Jim Gouk

[Petitions, March 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition constitutes over 200 pages signed by Canadians in B.C., Alberta, Ontario and Quebec and deals with Bill C-68, the Firearms Act.

In brief, the petitioners state that Bill C-68 will provide a false sense of security by suggesting that it will provide safer streets while doing nothing to hamper criminal activities and that it spends hundreds of millions dollars on ineffective registration that would be better spent on disease prevention and cure, establishing DNA data banks for police and providing funds for post-secondary education to enable our young people to deal with the debt they are inheriting from two decades of former governments.

Therefore, your petitioners call upon parliament to repeal—

[Petitions, March 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions to present today. The first deals with Canadian voters who express a concern that the concept of marriage should be a voluntary union of a single male and a single female.

They call upon parliament to amend the Marriage Act, Prohibitive Degrees, and the Interpretation Act so as to define in statute that a marriage can only be entered into between a single male and a single female.

[Justice, February 12th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Justice has indicated in this House that there is no federal urgency to overturn the B.C. child porn ruling because it only affects British Columbians, a sentiment now echoed by our justice committee chair colleague when he stated if they walk anywhere, it will only be in B.C.

I wonder what the justice minister's position is on child porn perverts in her province of Alberta. If this ruling affected her province would she still support allowing child pornographers to go free as she is now allowing in British Columbia?

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, February 10th, 1999]

It is entirely possible that is what this is about. I certainly cannot think of any other reason for it.

The sole speaker, I think it was, on this debate from the Conservative Party raised the issue of dumping. It was an interesting point. That is what the government is claiming. In essence that is what it is claiming the American companies are doing, that they are dumping product.

We do not need legislation for that. We already have it. If that is what it thinks is occurring it should follow the rules that are already in place. If it is not really dumping then it cannot very well follow those rules. There goes another excuse for the Liberal Party.

The Liberals talk in terms of what the Americans are doing in Canada, that they are running Canadian ads in their magazines. Did it ever occur to them that Canadians want to be able to run those ads? That is how they sell to their market. Have they ever thought of the impact on Canadian producers? God forbid, they have enough trouble nowadays with Liberal taxation policies. Now they cannot even advertise their overpriced products, overpriced because they have had to pay so much in taxes and wages trying to keep their employees above the starvation level as the Minister of Finance takes their paycheque away from them. Now they want to take away their ability to advertise in the magazines and publications of their choice. It is absolutely crazy.

Let us look at some of the other potential impacts of the bill. If one walks up to somebody and punches him in the nose he tends to try to defend himself. If the little giant walks up and tries to do something to the United States, guess what it will do? It will defend itself. It will say that we are being unfair to its companies. There are rules in place. If the government thinks they are dumping it should follow them. If it does not have the temerity to follow that route then it is wrong and retaliations start.

What kinds of things will the Americans retaliate on? We have talked about how it might be dumping. The government thinks this is dumping and it needs this action.

In the western part of my riding in the Okanagan Valley lot of orchardists, particularly those growing apples, are going bankrupt. One of the problems they have is real dumping by the American market into the Canadian market. American orchard farmers, apple farmers, have a completely different set of policies to follow and different levels of subsidization so they dump into Canada.

Is the government concerned about that? No. They are little apple orchardists who do not contribute enough to the Liberal Party to merit concern about that kind of dumping. However, a couple of big publications might affect the Liberal coffers so it had better do something. It creates a bogeyman and goes out to save them even though nobody else thinks they are in danger in the first place. It is interesting.

In the softwood lumber industry it has been suggested the Americans may look for some form of retaliation. I come from a forest reliant riding. That is our major employer. We had agreements with the United States and it tried doing the very thing the Canadian government is now talking of doing in the case of this magazine situation. What did we do? We just acquiesced. Maybe that is why they thought the Americans would do that in this case, but they did not acquiesce. They came out with an insane softwood lumber quota system and the government said “Hot damn, where do we sign?”

All kinds of people in my riding have had problems. I have talked to people in the softwood lumber industry about how this started and how they tracked it. When this started they admitted they had no idea of how it was going to work but they just had to do it.

My riding has been hurt by the softwood lumber quota. As if it were not bad enough the way it started, they said here is the quota and here is how it will work. A lot of people were really opposed to it. Some said the government is too weak-kneed to support them in any other way. At least if they got a little stability, even though they would be cut way back, they would know what they could count on.

Every year for the last three years a lot of the big lumber producers in my riding have been cut back further on the softwood lumber quota. They are hanging by their fingernails right now on the verge of shutting down. They are very close to it. We are waiting to see what happens with the quotas coming out in the spring. If there is another cut, it will wreak havoc on the west.

Of course the Liberal Party does not care. That is Reform country so why should it do anything for western companies. Then it has a western tour to try to determine why it does not get any support in the west. We do not have to look very far for the reasons for that.

If there is any threat of retaliation against western lumber producers, it might be the straw that breaks the camel's back and puts them under—

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, February 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I note once again that Liberal members across the way have the opportunity to officially join in this debate at any time but would rather snipe from the sidelines. Of course, that is understandable. They have nothing concrete to add. They have nothing substantive to say so all they can do is hurl little insults or stand there and nod like drinking birds. It is kind of interesting. If they had something to say I am sure the Canadian public would listen, but as it is they have already declared the merit of the bill by their silence.

Let us look at what is really happening with the bill. I have just completed a round of town hall meetings in my riding. I have talked about how legislation works in the House. I have explained that only the government writes legislation and that sometimes it writes good legislation which we support. In fact we work with them to get it through the House as quickly as possible because it might be long overdue.

Sometimes the government comes out with legislation that has some merit, but we think it could be a little better so we propose amendments. Sometimes the legislation is bad, really bad, and we say we will fight it unless the government agrees to fix it up. Every now and again it comes out with some legislation that is so bad it is absolutely unfixable. We are close to that with this one.

There is actually one more category. Every now and again it comes out with legislation that just does not make sense. We fight it if it is bad. We may not agree with it but at least we understand where the government is coming from. However, every now and again it comes out with something that just makes no sense at all.

Should we try to come up with some Machiavellian reason as to why it might come out with such legislation? Let us look at the legislation before us. We are only talking about two big corporations that stand to have any possible benefit. The rest of the publishers in the country are asking what it is doing.

Why would the government do that? It was not overly rich back in pre-1993 but it got all kinds of contributions from big corporations. I wonder if there will be a marker out there after its slides this piece of garbage through the House.

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, February 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Reform members seem to be the main ones who are trying to shed some light on the problems of the bill. We are continually being interrupted. Could I suggest that perhaps it might be in order if the hon. member across the way has so much to say that he take a place on the speaking rotation instead of interrupting.

[Petitions, February 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition containing over 20 pages of signatures from people who are essentially calling for international sanity.

They cite the stockpiling of over 30,000 nuclear weapons internationally. They cite the threat they pose to humanity and the environment. They point out that the only route to safety is the elimination of these nuclear weapons. They also point out Canadian obligations through the UN and International Court of Justice.

They therefore pray that parliament support the immediate initiation and conclusion by the year 2000 of an international convention which will set out a binding timetable for the abolition of all nuclear weapons.

[Bill C-68, December 1st, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, today marks the beginning of the forced registration of law-abiding Canadians' hunting rifles and shotguns.

This Liberal folly has cost over $200 million to date and has a long way to go yet.

The justice minister claims that Bill C-68 will save lives. A portion of the money being spent to set up this program could save over 1,700 breast cancer victims and dramatically reduce health care costs in the process. That is far more than the total number of firearm related deaths.

The justice minister also claims that Bill C-68 will make streets safer. In British Columbia, the RCMP's campaign against organized crime has been curtailed, patrol boats are docked and patrol aircraft are grounded.

In rural areas, border surveillance and night patrols have been cut due to an $8.5 million budget shortfall. That represents less than 5% of the money being wasted on her bill.

The bottom line is that Bill C-68 will cost lives and make the streets less safe.

Merry Christmas from the Liberal Party of Canada.

[Railway Safety Act, November 20th, 1998]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for putting me on the right track. Being as how you wield such power from your position, I am sure you also use it to get the Liberals on track with their national agenda.

When we talk about a government bill, be it rail safety, a tax bill, a justice bill, any kind of bill, I think it is appropriate to examine and review the credibility with which the various ministers bring forward these bills because each bill is brought forward in the name of a minister.

The rail safety bill was brought forward in the name of the Minister of Transport. There has to be credibility or those bills automatically suffer. Right now the Liberal cabinet lacks credibility because of its failure to take action in one particular area and that taints everybody. It does not matter which party. When we have a problem that we ignore or try to cover up it automatically taints everyone.

We have said, in the case of this rail safety bill, that we will go along with it. We will help to move it to committee. We will support this bill. Our critic said that this morning. We will deal with it openly and honestly when it gets to committee.

But it already has a black mark attached to it because it is presented in this House at the very time when the government is lacking credibility because of its failure to act on a real problem inside cabinet.

I am not going to continue. I am sure that hon. members want to reconsider their position on how to deal with this particular minister.

I will end my remarks by saying that we want the government to bring in good legislation. We want it to be credible and we want to be able to support it. However, it is hard to support government cabinet ministers when there is a bad apple in the barrel.

[Railway Safety Act, November 20th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I know the original plan had been that we were going to put up one speaker, and I am not going to keep hon. members for very long, but I could not end the day without passing some comments on Liberal rail safety.

As far as the bill goes, we are supporting it to move to committee where any bill can be improved. We certainly hope to discuss it openly with our colleagues on the other side and find ways to make the bill even better so that Canadians truly have rail safety.

I thought it appropriate at this time to talk about the other plan of the Liberals for rail safety. The Liberals are killing the economy in this country. They are making it so that we produce fewer goods, we sell fewer goods, we employ fewer people and we tax and suck the money out of the economy. If they keep doing that they will have rail safety because there will not be as many trains running. They are putting more impediments in the way of business every day, and that includes the railroads. We will have the ultimate rail safety, we will have the ultimate highway safety and we will have industrial safety because we will shut everything down.

I hope the Liberals can come up with a better plan for rail safety and all the other types of safety than continuing their chaotic economic forage into taxpayer pockets and come up with rail safety and other types of safety that work in a thriving, vibrant economy.

I also find it very ironic that the government would introduce a bill on rail safety at a time when it is derailing the APEC inquiry in Vancouver. A cabinet minister, the solicitor general, made public statements after specifically forbidding the RCMP to make any type of public statement which would derail the APEC inquiry. That is an interesting point which I think the Liberals have overlooked.

Recently in the United States there was a huge scandal, but the outcome of that scandal was not what the president had done to initiate that scandal—