Jim Gouk

[Access To Information Act, March 13th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to stand to speak in support of Bill C-216, introduced by my colleague for Nanaimo—Alberni. I will contain my remarks primarily to one aspect, the impact of the bill on the Canada Post Corporation.

It seems absolutely bizarre that the Canadian military should be open to access to information and Canada Post should not. The Canada post office is a monopoly. It has no competitors. There is absolutely no justification in terms of its stamp-mail service not to have it open to public scrutiny.

There are many provisions of Canada Post that we should be able to look at to see if in fact it has any justification when certain actions are taken. For example, there is supposed to be criteria for the home delivery of mail in many communities which are not getting it.

Canada Post argues that it cannot afford to do this, that it is not feasible. Yet there are many groups including postal workers who say that it is feasible, that they could certainly do it but Canada Post is covering up a lot of the facts. That may or may not be true but we will never know that if we are not allowed to get certain information from the corporation.

Any information we get, whether it be from the Canada Post Corporation or anywhere else, has to be subject to a lot better access than we are currently getting in many areas. Many times people apply for access to information and the government chooses to cloud the documents they seek by calling them protected by cabinet security and thus completely protected for the next 20 years.

This happened to me recently with a request for information on certain studies done on Canada Post. It is very interesting that they would release certain ones if they agree with them, but anything that disagrees with the government or with what Canada Post is doing, or is critical of them, they seem to want to cover up.

In one specific area we have had a lot of complaints from the private sector with regard to the Canada Post courier business. Canada Post operates one of the largest courier businesses in the country. It is a puzzling how we say to the courier businesses that would like to go into the stamp-mail delivery business that they cannot do that. Yet we protect Canada Post in its business and let it go into the courier business in direct competition with them.

Canada Post is not supposed to cross-subsidize, using profits from its stamp-mail business, a protected business, to subidize the cost of running its courier business. It says that it does not have to give access to information on that or have the auditor general go into that. In its financial statement is a statement by the auditor that says it meets all of the requirements to show it did not subsidize its business.

There are two problems with that. The first problem is that the statement only comes about as a result of information supplied to the auditor by the Canada Post Corporation. Right away that leaves one to wonder what kind of information it might happen to choose to deliver to the auditor.

The second problem is there is still a question of what exactly is a cross-subsidy. Most businesses have only a small portion of business expenses that are not related to a specific expense. When Canada Post came out with its latest annual financial statement for the year it indicated that almost half of all its expenses were not directly accounted to a particular department. That leaves a whole pile of money, some 40% of all its expenditures, that have not been related to a specific expenditure.

If we take the profit that its courier business is reputed to have made and we weigh that against the expense of those profits and allow the same ratio, instead of making $50 million it would have lost something in excess of that.

It really is necessary that we have access to books for this purpose to allow a proper review even by the auditor general which currently they are protected from.

It seems this government has a responsibility to the public to ensure things are being run appropriately. The Canadian public is captain of Canada Post. Because of its monopolistic situation people have no alternative. Some may send e-mail, some may send faxes, but when something has to be physically delivered through the mail and people want to do it with a stamped mail service, which they should be entitled to in this or any other country, they should be able to ensure that it is being done effectively and that it is being done on a cost efficient basis. We have absolutely no way to tell this whatsoever.

The government will ask why we are complaining because at least Canada Post is not subsidized right now. Maybe not, but it has sure been subsidized to a pretty penny in the past. It still owes a tremendous amount of money to the government, hence the Canadian taxpayer.

We have to question the price of the stamp at any given time because sooner or later Canada Post will come to the Canadian public with an increase to the price of a postage stamp. Is it justifiable? We only have the word of Canada Post because we are not allowed to look at its books to see if realistic and effective costs justify the increase in that postage rate.

I ask that all members of the House start questioning why they may not support this bill. The Liberal member who just spoke is not going to support this bill and it really puzzles me why a member of the government, not just a member of the House, would stand up in this place, look the Canadian public in the eye by way of the television camera and say “I will not support your having access to information about how we spend your tax dollars”.

It is absolutely bizarre that a member of government would do such a thing because we are not elected to rule people, we are elected to represent people. We take that very seriously on this side of the House. I certainly hope the hon. member does as well. I am sure that was her intention when she ran for Parliament and I am sure that is her intention as she goes about her day to day business. When she says she will not support all these crown corporations that are able to operate with impunity, without accountability through public scrutiny, it raises a question as to exactly what her motivation is.

All other parties in this House are supporting this bill. As NDP members said, even as much as it galls them to support something Reform came out with, they have to admit this is a good bill. When it starts crossing party lines that broadly I hope the government will endorse it as well.

[The Budget, March 9th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the secretary of state talked quite a bit about the millennium fund.

The fact is that this is only going to put about $300 million in to replace the money lost to the provinces which were the recipients of a $7 billion cut a year. So it is a small drop in the bucket.

She said specifically she has a lot of students in her riding, and to quote her words “who need to be able to go to school tomorrow”. How does she think that she can stand and talk positively about a Liberal budget that puts in a small portion of what was taken away in transfer payments? It is not going to help people until the year 2000 so it can build a monument for the Prime Minister.

[Petitions, February 20th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I have a petition signed by members of my constituency pointing out their great concerns about nuclear weapons and the threat to the health and survival of civilization.

They call on Parliament to support the immediate initiation and conclusion by the year 2000 of an international convention which sets out a binding timetable for the abolition of all nuclear weapons.

[Firearms Act, February 20th, 1998]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-362, an act to amend the Firearms Act and the Criminal Code (no registration of firearms that are not restricted or prohibited firearms).

Madam Speaker, this bill seeks to remove the most objectionable part of Bill C-68. At the time it was introduced, the Reform Party specifically asked the government to split the bill so that it could deal with registration and crack down on criminal misuse of firearms separately. It did not do this.

My bill seeks to revoke the most offensive part of Bill C-68, the one requiring law-abiding citizens of this country to register rifles and shotguns at a tremendous cost which is growing daily according to the government's own figures.

That way Canadians can have a little peace and quiet and some responsibility in this law so that the Criminal Code can be used to crack down on those who break law, not the law-abiding citizens of this country.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Patent Act, February 20th, 1998]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-361, an act to amend the Patent Act (life of patents pertaining to medicine).

Madam Speaker, this bill is in response to a growing number of constituents both in my riding and across this country who say that drugs in this country should be affordable. Bill C-91 in a previous government increased the patent protection, doubled it in fact, from 10 years to 20 under the understanding that this would result in an increase in drug research in this country.

Evidence since that time has not shown that it has increased any. My bill seeks to provide a balance by reducing the patent protection from 20 years to 15 years over a 5 year period, 1 year at a time, so that Canadians can afford drugs in this country.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Fisheries, February 20th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, earlier this week while attending a meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Works and Government Services, I made reference to a report referred to as the Dobson report.

A Liberal member of that committee raised a point of order requesting that since I had referred to the report I should be required to table it either with the committee or in the House of Commons.

In order to do this, I need clarification on this tabling request. Do the Liberal members really need the Reform Party to supply them with copies of a report that was commissioned by the Liberal Party?

[Canada Labour Code, February 20th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member said labour leaders do not want to go on strike. Fine, let us give them some mechanism so they have an alternative when they cannot settle.

He talked about strike leaders on strike pay. That makes it okay because they suffer? What about the people who are not part of the bargaining agent who are forced out of work? They are not even a part of these negotiations and have no strike pay at all.

He said unions are important. We never denied that. When unions were brought in they started to deal with deplorable working conditions. If unions were done away with in their entirety, the pendulum would swing back, although maybe not all the way. We are not talking about whether there should be unions but whether there should be work disruptions with major impacts on the economy of this country.

In terms of off site workers, what we object to is providing unions with home addresses so that they can actually go to the homes of these people. If they want to send something to them, that is one thing. It can be done through the employer. It can be done in other ways. The provision in this bill is unreasonable and undemocratic.

[Canada Labour Code, February 20th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his intervention on this point. I understand how it worked in his home province. It worked well but it worked slightly differently.

I hear objections but I do not hear alternatives. If he thinks final offer arbitration is not the best way to proceed, surely he would not say the only viable alternative is economic mayhem in this country, having people from one end of the country to the other who are not part of the strike, are not part of the bargaining group, impacted sometimes catastrophically.

If he would come up with an alternative which would solve the problem of job disruption, which would deal fairly with the—

[Canada Labour Code, February 20th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I will be very brief in my response. The hon. member raises a good point. I brought it up at length during my speech in debate.

It cannot be said too often that government recognizes the need to intercede in the grain industry, therefore why can it not recognize that need in other agricultural areas, in mining and forestry and in all the other commodities that are shipped? There cannot be special treatment for one.

I want to make it absolutely clear that we are not suggesting that grain be taken out. We think the fact that the government recognizes it is a small baby step in the right direction. What we are asking the government to do now is to recognize that it actually, by accident or otherwise, did something right, and to build on that and to do something right, to protect all industries, all agricultural sectors not just one small part.

[Canada Labour Code, February 20th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I will try to be brief because I know there is another question.

First, I point out to the hon. member that I am not the labour critic. I just happen to be speaking on this bill on behalf of our labour critic.

Second, the hon. member talked about interference in the process of certification by giving them the benefit of the doubt. Why not give them the benefit of the doubt the other way? That cuts two ways. If there is no proof that those employees want to join, then why not have it conducted by a separate vote individually for those people and find out. Do not just arbitrarily assume that they were interfered with so they would have joined.

The concept that they can just decertify after a year is an absolute crock. The member knows full well that once a union is in place, if those workers step forward and identify themselves as being opposed to that union, boy, if they do not get it decertified they have a major problem inside that bargaining unit.

The second thing the hon. member talked about was passive resistance, the peacefulness of a strike. He totally missed the point which unfortunately is not really surprising.

Where the problem lies, and I used an analogy to violence, is when families are going hungry, when businessmen in small businesses are losing their jobs, are losing their businesses and perhaps are losing their homes. Entire communities are shut down because the services impacted on them. When that happens, that is my understanding of something which is not peaceful, not violent in the physical sense but certainly violent in terms of disrupting good Canadians' lives.