Werner Schmidt

[Telecommunications Act, November 4th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, I believe the government's role should be to create an environment in which innovation and entrepreneurship can express themselves. The playing field should be level in the sense that an opportunity exists for all kinds of players to enter.

Let those who are particularly successful and good win the day. I do not think governments should decide ahead of time who should be the winner or who should be the loser. That is the difficulty with the bill.

In a short answer, my position is yes, let us let people go in and compete. We would not have the IBMs. We would not have the Apples. We would not have various other groups that have brought about all kinds of Internet service projects. We would not have them today if we had regulations that said they could not come in unless they met some conditions. They came because they had a service. They came because the service met the needs of people.

The time has come for government to create the overall broad framework so that we can succeed in that environment and let the market decide who will provide the best service for the least cost.

[Telecommunications Act, November 4th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I have been both exhilarated and disappointed today. We have before us a bill that on the one hand is being exalted as the greatest development that will advance the causes of technology and communication that has ever hit the floor of this House. It has given members of the government the opportunity to brag, to extol the virtues of how much they are doing to get Canadians on to the information highway and to make sure that all communities and all Canadians everywhere will be connected to this information highway.

At the same time these very same people recognize that there is not the capacity in Canada to do that right now. It is a noble goal, we all agree, and I support that, but the interesting thing with regard to this bill is that it has brought together two things that I submit do not belong together in the same bill. Whatever connection there is is tenuous at best.

We have one bill with two parts. The first part deals with amendments to the Telecommunications Act and the other part of the bill deals with amendments to the the Teleglobe Canada Reorganization and Divestiture Act. Those two things are completely separate. I submit that it would have been very much better if the government had submitted two bills, one which dealt with amendments to the Telecommunications Act, the other which dealt with amendments to the Teleglobe Canada Reorganization and Divestiture Act. It would have been far more successful and far more logical.

The issue behind this bill is to recognize the principle involved. There is not much doubt or argument about the basic principles of increasing competition, expanding the ownership possibilities of telecommunications vehicles and ending monopolies. It is rather encouraging that the Liberals, who tend to govern from the top down and intrude into business, have seen this as a major principle.

It is about time that Canadians recognized that government does not have all the answers. Yet within this very bill, we are reverting to government regulation and control of business.

I want to hearken back to the Information Highway Advisory Committee. This committee started with one set of recommendations in its first volume and then it came up with a second volume in which it began to implement things. One of the principles which the committee stated very unequivocally in the first report which it presented to the Minister of Industry was that the origin of the capital of a particular business, particularly a business in telecommunications, ought not to be so much the concern of the government, but rather the concern should be how that capital is applied. Is the capital applied in such a way that meets the economic and social goals of Canada? If the capital does those things it does not matter where it originated.

We need to focus very carefully and clearly on what it is we want to achieve in any legislation, particularly in legislation that deals with such a pervasive issue as telecommunications, the linking of people talking with one another through electronic means.

Two parliamentary secretaries expressed great pride in how broad the consultation had been on this bill. I do not know with whom they spoke. I have a report from an Internet service provider which arrived about five minutes ago. In fact, the report is from the legal counsel to the Internet service provider. He makes this observation:

I am concerned that this bill empowers the CRTC to declare that something is a basic telecommunications service, without any criteria to define “basic”, and then subject the service provider to a licensing regime. This licensing regime overturns the previous scheme of the Telecommunications Act in a fundamental way. The previous act—the one now in force—says that anyone may operate as a Canadian carrier who satisfies ownership criteria. The new one subjects every service that the CRTC wishes to regulate to a comprehensive scheme of licensing.

The key phrase is whatever service the CRTC wishes to regulate. This is a major departure. It is an intrusion into the operation of telecommunications such as we have never seen before. It was never a part of the Telecommunications Act.

When the Minister of Industry gave his speech in defence of Bill C-17 we were all enamoured by his commitment, by his seriousness and by his total support for the development of telecommunications and the whole business of innovation, science and technology developments and the application and commercialization of new ideas. He used the telecommunications business as an example of how this could be done. I congratulate the minister for doing that.

However, the minister failed to comment on one aspect of the bill which is an intrusion into the affairs of business. We have to get serious about that.

I want to refer directly to the mandate of the CRTC. The CRTC is a body with administrative and quasi-judicial authority. This is no itsy-bitsy committee whose members get together every once in a while to talk to one another and have a good time, go out for a beer or a coffee or whatever. This is a quasi-judicial body that can bind businesses or individuals and can determine how much you and I pay for our telephone rates. It can determine who will be the supplier of the pipe or the line or the fibre optic or satellite communication or wireless. It has the right to determine these kinds of things.

The CRTC has been given a brand new mandate and authority it did not have before. It has been given the authority, in clause 3, the new section 16, for new powers of licensing.

It is very interesting what these powers actually are. These powers establish classes of licences. That is one thing it does. It establishes the classes of services that would require a licence. Now we are hitting on two sides. First, it tells us the kinds of licences we will have. Second, it tell us these are the service providers who will be required to have a licence. They may be the same but they may also be different. The act is completely ambiguous in declaring exactly what is going to happen in this area.

I would like to make several observations with regard to this ambiguity. What does this ambiguity permit? First, it allows the establishment of many or few classes. The more classes there are the more administration, the more distributors, the more ways in which you find the CRTC getting into various areas. It decides how many of these classes there will be.

Second, it allows the CRTC to establish classes on an arbitrary basis. It does not provide any indication of the conditions and guidelines to be used before a particular class of licence is established. This is a figment of somebody's imagination first and then it is how much can fit here.

It sounds like someone who is getting ready for a Ph.D. dissertation. He takes a particular position and says this is my hypothesis. Then he draws a conclusion and says that this is my conclusion. He wonders around until he finds enough evidence to prove his conclusion given the hypothesis, rather than deciding on the hypothesis and looking for the evidence.

This is very serious. That is the kind of thing that could happen here. Far worse than that, the classes of licences could perpetuate obsolescence. It puts into a straitjacket the conditions that qualify a business or service provider getting a licence in the first place. That is terrible.

We would not have the advancement in telecommunications if we had had these kinds of constraints placed on new service providers, with new ideas and new ways of applying the technology. We should look at this very carefully.

The CRTC may now establish the conditions for the licences. Not only can it establish the classes of licences, the kinds of businesses that would be required to have a licence, but now the conditions. These too have no guidelines.

What will the conditions be? Will a service provider need a particular financial capability? Does it mean there has to have a particular concentration of ownership or if the ownership is too concentrated it will not get a licence? Will it be a coverage area that is involved or the range of services that will be provided? Then the question becomes is this a range of services that relates to the Internet? Will this be a service that will be on the information highway or could it be something that is independent of that? Will it have to do with the number of technical people who are employed by an organization or will a certain portion of the profits have to be be placed into R and D? Are these some of the conditions that are going to be placed on the licensee? We do not know.

However, we do know that the government is already on record insisting that in order for a certain kind of business to operate it must commit a certain proportion of its earnings and revenues toward research and development. I do not think that is necessarily a bad requirement. In fact, we need far more research and development in this country.

Canada is well down the list of OECD countries in spending on R and D. As an industrial nation it does not fare well in the way that the government presents R and D. Government does not provide as much money to research and development as could be the case. Neither does private enterprise commit to research and development in the proportion that it should. We need that kind of commitment. For that to be a possible condition for a licence is rather difficult.

These are some of the questions on the business of licensing. However, there is an even more significant part to licensing. It is not only the people who will get the licences and the conditions of licences, the bill goes even further and states that the CRTC may establish conditions relative to circumstances of the licensee.

This raises all kinds of questions. Does this now escalate the problem above and beyond direct political and/or commission arbitrariness. Now we are not only determining the conditions but the circumstances that would be involved.

It could prevent certain people from entering the market by making regulations that are so demanding it would be impossible for them to ever get into the business. It is sort of like issuing a tender for a motorcycle and setting the specifications for that motorcycle in such a way that there would only be one possible manufacturer that could meet those specifications. These are very serious possibilities.

There is also the possibility of capriciousness, which is to set different conditions for one class of licence apart from another class of licence so that in one case it may be on a certain financial base, while on the other side financial basis will not matter, but the concentration of ownership will.

It could also bring about that those who would get a licence would be friends of the government, those who are friends of management or directors of the CRTC, perhaps people in a particular management structure. Who knows? This could possibly create different cost structures for different classes of licences. We do not know what the circumstances would be.

If we put those four things in the legislative provision of licences, we would begin to ask ourselves how could anyone truly and honestly and fairly administer such a system?

If I was a bureaucrat and I wanted to establish myself as a bureaucratic entrepreneur, that is getting more and more people to come under my supervision, I would use this kind of a system. It would mean that I could have the whole world before me. I could create the types of licences I wanted, the kinds of services that would get the licences and then I could determine the conditions and the circumstances. It would be possible to build an empire that would be so great that it would be absolutely impossible for anybody to do anything without first of all coming to me to ask “How will we do this?” It has tremendous and horrendous implications.

The bottom line question in all of this is that it does not increase flexibility. It is the very opposite.

Not long ago the CRTC stated in one of its publications that it wanted local competition, a development I heralded with great support at the time and still do. I think it is wonderful. A great thing has happened, and I think the bill moves away from it.

In 1995-96 the commission initiated four different public proceedings to put into place conditions for effective competition in the local telephone market. These proceedings deal with co-location, local interconnection, network component unbundling, local number portability and price cap regulation.

Co-location is intended to facilitate competition by providing competitors with the option of delivering their traffic to local switches over either leased or owned facilities.

Unbundling refers to the requirement that incumbent local telephone companies make available at tariffied rates elements of their facilities to which competitors would require access to effectively enter the local telephone market. This is a tremendous policy for the CRTC to develop. It is exactly what should happen.

Last night I had the opportunity to meet with a couple of entrepreneurs who were doing exactly that. They have put in the ground loops of fibre optic cable which now allows them to get into local telephone market. This will put them in direct competition with the B.C. Tels and the Bells that have monopolies in these areas. Finally we have competition. That is absolutely tremendous and the CRTC ought to be commended for it. The legislation indicates what the CRTC did over here but gives it the power to frustrate what it had over there.

The CRTC goes on to say that another major element of the Reform Party was a series of adjustments to local telephone rates which stem from the commission's split rate based decision to bring prices closer to the true cost of providing service. This adjustment will produce artificial subsidies to residential local service that complicate the introduction of competition.

Implementation of a price cap regime will also give service providers more freedom to price individual services and to reap the benefits of productivity improvements.

This is tremendous stuff. In spite of that concern I have complete support for the other part of the bill which would change or amend the reorganization of Teleglobe Canada Reorganization and Divestiture Act. That should be moved forward expeditiously. Tomorrow we should do that if we possibly could.

[Telecommunications Act, November 4th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, in principle I suppose one would agree but I am asking myself the question that the bill does not in any way suggest how these licences will be granted, what the parameters will be and how the actual way in which these licences will be given. How could this then create a level playing field when nobody knows exactly what the licences will be or what the guidelines will be as to who gets licences and what the conditions of the licences will be?

[Telecommunications Act, November 4th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. parliamentary secretary for those comments.

I think it is great that we have a gentleman who was a senior executive with one of the larger automobile manufacturing enterprises here in Canada.

I would like to ask him if he could articulate for us exactly how the new licensing regime will help the establishment, development and growth of small businesses rather than big businesses.

[Kelowna Toy Run, November 3rd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, 200 motorcycles riding through the streets of a city makes citizens wary, but in Kelowna the sound of engines revving is greeted with enthusiasm because it means every child will receive a gift this Christmas.

There has never been a formal committee struck for the Kelowna toy run but each year these riders of goodwill collect toys, raise cash for food hampers and give it all to the Salvation Army to help families in need at Christmas.

It is not just the imagine of smiling faces on Christmas morning that feels good, it is knowing that we live in a community where people help people.

On behalf of the constituents of Kelowna, I give many thanks to Tom Maxted, this year's organizer, and the many people who help the Kelowna toy run get bigger and better every year.

[Dna Identification Act, November 3rd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, what a great piece of legislation. Finally we have movement toward becoming a little more accurate in identifying the people who are committing criminal acts. I think that is terrific. It is about time we moved in this direction. The people of Canada have said to the Government of Canada, be just. Administer the Criminal Code righteously and above all, depend on truth.

This DNA databank is a great new technology. It is a great way of providing identification positively and clearly. It is the best we have. We should look at this and ask ourselves why it is that there is any hesitation whatsoever in applying it wherever it needs to be applied so that we can find those people who actually are the ones in question here.

There should not even be a question about something like this. Is there any doubt at all that we want to come to grips with the criminal element in our society? Let's face it. The people of Canada are looking to the government, any government, and saying that it is their job to provide for their peace, their protection, their safety and their property. That is the job. That is what the justice system is supposed to do.

We know that this technology works. In fact we have the case of Guy Paul Morin who today is free because this technology made it very clear what was really the truth.

Therefore, the question we are facing here today concerns itself with a new technology that has been proven to be more effective, that has proven to be more desirable, one that has the complete confidence of our law enforcement officers, one that has been accepted by the judges in our courts.

We have before us now a bill that goes part way in accepting such a technology. It is almost like saying that there are 26 letters in the alphabet but for now we will just use the first 13 and hope that the language will work. It will not work. Things cannot be done like that.

This legislation has to do with three things: responsibility, truth and trust. What is the area of responsibility we are talking about? I have already alluded to the number one responsibility, that which the government is to provide for the peace and security of its people and for the protection of their property. It should do this in a peaceful environment, an environment where people can be happy, where they can love and have relationships with other people, where they can develop friendships, where they can trust their neighbours and where they can say “I am responsible”.

The same thing applies to law enforcement officers. These men and women have been charged by the government to take our laws and apply them to those who live in a way that is not consistent with our laws and say “You have broken the law”. They must do this the best way they can. They are the peacekeepers and therefore responsible for we want in our society. It is the responsibility of government to give them the tools that will make it easy for them to do the job they have been charged to do.

Why would we think of tying their hands and saying they cannot use this particular technology that has been proven to be so effective? It seems shortsighted and devoid of responsibility. Surely one of our major responsibilities is to give to these officers the best possible tools with which to enforce the laws.

Is this bill responsible? It is responsible as far as it goes but it is not exercising its full responsibility. In the final analysis this should be an adult bill, a bill that realizes full responsibility and not part of it.

The second aspect this bill should deal with is the question of truth. Truth is an interesting concept. It is a construct we need to recognize as something that is absolute. The truth exists whether we believe it or not. If people choose to believe something they will act in accordance to what they believe. If they happen to believe the truth, they will act on something that is truthful. They could also believe something that is not true. That belief will still influence their actions but their actions will be false and will be based on something that takes them in directions in which they do not want to go and in which society does not want them to go.

In the case of Guy Paul Morin, the police believed this man had committed a crime. The truth was he had not but their actions were determined by what they believed. He was charged. The court looked at the situation, believed he had done this and put him in jail. They convicted him. They then discovered that the truth was elsewhere and what they had believed was in fact not the truth. A way had to be found to identify what the truth was. They did find it and this man was finally declared innocent. It is wonderful that at least part of his life has been rejuvenated and he is back in society, making a contribution both to his family and to the community in which he lives.

This bill ought to be expanded so we can find the truth that exists in all these cases. Not only should we be responsible but we also need to find the truth in the best way we possibly can.

The third area is the area of trust. I found it very interesting that one of the arguments used for not using this DNA bank is because it might be used for the wrong purposes. That has to do with trust.

I do not know of a single RCMP officer who does not have access to a gun. That gun can be used for any one of a variety of purposes. We trust that police officer to use the gun in the way it was intended to be used. That is a matter of trust. That is a matter of responsibility. That is a matter of truth. This lady or gentlemen with the gun has said “I will use it in the best interests of society. I will use it in the most powerful way I know how and in the most effective way I know how to enforce the law”. We trust police officers with a gun. It is a lethal weapon that can maim and destroy lives, yet we trust them with that weapon.

Now we come to a DNA databank which is to be given to a very specific group of people who know exactly what the guidelines and the conditions are. Then we say that we cannot trust these people. That is an insult to the people who use their best abilities to enforce the law the way it should be enforced.

This is a very effective, precise tool. That tool should be given to them and we should trust the people to use it in the way in which it was intended. To think that we can never get around to the business of trusting, that we would say “Unless we can trust you, we are not going to give you anything.” Where would it end? There would be no police officers, no one would take responsibility for anything. We have to trust them.

Surely something that is known to be this effective can be given to people and surely we can trust them to use it in a manner in which it was intended.

In conclusion, this is an instrument for people to help people and for the government to exercise its true responsibility to do what it was elected to do, look after the safety and security of Canadians and protect the property of individuals. We should expand this, not contract it.

[National Shipbuilding Policy, October 29th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I too congratulate and commend the motion presented to the House, the depth of the research that has been done and the understanding of the industry. I also commend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry for his light on the subject.

The intent of the motion is probably one we could all support. There ought to be a sound industrial policy not only with regard to shipbuilding but with regard to all industrial development in Canada. That is what is lacking in the government currently in charge of the affairs of Canada.

I cannot help but to refer back to a particular response the Ministry of Industry made as recently as yesterday. It is no wonder people are confused, particularly the hon. member who proposed the motion. The Minister of Industry in reply to a question by the member for Halifax West said:

If he is asking me to announce that Canada will get into a subsidy bidding war in shipbuilding, the answer to him as it was for the member for Saint John last week is absolutely no.

The interesting contrast is that the same Minister of Industry is quite prepared to enter into a subsidy bidding war when it comes to the aerospace industry. How is it that the same minister will unequivocally say “absolutely no” to the subsidization of the bidding war with regard to shipbuilding but it is absolutely okay when it comes to the aerospace industry?

This is the same minister who does this. The unfortunate part of it is that is not unusual. It so happens that this is a Liberal government right now. There was a PC government before it which did exactly the same thing. It also subsidized the one but not the other. So there is nothing new here.

What this motion does is allow us to articulate rather clearly that while there is nothing new, the PCs did the same thing as the Liberals, Liberals do the same thing as the PCs, now they are saying the government needs to have policy. That is right. It does need to have a policy but so do the PCs because they do not have one either.

This is just one of those crazy back and forths. One would think it was a ping-pong game we were involved in here. The unfortunate part of it is that the people who are suffering in this are those working in the shipyards, the families involved, the lack of work for these people. That is where the problem lies for not having a good policy come to the floor.

I want to read this motion. The motion is a very interesting study in semantics. It reads something like this. They want the policy to focus:

—on making shipyards internationally competitive by providing tax incentives and construction financing comparable to what is being provided elsewhere in the world and which ensures reasonable access to foreign markets, particularly the United States of America; and should recognize that such a policy would not provide direct subsidies, but create alternative methods of support to ensure the growth of the industry.

What other alternate forms of support would their be than subsidies, maybe not direct but certainly indirect?

The hon. member said that there are all these other programs. Indeed there are. In fact, there is the foreign investment opportunity company and all kinds of other programs that exist which do allow countries that want to buy these ships to get financing from the Canadian government.

There is nothing new here. What there is, and I commend the member for this, is to articulate very clearly what the problem is in certain parts of this country.

I happened to be at the vision conference in Moncton, New Brunswick and I was particularly impressed by the tenure and discussion that took place at that conference. There were premiers and business leaders from the Atlantic provinces who all had one theme at this vision conference, a vision for the Atlantic provinces. It was led by the premier of New Brunswick.

Today this gentleman has retired from his position but he said to the assembled group “we want the federal government to get out of the subsidy business, get out of the grant business and give us that money in the form of tax breaks or reduced taxes”.

The Reform Party has talked about this for the last eight years. We know that is the answer. The answer does not lie in subsidies or grants. Grants and subsidies create dependency and operations that are now competitive, operations that do not search out markets, that do not have the incentive to apply the most recent technology, the most efficient ways of applying that technology and the most efficient deployment of personnel and people who are skilled. That is what is wrong with subsidies.

What has to happen here is that the environment needs to change. We said limit things like ACOA and grants and subsidies and then these industries could become indeed competitive, search out the markets and do the kinds of things that really matter.

From that point of view I support the motion but unfortunately that is not what it states. It states one thing and I am not so sure that it totally explores it the way it should. Perhaps the motion could be reworded in such a way so that we could fully support it and be enthusiastic about it.

The specific questions with regard to the shipbuilding industry really could be summed up in two questions. First, is the shipbuilding industry in trouble because it did not remain competitive? Second, is it in trouble because there is not enough of a market or the market is not large enough to sustain another international global shipbuilder?

Those are two absolutely critical questions. They lie at the very base of a Canadian shipbuilding policy. What ought it to be? I think the hon. member will agree that those are the key questions. I do not have the answers to those questions.

I suspect that the Canadian Shipbuilding Association does not have an answer to that question either, but I think it needs to address those two questions and then come to wherever the policy ought to change so that indeed the competitiveness of the marketplace can be established as far as the shipbuilding industry is concerned and the size of the market identified as to whether the capacity for building ships ought to be expanded. I think that is a major issue.

The hon. parliamentary secretary indicated that there was a rationalization of the shipbuilding industry. Part of it was to reduce the number of ships, and that is fine. However, what we now need to do is not only rationalize in terms of the numbers of ships that are to be built, but the kinds of ships that ought to be built and the technology that exists in those ships so that they can become competitive in the international marketplace and that they will then build the kind of profit picture into the people who own those shipbuilding yards so that they can hire people and give them work so that they can supply their families and friends with the things they need.

I wonder as well whether we should not become very serious about this whole business of how industry ought to run in this country. What kind of an environment ought the government to create for this country so that business could compete?

The number one issue it seems to me is to have a level playing field. We do not have a level playing field in Canada. It is anything but level when the government interferes in the marketplace with agencies like regional economic development agency like ACOA, western economic, FEDNOR or whatever it is. That creates an artificial intrusion into the marketplace.

When the government intrudes into the marketplace in giving specific grants to particular industries that are not repaid, that create an unfair advantage to the manufacturing agents receiving that money over and against a group that does not. It also raises the question of providing certain kinds of guaranteed loans.

I understand under title 11 in the United States, which is what I believe the member referred to, there have been no defaults on the money that has been granted since 1936.

The significant aspect here is that we know that in Canada there have been many defaults of various kinds of government repayable loans. This is a double whammy on the taxpayer. First the taxpayer is asked to give the grant or subsidy to a particular industry. When that industry defaults, the taxpayer has to pay again.

That is what is wrong with this kind of system. We cannot afford to do that. I encourage the member to go back and reword his motion slightly so that we could support it and recognize that subsidies and grants are anathemas to good business.

[Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, October 28th, 1997]

Will it cost more tax dollars?

[Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, October 28th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I was rather interested in my colleague's comments.

The member referred a bit to the previous speaker, the hon. secretary of state of the Liberal Party. Implicit in her remarks was efficiency. I remember my colleague stating rather correctly that there was an impediment to the establishment of exploration companies and so on. Implicit in the other comments was that this would expedite, make better and make more efficient the decision making process.

Could the member comment briefly on exactly how the creation of four to seven boards—and it is not quite clear how many there will be—would actually expedite and make more efficient the decision making process and thereby make it a more profitable venture?

[Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, October 28th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I was particularly impressed with the content, passion and the obvious understanding with which the hon. member presented her arguments in favour of Bill C-6.

There are a couple of questions I would like to address to the hon. member which deal with some of the words used which reverberate very favourably in my mind. These are words like fairness, balance and the development of the economy for individuals and entrepreneurs as well as for the country at large.

I ask the hon. member if she would please tell the House to what degree would her government be prepared to amend the proposed bill which is now before the House to accommodate some of the questions and concerns that the first nations, the Metis and business people have, as well as other people across Canada. She states rather correctly that many of the things that will be done here will affect not only the Northwest Territories but Alberta and other provinces and the federal government in particular.

I wonder if she would address to what degree will she and her government accept amendments to accommodate the various conflicting interests at this time.