Dick Proctor

[Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, May 26th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I too am pleased to rise on this emergency debate on BSE. It is my understanding that, as the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food noted in his remarks, this is more an information session than a debate. I appreciate what I have heard so far from all the speakers.

I thought I would add to that by talking a bit about mad cow and the bovine industry in Canada and then turn my thoughts to the ramifications on Canadians and the industry; some regretful look at cuts to federal inspection at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency which occurred about a decade ago and some of the fallout from that perhaps; the meat inspection system as it is today because it does vary from province to province; and finally some interim steps that I think ought to be considered by the government opposite.

Before I begin, I might note, as a number of Canadians are concerned about the diminishing amount of green spaces in Canada, they would really like to see the House of Commons tonight and the number of green spaces available here.

The epidemic of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE, or mad cow disease, has been spreading steadily in Europe for the past 20 years. The discovery of a case of mad cow disease six days ago in Alberta is now testing the measures introduced over the past decade or so to prevent the introduction and propagation of the disease in Canada.

Mad cow disease is a transmissible, a TSE which attacks the central nervous system of cattle. Other types of TSE include scrapie in sheep, chronic wasting disease in deer and elk and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD in human beings. There is no treatment for the disease and there is no vaccine against it. The exact cause is unknown but as we heard, for those of us who were listening to As It Happens yesterday, it appears to be associated with the presence of an abnormal protein called a prion.

It is increasingly agreed that a new form of CJD identified in Great Britain in recent years could be caused by human exposure to BSE or mad cow. The exact origins are still unknown of this disease. An independent study which evaluated the British government's response to the appearance of the disease summed up current scientific knowledge about it.

The report rejected the initial hypothesis that BSE was transmitted by sheep with scrapie, instead suggesting that the disease broke out in the 1970s following a genetic mutation of a single cow. The carcass of the animal apparently entered the animal food chain because it was common at that time to add meat products, in particular rendered products from ruminants, which are identified as cattle, sheep, goats, deer, elk and bison, to cattle feed. The disease then spread in the late seventies and early eighties because of the use of such feed.

The protein that is linked to BSE is very resistant to heat and other normal procedures for inactivating disease causing agents. This means that it may not be destroyed in the rendering process which processes carcasses at an extremely high temperature.

In 1988, 15 years ago, Great Britain banned the use of rendered material in animal feeds, thus removing potentially contaminated material from the food chain. As a result, the number of BSE cases reported in Great Britain had been dropping progressively since the winter of 1992-93.

The interval between an animal's exposure to BSE and the appearance of symptoms varies on average between three and six years. The animal that was identified in Alberta was apparently six years old. Animals with BSE show a number of different symptoms including nervous or aggressive behaviour, abnormal posture, lack of coordination or difficulty in rising from a lying position. The symptoms may last for a period of two to six months before the animal actually succumbs to the disease.

The first case of BSE diagnosed in Canada was a beef cow that had been imported from Great Britain in 1987 at the age of six months. The second case was discovered, as I and others have noted, on May 20 last week in a cow from an Alberta ranch. Obviously the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is currently investigating how this second case came to be.

Following the discovery of the first case of mad cow in Canada 10 years ago, the animal was destroyed and the government attempted to trace every other head of cattle imported from the United Kingdom between the years 1982 and 1990, the date at which cattle imports from the U.K. were banned.

According to a report by the European Commission's scientific steering committee, Canada imported 160 head of cattle from the U.K. in that eight year period. Of these 160 animals, 53 had been slaughtered and entered the food chain, 16 had died and had been sent for rendering, and 11 were exported out of the country. Of the remaining 80, 79 were traced and withdrawn from production, culled and then incinerated, buried or returned to the U.K. This means that 70 head of cattle that could not be traced at that time either entered the human or animal food chain, to the best of the CFIA's knowledge.

That is a history of what has happened until now. Following the case in 1993, BSE in Canada now is a reportable disease and every suspected case must be reported to a federal veterinarian. There is also a surveillance program under which any cows showing possible symptoms of the disease must be tested.

Since 2001, in the last two years the Canadian cattle identification program for cattle and bison has backed up this eradication policy and the program makes it possible to follow the movements of individual animals from the herd of origin to the slaughterhouse.

Prior to 1997, there was no restriction on the use of meat meal or bone meal in cattle feed. Since 1997 it has been forbidden to feed ruminants with mammalian meat meal or bone meal except for meal made exclusively from pork or horse meat. Meal prepared from fish or poultry is still permitted for cattle feed. Animal meal is still permitted for feeding poultry, swine and pets. No other BSE specific regulatory measures apply to rendering plants.

Canada also controls imports of products assessed as having a high risk of introducing BSE into Canada. We allow, for example, imports of live ruminants and their meat and meat products only from countries that Canada considers BSE free. According to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Canada has not imported ruminant derived meat meal or bone meal from Europe for the purpose of livestock feeding for more than a decade.

In December 2000, the CFIA suspended imports of rendered animal material of any species from any country that Canada did not recognize as BSE free. Canada is also proceeding with import controls on animal products and byproducts from countries where cases of BSE have been confirmed among non-imported animals. These animal products are evaluated on a case by case basis.

It is still too soon to say how a second case of mad cow disease has occurred. That is indeed what the CFIA inspectors and federal veterinarians are trying to do as they examine the animals that were slaughtered as a result of this one positive case coming to light. They believe that two options are possible. Either the animal was imported from a risk zone and contracted the disease before arriving in Canada, which is a theory that the CFIA appears to have rejected at the present time, or more likely, the animal, whether imported or born in Canada, may have contracted the disease here by consuming feed containing contaminated animal protein.

Whichever hypothesis turns out to be correct, the appearance of a case of BSE raises questions about the measures in place in Canada to restrict imports of animals from risk zones and to prevent contamination of feed intended for cattle as well as monitoring its use.

The ban on Canadian beef exports that began as soon as the positive identification for that black Angus cow in Alberta last week is significant. The Americans of course closed their border, and New Zealand, Japan and other countries did so as well. That of course is having a significant negative impact on a variety of people in the cattle industry. Certainly slaughterhouses and auction houses are cancelling sales, as we have heard this evening. The whole system is being backed up. We export, depending on which province, maybe 30% or 40% of our cattle, most of them to the United States, so a ban at the border will have a very negative impact on all of that.

In my own riding of Palliser, we have a slaughterhouse at Moose Jaw. The Minister of Labour in that province has written to the human resources minister here asking that Ottawa waive the two week waiting period with respect to employment insurance benefits for any workers whose livelihoods are affected by this mad cow disease and its outbreak.

There are a number of people who are impacted and it is something over which they have no control. In this case some people are on voluntary holidays or layoff for a couple of weeks until we see how long it is going to take for the tests to be concluded and the border to reopen. We are encouraged when we hear the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food say that his counterpart in the United States, Ann Veneman, wants that border open just as badly as he does and we do.

Byron Dorgan, our favourite American senator, and that is said tongue in cheek, says our inspection system was either negligent or incompetent to have waited more than three months to analyze a diseased cow. In fact, it is important to note that this animal was slaughtered or taken to a provincial plant and was put down. It is important to stress that it was not put into the food system, the human food chain. I think perhaps there is some criticism due for the fact that it took three months to analyze and confirm after this animal was killed that it indeed did have BSE or mad cow disease, but it is also important to recognize at the same time that we have had significant concerns in the meat packing, slaughtering and animal industry with CWD in deer and elk. I believe the preoccupation at that plant and that test ground has been to test the elk and the deer heads, and they finally got around to testing this black Angus animal.

Two years ago, the Auditor General reported that CFIA lacked the staff it needed to fulfill its mandate and that some files and problems had been neglected for long periods of time. There are veterinarians who are saying now that the CFIA is not able to keep up to other jurisdictions and does need more resources. I think those are some of the hard questions we need to look at in the wake of what has transpired over the past week.

One of the big questions in this case is whether the diseased cow ate contaminated food. There are those who say it is simply unsafe to render animals and to feed animals to other animals because that can recycle infectious agents. Again, those are important questions for the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food and indeed for all Canadians to be satisfied on.

I mentioned the federal food inspection cuts. They occurred in the 1995 budget when the government created a single food inspection agency to collapse the activities of three departments, Agriculture and Agri-Food, Health Canada and Fisheries and Oceans Canada, into one. The single agency was supposed to facilitate collaboration and help speed up work toward harmonizing standards among federal, provincial and municipal governments, but it had to do so with 44 million fewer dollars per year and 600 fewer employees than the three had prior to the amalgamation.

Indeed, according to a release from the then agriculture minister's office, which I will quote:

Commencing in 1998-99, total annual savings of $44 million are anticipated from the elimination of duplication and overlap following the creation of a single food inspection agency for the Government of Canada... it is anticipated the reductions may lead to the elimination of an additional 600 FTEs (Full-Time Equivalents--the service of an individual for one year) by 1998-99.

Those are some of the concerns that may be out there as a result of possible cutbacks. Again, we need to make sure that food safety is number one and we have the resources to ensure it is carried out.

At our agriculture and agri-food committee back in February we had some presentations on food and the slaughter of animals. I have looked at my notes from Dr. John Taylor in Manitoba and want to put some of his thoughts on the record because I thought what he had to say was of interest. He said in testimony in February that in Canada we have five levels of meat inspection: first, the federal system; second, a joint federal-provincial system; third, a provincial mandatory system; fourth, a provincial voluntary system; and finally and perhaps of most concern in some instances, we have no inspections at all, according to Dr. Taylor.

He said:

Even among the provincial governments we have some different inspection requirements... If you go back about five years, ministers of agriculture discussed a national standard for meat inspection. They concluded that they didn't want anything that was too stringent because it would have a significant negative impact on small plants in rural parts of the provinces and territories across Canada.

Given the very diverse standards, major driving forces for national standards created by international and domestic trade agreements, and market forces driven by retail chains that want a higher food safety standard and are starting to limit their purchases to federally inspected meat, the federal government and the provinces and territories developed the national meat and poultry regulations and code. The provinces and territories expected that this would allow for the interprovincial shipment of meat.

It has not done that yet and in light of this positive test for mad cow disease it is probably a good thing that it did not, but I think this will probably serve as a wake-up call for Canadians and for people in the food inspection business because of the dramatic impact that one hopefully isolated incident has caused already in the past six days in this country. It will serve as a wake-up call to ensure that we continue to have a very high secure standard of health safety from coast to coast to coast and that in fact the provinces and territories as well as the federal government have those kinds of securities in place in their slaughterhouses.

We can do more exporting internationally if we bring some of our provincial plants up to national standards. I think of the bison industry, which is a growing and important part of the agricultural industry in western Canada. The industry would love to be able to ship more of its product interprovincially and indeed internationally, but those animals have to be slaughtered at a federal plant. If we could get some of the provincial plants up to national standards, it would alleviate that problem significantly.

In conclusion, the other point I want to close on is the fact that this is having a significant impact on the ranchers, on farmers, and indeed on the folks who work in our packing plants, our packing house workers. I think there should be some short term programs put in place, such as waiving the two week waiting period for employment insurance benefits for those who pay into the system, for example, to assist them with putting food on their tables while these tests are carried out and finalized and we get the borders open again.

[Agriculture, May 26th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, workers in crisis deserve more than a prime ministerial happy meal. SARS has again hit Toronto, with the hospitality industry already in crisis and reeling from the first one.

The Liberal response: Not a penny in compensation for the hospitality sector, just an ad campaign that apparently does not even mention the word Toronto in the ad.

Why will the Prime Minister spend $100 million to glorify the past when he will not spend one penny to protect hospitality workers as a result of these emergencies?

[Agriculture, May 26th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, besides health concerns, Canadians see crisses like mad cow and SARS as big time job losses in the country. Our Prime Minister may see crisis as an excuse for dining out, but putting food on the table is a real concern for families even if it is only a photo opportunity for him, particularly for meat plant workers who cannot afford even a temporary loss of work.

The government has ignored the hospitality workers in Toronto with the EI benefit program. I am asking if the Prime Minister will deliver for meat plant workers and waive the waiting period as a result of the mad cow layoffs.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2003, May 14th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I partially answered that question but let me try it again in another way.

Had I been in a position to do so, I personally would not have implemented the $100 billion in tax cuts that the member's party wanted to make because I think they were very unfair tax cuts. They went to a demographic group in our society that did not need it as much as folks at the bottom needed it. I would not have done that. I believe $100 billion would have gone a long way toward correcting some of the other ills that I spoke about earlier in my response to the parliamentary secretary.

There are other areas I could comment on but I will leave it at that.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2003, May 14th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I did take a couple of notes during the member's speech to start this debate during which he bragged about health care, child poverty, cities, tax cuts and the homeless.

What are we talking about on health care? Is the government proud of the fact that the federal contribution to health care has gone from 13¢ to 14¢? The government is still the junior partner. It is no wonder Ralph Klein thumbs his nose at the health care system in this country. It is because Liberal members are not paying their freight.

On the child poverty issue, I have to refer the member to the stats. Statistics Canada has said that child poverty has remained relatively stable over the past 10 years. The government may think it is doing great things in terms of its various programs, but those things are not being borne out by statistics from its own departmental officials. The $150 million in infrastructure that the Federation of Canadian Municipalities have would build about four meters of highway in Saskatchewan.

Does the member want to know where I would save some money? I would save money on tax cuts. If the $100 billion that was announced on the eve of the 2000 election campaign had been directed to some of the social programs that it should have been directed to, it would have done a lot more, but it was a response to the Canadian Alliance at the time and an issue with which to go to the Canadian public.

What has happened on the homeless file, aside from the fact that the government has recently changed ministers in that area? We do not see any improvement. One need only take a walk in the Bytown area and look at the number of people with their caps out and their hands out looking for a donation to buy a cup of coffee. This used to be quite foreign. This was not something we encountered in larger cities but, unfortunately, it is becoming much more common. I think the parliamentary secretary needs to acknowledge some of these shortfalls.

Yes, a lot more should be done. I hope the government will do that in a future budget. The New Democratic Party, like other opposition parties, does participate in budget consultations. We hear what Canadians have to say when we go across the country. We are often disappointed when we see how little of that is reflected when the following February rolls around and the budget is introduced.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2003, May 14th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-28, the budget implementation act. Lest anybody be surprised, members of the New Democratic Party will be standing in clear opposition to the Liberal budget of 2003.

The Liberal spin doctors, and they have many of them across the way, have tried to portray this as a social spending budget. In fact, the government did try to do two things in the budget.

First, Ottawa tried to replace some of what it hacked and slashed over the past decade, but it is worth remembering that program spending in the budget taken as a percentage of our gross national product is far below historical levels. It is roughly at the levels that it was at in the 1940s, the years of Mackenzie King, Babe Ruth and Rocket Richard. Our level of spending is stuck there and for that we can thank in large part the former finance minister and the man who would become the next Prime Minister.

Social historians will note that the changes after the second world war were very profound. When Johnny came marching home from the war, he wanted to ensure that there were significant changes made in the way the country would function in the future after battling and defeating Hitler and Nazism. We had the growth of the welfare state in the fifties and sixties. What we are seeing subsequently is the pull back from that and it is impacting negatively on our society as a result. It is not just New Democrats who are saying that.

Yesterday Statistics Canada published its final report on the census data for the year 2001. The headline in today's news media says, “1990s a good decade for the rich: Statistics Canada”.The lead paragraph said:

The rich got richer in the 1990s, while everyone else's before-tax income stayed just about the same, as did the number of children living in low income families, Statistics Canada said on Tuesday.

According to Statistics Canada there are more than eight million families in Canada and their average income went up over the decade by the magnificent sum of $500 on average, about $50 a year. Members opposite are congratulating and patting themselves on the back about what a wonderful job they are doing. But, on the other hand, families in the top 10% of the income pyramid made 28% of all the money earned in the year 2000, and that was up from a decade earlier. Hence, the rich get richer headline.

The poorest 10% of families accounted for a mere 2% of the income. They remained in the same rut they were in a decade ago. Many of the poor people are single parents and 17% of seniors live in low income situations. They are the people who built the country and one in six of them is forced to live below the poverty line. That is a shame and something that none of us should accept. Even more shameful is that 18% of children in Canada were living in low income families in the year 2000.

We all heard the bold promises from the previous Conservative government of Brian Mulroney and of the current Liberal government about how they were going to do away with child poverty by the year 2000. The Ed Broadbent amendment was introduced and passed unanimously in November 1989, yet the number of poor children in Canada is almost exactly where it was 20 years ago in 1981. We are simply treading water.

Food banks are the only ones in the country where the branches are growing rapidly. We see them from coast to coast. With the resources that we have, it is an abomination that it continues to be the case in a country as rich and diverse as Canada.

The New Democratic Party believes the true test of any economy is how well it distributes the benefits of citizenship and by that measure the government and the budget do not pass the test.

In the 1940s there was somebody who said it slightly differently and much better than I just said it and that was Tommy Douglas. He said that the true test of a society is not the height of its skyscrapers but how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. I repeat again that on that basis the government and this budget do not pass the test.

I am not alone in my observations. The Catholic bishops of Quebec released their annual statement a couple of weeks ago expressing concern about the number of jobs in Canada that are part time, short term and insecure.

The bishops of Quebec said that insecurity in the lives of workers erodes their dignity and turns the human person into just another marketable commodity. The bishops added that the rights and dignity of workers would be better protected if more of them were able to belong to trade unions. I wholeheartedly concur with that.

What has the government and the budget done for workers? I acknowledge that it does reduce very slightly the cost of employment insurance premiums. This is a small measure when we consider that the government has accumulated a surplus of almost $50 billion in the EI fund over the years. We all know that the government has fought the deficit and paid for its massive tax cuts by raising money through workers' employment insurance premiums and the payroll taxes of employers. Both of those groups pay into the fund but the government does not. It just directs where the money will go.

Let me turn to the issue of students and post-secondary education. We used to call them the workers of tomorrow. In many cases they are not that any longer because they are working at part time jobs as they continue with their studies to try and help defray the high costs and the growing costs of post-secondary education.

The Canadian Association of University Teachers predicts that the funding available for post-secondary education will fall dramatically from $2.8 billion in the current fiscal year to $1.8 billion next year. That is placing significant strain on students and their families.

The federal cutbacks in post-secondary education in recent years have had the effect of driving up both tuition fees and student debt levels. Average student debt when the government came to power in 1993 was $13,000. Today it is over $21,000. Tuition fees in short have exceeded inflation six times between 1991 and 2001.

As I indicated, it is not just the students, but their families as well. The Canada student loans program requires parents to contribute a portion of family income, if they earn over a certain level, to their children's education until four years following graduation from high school. That amount is deducted from the student's assessed loan amount.

The required parental contribution is based on a moderate standard of living, determined by a formula that includes family size, income and the province in which the student resides. By way of example, a Saskatchewan family of three with an income of $50,000 would be expected to contribute between $220 and $230 a week to their child's education, or about $5,500 for a 24 week school year.

Obviously, moderate income families have to make large sacrifices to help their children through school. Some students simply do not go on to school or they delay their education. In fact, the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation published a study recently which stated that only 3% of Canadian families are able to provide the level of funding that is required under the Canada student loans program.

This is clearly not working. It is bad public policy and it is certainly inequitable. In talking with some university presidents, they have indicated to me that they are concerned about whether or not children from low and moderate income families will indeed be able to continue their education, or whether we are going to revert to the 1940s and earlier when it was only the children of wealthier families who had the wherewithal and were able to go on to a post-secondary education.

For our part, the New Democratic Party believes that we need to reduce the cost of post-secondary education by reducing tuition fees and relieving student debt by having the federal government assume interest costs on student loans throughout the life of the loan.

We should certainly eliminate all taxes on scholarships, grants and bursaries. As I have said before in this place, if we can eliminate taxes on lottery winnings, surely to goodness we can do it on scholarships, grants and bursaries.

As the agriculture critic for my party, let me turn for a moment to that issue and say how next to impossible it is to critique the government's budget when it comes to agriculture. It is not because it is a great budget. It is for another reason and let me explain.

The Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food has requested about $1.3 billion for the current fiscal year, but the Minister of Agriculture has told us that he will be seeking another $1.4 billion during the year to implement the agricultural policy framework. This is absolutely astounding. There is $1.3 billion in the budget, but we already know from the Minister of Agriculture that he is going to come back and ask for more money than is currently in the budget. How in the world can we debate and discuss a budget like that? Try to run a household or a farm in that kind of scenario, and one would not last very long.

Looking beyond all of that, let us say it is $1.4 billion plus $1.3 billion equals $2.7 billion. The amount of $2.7 billion in agriculture in this current fiscal year represents about one-half of what the federal government spent on agriculture just 12 years ago. Let the spin doctors try to turn that dross into gold. Spending is $2.7 billion this year. It was $4.3 billion in 1991-92. Spending on agriculture as a percentage of total government spending has dropped by half, from 2.8% in 1991-92 to just 1.4% this year.

Agriculture Canada reported last month that realized net farm income will fall by a full 19% this year and by more than 50% in Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan farm leader Terry Hildebrandt describes this as devastating. At a time of great difficulty on the farm, one would think that Ottawa would help out, but it is clear that the new agricultural policy framework has been designed to limit what Ottawa spends on agriculture.

It was with great fanfare that the Prime Minister announced the new agricultural policy framework just south of here last June. It was to include new safety net programs to protect farmers against sharp drops in income.

We are now a month and a half into the new fiscal year and there are still no new programs in place. It is absolutely unbelievable. Farmers rely on a clear policy framework as an informal collateral to take out spring operating loans from banks and credit unions. This year, incredibly, they are going to these financial institutions with empty hands.

Quite simply, at a time when farmers' incomes are under severe stress and they need a safety net, the federal government is proposing a new set of programs designed to reduce its commitment to farm families in perpetuity. We have to ask why the income of Canadian farmers is taking such a hit. One reason certainly is the massive American and European subsidies that are driving down international prices for farm products. That has a direct impact on our own products.

Canadian farmers are suffering trade injury. It is estimated to be worth about $1.3 billion a year. Although the agriculture minister basically accepts that figure, he went out of his way last June when he was unveiling his new policy to say that this new APF did not relate to trade injury. He knows it is a problem but stubbornly insists that the Canadian government will not do anything about it.

The government, in our opinion, must protect the incomes of Canadian farmers and that means acknowledging the impact of those subsidies. Ottawa needs to consult openly with farm organizations and provincial governments to provide new safety net programs, safety net programs that work and are acceptable to the producers and the industry overall.

Housing and infrastructure is something the parliamentary secretary boasted about. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities said that it needed about $2 billion a year in infrastructure investment and we got the magnificent sum of $150 million in new money. It is simply not enough.

I want to talk about another issue related to the state that Canadian families and working Canadians find themselves in. It is the whole issue of work. There was an astonishing article recently. I spoke earlier about part time work and insecure work, but full time employees are literally working themselves to death. In fact, North Americans now work 1,978 hours on average annually, which is 350 hours more than western Europeans work. If we do the math, we will find that 350 hours means that North American workers who are employed full time generally are working nine weeks more than their counterparts in western Europe.

It is no wonder parents do not have time to look after their children, to help out in the community or perhaps to take care of older parents. Work and consumption have become the focus at the expense of everything else in our society. Surely all of us here need to find ways to encourage Canadians to lead more balanced lives.

Today when productivity is several times what it was in the far-off 1940s, workers find themselves unable to complete the work in less than 40 hours per week. Of course, the Ontario government has fixed that by saying that it is not allowing any overtime until someone has worked 60 hours a week. As a result of this, the poor are earning less in real terms.

Working long hours has many other effects besides the impact directly on families. It impacts our health care system to a significant extent. Stress is the leading cause of heart disease and overwork impacts and causes stress. The consumption of fast foods results in greater obesity and the onset of adult diabetes.

In fact, tests show that the productivity of a worker declines dramatically in the final hours of a very long work shift. With regard to the 12 hour shifts that nurses put in, I think studies show that those individuals are not nearly as productive in the last two or three hours of the shift as they were in the first two or three hours.

In this wonderful job of being a member of Parliament, I have had the opportunity to travel a little with committees. When I am in Europe I do notice that Europeans seem to live a simpler, more balanced life. They do that because they work fewer hours. People who happen to be in a city in Europe on a Sunday will notice that most of the stores are not open. People are not seen running around to supermarkets to do their shopping. The staff are enjoying a day off, a day with their families, a day to hang out. For example, 29% of Norwegians spend less time at work than their North American counterparts, but their average income is actually only 16% less on average.

This issue is going to be of greater concern as we go along. Canadians are feeling very tired with the rat race they are in. They recognize it is leading to debilitating family relationships and is having an impact. I think we are going to hear more about people taking back their time and trying to lead a more balanced life.

The parliamentary secretary said he does not like personal debt or government debt. However, he did not have any comment about the debt that families in the country are facing with credit cards and things like high tuition fees which have an impact.

We in the New Democratic Party acknowledge and celebrate Canada's wealth and promise, but we insist that the government employ that wealth and our many advantages in the best interests of all citizens. We submit that this budget simply does not do that and consequently, we are opposed to it.

[Competition Act, May 9th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-249, an act to amend the Competition Act. I want to congratulate the member for Pickering—Ajax—Uxbridge for his diligent work in bringing this particular private member's bill forward.

Bill C-249 is about the balance of power between companies and consumers, big people and little people. It seeks to amend the Competition Act to clarify the powers of the competition tribunal when making orders in the case of a merger that would, if approved, create a monopoly or near monopoly situation at the expense and detriment of consumers and competition in the marketplace.

The bill would have the effect of giving the competition tribunal more flexibility in approving or disapproving mergers. It is the opinion of the member who put the bill forward that section 96 of the current Competition Act is outdated and needs to be amended to protect consumers against mergers that would allow monopolies or near monopolies with all of the negative consequences that flow from that.

We in the Prairies know a little something about monopoly or near monopoly situations because prairie history is rife with protests that have occurred as a result of the stranglehold that the big railroads and grain companies have had, at present and in the past, over our farming communities and other primary shippers. That is why I was particularly intrigued to hear the member from the Alliance talking against this bill. The Alliance purports to speak for western Canadians, but is sadly out of touch on this particular piece of legislation.

That near monopoly on the Prairies still applies to a great extent and our farmers continue to pay the price. They are seeing freight rates on grain rise dramatically, whether it is grain companies, equipment manufacturers, the people who produce tractors, combines and sprayers, et cetera, or the commercial fertilizer companies. These situations have arisen mainly because Ottawa has walked away from its responsibility to regulate these near monopolies in the public interest.

Recently, our smaller cities have also suffered as a result of the merger of Air Canada and Canadian. In that transaction Air Canada argued that it would make the airline industry more efficient. However, the question always remains, efficient for whom, for the company or for the passengers and consumers the company is supposed to be serving?

In the 36th Parliament we had to deal with the threat of mergers among the big banks that claimed this would create new efficiencies. Sadly, that issue may not be very far away from being back in the House again. The question remains, efficient for whom, the bank or the elderly pensioner whose local branch is closing; the bank or the teller who loses his or her job? Our party and caucus was in the forefront of the campaign, including my colleague from Regina—Qu'Appelle, against bank mergers, and it was a campaign that succeeded, at least temporarily.

I wish to point out to the member proposing Bill C-249 that I do not see in his literature or testimony before committee any reference to workers. He talks about consumers, and rightly so, but every large merger almost inevitably means lost jobs and that has a negative effect on individuals, families and communities.

Bill C-249 has been before the industry, science and technology committee. One of the witnesses who appeared before that committee on this bill was Konrad von Finckenstein, the Commissioner of Competition. The commissioner said in testimony that he believed the bill before us today was, “a workable alternative to the status quo”. I interpret this to mean that the competition commissioner thinks that the current bill is too merger friendly and that he would welcome an opportunity to modernize the legislation around the Competition Act.

Obviously he believes that Bill C-249 would be helpful in that regard because it would ensure that consumers and not just companies must benefit from any gains and efficiencies being predicted due to business mergers.

There is no unanimity in the business sector. I note that the Canadian Federation of Independent Business does support the bill, while the Canadian Chamber of Commerce does not. That again may speak to market solutions and the Canadian Alliance refusing to support this bill.

I suspect that the Canadian Federation of Independent Business is opposed to this because it speaks for smaller businesses likely to be harmed by big business mergers, while the chamber speaks mainly for big business in Canada.

In summary, I believe Bill C-249 would improve the Competition Act by protecting people against the most cynical and voracious business mergers. I am happy to support the legislation.

[Public Safety Act, 2002, May 9th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I too am pleased to rise in the House and also share with my colleague from the Bloc, who just took her place, the concern and the fear we have with Bill C-17.

We know Bill C-17 is the son and daughter of Bill C-42 and Bill C-55 respectively. It is a public safety act. Some people would claim it to be a public relations act. We are concerned because the sweeping powers that were in the earlier bill are in this reincarnation, a sense that government, officials and authority can do whatever they want, whenever they choose. The privacy commissioner says that the police have all the powers they require now to arrest and detain people whom they suspect, and therefore this is not necessary.

Some of us lived through the War Measures Act. Some of us were at the Quebec summit in Quebec City in 2001. To me, people who are proposing this bill seem to be saying that security trumps privacy, and we have some grave concerns about that.

The member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine commented on public opinion polls which said that Canadians in the aftermath of September 11 were prepared to forsake some of their privacy for additional security. I would say respectfully back to her that for a lot of hard-working Canadians that may in fact be a reality. However it is even more incumbent on those who Canadians elect to places and chambers, like the House of Commons, the legislators and parliamentarians, to ensure that our safety and security laws are there, but that they are there in balance to ensure guaranteed privacy when and where Canadians need it.

On the bill itself, because there are a number of different acts that roll into this legislation, the transport minister's regulations concerning the Aeronautics Act, making powers concerning aviation safety, I concede are better defined than they were in Bill C-42. The lack of specifics in this area was one of the concerns we had about the original bill, specifically our transport critic, the member for Churchill. Therefore we regard this as a mild improvement.

As well, in a feeble attempt to address the concerns of the privacy commissioner, the clause allowing RCMP designated officers to access passenger information to identify those individuals with outstanding arrest warrants has been removed and the bill would now only allow RCMP and CSIS officials to access passenger information for national or transportation security purposes. This too is an improvement. However they may still use this information to pursue individuals with outstanding arrest warrants if the crimes they are wanted for carry a potential sentence of five years or greater.

The privacy commissioner has stated publicly that this change is insufficient to protect the right of Canadians to privacy. In our opinion there are still insufficient safeguards in this current legislation to prevent intrusion, particularly since this information can be shared with American customs officials who currently have a racial profiling policy.

Let me just stop there and, as an aside, tell the House that I recently travelled in company with the secretary treasurer of the Canadian Labour Congress, who is of Arab descent and who travels quite extensively in his job. According to Hassan Yussuff, when he travels through the United States and looks at the people who are pulled aside at the airports for particular and thorough security checks, it is always people of Muslim and Arab descent.

The House heard from my colleague earlier today, the member for Vancouver East. She outlined the concern expressed by the Muslim organization, COMO, with regard to this.

We not only want to protect and ensure that citizens in Canada and people who are travelling here are protected, we also want to ensure they are not singled out, which seems to be the case in some other countries.

One of our major points of opposition to the bill was the clause concerning the military security zones, and it has been repealed. I congratulate the government. In its place the government will use existing legislation to establish controlled access zones to protect naval vessels at three ports: Halifax on the east coast, and Esquimalt and Nanoose Bay on the west coast. These three locations already have military facilities.

On the interim order powers, it now requires an order to be approved by the governor in council within 14 days, not 90 days. It must also be tabled in Parliament within 15 days regardless of whether Parliament is in session. We do not oppose these changes but they are rather insignificant and, in our opinion, do not address sufficiently the concerns we have about potential abuse in this area.

With regard to the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority Act, this act received royal assent after Bill C-42 was tabled. This is updated to reflect that the act was passed. If the government had its act together this section would have appeared in Bill C-42 as a conditional amendment. The fact that it did not, further underlines how the government seems to have been making up its security policy on the fly for many months now.

The Marine Transportation Security Act is another area that was not contained in Bill C-42. It would have empowered the government to contribute funds to port authorities to help pay for new security measures, something that our caucus supports.

The Criminal Code broadens the scope and we will continue to support that clause of the bill. We can also give our support to a couple of other minor clauses.

I would like to go back and conclude with the points that were made by the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine about the fact that with the changes the privacy commissioner can now support what is before us. I am troubled that the bill, which would enact measures for implementing the biological and toxin weapons convention, that there were amendments put forward by my colleague, the member for Churchill, that specifically impacted on the privacy commissioner and which were defeated at committee. Because they were defeated at committee they were not allowed to be debated here in the House.

I just want to pick out one of them. Motion No. 1 stated:

The Privacy Commissioner may review all material received in respect of the transactions described in subsection (1) to ensure that section 4.81 has been complied with.

To follow up on the argument that was advanced by the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, it would seem to me that if the committee has looked at this and the privacy commissioner has been satisfied, then I fail to understand why a reasonable amendment, such as the one that I have just read into the record that was advanced by the member for Churchill, would have been defeated by the Liberal majority on the committee.

Although there are some improvements in Bill C-17 over its earlier incarnations, this caucus, along with others on the opposition side, cannot support Bill C-17 and we will be voting against it.

[Post-Secondary Education, May 9th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, students need summer jobs because the amount of money they receive from financial aid programs is not enough for many of them to cover the increased costs of post-secondary education. That is not a comment from the students. It is the Millennium Scholarship Foundation that is making that report.

Its study finds that just 3% of parents are able to assist their children to come up with the level of support built into the loan formula. The report concludes that the unmet needs could result in higher dropout rates for low income students.

I invite the government to tell Canadians when post-secondary students will begin to receive the kind of educational assistance and support they require?

[Canada Labour Code, May 1st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the Canada Labour Code does not protect workers enough from the use of replacement workers during strikes and lockouts. The use of strikebreakers causes bitter disputes that persist. Anti-strikebreaking legislation produced excellent results in Quebec and also in Ontario, until Mike Harris scrapped it.

When will the Minister of Labour set up a working group that includes employers and unions to change the Canada Labour Code and prohibit strikebreakers?