Dale Johnston

[Species At Risk Act, February 28th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I listened intently to my colleague talk about judicious stewardship of endangered species and pragmatism. I am a farmer. We have some land in Alberta with a creek running through about 80 acres. When my wife and I bought the land we also bought the land adjacent to the creek and we pay taxes on it. It is not excluded from our title.

Now there may or may not be some endangered species of wildlife or flora on that land. I know there are a few bush partridges. I fret about their existence and wonder if they are endangered.

Would my colleague like to speak to the effectiveness of the bill? If someone finds that I have an endangered species on that land, will I have to forfeit the use of the land? As it is, our cattle go down to the creek to drink. Are there provisions in the bill that would compensate me if I had to set land aside for some endangered species to flourish? Does the bill provide for that? If not, what would my colleague suggest to improve that situation?

[Speech From The Throne, February 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, what I did say in my remarks was that not even in my wildest dreams could I imagine a fountain in Shawinigan being infrastructure. What I certainly can imagine being infrastructure is the repair of the Trans-Canada Highway, and I cannot quite understand why it has not been done. To me that is infrastructure.

Certainly, as the hon. member says, if municipalities chose to repair their water and sewer systems before the infrastructure program became available to them, then he is right, it would not make sense to force money on them for water and sewer where it is not needed.

By the same token, I challenge the hon. member to tell me how a fountain in the Prime Minister's riding would qualify, even in the broadest terms, as infrastructure.

The availability of infrastructure money should come with no political strings whatsoever attached to it. From where I sit, it appears that quite a lot of the infrastructure money came with some political strings attached to it. It should be available on the basis of need for infrastructure spending in a municipality.

I agree with the hon. member when he says that it should be decided by the area of governance that is closest to the people. Those people should be able to make the decision because they are the ones who know what is needed in the community.

I am just having a very difficult time understanding how he qualifies a golf course, for instance, or a fountain as infrastructure.

[Speech From The Throne, February 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I take this opportunity to congratulate you on your ascension to the chair. I also congratulate the others sharing the chair with you. We only demand of you perfection; nothing more, nothing less. I do not think that will be too hard a bill to fill. If that were not enough, perhaps we would also suggest that you could be an agent for some change in the House while you are at it.

This is my first intervention in the 37th parliament. I thank the people of the constituency of Wetaskiwin for yet another tremendous vote of confidence bestowed on me on November 27 during the federal election. I give a special thanks to my wife Dianne. As all members of the House know, their duties here also affect family members. certainly my wife Dianne has been a great supporter. I also thank our daughters Michelle and Dalene and our son-in-law Andy for their continued support.

I also mention the people on my campaign team who worked so hard in winter weather to get me re-elected. In particular, my campaign manager Janet Moseson did a marvellous job of working with a less than perfect product, myself. My official agent Gerald Grant has done a stellar job of looking after the finances, and his wife Averil Grant looked after the constituency office during a very busy time, and did it single-handedly. I thank all of them for their help, and the result is that I am back in the House of Commons for my third term.

Throughout the campaign I promised the voters of Wetaskiwin that I would bring their message to Ottawa. It would not be the other way around, that I would never bring Ottawa's message to them. I would be their servant.

My constituents have asked me to bring a message to the government and to the Prime Minister. Part of that message is that they want the government to be fiscally accountable and responsible. They want the government to treat all Canadians equally regardless of where they live or who they support.

My constituents do not want and certainly do not need the Prime Minister's tough love. They want and deserve respect from the Prime Minister and his government. Last week's throne speech was not a great start. It had even more platitudes than previous speeches from the throne. It was notable in that it had very little to say and it was notable in what it did not say.

When the government came into power in 1993 the national debt and deficit had reached astronomical proportions. A responsible government would have made tough decisions to cut wasteful and unnecessary spending in order to get things back on track. Not these Liberals. Instead, they kept their patronage ridden, make work projects, and they balanced the budget by raising taxes and offloading expenses on to the provinces and municipalities.

The throne speech promised that the government would fund improvements to municipal water and waste water systems through the federal-provincial-municipal Canada infrastructure program. That is the same promise that we heard in red book one. Instead, millions of dollars were squandered on questionable infrastructure spending.

In the 35th parliament the government announced the $6 billion infrastructure program. Here are some of the examples of what the government thinks are infrastructure and how that money was spent, and I beg to differ with it. There were bowling alley renovations in Ontario. There were a $24 million tennis stadium and a $14.4 million circus training centre in Montreal. There were a fountain in Shawinigan and golf courses in Atlantic Canada. Hardly any of that in the wildest imagination is infrastructure.

It appears that municipal sewage and water treatment infrastructure was not a high priority for the Liberal government as bowling alleys or golf courses. In the short term, make work projects designed to provide Liberal backbenchers with photo ops better describe it. The main reason to invest in infrastructure should be to make sure that the economy remains competitive and buoyant.

If a municipality, a province or a country cannot offer clean water, a reliable transportation system and affordable housing, businesses will locate somewhere else. If the British Columbia companies participating in the upcoming team Canada trade mission to China win large contracts, they will be faced with the problems of how to get their products to port because of deteriorating, congested road networks.

If Canadian companies cannot get their products to market, they will simply lose those contracts. Workers will have to be laid off and there will be a deteriorating effect on the economy. The government will then have fewer tax dollars to collect from those people.

Canadians, whether they live in the west, the east, the centre or the north, expect the government to provide core services. They pay enough taxes to justify these expectations. Before the government embarks on another potentially frivolous infrastructure plan, it should recognize what was wrong with the first two and steer clear of culture and social infrastructure components that led to many boondoggles.

Existing physical infrastructure has long been one of the areas consistently neglected by the government. An infrastructure program should embody economic efficiency and be a patronage free zone. By the end of the program in 1999, the Liberals' inefficient manner of allocating taxpayer dollars was obvious.

They left the private sector out of the picture in helping to identify, finance and administer the projects. Unless the neglect is followed up by an innovative way of finding new areas of financing, Canada's infrastructure will continue to deteriorate to the point where governments will be required to spend more money for improvements. As a matter of fact, improvements might not do it. They might have to completely rebuild the infrastructure.

Treasury Board claims that the program was not renewed in 1999 because the economy was booming. That brings us to where we are today: another red book and another throne speech promising to fix Canada's roads and sewers.

This time the government is still promising $2.6 billion, as announced in the February budget, for new physical infrastructure. Is it any wonder that westerners are skeptical and nearly shut out the Liberals in the last election?

If the economy is booming and Canada does not need another infrastructure program, we have to wonder why the government is renewing this program. Perhaps it has something to do with bringing goodies to certain regions of the country. For instance, Quebec got $515 million in federal contributions while Alberta got only $171 million. This is not regional fairness. Albertans have heard the same storyline over and over.

Yesterday the auditor general noted that Canadians get upset and angry when they see their tax dollars wasted. We cannot blame them. They expect the government to take the same care of and have the same prudence with their money as they themselves must.

I would like to point out that my former colleague in the House, the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands, Lee Morrison, authored a private member's bill that would have dedicated revenues from fuel taxes for repair of our crumbling highways. Our Trans-Canada Highway is a shame, a disaster, and I think his idea is one that is well worth exploring.

I want to conclude by saying that if the Prime Minister doubts what I am saying, he can visit the great riding of Wetaskiwin. We would be glad to have people meet with him and give him this exact message.

The other message the people of Wetaskiwin want me to deliver to this place today is that they want to see a country in which their children and grandchildren are treated with respect, have unlimited opportunity and have a government they can respect.

[Liberal Party Policies, October 20th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, Liberals opposite will soon discover that their worst nightmare is about to come true. Canadians will not be fooled by the Prime Minister's last minute attempts to buy votes.

When the Canadian Alliance called for tax cuts, the finance minister laughed. When it became evident that Canadians wanted a tax break, the government said “We can't afford it”.

Now on the eve of an election, the Liberals have taken their hands out of the taxpayers' pockets long enough to open the goodie bag. Do they really think Canadians will forget the deficit was eliminated through excessively high taxes? Do they really think Canadians will believe that the Liberals will actually deliver on any of these promises?

After all, it was the Liberals who promised to eliminate the GST. It was the very same Liberals who promised open and accountable government and then boycotted a committee.

Canadians will remember these and all the other broken Liberal promises. When the Liberals pass out red book three on Halloween, Canadians will recognize that there are no treats, just more Liberal tricks.

[Criminal Code, September 26th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I too am quite concerned that we are not hearing from speakers on the opposite side. Members opposite drafted the bill and should be here to defend it. Their non-participation and indeed their ambivalence to this whole thing perhaps could be interpreted in a couple of ways.

Maybe they think the legislation is so great that there is absolutely no way it could be improved upon, although I do not know how they could get that idea, because every one in the House who has spoken on it so far today has suggested improvements to the bill. Perhaps they are so ashamed of it that they just want it to slip through the House like a dose of salts, with nobody noticing it. Otherwise why is someone from that side not responding from time to time?

The other question my colleague raises is the one about wilful intent. I spoke to that at some length during my remarks but I would not mind actually expanding on that just a little. He talks about the ritual slaughter of animals by certain religious groups, which absolutely does date back to the time when history began to be recorded.

We have customs whereby the native people are still allowed to carry out their whale hunt. The Inuit are allowed to kill a certain amount of whales by harpooning them. I wonder if that has been considered in the bill.

I keep going back to two points. We have to consider what has been accepted practice for literally hundreds of years. We also have to be very cognizant that whatever we put into the statutes has to be tempered with copious amounts of common sense.

Perhaps common sense is not something that is very easily divined. We can argue that what is common sense to my knowledge is not necessarily common sense to others and vice versa, but the generally accepted term of common sense should be applied in liberal doses to this particular act.

[Criminal Code, September 26th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the questions from my colleague from Okanagan—Shuswap.

It would be my hope that the use of medical or laboratory animals would be an acceptable practice, provided of course that they are treated humanely in the course of the experiment. We all know that because of laboratory animals there have been huge advancements in medical science. I would think that the benefits would vastly outweigh the fact that these animals have to undergo experiments. Would I support having that covered and clarified in the bill? Absolutely I would. I think it would be of the utmost importance.

The second question my colleague asked is why there is this omnibus sort of bill, why they are mixing apples and oranges. It is not my place to impugn motives to the government, but if I were the suspicious type I would say that perhaps it has been done this way in order to set a bit of a minefield for the opposition, such that if the opposition finds something insupportable in the act and votes against it, all of the above simply become fine points. What will be kept on the record on the government side is that a certain party or a certain individual did not support strengthening the cruelty to animals act.

Of course, that is all speculation. Everyone knows very well that I am not one who would impugn motives to any person or any party in the House.

[Criminal Code, September 26th, 2000]

Madam Speaker, as usual, my colleague from Elk Island has been very insightful and rather entertaining. I expected when he was telling us about coming down the road and seeing the mother duck that he could actually hear her say to her little ones “duck”, but I guess he left that part out.

The other day I was driving home in broad daylight on a country road that was not very wide. There was some extremely tall grass in the ditch. A deer jumped out of the ditch and I collided with it. It was totally an accident. I am sure I inflicted some pain and suffering on that deer. I am also convinced that the deer inflicted some pain and suffering on me, because I had to repair the automobile afterwards. I had to do it quickly before my wife inflicted pain and suffering on me, because it was her car.

I am looking at the bill and I am wondering if I might be guilty of inflicting pain. If someone had come along they would have seen me strike that deer. I frankly did not see the deer leave, because it rode up over the front end of my wife's car and landed behind the back door. By the time I got the vehicle stopped and got out of the car, the deer had vanished. Although I was not going very fast, it does take a few seconds to get the car stopped. I was not able to assess whether it limped away or whether it bounded off, but I am quite sure that at 60 kilometres an hour, which was about the speed I was travelling, striking a deer with a car that weighs 4,000 pounds would certainly inflict some harm on it and some pain, maybe even break some bones. I do not know.

Under the bill, would I be guilty of inflicting pain on that animal? That is one of the reasons it is so important that we keep the words wilful or wilfully in the bill.

There are many other aspects to the bill. It also deals with the disarming of a police officer and technical amendments to the Firearms Act. I frankly do not have any argument with that. I think that the disarming of a police officer, if it has not been in the code all these years as a specific crime, certainly should have been. We have to give our police officers the tools to do their job. We must respect our police officers for the job they do. Anyone who attacks a police officer should suffer the full wrath of the law. I am also talking about trying to disarm the police officer, take away his firearm.

I have no problem with the technical amendments to the Firearms Act. They seem fairly reasoned and commonsensical. On the other hand, other aspects of the bill lack that elusive quality of common sense.

Coming from a farming community, I see all sorts of things. Normally our livestock producers take the very best care of their livestock. It is in their best interest to do so because this is their livelihood. This is their living. Occasionally we hear reports on the radio or on the television stating that in such-and-such an area several head of cattle, hogs or whatever had to be humanely disposed of because they were in such a bad state of emaciation from lack of feed or they had been hauled in a truck that was so cold they had frozen spots on their carcasses. That is an offence that absolutely should be punished. There is no rationale whatsoever for causing undue suffering to defenceless animals.

Therefore I am making the case that wilful negligence should be taken into consideration, whether it is inflicting wilful suffering and pain or whether it is done through lack of knowledge or lack of attention. If someone knew or should have known those conditions would bring suffering and pain to an animal, livestock, pet, cat, dog or whatever, it would be very difficult for them to defend their position in a court of law. Those individuals should in all instances be found guilty of cruelty to animals.

I mentioned earlier agriculture and rodeos. I certainly do not support blood sports such as dog fighting, rooster fighting, or bear baiting, the old idea of putting a bear in the ring to kill dogs or turning dogs on the bear simply to entertain people who watch the fight. None of that makes any sense to me whatsoever.

We have to differentiate that from a common practice in the agricultural industry that is absolutely necessary. Farmers do not neuter their bull calves simply because they want to inflict pain and suffering on them. They do it for a very practical reason, which is that the animals fatten better and it makes them more docile. It also plays a large role in the genetics of the cattle herd. Farmers select the bulls they want to add to the gene pool of their livestock and simply neuter all the ones that do not measure up to a certain standard. That is a common practice, as is the practice of hot iron branding of cattle for identification purposes.

I know of one instance where a friend of mine who is a cattle buyer bought a load of cattle or two. He was marshalling them at a custom feedlot. He continued to buy cattle until he had a certain number and then find a buyer. He also put together orders for people who had asked him to pick out a certain amount of a certain type of cattle.

Unbeknownst to him, this feedlot was suffering from real economic stress. One day he went there and found the sheriff had actually seized the feedlot and all of the contents therein, including the cattle my friend had bought. I do not know whether my friend had a premonition or what, but he had undergone the old western practice of putting a brand on these cattle before he put them into the feedlot. When the sheriff asked, “How can you prove you actually have cattle in here that belong to you?” He said “They have my brand on them”. The sheriff released his cattle to him immediately. Cattle could be identified perhaps with a tattoo and it might stand up, but an ear tag would not.

While we are talking about tattoos and ear tags, do they inflict pain and suffering on the livestock? If they do, would putting an ear tag or a tattoo in the ear of an animal, which is a very common practice for purebred animals, inflict pain and suffering and make one guilty of a crime under this act? Those are all questions we have to ask.

I would like to see the bill go to committee. I would like to see it amended to reflect some of the common sense and some of the practices that are common and have been acceptable for hundreds of years.

At every auction market in the country and at every rodeo there are representatives from the humane society who are there to supervise. Those people would be great witnesses before the committee because they have seen what is acceptable and what is not. They have a very good idea of an acceptable practice and a practice that would constitute cruelty.

I would like to see all the amendments we have put forward adopted by the committee. They would answer some of the concerns of farmers, hunters, agricultural groups, those in the fur trade, people in the rodeo and the circus business, and others.

Every year the Calgary Stampede takes place. There is usually a protest following or during the stampede that says the roping of cattle is unnecessary cruelty and all the rest of it. There is a long way between the catching of a calf at the end of a lariat rope and cock fighting. Cock fighting is a brutal sport in which two roosters fight until one of them is dead. To me that is a senseless and cruel sport that has no place in modern society. I agree with those people who oppose it.

Wilful neglect is certainly deserving of harsh punishment. It is absolutely unacceptable. From an agricultural point of view it just does not make any economic sense not to take care of livestock. Neglect of farm animals, where they are not properly fed or not properly bedded, is not only against the law and should be against the law but is also a very stupid economic move. If one is with the condition that one does not have the feed or the bedding to properly look after livestock, then they should be sold. There is a ready market for any livestock and they should be sold to someone who will take care of them.

Still in the livestock and farming vein, there is one clause of the bill I would like to quote from. It says anyone who “kills an animal or, being the owner, permits an animal to be killed, brutally or viciously”. I wonder what brutally or viciously killing means. Does it mean if one shoots them it is brutal and vicious and if one tickles them to death it is okay? I do not understand that at all.

If one kills a human being, is it brutal and vicious? I think so. Gophers, which are properly known as the Richardson's ground squirrel, dig up meadows and generally cause havoc with the turf. One could shoot them with a .22 or, worse yet, use a leghold trap. As we kids used to do in school days at recess, one could go out and drown them by pouring water down their holes. Perhaps we were guilty of cruel and unusual punishment with those poor little ground squirrels, but are those things all considered to be “brutally or viciously” killing the animals?

The bill goes on to say that anyone who “kills an animal, or being the owner, permits the animal to be killed, brutally or viciously, regardless of whether the animal dies immediately”, is guilty of a criminal offence. My concern is that I own livestock. The whole purpose of the livestock is to create protein, meat, for customers. To do that, since we have yet to discover a way to eat animals alive, animals have to be killed in some way.

Even if the animal dies immediately, we are guilty of a criminal offence, and even though we did not do it. I guess we hire professional hit men to kill our steers so we are still guilty of consulting with and getting somebody else to carry out our foul deeds. Even though the animal dies immediately, we are guilty of a criminal offence.

I shudder to think of how many times I have been guilty of that, because we have sent literally thousands of animals to the slaughterhouse. The animals die immediately, I think. I am not sure, but I am pretty sure that they do. They are immobilized, the butcher opens the carotid veins in the neck, the animal is bled and dies almost immediately. As soon as the carotid arteries are opened the blood pressure goes to zero and the animal is for all intents and purposes dead immediately.

However, that does not matter. I am still guilty under this legislation. That is a terrible deficiency in the bill. I hope that the committee will move to amend this or to remove any ambiguity in this area so that the person who raises chickens for a living will be able to have the chickens killed and processed. We had chicken for lunch today. I wonder how that got here. It got here because somebody killed the chicken, I hope not brutally or viciously, and I hope immediately. I hope somebody did not have to go to jail because we had chicken for lunch.

That is the kind of common sense I am talking about, which is absent in the bill and which is absolutely vital to the bill. We cannot stand to have this kind of ambiguity. We must have more clarity. The bill as it is now will cause a tremendous amount of anxiety in the agricultural community. It has already, in my opinion.

While the bill is not in the form that I would like to see, I want it to be on the record that I am a pet owner and a livestock producer and I pride myself on taking good care of my livestock. My animals are well fed, with good access to a good water supply. In cold weather I keep them bedded. We give them the very best obstetrics we can if they have difficulty calving; we do everything we can to assist them, including giving them Caesarean operations if need be, to save the life of one or the other and sometimes both.

As far as our pets are concerned, we have a little white Maltese dog that we keep in the house. She is our pride and joy. Our children grew up and left and we needed something to mother, so we got a puppy. I would not do anything whatsoever to make life uncomfortable for that little dog. Frankly, anyone who would is an abuser and should be dealt with as an abuser, whether he does it through neglect or wilful harm. I want to be extremely clear about that.

I support the idea that animals have a purpose in our lives. Pets have a different purpose than farm animals, obviously, but a lot of pets on the farm are also working pets, like stock dogs. We have had stock dogs on our farm that were an absolutely essential part of our operation and saved us many steps.

While I am not pleased with the bill in its present form, I am prepared to give it tentative support to get it into committee in the hope that it will be amended to reflect the common sense suggestions I have put forward today.

[Criminal Code, September 26th, 2000]

Madam Speaker, I was very interested in my neighbour's speech. Our constituencies share a boundary so I know that his constituents and background are somewhat similar to mine.

I was very interested to hear him say that the words wilful and wilfully have been removed from the bill. Anyone who wilfully inflicts pain or suffering on animals, whether it is wilful or whether it is through negligence, should suffer some sort of punishment because they ought to know better.

I listened to other members today who talked about the possibility that those who abuse animals and treat them badly are also likely to be the sort of people who abuse and treat human beings badly. I agree. I think there is a correlation between the two. I also think that wilful neglect, damage, or even neglect because a person did not know any better, should be penalized.

I would like my colleague to expound on how he feels about livestock producers who fail to adequately care for and feed their livestock and therefore cause them to emaciate and die of starvation. I would like him to comment on another practice. Where he and I come from rodeos are a big thing in the summertime. Does the use of animals in a rodeo constitute neglect or wilful harm?

[Criminal Code, September 26th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague speak about the cruelty to animals aspect of the legislation. Certainly I agree with his assessment that those who inflict cruelty on innocent, defenceless animals should be dealt with.

However, I am wondering about the definition of what causes pain and suffering. Would my colleague like to comment on the concern I hear from people in the agricultural community I represent that common practices with livestock, such as dehorning and castration of bulls and branding for identification, may be construed as cruelty to a defenceless animal?

In order to carry out these operations on farm animals, we have to restrain them in such a way that the operation can be done and the brand is readable. In the part of the country I come from the hot iron brand is still very much a legal way of identifying our livestock. It is the one permanent method that works. Ear tags and such things are ways of identifying cattle as well, but even the application of an ear tag on an animal may be construed as cruelty to animals under the bill. I am extremely concerned about that and would like to voice the concerns of constituents that have talked with me in this regard. Would my colleague like to comment?

[Grain Transportation, September 20th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps the minister has not noticed that the workers have been without a contract since January and they are frustrated. Of course, the grain companies are frustrated too. The farmers have had it right up to their ears.

With low commodity prices threatening to put many grain farmers completely out of business, I would think it is about time that the minister changed the code so that there would be a dispute settlement mechanism whereby these things could be nipped in the bud before they became a crisis.