Joe Jordan

[Criminal Code, February 23rd, 2004]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for the question. I come from a rural area as he does and share some of his concerns on this issue. I will reiterate the answer that the minister gave in the House to the question. He said:

I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to say the government has no plans to privatize services.

Governments in Canada and around the world have longstanding experience in working collaboratively with the private sector to deliver important services. In fact, in this country, dating back to the 1840s, pre-Confederation Canada partnered with the private sector to build railroads and, some would argue, build a country.

More recently, the Government of Canada has used public private partnerships, or P3s as they have come to be known, to address water and infrastructure needs on first nations reserves, to develop air force flying and combat support training, and to build the Canadian embassy in Berlin.

These partnerships fulfill national objectives when the private sector shares responsibilities, costs, risks and benefits with the government. However, we in government are still accountable for managing the contract for best results.

Public private partnerships are just one option for delivering public services. Government takes a case-by-case approach to determine which way is most appropriate to meet the needs of Canadians. Our approach is purposefully moderate and incremental, and based on sound reasoning and due diligence.

Public private partnerships work to the mutual advantage of the partners by satisfying public needs, by increasing the capacity of government to deliver programs and services, and by generating employment and economic development opportunities. P3s work best when they are based on mutual trust, reciprocal benefits and enforceable consequences.

The government does not take a final decision on any specific cases without prior consultation with employees and their unions.

Recent transition decisions by the Prime Minister have raised the profile of P3 as an important procurement option. For example, the newly created expenditure review committee assesses all program spending proposals against the criteria that include partnership, value for money, and efficiency. This makes P3s one of the options under consideration.

The position of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance, with special emphasis on public private partnerships, is a newly created position to champion P3 opportunities where they make sense.

Canada's use of P3s is primarily among sub-national governments, where it is being considered for many sectors, from municipal recreation centres to hospital buildings. Five provinces have officially embraced P3 as a procurement alternative. The other provinces, the territories, and several municipalities, are poised to adopt the method.

Most P3 experience has been gained through infrastructure projects, including roads, bridges, airports, water, power, et cetera. Several Canadian firms have successfully used the experience to win P3 project contracts overseas. Good examples of that would be the Cross Israel highway, and the Santiago and Budapest airports.

By contrast to a rich P3 experience, the Government of Canada has not done a fully-fledged privatization since 1996, when the Canada Communications Group was sold. Some construe shared governance corporations, like NavCan, as divestitures. However, these are examples of creating non-profit organizations with minority federal representation on the board to serve public interests more effectively.

Meanwhile, many departments and agencies continue to explore and promote P3s through their programs and initiatives. Our partners' time, expertise and funding add value to the quality of life we enjoy in this country.

[Questions on the Order Paper, February 6th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.

[Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, February 4th, 2004]

It is comments too, so I am making a comment.

They are not used to doing that so they are relying on the feed producers to give them outreach information. In some cases, the infrastructure is not there. We had a late winter, we were looking good, and we had not had the second case.

BSE exists in one in a million cows spontaneously. The hon. member talked about testing. They talk about science and science-based. Look at Japan, it is not making decisions based on science. It has had two outbreaks. It is very political over there.

Would the hon. member please talk a bit more about perhaps looking at universal testing. It is BSE today? If we look at what is happening in SARS, one of the natures of a global market is we do not know what the next crisis is. Would it not be useful to think about testing and branding Canadian product to be the safest in the world? Even though the science does not support that move, but the consumers are not making their decision based on science.

[Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, February 4th, 2004]

Madam Chair, on that point I would say that if we took a look at changing the burden of proof from the Competition Bureau from the criminal burden of proof, which sounds good, it is very a high bar to make it civil. I think that could be a much more effective organization.

I would certainly support the procedure and House affairs committee striking the agriculture committee immediately and looking into this issue of why the price has not gone down and why the only people who seem to be paying for this crisis are the consumers and the farmers. That is something which needs to be looked at. I think the people who are watching this debate at home can take some heart in the fact that the members of the agriculture committee who speak on this are extremely knowledgeable and short term, we need to be guided by what their recommendations are. They produce unanimous reports and they are very useful.

I want to just mention a couple of things to this member, in terms of maybe the longer term or the larger issue here.

It seems to me that if this had happened 10 years ago, given export statistics of Canadian cattle, we would have been in much better shape because much more of our domestic supply made up the larger market. Canadians stepped up to the plate. Canadians increased their consumption of beef through this crisis. If we were in the position the United States is, where upwards of 90% of its market is domestic, and if Canadians stepped up to the plate, we would not be in the situation we are in today.

Ironically, it is the government itself that launched programs through the 1990s to try to get farmers to get into export markets. I think that globalization is a bit of a double-edged sword. There are all kinds of opportunities, but there are also all kinds of risks. We are starting to see some of the risks of putting farmers in that position.

I have listened to descriptions of some of the problems faced by western farmers, but in eastern Ontario a lot of the beef farmers are not set up in terms of infrastructure and barns to finish these cows over the winter and provincially--

[Petitions, November 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36 I have the honour to present a petition from constituents in my riding. They call upon Parliament to reject Bill C-22, to consider parental rights along with parental responsibilities and begin with the presumption of mandatory equal parenting in the event of a divorce.

[Supply, October 23rd, 2003]

Madam Speaker, when I read this motion this morning what went through my mind was whether this was a valuable use of the House's time. With the challenges that face governments today, with the number of issues and the number of forces at play in a global world, I really thought this would be a waste of time, but the fact that we are here and debating it certainly gives me an excellent opportunity to reflect a bit on the gentlemen whom the motion is intended to embarrass.

I tell a lot of groups that I speak to about politics of my own personal experiences, and I say that because as a former parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, I think I was privileged to have a window into the world of this man.

I came to Ottawa as an MP in 1997. My family was an extremely political family. My father was a member of Parliament. My grandfather, although he ran unsuccessfully, managed a number of campaigns in very tough areas of the country to try to get the Liberal vote out. I came here with that very partisan grounding.

One of the things that struck me when I got here was that for the good politicians, the effective politicians, although they can engage in the rhetoric of question period, the real work that goes on here is at committee. I can say that for the most part my work on committees has been very rewarding and very non-partisan, much to my initial disappointment. We get excited about things and it takes a few years to sort things out.

The thing that strikes me about the business of government and governing a nation is that the black and white issues are easy to deal with, and governments do an easy job of dealing with them. It is the grey areas that cause us problems. The grey areas are a small portion of what we do, but they get a disproportionate amount of attention given to them in the media, which brings me to my point.

As the parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, one of my jobs and one of the things I concerned myself with was my minister. One gets a little protective. I was constantly frustrated when confronted with this ongoing paradox of the Prime Minister and the opinion people would have of him if all they did was read the National Post and the opinion that I had from working with him on a daily basis.

What struck me was that this seemed to bother me a lot more than it bothered him. He was constantly providing me with advice, and one point was not to read the newspapers, which he did not do; he made it very clear to me that this is not leadership. One does not stick a wet finger in the air, see which way the wind is blowing and make decisions. He made his decisions based upon a very deeply entrenched set of principles.

What bothers me about this motion and its intent is that here we have a politician with 40 years of service in this country. This gentleman has been around this place longer than the eternal flame on the front lawn. When the Prime Minister showed up for his first day of work, the member for Leeds--Grenville showed up for his first day of kindergarten.

We have a country that is infinitely better off because this Prime Minister chose public service. We have an economy that is infinitely better off because this Prime Minister chose to accept the responsibility of leading the Liberal Party in the last 10 years. When this party came to power, we were facing a $42 billion a year deficit. If government were a business, we would have been bankrupt. Tough decisions had to be made. It is very easy now to gloss over this and gloss over this period. Certainly the Tories tried. I can remember that the finance minister of the Tories at one point was preaching belt tightening. It appealed to Bay Street. It appealed to the fiscally responsible business people in our society.

When that plan of belt tightening got around the cabinet table, it was completely decimated. What would have been a little belt tightening then ended up being the equivalent of the Atkins diet in 1993. We had to make tough choices, tough choices for Liberals, tough choices for politicians who understand that things like investing in children are not costs. They are just that: investments. Things like investing in the environment are not costs on a balance sheet. Even with those deeply held principles, the job was done and the economy is much better off. We lead the G-7. The Economist magazine has highlighted Canada as the place to invest internationally. International agencies point to Canada as a market with the least amount of corruption in terms of a market for international business.

If we listened to the opposition, we would think the sky is falling. That is its job. Its job is to oppose and that is fine, but I think that in the twilight of this career this type of motion really is insulting.

I know that the current parliamentary secretary touched on the fact that in the last year we have seen the benefit of 40 years of experience in public life, certainly as a political party. I do not want to get partisan, but the job of political parties is to get power and put in place the principles and the values that the members hold. That is the job of the party, not the government.

In terms of the Liberal Party, the success of this current Prime Minister is unprecedented. People can spin it any way they want and they will not find a more successful political party leader than this particular gentleman, so that debate is moot. The opposition members may think that what they are looking at is a light at the end of the tunnel. I can tell the House that they may very well be looking at the light of a freight train. They do not want another election. One can only take losing so many times. I do not want to appear arrogant, but on a partisan political basis they cannot argue with his ability to win elections.

But let us look at what he does when he wins. I have never been prouder of the stand of our Prime Minister in the wake of what happened in Iraq. Certainly I was not proud of how that unfolded. I was not proud of some of the personal statements people made, but at the end of the day history will show that this Prime Minister's instinct was absolutely correct in terms of how we handle those types of situations and in terms of the fact that multilateralism, with its flaws, is the only option in dealing with issues of international crisis.

One of the issues that I feel very strongly about is the environment. I am of the view that we must structurally change our economy so that activities that harm the environment are taxed and activities that do not are not. We must encourage the self-policing concepts of profit and competition to make buckets of cash for companies that are good for the environment and to make sure that pollution does not pay. If we do not change structurally, we are in trouble.

The Prime Minister ratified the Kyoto Accord in the wake of some of the most ridiculous fearmongering and naysaying from the opposition. He stepped up to the plate, and generations and generations from now will look back at that small step. That is all that it was. The reductions that are inherent in the Kyoto accord represent about 10% of what we actually need to do if we are serious about sustaining life on this planet.

In the wake of that crisis and knowing that international agreements take decades, not years, to ratify, the Prime Minister stepped up and ratified Kyoto. I think we are seeing now with Russia's potential ratification that we are going to move on the file. It is not a panacea. It is not going to solve the problems. But that is leadership. That is what we have had and that is what we have from this Prime Minister.

When I woke up this morning I looked at the motion and thought, “This is ridiculous. This is a waste of the House's time. This sort of tips the scales when we have this debate about whether the House is going to prorogue or not”. I thought that we have more important things to spend our time on. We have more important things to do.

At the end of the day, the motion is designed essentially to run out of town a gentleman who has given 40 years of his life to a very high level of public service. He has always considered public service to be the most noble of professions. We should not be running him out of town. Canada should have a parade in honour of one of the finest prime ministers that we have ever had or ever will have.

[Electoral Reform, October 10th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I understand that some members are getting ready for the next election. In fact, I read this morning that the member for Halifax held her nomination meeting last night.

Could the government House leader provide the House with an update as to the plans for Bill C-49, a government bill designed to address some of these anomalies with riding redistribution?

[Supply, September 30th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I got up earlier and gave the Reader's Digest version of my thoughts but I will take four minutes now.

If we throw out the partisan rhetoric, I think what we are hearing is that debate on the motion has been very interesting. There are people who are going to support this for a variety of different reasons, but I think it is fair to say we do have some issues that need to be addressed.

I will repeat my comments. I am not saying that this is the solution to the problems with democracy. In fact, to paraphrase Churchill, democracy has problems until we consider the alternatives. There are pros and cons to everything. There are no easy answers, but based on my own experience out on the hustings, people are not staying away from the ballot box, as has been suggested, simply because they think the government is doing a good job. I think there really is a disconnect out there. I think there are people who sit there and think, “What does my vote matter?” They think that the person they want to support does not have a hope of winning because that person is not from one of the mainstream parties, so they just disconnect themselves from the process.

Believe me, democracy does not work if people are not engaged in it. There has been talk of the government getting whatever the percentage was, being the government. Do not blame us. We still got more votes than the opposition parties. We are all in this together. We all have to figure out how to put in place a process that can take the needs and aspirations of Canadians and reflect them in public policy.

As I said in my earlier comments, I look at the issue of the environment. In our current system of first past the post, winner take all, 31% or less, or 39% in my case, I win the prize. That is characteristic of the fact that there were eight or nine parties running.

When the member talks about the way we run the House, I agree. The Standing Orders for the way we run the House, the lion's share of them, were put in place when we had two parties. When we get to three, four or five parties, that is where we start to run into problems in terms of representation on committees and allocation of time on various topics. I think we need to look at those sorts of things.

But what I like about this motion, and it may be a proportional ballot or preferential ballot, as they are not defining what we do in terms of proportional representation, I do not see the flaw, the problem, with putting some value on a vote that does not necessarily carry the day in first past the post but is certainly a ballot that has been sincerely put in that ballot box by a Canadian.

We could do it in a way which says that the candidates selected under proportional representation would start with the candidate of the defeated party that got the most votes. We do not need to have the person hand picked. Again, that has not been defined in the motion.

We heard a lot of talk about Italy. I think we have to be very careful that we make a distinction between correlation and causation. Italy's democracy is rather cumbersome. Whether that is because they have proportional representation or not, I do not know. I think it is a dangerous leap of faith to blame it on PR. The same logic would suggest that we should never go to bed because the lion's share of people die in bed. I think we have to have a bit of an open mind.

This particular motion, by simply keeping the issue alive, puts it on the radar screen. I harbour no illusions as to its fate, but again I think it is worth supporting in the sense that it is not a perfect system now and we should take a serious look at anything that could potentially improve it.

[Supply, September 30th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I just could not resist jumping into this with a few comments.

We do have a party system, but I would say that the member for Esquimalt--Juan de Fuca, for whom I have a lot of respect, has sound logic but that is the point. It is just sound. It is unencumbered by meaning. This party has more free votes than any other party. If we are going to be accused of not having any, then there is an issue.

In terms of proportional representation, I do not think our system works all that well because voter turnout has been declining. I have been at debates myself where I have been sorely tempted to vote for the Green Party candidate because he was the best person in the room. I am a candidate who won by 55 votes. If anybody should be against this in the interest of self-preservation, it is me.

I will stand proudly and support this motion by the NDP, not because I think it is the panacea to solve our problems but because we have to keep the issue on the radar screen, explore the options and figure out a way to reconnect with the people in our ridings. Environmental issues and the issues that these supposed minor parties are pushing are important and we need to hear their voices.

[Canada Elections Act, June 10th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, on the issue of the $1,000 going to zero, because I think it is just overly complicated, and the regulation of leadership expenses in addition to nomination expenses, is there a process that this could perhaps be looked at in the years to come?