Bev Desjarlais

[Transport, February 12th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Transport has asked for a review of the grain handling and transportation system from farmer to port. If this review is to have any credibility, producers must have all options of grain transport available to them.

Will the Minister of Transport halt the elimination of one of these options? Will he ensure that not one more kilometre of track is torn up, allowing time for Judge Estey to report?

[Division No. 72, February 12th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, for 60 years the wheat board as a crown agency has done an admirable job for farmers, for all farmers, those with small farms, those with large farms. Studies show that each year farmers make $265 million more selling wheat through the wheat board than they would selling to the private grain trade.

It is the best grain marketing organization in the world. The wheat board has been able to get good prices and returns the profit to farmers rather than having it line the pockets of private grain graders. The wheat board is a $6 billion industry and certain corporate interests would love to get their hands on it. It is because of that that we see the Reform Party and its business friends trying to abolish the wheat board.

The Reform, like the Liberals, want a winner take all economy and they want to get there a whole lot faster. To this end we have seen the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange and Cargill rally behind the position or more likely lobby that position. We see the National Citizens' Coalition attacking the integrity of the wheat board. It is no surprise that a former Reform MP, Stephen Harper, is leading that charge.

Producers support the wheat board. It has ensured stability in their interest. Statements made in the past by Reform members compared life in Canada under the wheat board to life in the former Soviet Union. They call Canada a police state because we have a wheat board. These remarks only prove that Reform members are capable of writing for the tabloids. These remarks only prove that Reform is capable of writing for the tabloids. These remarks are extremist rhetoric and we have listened to a whole lot of it. They do not accurately reflect the work and actions of the wheat board.

The Reform Party's agriculture critic in the last Parliament is not with us today. He came from the riding of Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar which is a fairly large farming area. I suggest his party's stance on the wheat board is one of the main reasons he is not here. The majority of the farmers do not support Reform's position on the wheat board.

There is no question that producers are not happy with the government's amendments to the act. There is no question that more accountability and transparency are wanted. The producers, however, do not want to throw the baby out with the bath water. They want the Canadian Wheat Board. If this government seriously wants support for the changes it must ensure access to information and it must ensure that there is accountability. Its failure to do this again leaves people questioning high paid appointments and patronage. This only taints the Canadian Wheat Board.

[Charlotte County Ports, February 11th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, on December 1, 1997 I asked the President of the Treasury Board whether the government would settle the pay equity dispute fairly, once and for all, or signal to the public that pay equity dead.

Under federal jurisdiction section 11 of the Canadian Human Rights Act provides that it is discriminatory practice for an employer to establish or maintain differences in wages between male and female employees who perform work of equal value.

In 1984 the Public Service Alliance of Canada filed a pay equity complaint on behalf of its members. They are still waiting for their money in 1998. We have all had the honour of listening to every excuse imaginable as to why it has not been done.

In the past 14 years the Public Service Alliance of Canada and the Treasury Board have been through four years of joint union-management pay equity study, almost six years of hearings before a Canadian human rights tribunal and months of fruitless negotiations.

In the 1993 federal election the Liberals promised that if elected they would stop the stalling tactics of the Conservative government and work on an acceptable solution. I guess that was just another one of those promises the electors need to forget once the polling stations close.

The Liberals' idea of a solution was to continue the stalling tactics before the human rights tribunal. When that did not work they put some money on the table. The money is an amount which only partially closes the wage gap between male and female salaries for work of equal value. They are hoping that time will be on their side and that their employees will be forced to wait so long for pay equity that they will agree to any amount.

There is a perception that big business and the wealthy can tie things up in court through appeals for so long that it either breaks the small business or an average person runs out of money or dies. I do not think Canadians ever expected this to be the tactic of our government.

We see it with the Singer workers in Quebec. Government members do not care that they will be in their graves before that is settled. If they did they would have resolved it by now. We are still seeing it with the workers affected by the human rights decision.

Did Mr. Mulroney have as much trouble getting his money? Did the government wait 14 years to pay $474 million in cancellation fees to get out of the EH-101 helicopter deal? Will it take 14 years to finalize the Pearson International pay up? I think not. Why are they being paid and not the workers? Because government workers are ordinary Canadians, low and middle income Canadians.

In December the President of the Treasury Board misrepresented facts. At the same time that PSAC representatives were meeting with Treasury Board officials to continue the talks on pay equity, the President of the Treasury Board was conducting a press conference announcing that the negotiations were to end.

The government did not want to find a way to settle the dispute. The offer put forward by the Treasury Board fails to comply with the Canadian Human Rights Act and pay equity guidelines.

Have we reached a point where we have to go to the Department of Justice to encourage the government to comply with the law? Can Canadians trust that the government will comply with the decision of the human rights commission and pay the people all they are owed now?

[Charlotte County Ports, February 11th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I could say ditto and you would have heard much of what I am going to say, but there is a saying that it takes three times to make a bad habit and twelve repetitions to break it. I think we are going to need 12 times a lot to break the bad habits that the Liberals have gotten into.

I rise today to support the private member's motion:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should undertake a review of the federal Department of Transport's role in the Charlotte County Ports Inc. quarry project.

During the debate on C-9, I listened with great interest to the speech from the member for Charlotte on the Bayside port in New Brunswick. I have actually had the opportunity to be there and it is a beautiful area.

The Bayside port is a small port on the Saint Croix River, an international body of tidal waters. It is very well situated for shipping with close access to U.S. markets. It is one of Canada's most profitable ports but the Canadian government wants to privatize the ports. The Bayside port makes a significant contribution to the continuing regional and economic growth in New Brunswick. It is a vital element in the communities in southwestern New Brunswick.

I find it somewhat insulting to have the parliamentary secretary suggest that the area where the port is located has no real aspect in this whole deal of the Charlotte quarry.

The member for Charlotte has made interesting remarks during his speeches concerning the group from New York and New Jersey wanting to take over the Bayside port. No point getting into that because we should not be worrying about what the Americans do. What we need to worry about is what our government is not doing. It is not protecting Canadians.

Let us go back to 1994 when the quarry project was first proposed by L.E. Shaw. That company had to drop its plans because it could not break into the sand and gravel market in the U.S. The only way to get into that business if one wants to ship to the U.S. is to be owned by the Americans. Surprise.

Now we have an American company, a large American conglomerate whose plans are to take over the Canadian port. This by itself is something but add the fact that this American company hired two former members of this House, one of them being the former transport minister, to lobby the federal government to allow the transfer of the Bayside port into their hands, and now we really have something.

This is why I am supporting this motion. Doug Young as former transport minister initiated the national marine policy which calls for the divestiture of our Canadian ports. Now that he has put the privatization process in place, he and ex-MP Paul Zed are going to personally profit from it.

Calling for a review of Transport Canada's role in the Charlotte County Ports Inc. quarry project is reasonable when a former transport minister is involved in lobbying his ancient colleagues in Ottawa or his Liberal friends in power in New Brunswick.

There has been a lack of transparency in the quarry project. Were other companies allowed to bid? Have there been independent environmental studies? The people of New Brunswick deserve better than this.

On June 2 last year the voters of Acadie—Bathurst decided not to send Doug Young back to Parliament. That should tell the government something. When the voters in someone's own area know enough not to put him back here, nobody should be listening to him.

But it seems, as the

Globe and Mail

put it, Doug Young has remained in the power game. The knowledge he got while at Transport Canada is proving to be very profitable for him because the Bayside Ports situation is not the only situation. While transport minister Doug Young finalized the privatization of Canadian National railway, guess who was his first client at the consulting firm, as the House heard from my colleague from the Reform Party: Paul Tellier, chairman and chief executive officer of CN.

That is not all. In 1995 Doug Young, while he was in the federal cabinet, made a deal with the province of New Brunswick, a federal-provincial highway agreement. Have I got a deal for you. Now Doug Young heads the international consortium Maritime Road Development Corp. which was awarded a contract to build a four lane divided highway in southern New Brunswick. The province of New Brunswick will then lease the road from the private owners and travellers will have to pay tolls on the 195 kilometre stretch, including the 23 kilometre section built as part of the highway agreement signed by Doug Young in 1995.

During the next 30 years it is estimated New Brunswick taxpayers and the travelling public will pay out $2.6 billion in lease payments and tolls. They are going to pay tolls to a company headed by Doug Young, former transport minister, to drive on a section of highway that was funded by the federal and provincial governments.

It is hard to believe this is not a conflict of interest. Doug Young will be benefiting at the expense of New Brunswickers. We could have read in the newspaper that the present Minister of Transport has asked the deputy minister to begin discussions with provincial counterparts to find ways of protecting future public investments in highways when they are transferred to private hands. If that is not reason enough to question Doug Young's credibility, nothing is. I commend the Minister of Transport for his action but we need to go further.

Let us go back to the member for Charlotte's motion. That lack of transparency in the Charlotte County Ports Inc. quarry project is also often lacking in the public partnership deals. The New Brunswick minister of justice acknowledged the need for both government and business to understand these transactions require greater transparency in order to ensure public trust as well as guard the public interest. That is a very important point because politicians do not have public trust.

The New Brunswick auditor general's report called for a halt to these projects until there is genuine analysis of the real benefit to the province's citizens from this approach to the delivery of government services.

The federal government should take note of these words of caution too, as there are more and more public and private partnerships happening. Just last evening I met with people in Happy Valley, Goose Bay, Labrador regarding the alternative service delivery in the privatizing of that base. I heard concerns from that community very similar to the questionable actions in my aforementioned statement.

To conclude, I reiterate my support for the member's motion. There has not been enough transparency in the Charlotte County Ports Inc. quarry project and I believe a review would be advisable.

[Search And Rescue, December 11th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, the Reform Party leader cynically manipulated a serious aircraft tragedy by linking it to the need for new helicopters.

In fact, the 24 hour wait endured by the victims was the result of botched decision making by search and rescue operations. A pilot in a privately chartered helicopter claimed that he followed Transport Canada guidelines while landing at the crash site.

Can the minister of defence tell us why his department failed to enlist locally available helicopters in this rescue as was the case in the Red River flood?

[Air Crash, December 10th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday afternoon in my riding tragedy hit Little Grand Rapids, a remote community some 260 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.

A plane crashed killing the pilot and two others. A child also died later in the hospital. The remaining passengers, some of them critically injured, are being treated in a tiny nursing station near the crash site. Only now are the injured being air-lifted to a hospital in Winnipeg.

Residents travelled to the site by skidoo to assist the injured. Volunteers were up all night bringing needed supplies to the nursing station. For more than 20 hours, rescue planes were unable to land due to treacherous weather conditions. The airport at Little Grand Rapids, like many remote communities, has limited resources and equipment, increasing the potential for dangerous landings.

Today we extend our deepest sympathy to the families and friends of those who died in the crash. We also commend the community and the many volunteers who have offered their help to the victims of the crash.

[User Fee Act, December 3rd, 1997]

Madam Speaker, if we were discussing the issue of user fees I am quite sure it would be a different debate, but as we are discussing a private member's bill to ensure parliamentary scrutiny of user fees I want to rise in support of the bill.

The user fee act will require scrutiny by the appropriate standing committee of the House of Commons before any user fee may be set or increased. The regulating authority must submit a proposal to the committee before any fee is established or increased.

The report of the committee is subject to the concurrence of the House. If the committee does not report within 150 days, the House may pass a resolution approving, denying or amending the proposed fee or change. The regulating authority is bound by the decision of the House.

The enactment also requires public accounts and other government reports on revenue that identify sources of revenue to identify the amount of revenue from user fees.

The legislation of my colleague from Medicine Hat is designed as a response to the auditor general's comments that parliament needs to scrutinize user fees. There does not exist a government-wide summary of the fees being charged, the revenues raised and the authorities under which they were established. There is a lack of scrutiny.

User fees are more and more present for services which the government provides. Not only are they becoming more abundant but they are becoming higher.

It is easy to show a surplus when services are cut. It is easy to show a surplus when we operate government as pay for service. The government has cut and slashed so much the budgets of departments that they now turn to user fees to make up for the loss. In 1996 the federal bureaucrats picked up $3.8 billion in user fees for government services, 7% more than in 1995.

User fees have been able to explode without scrutiny. People are affected by these user fees that are imposed on them. They are hitting us from every angle. Ottawa has cut its deficit on the backs of the provinces and the provinces are doing the same on the backs of municipalities, hospitals and school boards. With no government to download onto and under pressure from citizens to hold the line on taxes, local politicians have increasingly turned to user fees. Local governments now raise more than $9 billion a year in user fees and hospitals another $3 billion, double what they were pulling in a decade ago.

As a trustee with my school district, I was aware over the years that students had to buy some supplies, wood for carpentry and material for sewing, gym shorts, a calculator, a French verb book. As the years went by the list got longer and longer. Finally there was a public outcry because there were just so many items the students had to purchase on their own. Such is the case with the Government of Canada.

This legislation would be a start. Members in this Parliament would have a chance to represent their constituents' concerns over the government's user fees. They would have a chance to have public debate on user fee increases. We would have a chance to decide if it was fair for Canadians to pay for the government's cuts to departmental budgets. This is why I will be supporting this bill.

[Canada Marine Act, December 3rd, 1997]

Madam Speaker, further to discussion with Canada Ports employees, all the opposition parties and even some Liberal members recognized the real need to ensure employee benefits and pensions were continued. We are going through a major change here. I hope this is not something that will happen every day or every decade where employees who work for the Government of Canada are being told their jobs will no longer be there, that they are due to retire in five years and will not have the income or pension benefits they have planned for retirement.

It was hoped that the government would come up with a clause that would recognize this is a major change and that employees would be given the opportunity to continue with those same benefits. That is not to say that new employees may have had something different. Those employees who had planned their retirement based on that plan should have had the opportunity to continue.

This situation will not affect only Canada Ports. It is coming up in Atomic Energy Canada as those types of corporations are turned over. The issue will keep coming back. I suggest that we all look at the possibility of ensuring there is something for those employees so they are not five years to retirement without the funds they thought were available.

I will be supporting Motion No. 18 because I believe it is more encompassing. I put that motion forward at committee and I thank the hon. member for Beauport—Montmorency—Orléans resubmitting it.

[Canada Marine Act, December 3rd, 1997]

Madam Speaker, in discussion of the marine act at the standing committee, it was acknowledged that there had been lengthy discussions in the previous Parliament and it was also understood that the affected groups were, overall, satisfied with the changes that had been made to the marine act.

In recognition of that and of their request that we not rehash the whole process and that we try to move the bill along, I believe the standing committee worked in that effort. The major area that came up for discussion, as we are being made aware, was to ensure that employees of Canada Ports continued with some kind of superannuation or pension benefits comparable to what they had.

I had a real treat of being in Churchill the day after the signing took place and the port was turned over to another company. I realized that Canada Ports really had not given two cents worth of its time with regard to its employees. There had been little or no discussion with the employees. The employees were given forms with which they were basically signing away their rights to any file or complaints they had under the human rights code. It was actually very disgraceful to see that approach taken with the employees.

What also happened with those employees is there was not a comparable plan in place.

I have a letter that was given to one of those employees with regard to the three months pay for the perceived difference in superannuation and RRSPs. The letter states that the money that person would have received, in that perceived difference, the money that person would get, would be put toward that person's earnings. Therefore, that person would be denied a length of time in which to claim unemployment. That person could not even take that money and invest it in something that would be there for retirement. It then went toward insurable earnings. So that person did not have even that difference of money that was recognized. That person would not even be allowed to use it for retirement.

[Canada Marine Act, December 3rd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, there is no question with regard to Bill C-9 that new members of the transport committee were not given the opportunity to interview new witnesses. We did, however, have access to an extensive amount of considerations that were done in the previous Parliament.

We also had time to have discussions with the stakeholders, including people within the marine industry and union members. Therefore, I can quite confidently say that contrary to the hon. member's belief that the unions were not given the opportunity to be represented on the board and shocked that that position would not be supported by myself, it is interesting to note that the unions did not ask for representation on those boards. I also accepted the explanation of the member across that they were not restricted. If their local municipalities or the authorities in question wanted to have someone on the board, they certainly had the opportunity to do that.

I do not make any bones about my background. I come from a very strong labour background and I do not make any bones about that. I am comfortable with my position within the labour unions. They know I am there acting on their best behalf and that I am not going to show up tomorrow suggesting back to work legislation.

In putting that point straight, I would like to comment on the motions. I will be recommending support of Motion No. 1. All the municipalities that have a stake in the ports should have the opportunity for representation. We will have far greater viability of the ports and a lot better working relationship within those communities if they have that opportunity. I will therefore certainly be supporting and recommending the support of Motion No. 1.

I will be recommending support to all of the motions in this group. It is important that the limits of the ports be clearly set out so that a year down the road we are not questioning what should be happening to this port or that port or whether one is having more opportunity than the other. Therefore, I would also recommend that one.

There is no question that Motion No. 3 will lead, I hope, to less patronage. It seems to be a common problem with appointments through the governing body. If we could have representation, if the appointments were suggested by the users, then there would be less chance of that. I would strongly urge the government to move on that motion as well.

Motion No. 12 in regard to the zoning bylaws, the clause already calls for taking into account the relevant social, economic and environmental matters. I was quite surprised that the member from the Conservative caucus would suggest that the concerns of the municipalities in the area should not be an overall guiding factor and their wishes with regard to zoning should not be considered. To suggest that just because a port is there it should have the municipalities to ransom for years to come and not allow municipalities to readjust their zoning is just not acceptable to me.

I will be recommending support for all these motions.