Dale Johnston

[Division No. 49, December 2nd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, we are on the eve of getting the mail moving again. This is an opportunity for me to share a few thoughts with the minister and Canadians in general. It was good to hear the minister say that he supports the collective bargaining process. He has told us that over and over again, so I guess that is his position.

He also said that he takes no satisfaction in having to bring in legislation of this type. There is a point on which the minister and I can agree. Although we as a party asked to get the mail moving again, this seemed to be the only method left to get the mail moving and we reluctantly support this sort of thing.

We believe there is no need to have to legislate back to work for work stoppages, in particular in areas where there is no alternative. There is no alternative to the post office. If you put first class mail out to be delivered it will be delivered by the post office. Nobody is running in competition with the post office.

Where a monopoly exists we have to come up with a mechanism that settles these disputes without a strike or a lockout. The Canadian public simply cannot withstand this kind of blow. People have phoned our offices repeatedly to tell us how much money they are losing and that they will have to lay off employees.

We are concerned that every time this happens, Canada Post is losing another slice of the market share. Not everybody has access to the Internet, e-mail, faxes and so forth. Every time there is a disruption in the service of first class mail, people start to look for alternatives.

A good case in point is a local newspaper back home. It is a member of the weekly newspaper association that has been publishing for the last 50 years in my hometown. Every week it mails out its papers to the outlying areas. It is an ad journal with no subscription rates. It simply goes out to every household in the coverage area and is paid for by the advertising. I spoke with the editor of that paper just recently and he said that his postal costs were about one thousand dollars a week. As soon as this postal disruption was talked about, as soon as there was a lot of chest thumping and we knew that there was going to be a postal disruption, this editor set the wheels to deliver his paper without Canada Post.

What they actually came up with was a distribution system where they had news boxes at convenient points all through their circulation area that would be stocked on the same day that the paper was printed.

Everybody now is going to get their paper on the same day whether they live in the town that the paper is printed in or whether they live in an adjacent town or somewhere in between in a rural area. They will all get their paper the same day.

The most significant thing is that besides the fact that it is going to cost him half of what it did through Canada Post, $500 a week as opposed to $1,000 a week, this editor has no intention of going back to Canada Post once the mail has resumed. I think that is a shame because there is another slice of market share that Canada Post has lost.

One of the things that was very hotly contested during all of these labour talks was the fear of lay-offs in their jobs. CUPW kept saying that they were—

[Division No. 48, December 2nd, 1997]

moved:

That Bill C-24 be amended, in Clause 12, by replacing lines 33 to 39 on page 5 with the following:

“12. The rates of pay in the new collective agreement shall be determined by Final Offer Arbitration, in the event the parties cannot reach a settlement.”

[Division No. 48, December 2nd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I find it very unusual that the Bloc would put forth a motion which would support a legislated settlement as far as the money is concerned. Of course one would expect them to say that it should be negotiated and I would agree with that.

If it gets to the point where we have to legislate an organization back to work and appoint an arbitrator, then we should allow the arbitrator to make these decisions.

I believe it is absolutely wrong to have the dollars and cents spelled out in the bill. It will handcuff the arbitrator.

[Division No. 48, December 2nd, 1997]

Mr. Chairman, I would like to speak very briefly to this amendment which would put in place final offer selection arbitration to address the matter of pay schedules rather than having it done through an arbitrary manner.

Certainly when these matters arose in the House and during question period when we questioned the Minister of Labour, he stressed the need to have a negotiated settlement. We agree with him. We think a negotiated settlement far surpasses an imposed settlement any time. However, we also believe the use of final offer selection arbitration is a tool that can be used equally by both sides and is a very worthwhile tool that can be used in instances like these without having to use this method of back to work legislation, a method, I might add, that has come to be counted on by labour and management. It is less than a perfect situation at any time.

[The Environment, November 28th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, when we ask the government what commitments it is going to make on behalf of Canadians in Kyoto we get things like manana, manana, tomorrow. But tomorrow is here.

We would like to know what are the standards to which this minister is going to oblige Canadians. Will she tell us today? Manana is here.

[Aboriginal Affairs, November 27th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, we have heard the minister say that she is concerned and that she has given many speeches.

Constituents of mine from the Hobbema reserve are also concerned. They are concerned that even though there are billions of dollars spent by her department they have the highest substance abuse, the highest disease rate, the highest crime rate, the highest poverty rate in Canada.

When will the minister stop her talking and act on the report that she has been given?

[Canadian Wheat Board Act, November 20th, 1997]

It would appear our NDP friend from Saskatchewan would agree with that sentiment. He has it wrong, as usual.

We want to have a flexible wheat board. We want to have a board where we can be in or out. Why not have a choice?

Let me give my esteemed colleague examples of some things I am sure he supports. What about co-ops? What about credit unions? What about pools? I am sure my friend from the more socialist party believes those are good things.

Let us take a quick look at how they operate. Do the credit unions in Mountain View, Ponoka and Bashaw, Saskatchewan, operate under a board that is appointed by the premier of the province or the reeve of the county? No. Those people are elected. The boards of directors are elected.

Some of those people are not even paid. They may collect mileage to and from meetings. They may get their registration fee paid to attend conferences and that sort of thing. A lot of these people donate their time to the board. They are elected by the members of the credit union, by the producers in the hog pool, or whatever it is, or by the people who are members of the co-operative. They are accountable to the people who elect them. Those elected people hire an administrator. The administrator makes administrative decisions and the elected board makes political decisions.

Is there any resemblance between what I have just described and the Canadian Wheat Board? None whatsoever. They are not even in the same ballpark.

We are asking for a completely elected board of directors that is accountable to producers, a wheat board farmers could be members of or excluded from and market their grain one way or the other.

My NDP friend from Saskatchewan said “it will not work if you are not all in it”. How does he know that? If it did not work because it was not a monopoly, if it will not work without being a monopoly then it must be a pretty poor system.

I think that anybody in this House would say that competition is good. I am sure my hon. colleague feels very good about the fact that he ran against other opponents in the election and was victorious. In that case he would say “Certainly competition is great. Competition is good”.

Why is competition not good in the grain market business? We evolved immensely in agriculture in the 60 or 70 years since the dawn of the wheat board. What we are trying to do is to drag the wheat board and proponents of same kicking and screaming into the 21st century in a marketing system that answers the requirements, in fact the demands, of the producers.

I wish I could think of the member's riding. The member for Qu'Appelle likes to say these groups support the inclusion. Let us have a look. The National Farmers Union, the National Foundation and three others we have listed here.

Mr. Speaker, because of time constraints I have 12 groups of people listed here; Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, Winnipeg Commodity Exchange, Canadian Oilseed Processors Association, Alberta Canola Producers, Saskatchewan Canola Growers Association, Canadian Federation of Independent Business, Western Barley Growers Association, Alberta Winter Wheat Producers Commission, Oat Producers Association of Alberta, Flax Growers Western Canada, Manitoba Canola Growers Association and Canadian Canola Growers Association all are vigorously opposed to the inclusion. I think we will find certainly not the least of which should be added to that is the Reform Party of Canada.

[Canadian Wheat Board Act, November 20th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, several things come to mind as an opener, not the least of which is that I too am a farmer.

I guess another thing that should be said is that the times, they are a'changin'. It is a long time since my father and my father-in-law saw the birth of the Canadian Wheat Board. A lot of things have changed since that time when farmers would haul most of their grain in the winter. Practically all the grain was hauled on sleighs. The roads were bad during the summertime when they could only use wheeled vehicles and they did not have enough horses to pull a load of wheat through the muddy roads. They hauled their grain in the wintertime, when they had time to do it as well. They would haul about 100 bushels of wheat five, ten, twenty or whatever miles it required to get it an elevator. Most elevators were about 20 to 30 miles at the very most from farming communities.

The grain would be hauled in dribs and drabs by today's standards to the elevators where it would be loaded on to rail cars and shipped out in greater quantities.

Technology has evolved now to the point where we have trucks that can hold two or three the capacity of old time granaries. Once they get the truck rolling it really does not matter how far they have to travel. Once it is loaded on the truck it can be destined for almost anywhere in North America. The marketing of grain has changed immeasurably in the 50, 60 or 70 years since the birth of the Canadian Wheat Board.

The Canadian Wheat Board is stuck in the 1920s. I listened with great interest to my colleague from the NDP trying to defend the system and all the people he claims support single desk selling. I am reminded of a discussion with a friend back home who was of like mind. He thought the single desk marketing of grain was the only way to go because that was how to get the best results.

I asked him to extrapolate his thinking a bit. He also raised cattle. Maybe I should become the single desk buyer for cattle. He could sell all his cattle to me. Everybody in Alberta could sell their cattle to me and I would get the best price that I could. He thought about that for not even a second and said no, that he could not do that. He could not possibly think about selling me all his cattle exclusively and all the cattle of all producers in that area, in that province or maybe in all western provinces.

I would like to be in that position. Most people in the House would like to be in the position where they would have an absolute monopoly. That is what we are talking about today.

Farmers in western Canada have overcome drought, flood, hail, poor weather, too much rain, not enough rain, seed borne diseases, late yielding varieties and all sorts of things in the production of grain.

Now there are better seed varieties and better genetics. Seeds mature earlier. We are avoiding frosts. We have better machinery than we have ever had to work the land, to cut the grain and to combine the grain. It would seem oftentimes that we have more grain than we know what to do with, or at least what the Canadian Wheat Board knows what to do with.

It would seem production is not the challenge it once was. The huge challenge today is the marketing of grain. Because our input costs are so high that our margins naturally are proportionately lower. The marketing of grain is of the utmost importance. By introducing these amendments we are trying to put some flexibility into an absolutely inflexible Canadian Wheat Board.

The NDP member from Saskatchewan accused us of wanting to do away with the wheat board.

[Canada Post, November 20th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, for seven months this process has been going on and the results have been that there has been not bargaining in earnest but actually depending on the government at some point to legislate them back to work, like it has done time and time again.

When will the minister take some action and restore the postal service?

[Canada Post, November 20th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians have lost access to the postal system. The Minister of Labour says that he supports the collective bargaining process. So do we. But when will he act to do something about this monopoly that 30 million Canadians do not have an alternative to?