Dennis Mills

[Kyoto Protocol, December 3rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has shown repeatedly his capacity to interact and work with the provinces. It has always been a friendly and constructive joust between the provinces and the national government. I think we would be doing something wrong if we did not have a joust with them. That is just the nature of the way we are governed in this country.

However it does not mean we are not listening. It does not mean that we are not taking into consideration all those valid concerns that are being presented to us, by not just the provinces but by all interest groups.

I do not understand where the idea comes from that we are not listening to those valid concerns that we design a pathway to make it better.

[Kyoto Protocol, December 3rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot figure out where the member is coming from. The fiscal track record of the government over the last nine years in putting the fiscal trajectory back on track is one of the envies of the world. I think we have been overly obsessed with the fiscal trajectory.

I want to say to the members of the Canadian Alliance that if they get caught on the wrong side of this issue there will be a heavy political price to pay with grassroots Canadians.

[Kyoto Protocol, December 3rd, 2002]

Let us talk about acid rain, which was a great example. I acknowledge the member for Fundy--Royal and the great work of the Conservative member of Parliament, Stan Darling from Muskoka--Parry Sound, when he almost singularly said that he would lead the way to get the congressmen of the United States to come onboard on the acid rain protocol.

Quite frankly, a lot of us thought that Stan Darling was just going uphill with grease on his shoes but, God bless him, he mobilized Americans. He mobilized the grassroots in the United States to force their congressmen and congresswomen to say, “yes, this acid rain protocol is important”. The results are a magnificent achievement for both of our countries together.

I believe there have been ample precedents for the mobilization of not just the will, the activism and the ingenuity of our country to take up this Kyoto challenge, but we have precedents: the 6% and 5% program, Stan Darling's acid rain protocol. I believe Canadians are waiting for us to lead on this in a very direct way. I do not think Canadians support the coalition of the antis, the anti-Kyoto crowd or group, wherever they are. I think they want us to come together and get this done.

A more fundamental issue is at stake here. It has to do with our sovereignty and our own self-confidence. As the House knows, in the last few years the foreign control and foreign infiltration of this country has just gone so high it is right off the Richter scale. If we are not careful there could be a tie-in to sort of slowing us down on this issue. We had better keep our heads up and appeal to Canadians to use their ingenuity.

I want to close by using an example of TeleTrips, a Canadian software that monitors men and women who work at home one day a week. It shows what is saved in terms of travelling on the highways and how it cuts back on waste and emissions. The United States is already doing this in five major cities and it is saving billions and billions of dollars a year in terms of its environmental costs and damage. We have not even started here. Therefore in many respects the Americans are ahead of us in working on some of these targets.

As my colleague from Don Valley West said earlier, we have green technology that is the envy of the world. If there was ever a moment to celebrate and support our technology, it is by getting our technology activated on this particular challenge. We know, from previous experiences, that all Canadians will rally.

[Kyoto Protocol, December 3rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I feel privileged to have an opportunity to speak in the debate.

I want to go back to an evening I had 14 months ago. A group of us were in Toronto sitting around and listening to the former president of the United States, Bill Clinton, talk about his life as president. He decided at the end of the evening that he would take questions. A young man in the back of the room stood and asked, “Mr. Clinton, if you had an opportunity to be the president again, what would the number one issue be on your agenda?” Mr. Clinton said, “There is only one issue. It is climate change and, as a North American society, we have to mobilize and get involved in doing what is right for future generations”.

When the Prime Minister announced that we as a House of Commons would be voting for the ratification of Kyoto, it will go down as one of his boldest moves as a leader. I will tell members why the Prime Minister has the confidence that he is doing the right thing.

I happened to be around here in 1983 as a young assistant when we had inflation of 13% and unemployment of 12%. It was a very scary time to be in government. At that particular moment in time, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau stood in the House and announced a wage and price restraint program only for the Government of Canada. Over a two year period we were going to lead by example in restraining wages and prices. He appealed to Canadians to join in the exercise on a voluntary basis for the good of the entire country. I remember vividly the opposition at that time saying that this would never happen, that it was just a public relations gimmick. That is what the opposition said.

The people of Canada rallied. Small business, large business and unions from coast to coast involved themselves in the great mobilization of the national will of the country. Within a two and a half year period we reversed the trajectory of wages and prices spiralling out of control, which were causing enormous damage to the economy. It was the public will. It was not through regulation. It was the ingenuity of individual men and women who got involved in this national exercise.

I believe that same quality and capacity of ingenuity exists today. We do not have to have the plan in a definitive way today for what we will be doing for the next 10 years. We never had a perfect plan when we gave the Government of Canada support for Spar Aerospace in 1980 to make a space arm, but through research and ingenuity, two and a half years later we had one of the most proud moments in Canadian technology when that space arm opened in outer space.

[Supply, November 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member for Acadie—Bathurst. However, if words came along that could even improve on those recommendations, we would be irresponsible to ignore them.

[Supply, November 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know how snafu translates, but the bottom line of today's debate is that the chamber has spoken. I have listened to every speech today. We are all in accord. It is now up to the executive of the government to do what it has to do to fix the problem.

[Supply, November 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I have not encountered a single member of Parliament on this side of the House or that side of the House who is not in accord with the member's motion.

I am not a technical interpreter of the motion, but sometimes motions are put forward that may need technical amendments in order to get the job done that really needs to be done. I know there have been some discussions that some technical changes to the member's motion may be needed in order for us to get the job done that we want done. I am praying that the member is receptive to that. I do not see any resistance on this side of the House to what has to be done.

The number of people who are affected is really not an issue. If it were only one person, we would still have the duty to amend the law.

[Supply, November 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, once again I would like to acknowledge the leadership of the member for Halifax in putting forward today's motion. Also I thank my colleague for giving me the opportunity to share some of her time. I would also like to acknowledge her leadership on the subcommittee for the disabled.

The first week in September I was sitting in my constituency office on the Danforth. A young fellow who has worked with me in the last three election campaigns on my phone bank rolled into my office in his wheelchair. Johnny has no legs. He said, “Dennis, guess what I have here. I have a letter that says I am no longer eligible for my disability credit”. I said that it must have been some kind of a joke or a computer glitch, that it was a no-brainer and I would get it fixed in a second. I took the letter and sure enough it said he would have to reapply and it went on and on with a long list of things.

I immediately called the office of the Minister of Finance and said it was crazy and that they would have to get on it. The letter was real. I was shocked. I followed through with a letter to the Minister of Finance and I received a response that the law of the land had to be amended because in fact there were some loopholes in the current law. I was shocked when I received that response.

The very first week we were back in the House the issue was raised by a member of the New Democratic Party. In fact I responded to the member by saying that this was something that must be dealt with immediately. I made a commitment that I would be pushing and following through on this. Now it is almost three months later.

I can remember a few months ago when all the Olympic athletes we cheered for in Salt Lake City were ushered into the House of Commons, every one of our athletes who won a medal. I remember how we all stood and cheered for about 10 minutes because of their accomplishments.

In order to get the point across here, we may have to usher in a couple of hundred people who are visibly disabled who have been disallowed their disability credit. This is such an obvious discrimination against the most disadvantaged people in our country. For the life of me I cannot understand why the Department of Finance and the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency do not just lock themselves in a room and design the policy that fixes this immediately.

Many years ago I had the opportunity to work across the street in the Langevin Block in Prime Minister Trudeau's office. We coined an expression in those days. It was called the MAD treatment, maximum administrative delay. We would use that expression when we had a political priority that we wanted implemented but the officials would give us the MAD treatment, maximum administrative delay. I think this Parliament, this House of Commons is getting the MAD treatment on this file.

It is pretty basic to me. I will be supporting the New Democratic motion this afternoon, or whenever the vote takes place. I believe that to create any kind of a misperception that we are doing anything other than supporting those people in our country who are most disadvantaged disgraces this chamber.

[Supply, November 19th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, through you, I will tell the parliamentary secretary that I do not think that there is a more important issue in front of us today.

My question is how quickly will we get a resolution on this critical issue?

[Supply, November 19th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I acknowledge the parliamentary secretary's litany of all the good things the government has done for the disabled over the last three years. The reality is that the CCRA has interpreted a law here in a way where there are 30,000-plus disabled people who right now are really getting screwed.