other party did not, we know what would happen. The effect of that would be to have the two parties put in a reasonable offer at the start. It would prevent a lot of the problems we have in the labour-management area. Canada could enhance its reputation as being a reliable supplier.

If we miss this opportunity I think we are missing an opportunity that is going to cost future jobs. Canada relies on our exports for about one-third of our gross domestic product. That means 40% of the jobs of every Canadian family, every community rely on our ability to export. We know that some of our exports go through the United States but some go through our port cities as well.

This is an opportunity we want to seize. The government should look at these as reasonable amendments and adopt them.

[Canada Grain Act, May 11th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to join the debate today on the second group of amendments to Bill C-26.

There has been quite a debate here about government's role in the specialty crops area. I think the phrase that is hated most of all on the prairies is “I am from the federal government and I am here to help you”. That is when farmers and producers head for cover in the back 40. They know they may have a well-intentioned government out there ready to provide a program but quite often it goes off the rails in the process. Some of my colleagues have already talked about that today.

The issue here really is a matter of whether this is a voluntary check-off or one that is a negative option billing and has to be applied for. It seems that government has not learned a lesson from the cable television industry issue that raised so much furore a couple of years ago. It is okay to back off there but when it comes to farmers, mother government knows best. It sounds like something we used to hear out of Russia in the height of the central planning days. It certainly did not work there and I do not see how it is going to work here.

The issue itself of whether there should be insurance for these producers of specialty crops is not a bad one but it is one which should be decided by the producers themselves. As one of my colleagues said earlier, if we take half a per cent here and one per cent there, pretty soon it adds up to something big. Farmers are under a lot of stress already and have difficulty competing. They want to decide for themselves whether they want to take insurance.

On my own home farm in Alberta we do not choose to take hail insurance. It is an option we have. It is a management tool. It is available. That is the way it should be with regard to the specialty crops issue. It should be available. If farmers want it, they will support it. If enough of them support it, it is going to be a viable option. If they do not, or if only 20% support it, maybe it is not going to be viable and maybe it is something that really is not needed. It seems to me that farmers should have that choice.

Choice is not something the government seems to offer when it comes to farmers. On the Canadian Wheat Board debate, if there was a choice offered, producers would vote with their product. They would support whatever system worked best for them. Maybe two systems could work side by side, the Canadian Wheat Board working side by side with the free market option. Maybe it could work that way and I think it probably would. Surely the choice should be left up to the producers. It is in every other aspect of Canadian life. It seems to me that is what should be done here as well.

It bothers me that the government has chosen to take a negative approach, that farmers have to pay it unless they want it back. The government seems to think that farmers will forget about it and it will sort of chew away and that money will be added to the pool.

If this was voluntary and farmers decided not to take it, what is the issue? The farmers would no longer be eligible for that insurance. Farmers would know that, in the same way they know that if they do not choose to take crop insurance they are not eligible to collect. If they do not choose to take hail insurance, they are not eligible to collect hail insurance. It would be the same here. It is a choice.

It seems that the government has a condescending view of farmers, that they are people who cannot run their own lives and do not know how to operate a business. I have a big surprise for the Liberal government. Farmers know full well what they are doing. They are running operations which in many cases are in the millions of dollars. They make choices every day. They make choices on what kind of fertilizer to put on, what kind of seed, what is the best kind. They access information through the Internet on the best varieties. These people are intelligent. Surely they can decide whether they want an insurance program for specialty crops.

In the Peace River country a lot of people are growing peas, a speciality crop. It is a management tool that surely should be available to them but let them make the decision. Why should they have to wait a year to get their money back if they do not want to participate in the project? They would not be covered for the insurance if they decided to get their money back at the end of the year. The pool would have that money for a full year. It is a bureaucratic set-up. It takes time to get it back and for the check-off to take place. Surely the better system would be to have it voluntary so that they would say this is a management tool they want and need in their business.

Another issue is the issue of having some responsibility for farmers who do not want to take that insurance. They have a choice in to whom they sell product. They have a choice in the same way that if I produced a book I could sell the book. If I produced a pen I could sell it to somebody. If I thought the person was a poor credit risk, that he or she would go broke and not pay me, I would want to do some investigative research to know it was a stable company when I hauled my product there.

Why do we need government interfering in all that process? Could it not just be a process for those people who choose a voluntary process? Could it not just be a process that says “I will sell my peas off my farm to that company, but before doing that I want to know that when I get a cheque it will not be NSF, that the company is good for it. I have a choice of whether or not I take insurance. If I decide I do not want that 2% cost to me I will do my own research and find out whether or not it is a viable company?”

I suggest that 98% of the commerce that goes on in Canada out of a $750 billion gross domestic product takes place in that manner. Government does not interfere in all areas of business. When we buy a car there is no insurance that says the company will to produce it. It is a simple business transaction. It seems to me the same should apply here.

Those are my comments. I know a lot of people in my riding of Peace River would choose not to participate if it were voluntary. There are those who would choose to participate. I guess it would be a matter of whether there were enough people involved in the process to make it into an economic feasible insurance program. If there are not enough people who want to participate maybe it should not be in place to begin with.

[Canada Grain Act, May 11th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to speak at report stage to Bill C-26 and in particular to the set of motions before the House. I want to support the motions put forward by my colleagues, specifically my colleague for Prince George—Peace River who has introduced some good amendments to this.

I would like to speak a little more specifically about why the whole area of specialty crops has become such an important part of farming in western Canada. My family and I operate a 2,000 acre grain farm in Alberta and we are now growing more and more non-traditional crops, meaning not wheat, barley or canola.

The reason for this is the difficulties we have encountered over the years with the Canadian Wheat Board. I do not think our operation is very much different than a lot of farms in western Canada which have experienced difficulty with market signals being sent by the monopoly situation with the Canadian Wheat Board and not knowing what kind of return we are going to receive.

Farmers now have a tremendous amount of money being expended every year. At this time of year fertilizer and chemical bills start to roll in and in many cases they are in excess of $100,000. This results in farmers needing the ability to price ahead to be aware of what crops are going to be sold and they are starting to look to other crops. Farmers are looking to peas, to fescue and to lentils, to crops outside the jurisdiction of the Canadian Wheat Board.

Because of the rotation system that is required to ensure disease does not build up, we still need to maintain some traditional crops. On our farm this year there are 1,000 acres of wheat which went in the ground within the last two weeks. Some of this wheat is soft spring wheat that we sell outside of the board but some like the hard red springs will have to be sold through the board.

Our party wants to see as a board that advises the federal government and takes authority on advising the specialty crops commission. Advisory boards sometimes have the potential for having people who know absolutely nothing about the industry itself.

There are all too many opportunities I am afraid to have former politicians, because they did not win in the election last time around, to get appointed to these boards and they may not do justice to the real issues. Farmers should be on these boards as they know what is best for their industry.

I support Motions Nos. 1 and 8 in Group No. 1 which state this should be a speciality crops board rather than an advisory group appointed by the government.

We have to go back to the Canadian What Board to see how the difference works. I am aware that we have had an advisory board in the Canadian Wheat Board, appointed by the federal government, for some time with basically not much authority. It has been a closed shop. I do not know that it has done a very good job.

Farmers in my part of the country are calling for the Canadian Wheat Board not to have a group of commissioners appointed by the federal government with an advisory board attached. They are calling for the Canadian Wheat Board to be operated by a group of directors of farmers who control the functions of the Canadian Wheat Board.

It is not very much different from what we are talking about today. Farmers pay the real cost of administering the Canadian Wheat Board. They will pay all the costs involved in this board. Why should they not have a direct incentive and direct say in how it works?

I want to point out another reason I think that is important. I have friends and neighbours that have gone into the speciality crop industry in terms of organically grown grains. They have gone to a very big effort because it is a specialty market. They have to ensure that their farm is free of chemicals and commercial fertilizers for five years before they can grow organically grown crops. Yet they still have to go through the Canadian Wheat Board to get an export permit to market those crops.

Ministers of agriculture over the years have said that we should diversify, that we should try to get out of some of the main crops and into specialty markets. My friend, Dexter Smith of Peace River, has done just that. He has spent a tremendous amount of work to rig up his farm for organically grown wheat. He has to find his own markets. The Canadian Wheat Board does not do his marketing for him. Farmers have tried to develop a set of standards for their industry with no help from government, I might add. The government is standing in their way in many cases.

Dexter Smith has to go to the Canadian Wheat Board to buy his product back before he can sell it. The Canadian Wheat Board does not offer any elevators to take the specialty crop. There are no elevators in the entire Peace River country to take Dexter Smith's crop. There are no elevators in Alberta to take it. It would just get dumped in with the regular wheat and therefore lose the effect of having been organically grown.

He has to find his own markets. He has to arrange for the transportation. Yet what do we have? The Canadian Wheat Board standing in his way, inhibiting his ability.

If we have an advisory board on the specialty crops that we are talking about today, it will be appointed by the federal government, probably with some ex-politicians, people not having expertise in the area. That will get in the way of the people in the industry. We really want people with knowledge of these specialty crops and how best to serve their own industry.

What would be better than to have a specialty crops board with members elected by fellow producers out of their industry, knowing that they would have the expertise on how to govern their own industry? It seems to me that is a reasonable request which has to be considered.

As I was saying, things have changed significantly in the farm industry over the years. When I started farming 30 years ago wheat, barley and canola were the main crops in our part of the world. That is not the case any more. We have lost our transportation subsidies through the Crow rate. We have lost subsidies in terms of GRIP and other government programs. In fact our Canadian grain farming industry has moved faster than that of any other country to get rid of subsidies worldwide. We are far ahead of our GATT commitments in terms of phasing down our subsidies.

Yet, what is our trade department doing for us to try to ensure we have opportunities to export to countries in Europe that are still maintaining heavy domestic and export subsidies? I would maintain not that much. It had better start to do something soon or our guys are going to get tired and say, “We are complying with what you have asked of us to get to a market driven industry, but we have competitors worldwide that are still being subsidized very heavily. You had better do something about it or we are going to be back asking for subsidies again”. That is the exact approach we do not want.

The trade department and the Liberal government had better start getting aggressive, or else they will lose market opportunities and some excellent farmers.

In conclusion, I would like to add my weight to those in the Reform Party who in speaking today said that we need some common sense in the approaches to this industry. If we are to have speciality crop marketing boards, let us make them producer marketing boards that are elected from their own members instead of having a group of advisory board members that may not have any expertise in the area. It seems to me the bill would then enjoy the support of the entire farming community in those sectors.

[Supply, April 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it is an interesting debate today.

The Liberal member who just spoke used a lot of facts and in some respects was talking about the budget. We should examine that a bit.

The issue that has been brought up here is child poverty and globalization. In terms of poverty, would the member agree that something should have been done in the last budget for the over 2.5 million Canadians who are still paying taxes to the federal government and earning less than $15,000 a year? In fact the 1997-98 fiscal year which ended on March 31 would have had a surplus of over $4.5 billion if the government had not decided to spend it.

I see the member is getting some coaching from her colleague but that is all right. Maybe together the two of them can figure out something.

It seems to me it would have been an opportune time to have some tax relief for low income Canadians, to take them off the tax rolls altogether. What is required are good paying jobs. People who are not in the category of having high paying jobs should not have the extra difficulty of having to pay federal taxes on an income that is very low, $15,000 or less.

Would the hon. member agree with me on that?

[Supply, April 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member talk about the need for cultural exemptions. I was trying to find out what area was the biggest concern.

The member stated that unless Canada achieves a cultural exemption under the MAI there are serious problems for Canada. We have an investment agreement and a treaty with the United States and Mexico called the NAFTA. We have a cultural exemption under the NAFTA but I wonder if the member recognizes that the cultural exemption also provides for the United States to retaliate in equivalent measure for any protectionist measure we take.

Given that most cultural people in the industry seem to think the threat is coming from the United States, I am wondering about the logic of this because the NAFTA is going to stay in place no matter what we do in terms of the MAI. I am wondering if the member is not giving a little too much credence to the MAI. The NAFTA is going to stay in place and it takes precedence in terms of the culture agreement with the United States in any case.

[Supply, April 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the hon. member from the Bloc and I am wondering if the member could tell the House what aspect of globalization is hurting Canada. Is it the free trade agreement with the United States? Is it the NAFTA with United States and Mexico? Is it the World Trade Organization where we have negotiated with 132 other member countries or is it the MAI?

Could the member explicitly tell us what aspect of globalization is being hurt by treaties Canada signed?

[Supply, April 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think there is any disagreement. We want to get rid of poverty in Canada but we have different methods of doing it.

The Bloc, the Liberals and the NDP seem to feel that the levers of power by government intervening in the economy is the proper way. We have seen 30 years of such intervention and I believe it has failed.

Unemployment is still running almost in double digits and has been for a long time. The Canada pension plan needs a massive infusion of taxpayers' money or a 72% increase to keep it viable. Health care is in trouble. The federal government has cut back payments in health care by $6 billion to the provinces.

Maybe the government should not intervene so much in the economy and the business sector and let business do what it does best, that is create well paying jobs. We have to be competitive internationally. On the issue of globalization, certainly that is happening, but I do not think it is something we can stop or would want to stop. It is a smaller world and we have to take advantage of it.