A true liberal.
Lost his last election, in 2004, with 41% of the vote.
Small Business Loans Act December 12th, 1995
A true liberal.
Small Business Loans Act December 12th, 1995
Mr. Speaker, in summary, the bill before us tonight is a reinforcement of the government's commitment to support small business loan activity. We have accepted amendments to the bill from the Reform Party.
I hope that as we head into the new year which is just around the corner, that the signal all members of the House have sent to all the financial institutions through speedy passage of bills and through the speedy and united recommendations in our "Taking Care of Small Business" report will be recognized.
Small Business Loans Act December 12th, 1995
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak on third and final reading of the amendments to the Small Business Loans Act.
I will review some of the initiatives we have accomplished in the industry committee over the last year. It is important to do this because I see in the House tonight the member for Okanagan and the member for Trois-Rivières, the members who led the debate on behalf of their parties.
The industry committee in the last year was one of the most unique committees on Parliament Hill. When the public sees Members of Parliament getting together, especially in the chamber, all it sees is the adversarial debate. It sees by and large the experience of question period, which is such a misleading image of what the Parliament of Canada is all about.
This will be my last speech in the House for this year on matters related to industry and on the whole issue of access to capital. To the members for Trois-Rivières and Okanagan, it was a real pleasure.
When I leave the House to go back to whatever I will do when it is all over and reflect on my experience in Ottawa, I will say one of the most productive years in Ottawa was working on this committee when our focus was so united on the whole issue of access to capital for small and medium size business men and women.
I believe with all of our differences on distinct society and veto and so on, and goodness knows there are a lot of other issues we have differ on, there is one common cause shared by every member of the House: the small business community represents the greatest hope for putting Canadians back to work.
The number one issue or the number one difficulty that community faces is issue of access to sufficient capital to support its risks, to support its basic business activity. If we move the banks an inch, and I think we have moved them only an inch, it is because banking institutions have not been able to break up or divide the industry committee. We have worked as a team.
I have to confess to Canadians that the best lobby system on Parliament Hill is the financial institutions. They have a way of lobbying and intimidating, but we held firm in our convictions, in our cause in the last year. I hope that over the next year we can keep that type of commitment. Whoever else is on the industry committee, I hope they carry on with the torch and keep that cause moving forward.
I am optimistic about this. Last night I watched the Prime Minister in the second national town hall meeting. Canadians from across the country asked the Prime Minister many questions. I remember vividly the question from a small business entrepreneur who ran a grocery business. He asked the Prime Minister when he was going to get serious about his commitment to take on the banks.
I was pleased that question was put to the Prime Minister and for a split second it caught the Prime Minister off guard. The Prime Minister is well aware that we are working hard on the issue. Because we are working as a team one would think we would be moving the banks forward, but it is such a small movement that it has not really impacted yet. The Prime Minister said that we have been working on that.
The idea was put forward by the member of Parliament for Trinity-Spadina. He has been pushing, debating and arguing for the past year and a half that all banks in Canada should have a target of approximately 30 per cent of their total corporate loan portfolio devoted to the small business sector. I was stunned that the Prime Minister mentioned that objective. Many members of the committee thought that the member for Trinity-Spadina was being overly aggressive in directing the banks on to whom they should lend money. I opposed the member's recommendation that these targets be put in writing.
I am beginning to think that maybe the member for Trinity-Spadina was right when he told us a year ago that the banks were not really going to deal with the issue unless we gave them a specific benchmark. The member for Okanagan remembers how we almost ganged up on our fellow member saying that we cannot go quite that far, that we cannot dictate 30 per cent of the total loan portfolio.
Supply December 5th, 1995
Of the Government of Canada?
Supply December 5th, 1995
They have lost faith in the individual.
Canada Water Export Prohibition Act November 29th, 1995
Mr. Speaker, I want to go back to my very first speech in the House of Commons in 1988. This was the issue I talked about when I opposed the free trade agreement; that water was a part of the free trade agreement.
I congratulate the member for Kamloops for bringing this private member's bill forward. On this issue we should have a general debate. Basically our country is water blind when it comes to understanding the complexities and depth of what is going on around this issue.
When I left high school and went to study in Texas I kept in touch with a few of my friends over the years. When I was running in 1988 for the first time to become a member of Parliament I received a call from an old college classmate of mine who said in that free trade agreement there has to be something dealing with water.
I asked my good friend Bert Edmondson to tell me more. He said the chief free trade negotiator for President Ronald Reagan was a personal friend of his and spent his entire life, including his Ph.D. thesis, studying North American water management, Clayton Yeutter. He worked as a young political assistant for Congressman Jim Wright who spent most of his time studying North American water management.
My friend, even though he was in Houston, an American looking out for the United States, gave me a little friendly heads up that there has to be something in that agreement dealing with North American water management.
I then talked to a few other people, lawyers and experts, much more expert than I was on this issue. I was going to focus on the whole issue of unfettered foreign investment, something I was opposed to, chapter 14. However, when this water dimension came into the deal that got my interest even more.
I remember standing on the other side of the House saying to then Prime Minister Mulroney: "If water is not part of this free trade agreement and yet there is so much worry about it, why do you not ask your friend, President Reagan, for a one-page protocol letter signed by him and you stating water is not a part of this deal? That would put all Canadians across Canada at ease." As the member for Kamloops said, whatever we do in the House or in any provincial house on the whole issue of water is subservient to the free trade agreement.
I could not sell Prime Minister Mulroney on getting a one-page protocol letter exempting water and of course the deal went through.
However, that very first month I was elected I discovered as an MP I had access to the Library of Parliament and the researchers. I remember asking them to find out a little more about Clayton Yeutter's Ph.D. thesis. Apparently it was on the whole issue of water. Lo and behold, about four months later his Ph.D. transcript from the University of Nebraska, pulled off microfiche, landed on my desk. It was about 700 pages on how the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was to replumb the entire North American system. I remember after I received that Ph.D. thesis of Clayton Yeutter sending him letters complimenting him on this great thesis on how to replumb the North American water system. I asked him if he would comment as the chief free trade negotiator on whether it was in or out of the free trade agreement.
I never had an answer to the first letter, the second letter or the third letter. Therefore we must have our heads up on this issue.
I can remember the hon. member for Kamloops in opposition presenting thousands of petitions on the floor of the House, giving us a heads up on interbasin transfers. We have to deal with this issue.
To the member for Kamloops, his private member's bill today is in the right direction but it is too narrow. The member has said no interbasin transfers. As my colleague the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment knows, we already have an interbasin transfer from Lake Ontario into the St. Lawrence. That is one of the reasons we can maintain Montreal as a port. If we ever stopped that transfer from Lake Ontario, a joint decision made by the International Joint Commission, Montreal would not be a port.
This of course is something that was never discussed during the last referendum. Our friends who want to create their own country do not realize that Canada and the United States together, nation to nation, decide on the flow of water from Lake Ontario. We happily maintain Montreal as one of the great ports of the world. That in a manner of speaking is basin transfer.
I am happy to participate in this debate today. It touches on an issue we will have to deal with in a comprehensive way over the next three to five years.
A chapter in one of the books by the former premier of Quebec, Robert Bourassa, dealt with the grand canal, the recycling of water from James Bay up over Mount Amos, down into the Georgian Bay system, through the French River, into all the Great Lakes and through Lake Michigan into the United States. This chapter had a contribution by Tom Kierans from Newfoundland who spent his entire life working for that great U.S. firm, Bechtel Group Inc. I am intrigued by this idea.
What I am trying to say is this is an issue we will have to face up to. Fifteen years from now our American friends will not be able to carry on without Canadian water. What will we do?
The member for Kamloops, who has been consistent on this issue and is pricking our conscience and our thought process here again tonight, is giving us a heads up on a very important issue. I hope through my colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment, and other colleagues we can take this issue on in a comprehensive way in the not too distant future.
Maybe, as the member said in his speech, there are many different factors in this equation, many intricacies related to our first peoples, our aboriginals, and our whole environmental system. There are the different types of waters, processes and everything else that we have to deal with. I hope we can get into that in the not too distant future.
With respect to my colleagues from the Bloc, water is really not a provincial debate or issue. When we look at the way 65 per cent of our waters flow north into James Bay, when we see the way waters flow back and forth, if there was ever a reason for my colleagues across the floor to convert from Bloc Quebecois to Bloc canadien, it is around the whole issue of water.
Unless we have a strong national government managing our water resources for the interests of all Canadians, the entire community is in jeopardy. The best way to secure the precious resource of water for all Quebecers is by making sure the national Government of Canada is working on behalf of all Quebecers. Quebec alone would not have the same capacity or the same thrust.
Canada Water Export Prohibition Act November 29th, 1995
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would like a point of clarification. Does debate on a private member's bill go from one side of the House to the other?
Canada Water Export Prohibition Act November 29th, 1995
Oh, my God, it is unbelievable.
Bankruptcy And Insolvency Act November 28th, 1995
Mr. Speaker, before I talk specifically about the amendments to the Bankruptcy Act, Bill C-109, it is important to go back and have a little history on how the bill evolved.
I hope later today we will hear from our colleague, the member for Dartmouth, because in opposition he was our critic for consumer and corporate affairs and had a tremendous hand in crafting this bill on bankruptcy and insolvency. It is a complex bill because it includes a lot of provisions affecting the bankruptcy and insolvency area.
This bill contains almost 100 pages and has provisions affecting procedures in consumer bankruptcies and proposals, landlord compensation where leases are disclaimed in reorganizations, liability of directors and stays of action against directors during reorganizations. It includes the whole area of protection of trustees and receivers against personal liability for pre-appointment environmental damage and other claims, workmen's compensation board claims, the dischargeability of student loan debts.
Also included are the licensing and regulation of trustees and their liability in relation to other activities related to business, the requirement that bankrupts pay part of their income to the bankruptcy estate, securities, firm bankruptcies and international solvencies, and so on.
I have gone over those issues because it is important to understand this is a very complex area but vital in terms of making sure the environment is good for creating opportunities for business men and women to get involved in risk taking. It is also very important that we deal with the issue in terms of protecting the consumer.
The amendments we are putting forward today are a further striking of a balance between rehabilitation and obligation. In other words, the emphasis in the bill is to make sure we do everything we can to help preserve jobs and the businesses that create them. Rather than automatically having a situation in which people lose
their businesses, we create an environment in which we can actually help them through and that before they become bankrupt we take every measure possible to help them through difficult circumstances.
The amendments to the bill we are dealing with today are further refinements of the bill from 1992. This was a commitment we made. When the last bill was approved in 1992 we said that three years later we would have a review. We have listened to people from across Canada, from business groups and consumer groups. These amendments reflect the recommendations the study group proposed.
I will deal specifically with the amendments: "The maintenance of income support benefits, such as GST tax refunds, that allow families and individuals to meet their essential needs". Under the proposed legislation these benefits are exempt from seizures unintended to reimburse creditors.
"The priority status for provable claims by divorced or separated spouses for spousal or child support payments". Previously spouses were not considered creditors.
"Debtors to meet their obligations where a sexual or physical assault charge resulted in penalties". The amendments make these judgements non-dischargeable and allow support for assault victims to discontinue.
The bill also has a further refinement in the area of student loans, tighter control of premature student bankruptcies intended to discharge responsibility from student loans. In recent years the federal government has lost over $60 million per year in loan defaults as a result of early student claims of bankruptcy. The proposed changes will make student loan debts non-dischargeable for 24 months following termination of studies, recognizing that some students experience real economic difficulties. The amendments complement a variety of repayment options during that 24-month period including no repayment in situations of hardship.
Also individuals can make recompense from a portion of surplus income deemed to exceed a minimum cost of living. This provision provides for a regularized repayment schedule and encourages bankrupt individuals to make their best effort to reimburse their creditors.
Under directives from the superintendent of bankruptcy, trustees will have powers to establish rates and terms of a conditional discharge. This will save court costs and will allow for a personalized arrangement between a bankrupt individual and his or her creditors. Also spouses can make a joint consumer proposal where their financial relationship requires a co-ordinated repayment effort. These new provisions streamline the proceedings and save costs.
There is more time for creditors to review debtor proposals and a quicker response from the courts to those proposals. The old waiting period for creditors would be extended from 30 days to 45 days. The courts would have 15 days to indicate whether the proposal had been accepted as opposed to the current response period of 30 days. Otherwise the proposal would be deemed to be accepted. There is also a provision for counselling for persons related to the debtor.
That essentially represents the essence of those amendments in terms of the individual. We also have further amendments relating to businesses, farmers and fishermen. We feel confident that the House will support all of these amendments, certainly because of the participation of the advisory group.
Over the next little while the House has to deal with the whole issue of creating confidence in the marketplace. I personally do not like dealing with the whole issue of bankruptcy and insolvency. Even though the bill is there to protect and to make sure that people are treated fairly, I believe there is a very high level of anxiety in the marketplace right now. One of the things we must do as members of Parliament is make sure that we somehow work at creating an environment where the confidence level in the business community is returned to what it used to be.
It is only when people have confidence in the marketplace and confidence in themselves that they take the risk that generates production and job opportunity which eventually creates a condition in the marketplace where bankruptcies are minimized. In the last couple of years, even though bankruptcies have really remained constant, the bottom line is that we still had too many. The quarterly releases on the number of bankruptcies tend to send a shiver right through the marketplace. It is a domino effect. It has an adverse impact on the confidence of the entire marketplace.
It is hoped this bill will assist in giving individuals and business men and women every opportunity to avoid or get around having to go through that dreaded experience of bankruptcy and insolvency.
I hope we can get the support of all members for the speedy passage of this bill.
Small Business Loans Act November 28th, 1995
-and a challenger of the status quo of banks. He has always been there for small business. Speaking of the word reform, a number of us over here are quite proud to be called Liberal reformers.