Lost his last election, in 2004, with 33% of the vote.
The Environment March 22nd, 2000
Mr. Speaker, today is World Water Day, a day recognized throughout the world to draw attention within the international community to the urgent need for the sustainable use of water resources.
Could the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment tell the House what Canada is doing to protect its own fresh water resources?
Blood Samples Act March 21st, 2000
Madam Speaker, one of the joys of sitting on the private members' subcommittee is that I get to hear detailed pitches for virtually every private member's bill that comes to the House. I probably heard the hon. member speak in favour of the bill long before it was brought to the attention of the House. At the time I think he made extremely valid arguments as to why this piece of legislation was required.
If we give it a bit of thought, I think in the last 15 or 20 years blood related and blood transmitted diseases have appeared that were not around when the criminal code was crafted or amended the last time. I think it is a very timely piece of legislation.
We have to be a bit careful in terms of describing this as a panacea. There are cases where, let us say, someone may have contracted HIV who was involved in one of these scuffles, but if they are still in the incubation period it may not show up in their tests. Issues need to be hammered out. However, absolutely those concerns are very minor compared to the thrust of this bill.
I congratulate the member for Fraser Valley. I believe that the bill belongs in the committee. From what I have heard from some of the previous speakers who are members of the justice committee, I think they are in a good position to come to terms with what needs to be done.
I will be supporting the bill. I would encourage the member to let the debate collapse, because if he waits for his third hour we will be into May and I think it is important that we get the bill before the committee as soon as possible.
An Act For The Recognition And Protection Of Human Rights And Fundamental Freedoms February 25th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I sit on the subcommittee on Private Members' Business. That member knows that it is a non-partisan committee. To accuse the government of making that decision is just—
Gun Control February 23rd, 2000
Mr. Speaker, earlier this week the Supreme Court of Canada heard an appeal of Alberta's firearms reference decision. Opponents of the registration system and their friends in the Reform Party allege that nobody but the government supports the Firearms Act.
Can the Minister of Justice please tell the House which groups intervened in support of this important public safety measure?
National Flag Of Canada Day February 15th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, we learned today that Canada's original maple leaf flag is not presently displayed in Canadian museums. Since the committee that chose the flag was chaired by my predecessor and constituent, John Matheson, I would like to ask the Prime Minister whether the original flag will be given to the government.
Clayoquot Sound And Redberry Lake February 14th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the communities of Clayoquot Sound in British Columbia and Redberry Lake in Saskatchewan on their recent designation as international biosphere reserves.
Biosphere reserves are areas of terrestrial or coastal ecosystems which are internationally recognized within the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's Man and Biosphere Program for promoting and demonstrating a balanced relationship between people and nature.
This is an incredible honour for the communities involved and the many partners that contributed to the success of these nominations.
The declaration of Clayoquot Sound and Redberry Lake as biosphere reserves is recognition of our substantial progress toward a sustainable future for the regions, including their biological, economic, social and cultural values.
Canada has six other biosphere reserves: in Quebec, Alberta, Ontario and Manitoba making the Clayoquot Sound and Redberry Lake biosphere reserves the seventh and eighth such reserves in Canada.
Canada Elections Act February 14th, 2000
Madam Speaker, I would like to move the following amendments:
That Motion No. 90 for Bill C-2 be amended by
(a) substituting the following for the proposed substituted text contained in paragraph (a) of the motion:
“(a) a statement, prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, of its assets and liabilities,”
(b) replacing paragraph (b) of the motion with the following:
“(b) by replacing line 40 on page 153 with the following:
“whether that statement presents fairly and in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles the”.
That Motion No. 94 for Bill C-2 be amended by
(a) substituting the following for the proposed substituted text contained in paragraph (a) of the motion:
“(a) a statement, prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, of the fair market value of”
(b) replacing paragraph (b) of the motion with the following:
“(b) by replacing line 11 on page 160 with the following:
“whether the statement presents, in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, the fair”
That Motion No. 123 for Bill C-2 be amended by
(a) replacing the opening words of the motion with the following:
“That Bill C-2, in Clause 430, be amended by replacing line 33 on page 178 with the following:”
(b) substituting the following for the proposed substituted text contained in the motion:
“report presents fairly and in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles the information con-”
These motions are signed by the minister.
Standing Committee On Finance December 16th, 1999
Mr. Speaker, I will say at the outset that you need not apologize to me for getting my point of order confused. I was a bit confused myself. It was the spirit of the need for haste which threw me off.
I am very honoured to participate in the prebudget debate. Having sat through the morning and now part of the afternoon on this issue, a couple of things strike me and I want to point out a few things. I am not on the finance committee. This is not an apology, but I am trying to bring a different perspective to the issue.
I have taken a quick look at the document we have been referencing as well as the minority reports from the various parties. It is very clear that it is an extremely hardworking committee. Understandably and not surprisingly, various parties are taking traditional stands on issues. I think if we put the entire package together, including the minority reports, we have a good handle on the numbers which make our economy work.
On the issue of tax cuts, we have been around that a number of times. That argument is over. It is very clear the government needs to address the level of taxation.
We make a mistake if we assume that tax cuts are it. I do not argue for a minute that tax cuts are not part of it; what I suggest is that tax cuts are not all of it. What I am hearing from some speakers is that this is somehow a panacea to make the economy work in some magical way: let us eliminate government altogether; let us cut taxes so much that we are actually giving money to be Canadians. I do not know where this ridiculous argument ends.
If we look at the forces at play in our economy today, especially globalization, dismantling and devolving the federal government at this time is sheer lunacy. It is very opportune politics to go around and ask people if they think they pay too much tax. We would have to go into many doughnut stores before we would find somebody who said, “No, I want to pay more”.
It is fundamentally misleading to talk about American level taxation unless we want to talk about American level social spending. If Canadians are confronted with that reality they may say that yes, everybody wants to pay less tax, but what they really want is to get value for their expenditures. I want to leave the numbers aside because it is not all about numbers.
I listened with great interest to my Reform colleague. I would suggest to him that somehow burying our heads in a pail of pay stubs is not going to provide the vision that Canadians will require in terms of leadership from the federal government on the verge of the new millennium. We have to look for that kind of balance.
We certainly had a short term crisis. With a $42 billion deficit we were essentially up to our ass in alligators, but we are over that now. Through the fiscal management and commitment of all Canadians and the hard work of the committee, we got ourselves to a crossroads. The decisions we have to make at that crossroads are whether we will continue to have our planning horizon mirror the election cycle or will we think three, four, five, six, seven generations down the line and start making some of the decisions that will make our economy sustainable.
The number of people who are in on this debate is interesting. It took the premier of Ontario all of 24 hours to break his self-imposed rule that he was not going to comment on areas of federal jurisdiction. The premier of Ontario is calling on the federal government to put in a balanced budget law which essentially makes it illegal to run a deficit. It is big brother at its worst, that somehow we can come up with decision making algorithms and eliminate the human side of government altogether, that we can put these things in a formula and the computers will govern the country for us.
Surprisingly I have to say that I agree with Mr. Harris. We should not go into deficits in this country but I would argue that his definition of deficit is far too narrow. I would gladly support statutory regulations that prevent us from going into social deficits and from going into environmental deficits as well because that is where we have some very serious problems. I would like us to address literacy issues with the same vigour that we are addressing some of the tax reforms that members are talking about today.
In terms of specific areas for tax reform, as a member of the subcommittee on persons with disabilities I would offer as a suggestion, and unfortunately it did not make the report, that we need to look at the way the tax system treats people with disabilities. They are required to use the medical exemption which is an exemption designed for catastrophic health events in a person's life on an ongoing basis. This is a very difficult deduction for people with disabilities to make.
I hope and trust that our government, as we flavour the next budget as a children's budget, will make sure we capture in that envelope children with disabilities. It is important that all Canadians share in the economic growth that we have been enjoying in the last few years.
I listened with great interest to my Conservative colleague who is, I understand, an economist. I am not, although I must say I held up my end of the bell curve in a few economics classes. He talked rather flippantly about having a hypocrisy tax on the Liberals and somehow that would get us out of debt. In all seriousness, I would suggest to him that maybe we should put in place a failure to learn from one's mistakes tax because of the Conservative's stand on the referendum law. That party's members need to learn the lesson of sitting around the table with separatists when trying to run this country. It is not too late for them to change their mind. The Reform Party did it and it seems to have worked. They need to come onboard, but I will leave that alone because it is obviously salt in a widening wound.
I do want to recognize the NDP member for Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar on his maiden speech. I thought it was an excellent speech. The member for Regina—Qu'Appelle then got up and again picked up on some very positive themes. They are themes I am mirroring here today in terms of there being more to it than economics and crunching the numbers.
The member from Regina then made a fatal mistake when he talked about half the surplus going to spending, half going to debt reduction and half going to tax reduction. Apart from being impossible in terms of geometry, it is that third half of money that the NDP does not have a sense of reality about. We have to pay for these things. To somehow invent a new half, apart from the fact that it defies the laws of physics, it also does not resonate with voters. Having gone through the debt and the deficit and the cycle of spending and taxing, the voters understand that at the end of the day we have to pay the piper. We cannot spend money we do not have. It is a rather old adage but it does not hurt to remind ourselves of that from time to time.
I will touch on the repeated references to the GDP. It is a real fallacy in the country when we link our well-being to gross domestic product. Economic indicators are important but they do not tell the whole story.
Let us consider the fact that when children get asthma because of air pollution, the price of their inhalers is added to the GDP. When we have wells go bad in rural Canada because of groundwater problems, rural Canadians buy bottled water, and that is added to the GDP. When people replace stolen property or put security systems in their homes, that increases our GDP. When the insurance industry has to spend billions of dollars, as it did in eastern Ontario after the ice storm, because of increasingly violent weather events, our GDP goes up. When planes crash off of Peggy's Cove, our GDP goes up. As a nation and as the new millennium is looking us in the face, the beans need to be counted but we do not govern by the numbers.
It is not unlike driving a bus full of Canadians barrelling down the road, staring at the speedometer. From repeated consultations I have had with groups across the country, the people of Canada are looking out the windows. They are expecting the government to take some leadership, certainly in the area of sustainable economies, but they also want to see us move toward sustainable social systems where all people share in the benefits that are generated and certainly in sustainable environmental policies. At the end of the day, air, water and soil are fundamentally important to the well-being of Canadians.
Standing Committee On Finance December 16th, 1999
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would ask you to seek the unanimous consent of the House to approve the motion that the hon. member for Pickering—Ajax—Uxbridge put to the House earlier on Bill C-202.
Cape Breton Development Corporation Divestiture Authorization And Dissolution Act November 15th, 1999
I did answer the question. I said that I would take it under advisement.
I think it is important to remember that Cape Breton is still part of Canada, that Cape Breton still has access to all of the programs and services that other areas of the country do. To somehow say that this is some sort of kiss-off is doing a disservice to it and really is not serving the long term interests of the area.