Jim Gouk

[Government Contracts, June 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the government manages to hand over a $165 million subsidy each year to VIA without any outside help, so why was it necessary to pay Lafleur Communications Marketing a commission of $112,000 to transfer this extra $1 million from public works to VIA Rail? Is it because of its $57,000 donation to the Liberal Party or is it just another way to cover up yet another fund-skimming scam?

[Government Contracts, June 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, VIA Rail's operation loses $165 million every year, which is paid for by the Canadian taxpayer.

Recently it was disclosed that VIA Rail was a $1 million sponsor of a film production of the life of Maurice Richard.

Why is a government operation, subsidized by taxpayers in the amount of almost half a million dollars a day, spending $1 million it does not have to sponsor the production of a hockey film?

[Supply, June 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, yes, it is yet another example of why the federal government should, in its wisdom, which we hope it has, recognize that it should not be pursuing trying to collect back this money.

It even holds further. My hon. colleague talked about transfer payments and equalization payments. He is right. The formula keeps changing and that is exactly what it is. It is a formula that is subject to manipulation. That is why I honestly believe that if we get full efficiency from the government, if we reduce it to doing only those things that should be done by government and can best be done at the federal level, then we could get to a situation where we would no longer pay federal tax and the federal government would bill the provinces a fee for services rendered based on the provincial GDP which would become the equalization.

I believe that would be a far fairer system. It would be less subject to manipulation and it would most certainly be something that would hold the federal government far more accountable for the money it spends and the programs it runs.

[Supply, June 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, certainly the federal government has to take responsibility and not just a part of the responsibility. It was the federal government's error. This was not a bill from the provinces to the federal government. This was a calculation of money that the federal government was going to provide. It has gone on for years. It is a systemic problem.

As I mentioned in my speech in quoting the premier of Manitoba, the money that was overpaid was not stuffed in a Swiss bank account. It was not used on frivolous things. The money was used specifically to provide social services, health care and education for the people of our province and the other provinces.

Under those circumstances, given that it was the federal government's error, given that the payment was actually less than the amount it had committed to pay and given the fact that the money was well spent, it unquestionably should be dropped. The federal government should make whatever corrections it has to make for the future but it should not even think about coming to the provinces and reducing our services even more.

[Supply, June 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to start by being slightly controversial. We are looking for the federal government to show some compassion and forgive the overpayment that was made to the provinces. I will start with the question, should we forgive the overpayment to the provinces? The answer to that is no, we should not forgive the overpayment because there was no overpayment.

If we look at the transfer payments particularly in terms of health care, the federal government some years back convinced the provinces to sign on to something called the Canada Health Act. The provision of health care is a provincial jurisdiction but the federal government wanted in on it, as it seems to want in on so many things. The government said it wanted the provinces to sign on to its program and in return it would pay 50% of the cost of the program. That is one-half of the cost of providing health care.

The government share is now down to 14%. There was no overpayment. It was a small down payment on the money the federal government owes the provinces for a commitment it made many years ago, a commitment made, I might add, by a Liberal government.

There was no overpayment. We should keep that in mind as we debate today what to do with the transfers that were made and the question of whether or not too much was paid. It is not an overpayment. It is a matter of the government having given some of the provinces more than it intended but it is still under the amount to which the government actually made a commitment. The Canada Health Act is a great concept, provided the government lives up to the commitment it made.

Health care is in trouble in this country. We all know that. All of us collectively face it every day in our ridings. I doubt that there is anybody in the House who finds that constituents are really happy about their health care.

In the province of British Columbia we are facing a particular crisis. Our previous government ran up a tremendous debt. The federal government knows as well as anyone that when a government runs up a debt, it is harder to fund programs. It has to pay off the debt as well as the interest on that debt because it was irresponsible in the first place. We are struggling with this in my province.

We are also struggling with the fact that the federal government is not providing the money it committed to provide. Now we have yet another hurdle to overcome. The government said that the money it gave to the province, even though it is less than it promised, was actually more than it meant to give and therefore it is going to take some of it back. That is unconscionable.

As was said by the premier of Manitoba “This money was spent on health care, education and social services. It is not in a Swiss bank account. We did not funnel it out to our friends in advertising companies, publication companies and other fancy schemes. We did not spend it on fancy new executive jets. We spent it on services to the taxpayers of this country, the very people the federal government looks to, to provide them with their money”.

In my riding this has had a tremendous impact. We are facing hospital closures. I heard on the radio this morning that here in the Ottawa area people are in deep crisis because beds will be closed in some of the hospitals. In my riding the hospital itself is closing. This is fairly widespread and it is all because there is not enough money to run the programs. There is not enough money because the federal government has reneged on what it agreed to pay. Now the government is saying that even the underpayment it gave the province is really more than it intended and it wants some of it back.

The impact on the provinces where this applies will be absolutely overwhelming. This affects in particular rural communities. It is always tougher to provide services in a rural community because there is not the economy of scale.

We have said that it is more difficult to provide services in our country because it has a large geographic area with a sparse population in comparison to other countries, including the United States next door. We have a country that is as big or bigger than the United States, yet we have one-tenth of its population. It is expensive to provide those services. We understand that. But the rural communities have the same problem again relative to the urban communities.

Cutting back on the payments and then asking for additional money back would just increase the impact all the more. The federal government must stop this quest of trying to get money back from the provincial governments. The money was spent on the people of this country. What it would be doing is going to the people, not the governments, of each province and telling them that the services they received were too much, that it did not intend for them to have that much service from the governments of this country and that it wants them to give some of that service back. If the province gives back the money the impact is less services for the people of that province. Therefore it is really the individual taxpayer who the government would be requesting the money from.

What is the solution in the future? We are in a mess. We need to get out of it by having the federal government show some compassion, recognize the problem and recognize the fact that the money has indeed been well spent. There is no greater use for a tax dollar than that, although the government might challenge that.

How do we prevent this from happening in the future? I think the way we can prevent it is to go back to very old Reform Party policy.

The Reform Party approach first premised that we had far too much government in this country. The only justification for government is to do things for the people which they cannot or will not do for themselves. Therefore we reduce government to doing only those things. That means that government gets out of business and does not intrude on jurisdictions that have nothing to do with it. We reduce it to those things.

Having reduced it to that, we then bring it back as close to the people it serves as possible. We do that so that when something like this happens the government can be held accountable by the taxpayers at the closest level possible, where they can reach out and get a hold of these politicians and tell them to smarten up and do what it is that they are expected to do. It is a little harder, especially for us in the west, when decisions are made by people in the Prime Minister's Office thousands of miles away in Ottawa.

If we took this to its ultimate conclusion, I think it would be realistic to say that we could reach a point where it would no longer be necessary or feasible to pay federal income tax. It would be a shock to those people over there, I assure the House, if they no longer had their hands directly in the taxpayer purse. The government of course would need money to do the things that it must do because some things are best done at the federal level. However, instead of taking money from the people in our province individually and then reducing our own province, the province of those taxpayers, to begging for some of our own money back, the federal government would then bill the province a fee for services rendered.

How do we get equalization if we do that? We bill those provinces the fee on a structured basis based on the provincial GDP. Those better able to pay for the services would pay a little more for them. However, because the government would not have its consolidated tax barrel, which it merrily dips into whenever it wants, it would only be able to charge for a specific service provided. It would have to show the costs of operating that particular program and it would have to justify exactly what it does.

The alternative would be to go to that dreaded word that the media and some of our opponents like to play up, that is, a firewall. However we would not build a firewall around the province. We would build it around Ottawa. We would not build it to keep people out. We would build it to keep the federal bureaucrats and politicians in so that they could not keep raiding the provinces. This is not a battle for one province to stop all the other provinces from getting in. It is a matter of a problem created by the federal government in jurisdictional clashes between the federal and provincial governments.

The government has to realize that there is only one taxpayer. When it takes a dollar from that taxpayer, the only justification is to provide the services necessary for that taxpayer. The money that was paid to the provinces, what it calls an overpayment, was spent providing services to the taxpayer. Instead of asking for that money back, the federal government should applaud the provincial governments for making that provision.

I hope the government will come to its senses, show some compassion, recognize that the money has been well spent and stop trying to take yet more money out of the pockets of the taxpayers and basically asking them to return services.

[Assisted Human Reproduction Act, May 27th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I had in mind what I would say when I rose but listening to the hon. member across the way has changed what I wished to talk about. I will direct myself to what he said. I appreciate his sincerity but do not fully agree with him.

There are so many things we get into that could be referred to as designer fixes. By that I mean we focus on what is popular or current and tend to ignore everything else. Following the hon. member's suggestion and saying embryonic stem cell research is a potential cure all could create problems. That is the decision the House would make by passing the bill as it stands. We would go ahead with embryonic stem cell research right away without further development of adult stem cell research. Adult stem cell research would be pushed off to one side. Scientists and researchers would focus instead on embryonic stem cell research and we would miss an opportunity.

I will use an example. Some might say it is a little radical but I am trying to make a point. A lot of people are in need of organ transplants. The need often exceeds the supply. Why do we not take people who have committed serious crimes, shoot them and take their organs so we can preserve the lives of the more morally upright people who have not committed crimes? There are two reasons why we do not. First, there is the moral issue. Second, there are alternatives.

This is exactly what we are facing in the question of stem cell research. First, we are facing a moral issue. Is it right to destroy embryos so we can harvest their stem cells to find cures for diseases that may or may not be curable another way? This raises a lot of moral questions. It is not just the moral argument, as the hon. member suggested, where embryos that are not used for artificial insemination would cease to exist in any case.

Some might argue that in the tightest confines of control where there are absolute safeguards and assurances it is only by accident that an extra embryo would exist. Perhaps the people involved thought it would be needed and by happenstance it was not. Faced with an extra embryo they would ask what to do and whether it was for the greater good. An argument can be made that way. The problem is that nothing in Bill C-437 would prevent such people from saying that to be absolutely sure they had better have a lot of extra embryos in case some did not take. They would end up with a huge amount of embryos. They would be creating a supply to serve a need they created themselves.

As in the wild example I gave where there is a moral issue, there are also alternatives. There are alternatives in terms of donors. There is a shortage of supply. We need to do all kinds of things to ensure organ donors come forward. Maybe we need more education in terms of the health of people who make donations. What would be the potential future problems for someone who donates a kidney?

With regard to people passing away, there are concerns that people who are anxious might decide a bit too quickly that a person will probably not survive. They might decide to get the organs while they are fresh and before too much time has expired. These are real fears that exist in some people's minds. Perhaps we need to do more advertising to ensure people understand the shortage and the real need for organs. We could show people that making the sacrifice in one form or another could preserve a human life.

There are alternatives in the case of stem cell research. Adult stem cell research is underway to effect potential cures. Treatments are currently underway using adult stem cells. Because it is not foreign tissue it does not have the problem of rejection that we see, ironically, with organ transplants. There is real potential in adult stem cell research. All we are saying in our proposal is that we should properly explore the alternative, the one with fewer moral implications and potential health problems for recipients.

If we moved too quickly to embryonic stem cell research many people would put adult stem cell research aside. They would say it was old while embryonic stem cell research was new. They would want to focus on the new and not bother with the old. Government grants would dry up and become non-existent. There would be no move toward research. Research would wither and die. All bets would be on embryonic stem cell research and the demand for it would go up. People would be inclined to cheat and create far more embryos than needed. Embryos would be created for the pure purpose of destroying them for medical research. That is the moral question.

I am not saying that at some point we need to investigate the possibility for the greater good of mankind or to treat the living without destroying life in the process. However while we have alternatives, and we do have alternatives, we owe it to the public and ourselves to fully explore them to ensure they get an honest chance.

We are not saying we should move the issue aside indefinitely or forever. We are saying we should be given three years to make a concentrated effort to determine whether we can effect cures through an alternative, morally higher and perhaps medically safer ground. If at the end of that time evidence suggests it is not working and that embryonic stem cells have greater potential, let us move cautiously in that direction and design a bill that provides safeguards. However we should know we have exhausted the alternatives before moving onto that ground. That is a reasonable request.

The hon. member shared some ideas with us. I appreciate that. It is what we are supposed to do in this place. We are supposed to share ideas, not fight one another. There is a good mixture on both sides of the House on the issue. It is a disturbing and controversial bill on which we need to move slowly.

I will consider words of the hon. member and I trust he will consider mine. I hope everyone in the House is listening carefully to everyone's ideas. It ultimately will help us design a bill that reflects the needs and wishes of the Canadian public.

[Assisted Human Reproduction Act, May 27th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I think it is important for all members to make comments in this particular debate. It is something that is controversial and something with which I think each of us have struggled.

There is one thing that I think is necessary. So far the government is doing it and I hope it will continue in this vein, and that is that there has to be full and unrestricted debate on this legislation. We cannot have closure on this at some point or some attempt to rush this through. I hope the government sees that. There is no indication it would do otherwise but I trust it will stay with that.

In committee, in particular, aside from debate, it is very necessary that there be full public consultation. We have had some arguments, I guess we could call it, with the transport committee recently. The Canadian Alliance refused travel on a particular piece of legislation. I go along with that simply because with the committee travel that I have been a part of before I have seen occasions where we go out and hear overwhelming testimony from the public one way or another where people are of a common mind. Yet the legislation or any amendments that pass at the committee level do not reflect what we have heard from the public, which then of course brings to cause whether we should be bothering to consult and pretend to go through this facade if indeed we are not going to reflect what people have said.

In this bill in particular it is very important that we not only consult with the public but that the legislation ultimately reflects the will of the public as a result of those consultations. Beyond that, when it comes back to the House for a vote, I think it is very necessary that this be a free vote. A free vote is often something that is misinterpreted. A free vote should not be for individual members of parliament like myself, my colleague who just spoke or any of the members across the way to vote the way they personally feel regardless of input from others.

There are 301 members of parliament in the House and collectively we represent all the people of this country. The free vote should reflect our consultation with the people we represent in our individual ridings. We should take the time and the trouble to explain these issues, to bring the information before our constituents, to seek input from those constituents and ultimately to vote according to the direction of those constituents after they have been informed as openly as possible of the pros and cons of this bill.

We support a three year delay in proceeding with any experimentation on embryonic stem cells. We do this, first, because there have been great advances in the case of adult stem cell research and utilization of adult stem cells in treatments. There has been nothing that indicates or has demonstrated the ability of embryotic stem cells to be superior to adult stem cells. We keep hearing about the potential of what might be, what could be. The reality is that there is absolutely nothing concrete yet that says it is superior.

To the contrary. We know there are a lot of problems with embryotic stem cells because of rejection. We are using foreign tissue and, as a result, there is a rejection problem. I have some acquaintances and friends who have gone through organ transplants only to reject them and need the operation again. Rejection is a serious thing and it is something we want to avoid at all costs.

There is probably a desire on the part of some people to say that they want some kind of magic fix that is squirted up their noses which fixes their toes, so to speak. The reality is that in the treatment that comes from adult stem cell research, the stem cell is taken from the individual who is being treated so there is no rejection problem but it is very site specific. There is not necessarily a problem with that as long as they ultimately manage to produce the medications and cures necessary to deal with illnesses that are currently treatable.

I hope the vote of individual members of parliament does reflect the information that has gone out to the public and the opinions of their own constituents that they get back.

Certainly we need some of the things proposed in the bill, and there are some things that should be in the bill but are missing, one of them being a total and absolute ban on the creation of hybrids. A hybrid is the result of a human egg fertilized with an animal's sperm. It is fine to say that we will not allow it to proceed to fruition, but there is no justification for even the creation of it. It opens up the door to all kinds of horrors. We think it is something that should be nipped in the bud and stopped. I do not think there will be much support at all from the general public. I am sure that if hon. members took the trouble to have even quick consultations with their constituents they would find that most of their constituents would be shocked and horrified at the very concept of this thing proceeding.

One area that I have a couple of concerns about deals with the same category. It has to do with placing limitations on the donors. There is a very obvious need for this. I do not think it has been spelled out in the bill at all, and it needs to be. We have had some cases, one in particular in the United States, where a very unscrupulous individual who was supposedly acting on behalf of a number of donors simply supplied all the sperm himself. It turned out that he had hundreds of offspring with none of them realizing that they were interrelated, with all the potential problems that brings forward. There need to be some guidelines and safety measures put in place to ensure that this can never happen.

Beyond that but on the same concept is an area that our party is proposing, and I agree with it, providing the right caveats are in place, and that is the rights of the child who is born as a result of embryonic mixing. When that child grows up and wants to know who the parents are, our party's position is that absolutely the information should be available to the child. I agree that our background history, our knowledge of our ancestors and our heritage is very important. There is something that needs to be put in the bill with regard to this, very clearly and specifically. There must be some kind of legal protection for the donors so that there can be absolutely no question about it, so that the child cannot come back years later and say “You are my father so you have to pay for my full education” or for some other costs. The intention has supposedly been spelled out in the bill, but we know that often intention does not prove to be reality.

In regard to intention, we have seen all kinds of bills offered by the government. One that always sticks in my mind is conditional sentencing. That is where someone does not serve any time in jail. Violent offenders were allowed to go free as a result of that. When we brought the issue back to the House, the minister who introduced that legislation said that it was never the intention that it would apply to violent offenders. The reality is that because it was not clearly spelled out in the bill it was indeed applied to violent offenders.

It needs to be made absolutely clear in law, in the bill, that the children created through this type of birth can have access to their parents' histories but that there can be no legal or financial ramifications that would come back on those parents.

One area which I think shows maybe a bit of arrogance on the part of the government is the method by which the assisted human reproduction agency of Canada would operate. I would hope we would all agree that there is something fundamentally wrong with creating an agency for which the government appoints those who will be in that agency and then allows the minister herself to give that agency any policy direction that she wishes. Further, the agency is obliged to follow the directions given to it by the minister and must ensure that these directions remain secret. That basically says that we will appoint one person in the House who will decide for herself which direction things will go in and who will be accountable to absolutely no one and will not even have to release the information about which decision was made except to give direction to those who would carry out that will. That is fundamentally wrong. That is one thing that has to stop.

I see that I am out of time, but I think this is the kind of subject for which we need to have a great deal of time and consideration. We need to listen to one another and consider one another's position. I would hope that each person does take the time to consult with their constituents and reflect upon their needs and wishes rather than just take direction from their parties, and I hope that we ultimately have a free vote which truly will reflect the wishes of our constituents.

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, so many ideas were put out by the member who just spoke, some of them a little silly and some of them very silly. At least he said something at the very end, which is a good way to end, when he talked about the government getting a little tougher.

There are a lot of measures the government could take. It has not done a damned thing yet and it is high time it did. I am glad to see that the hon. member is at least suggesting his own government should be held to account on these issues.

There were a couple of things he said that I find rather fascinating. He tried to sidestep or remove himself from the comments of the international trade minister who said there were no job losses from this dispute at all. However he did suggest that a lot of it may be exaggerated. Maybe when we come from a big urban centre those losses are not all that significant.

He should come out to my riding. My riding is a rural riding, not one that has forestry jobs, but one that is forestry dependent. He should see what the dispute has done to the people of my riding. I invite him to come out as my guest. I would be more than happy to show him around if he really wants to find out what is going on in the industry.

I would be interested if he would clarify his suggestion that one of the solutions might be for the Canadian Commercial Corporation to buy all the wood from the Canadian lumber companies. It would be the marketer of the wood. That might be good if there were a couple of big, huge industries. Coming from an urban centre that may well be how the hon. member thinks. We have a lot of small companies that operate in niche markets. They find their own special buyers that operate on special contracts.

How would he manage that right across the board when we have one super gigantic government corporation, which is an oxymoron in itself, trying to sell to all of the United States? How could that possibly work in an efficient manner?

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to hear a presentation by the Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific, although it is a little surprising that the government's lead speaker would be someone who is responsible for Asia-Pacific, when we would have expected that the Minister for International Trade, who is the one responsible for dealing with the softwood issue, would have been the lead speaker.

Perhaps it is not surprising given that the Minister for International Trade has stated publicly that he does not believe any jobs were affected by the dispute in the lumber industry, that this was simply an industry adjustment that presumably would have taken place anyway.

Does the Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific agree with that statement? Is he prepared to stand in the House and say that he does not believe there have been any job losses? If he does, I would sure like him to come to my riding where there has been a tremendous amount of job loss or, alternatively, if he disagrees with the Minister for International Trade and recognizes there have been job losses and that there will be a lot more, what would he suggest his government should do about dealing with the impact on individuals, companies and communities that have been affected by the job losses that his colleague does not think have occurred?

[Public Safety Act, 2002, May 3rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to go to something which arose during question period today. In discussing Bill C-55 the solicitor general said that the bill would help authorities become aware of individuals, like murderers or whatever, that could be entering the country and that we would be able to arrest them. In question period today he said we should be pleased that the government is giving the police the powers to deal with this.

The fact of the matter is we already have border security with our Canada customs agents. These are dedicated, well trained people who know how to detect these types of people coming across the border. However they do not have those tools that the solicitor general says he has given to the police to deal with them when they are right at the border.

This goes back to the former minister of immigration who could not deal with inappropriate people coming in under her portfolio so she got demoted to the revenue portfolio, and now supports an internal document that states:

Should a customs officer encounter an individual who is identified as being the subject of an armed and dangerous lookout, the customs officer should allow the individual to proceed and immediately notify the police and provide as much detail as possible to enable apprehension...

That is garbage. In defence of this ridiculous policy the minister then went on to compare Canada customs agents to bank tellers. I am sure the Minister of Finance already looks upon them as tax collectors. He has after all in the past been heard to say something along the line that he never met a tax he did not like. Naturally he would want them to devote their energies to collecting money for the cash-hungry government.

To say, as the solicitor general has done today, that we have given the tools to the police to deal with inappropriate people coming across our border is the same as the minister who deals with the softwood lumber issue saying that the government is dealing with this and have employment insurance for those people who are losing their jobs. We would rather have real jobs for those people.

It would also be comparable to saying that the government will enhance ambulance services in this country to better enable them to take accident victims to the hospital instead of doing something about the deplorable condition of the national highway system.

Part of the mix of course, because Liberal ministers often like to talk in two different directions at the same time, is that the same minister, who said the government was taking steps to deal with job losses through the EI system for softwood lumber, also claimed there were no direct job losses and the natural restructuring of the industry was taking place, so no real action was required by the government. I guess that is how it justifies the position it takes.

It is ironic that the government has brought in a bill that has a lot of draconian powers that even some of its own backbenchers are speaking out against. At the same time it is not taking the simple, obvious steps such as equipping our Canada customs people to do the job right at the border. They are the first line of defence for this country's borders and they are not being given the tools they need to do the job.

We are debating our amendment to the bill and we will come back to the bill during other stages. I assure the House that I will be here. I will be speaking out on behalf of Canadians who have concerns with the bill, who are alarmed at a government that would ram it through without proper debate. They are alarmed at a government that continues to put these kinds of omnibus bills through without even considering splitting them up so they can be examined properly by their various departments.