Lost his last election, in 2004, with 35% of the vote.
Cape Breton Development Corporation Divestiture Authorization And Dissolution Act June 2nd, 2000
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.
We have completed the first round of the bill and I see that there are less than 10 minutes remaining before we go to Private Members' Business. I wonder whether there would be unanimous consent for you, Mr. Speaker, to see the clock as being 1.30 p.m., which would allow us to go to Private Members' Business, and we will resume on the bill next week.
Cape Breton Development Corporation Divestiture Authorization And Dissolution Act June 2nd, 2000
Mr. Speaker, I too am pleased, but not as pleased as I would like to be about taking part in this debate today because of the issue that is before us.
Before I get into the gist of my remarks, I would like to sincerely congratulate the two members of parliament from Cape Breton, the hon. member for Bras-d'Or—Cape Breton and the hon. member for Sydney—Victoria, who, in their remarks prior to question period, put the case for Devco very eloquently. That deserves to be mentioned at the outset.
I think it was the hon. member for Sydney—Victoria who also questioned the Prime Minister of this country trotting off to Berlin. He may come back with a couple of broken arms from patting himself and his government on the back so much for the compassionate society we are supposed to be developing.
We must look at what happens in the regions of our country. We heard in question period today what is happening with regard to toxic waste being dumped. The toxic waste that is being allowed into Canada primarily comes from the United States. There are tonnes and tonnes of it being dumped in the province of Quebec and in southwestern Ontario. We look at the situation in Cape Breton and the plight of the farmers.
At the same time, we have to recognize that the Liberal majority government opposite has roughly two-thirds of its seats in one province. We lack a national party with membership from most regions. We know what Nova Scotians thought of the government in the 1997 election three years ago today. They did not return one government member to the House of Commons. I think there is a message in there. I hope the government members opposite are listening.
Unlike the previous members, including the member for Dartmouth who spoke eloquently, I am not from that part of the world. If I may digress for 30 seconds, I want to talk about somebody who is from there, somebody I am privileged to call a friend.
His name is John Francis Lofty MacMillan. To picture this man, think of the song from the 1960s “Big Bad John”. I think the words went “He stood six foot six and weighed 245”. That will give an indication of Lofty MacMillan. He was a mine worker from Judique in Cape Breton.
When I knew him we were both involved with the Canadian Union of Public Employees. Brother MacMillan used to be concerned about the timidity of the public sector as compared with the militancy of the United Mine Workers. To inject some militancy and some backbone in the public sector in those days, he regularly told this story.
When the miners of Cape Breton went on strike, they would throw their lunch pails in the air. His idea of taking a strike vote was if the lunch pails stayed up, they went back to work; if they came down, they went on strike. According to Lofty MacMillan that is how they took strike votes in those days. The member for Winnipeg North Centre is saying that works for him. I suspect that it would. Mr. MacMillan and his colleagues were busy fighting the mine owners. However, for a number of decades now, the government has been involved. That always makes life a little more interesting.
Bill C-11 was introduced to authorize the divestiture of the assets of, and to dissolve, the Cape Breton Development Corporation, to amend the Cape Breton Development Corporation Act and to make consequential amendments to other acts.
The enactment provides the necessary authority for the disposition of all or substantially all of the assets of the Cape Breton Development Corporation, and provides for the dissolution and winding up of the affairs of the corporation.
The purpose of the proposed legislation is to enable a private sector operator to acquire the mining assets of the corporation so that the federal government can exit the coal mining business in Cape Breton and to provide for the continuation of the existing jurisdictional regimes for labour relations, occupational safety and health, and labour standards.
The NDP will propose that the bill be withdrawn and that the matter be referred to committee, for three main reasons.
First, the unions representing Devco employees have taken the corporation to court for failure to meet its obligations under the legislation and seek to have clause 17(4)( b ) included in any new legislation.
Second, so that the committee can institute a process of full public consultation in Cape Breton in order to develop a long term strategy for the economic development of the region in order to offset the effects of possible privatization.
Third, the uncertainty created by the recent court decisions with respect to first nations treaty rights and the repercussions on mining rights must be clarified.
This morning there have been some developments on the bill. As I understand it, and details are a bit uncertain at the moment, it appears that the arbitration board has been very critical of the way in which the government has acted heretofore. We hope that it will look very seriously at the arbitrators' report today and take the necessary corrective steps.
My colleagues from Sydney—Victoria and Bras D'Or—Cape Breton have been saying that the amendments we are proposing have been developed in very close consultation with the miners themselves, with the people of that region. They know exactly what needs to be done and the converse, what has not been done, over the past number of years as the government took arbitrary steps without adequate consultation with the people themselves.
We simply ask, will the government not agree with the amendments that have been developed by the miners and their families and indeed the leaders in and around Cape Breton?
Other members have talked about the fact that coal has been mined for 300 years in Cape Breton and it is not because there is no coal left that we are in this predicament. It is rather because of a government decision to get fine coal from other locations and countries.
One of the concerns that we have is that the coal will now be coming from Colombia in South America. As I think you are aware, Mr. Speaker, and certainly our caucus members know what has been happening for the last number of years in Colombia. I do not think there is any country, certainly not in this hemisphere and perhaps not anywhere in the world, where trade union leaders are more endangered by loss of life than they are in that country. As my colleague our labour critic is saying, they are being assassinated at an alarming rate.
We are aware of a brother from Colombia that was in this country within the past month, who is now back there, and there have been two attempts on his life. We have made appeals to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, because I presume he will be at the Organization of American States meetings this weekend in Windsor, Ontario, that there be adequate pressure put to ensure that this individual and other individuals are not subject to being assassinated, murdered, because of the actions of the Colombian government. We cannot say that strongly enough.
Canada Transportation Act June 1st, 2000
Madam Speaker, it is an interesting question but it needs to be dissected.
For example, if a person lives in Lethbridge, Alberta or somewhere along the border between Canada and the United States, there may be a lot of good arguments for that person wanting to market his grain himself perhaps south of the line. If a person lives in northern Saskatchewan or in Debden, Saskatchewan, it is a much more difficult thing. That is what the Canadian Wheat Board has always been about. It is about price pooling and getting a fair share and a fair return for people regardless of where they live in western Canada.
In terms of whether it is 75%, there is a majority government sitting over there that was elected with 38% of the vote, so let us talk reality on this topic.
Canada Transportation Act June 1st, 2000
Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague, the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle for his question. I say to him that I am proud to belong to a party that has always believed, as the member himself indicated in his comment, in the power and the need for the Canadian Wheat Board to assist farmers and ensure that there is price pooling at the best price available to them. It is something the farmers in western Canada have fought for for decades.
The notion of a voluntary board is heresy. It is impossible to envisage how that would work. I find it difficult to swallow the idea that the Canadian Wheat Board is falling out of favour after seeing the election results a couple of years ago. I expect when we see the next round of elections the folks that were elected in those elections by farmers were by and large very strong supporters of the Canadian Wheat Board and I think that will continue in the future.
Canada Transportation Act June 1st, 2000
Madam Speaker, I listened to my colleague from the Bloc with great interest. I think he has chosen an unfortunate day to talk about the disparity between Quebec and the rest of Canada given the news about sponsorship of money and where moneys are going from the government. I am talking about the fact that on a province by province basis, some 71% of the money is going to la belle province. As the newspaper suggests, the money is going into Quebec by the truckload and into the rest of Canada by the teaspoon.
We are here today to speak about the grain transportation bill. I am pleased to take part in this debate on behalf of our caucus. Before I get into the thrust of my remarks, I want to acknowledge the fact that the Minister of Transport paid tribute to three former senior members of parliament who knew a lot about grain transportation, one of them being Les Benjamin, a 25 year member of parliament for the New Democratic Party. I am sure Mr. Benjamin is watching this debate at his home in Regina this morning.
Three weeks ago and a day, the Minister of Transport and his colleagues announced some changes to the grain handling and transportation system, a number of them at a news conference across the street. They included replacing the rate cap with a revenue cap and reducing railway revenues by 13.5% per tonne. They actually said that it was 18% but it is only 13.5%.
The Canadian Wheat Board control over transportation and logistics has been sharply curtailed. It must tender at least 25% immediately and 50% by the third year.
Madam Speaker, I apologize for not informing you at the beginning of my speech, but I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the member for Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar.
A number of other things were contained in that press release: $175 million for prairie roads and highways; changes to final offer arbitration when shippers and railways cannot agree; the CTA was being amended to facilitate branch line transfers to short lines; and monitoring and reporting, by as yet an unidentified private sector third party, to assess all of these impacts.
Bill C-34, as it was drafted and presented to us this week, does not deal with a number of issues. Money for prairie roads was alluded to by the Minister of Transport earlier in his address. We have been advised that a memorandum of understanding is being negotiated separately between the minister responsible for the wheat board and the wheat board itself and that this agreement will be in place when the legislation takes effect on August 1, if the government gets its way.
I should say, just as a quick aside, that we in this caucus are concerned about moving to at least 50% of transfer to the wheat board. This may be too much too fast.
I think everybody has exhibited some frustration over the timing involved. We have talked about Mr. Estey's report which came out in December 1998. We have talked about Mr. Kroeger's recommendations in September 1999. Absolutely nothing happened on this file between September and May 10. Even then, it took the government 22 days after the major announcement to actually bring forward legislation for parliamentarians to look at and consider. Despite that, its intention is to ram the bill through and have it ready for the new crop year. With great respect, it is contemptuous not only of producers but of parliamentarians as well.
Aside from the arbitrariness of the government's actions, we have some significant concerns with the bill as it is drafted. There is no productivity sharing formula. I will take a minute to explain what that means.
Before 1992 farmers shared in efficiencies with the railroads. In other words, when we had more fuel efficient locomotives and larger hopper cars, when the railroads laid off staff, when we built inland terminals and had unit trains, windfall profits accrued. Those prior to 1992 were shared with the producers. They have not been shared with them since 1992. The estimate, and nobody seriously disputes it, is it is about $700 million in windfall profits. There is no suggestion in this legislation that that productivity gain sharing, either in the past or in the future, is about to be shared with the producers. We have a major concern with that.
A second concern deals with the rate differentials between the branch and the main lines. As I understand the bill, the differential rate cannot exceed 3% between a single car on a branch line and a single car on a main line. The question that needs to be asked is how many single cars are likely to be loaded on a main line? The answer is not many. As a result of that, we are fearful that the costs on the branch lines will be uneconomical and will accelerate branch line abandonment. In our opinion, the rate differential should be no larger than the actual differences in the costs. As an aside, we also say that the short lines will unlikely be able to negotiate fair revenue sharing with the railways. This too needs to be addressed.
Lower freight rates should have been developed immediately after the Kroeger report came down in September. Grain transportation is an extremely complex subject, as the Minister of Transport readily acknowledged in his address. Yet this is being rushed through in the dying days of this session of the 36th Parliament. It is impossible for us to assess this legislation when we do not even know for example the details of the wheat board tendering process.
How can anyone say this is good or bad until we see what the government has in mind on railway competition? Since before Saskatchewan and Manitoba existed as provinces, we had the Crowsnest Pass freight rate agreement which came into effect in 1897. It came into effect because the Canadian Redpass region was a long way from tide water. Governments, at that time and subsequently, recognized that if we were going to take advantage of it we had to provide subsidies to offset the long distances and the high costs of transportation.
The government and the current minister responsible for the wheat board put the final nail in the Crow coffin in 1995 and paid out on what it thought was a one time basis. Of course last year it had to augment that because the input costs and the transportation costs are so significantly high for ravaged western Canadian farmers.
The bill does not involve the government any longer in helping the producer. It says it is up to the private sector, the railways and the grain companies, to do that. If I may be permitted an old adage, it is a little like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank. It is unlikely to be a good outcome for producers.
The bill also fails to address what will happen if and when Canadian National and Canadian Pacific are acquired by U.S. rail lines. If it was not for the Surface Transportation Board in the United States, we already know that a merger would be in place between Canadian National and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation. CN refers to it as a merger, but it is really gobble-ization by Burlington Northern.
What happens if we end up with two Americanized railways? We already have the American flag on the Canadian Pacific locomotives and on a couple of grain companies. How will that result in any effective competition that farmers can take advantage of in order to access the best price?
We are concerned about NAFTA. Time will not permit me to deal with that, but we certainly are going to be dealing with it.
Let me sum up this way on the bill. Over the last decade the federal government has eliminated the Crow, repealed the Western Grain Transportation Act, altered the car allocation policy and privatized Canadian National. In each announcement there were soothing words by the government that this was in the best interests of the producers, that it would benefit them. The reality is that in each of these four instances and others, farmers have been hurt.
The minister spoke this morning about everyone having to compromise and everyone having to mix a little water with their wine. I can say that the farmers were deluged by the water and the grain companies and the railways have enjoyed most of the wine.
Our position is why should producers and opposition politicians believe the government this time after having been disappointed so many times in the past? We are about to embark on 48 hours of virtually non-stop hearings on the bill beginning next Monday. We think there are a number of improvements that can and should be made. We will be introducing those amendments and we hope that they will find favour.
Just by way of conclusion, while we will not be obstructionist and hold up the bill, we are not prepared to support Bill C-34 as it appears now.
Supply May 30th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Sydney—Victoria for allowing me to share his time.
The member for Hamilton West, who is the chair of the transportation committee, talked a few minutes ago about what has transpired in this country for the last 133 years with governments alternating between the Liberals and the Conservatives. When the Liberals are in everything is great and it is the fault of the other guys. It is a game that is wearing a bit thin. I am sure it is for you too, Mr. Speaker, as it is for those of us in the New Democratic Party caucus.
I want to talk about transportation policy from the point of view of Saskatchewan, which is a landlocked province. I want to talk a bit about air, rail, highways and roads. There is not much point in talking about shipping unless we want to go canoeing in northern Saskatchewan where there are some terrific canoe routes.
Transportation for the New Democratic Party and for our constituents is absolutely vital to Canada's future economic development. We need an efficient, high quality and safe network of highways, railways, ports and airports to move not only goods, but people as well.
Our transportation infrastructure has deteriorated under this government, as it did under the Mulroney government in the 1980s and early 1990s. Despite the member for Hamilton West, we insist that this government lacks the vision and the will to develop transportation infrastructure worthy of the 21st century.
Let me talk a bit about the airline industry. We feel it has been in a state of perpetual crisis since the late 1980s as a result of unregulated competition. More recently we saw the total demise of Canadian Airlines and the creation of one big airline. On this side of the House we have consistently called for a modern regulation regime to protect the public interest.
I will make a few observations on air travel as it has affected people coming in and going out of Saskatchewan since the merger took place. I do not believe that I have been on a flight recently from Ottawa to Regina—and other members fly the same route—that has not been positively and absolutely booked. Of course, the flight from Ottawa to Regina is not a direct, non-stop flight. It either goes through Winnipeg or Toronto, and occasionally both. Often they try to bribe people with $300, for those who do not need to get there yesterday, as the member for Hamilton West was suggesting. The flights are full, there are fewer seats on the planes and it is very expensive.
Not everybody needs to get there yesterday. Some people would enjoy taking the train. In the southern part of Saskatchewan that is very difficult to achieve. People either have to go to Saskatoon, which is almost a three hour drive from Regina, or perhaps two and a half hours from Moose Jaw, to get a train usually at 2 o'clock in the morning, or they can go to Melville, which would take a couple of hours, to get the train at 4 o'clock or 5 o'clock in the morning, depending on whether the person is heading east or west. The train station in Regina is now a casino. The train station in Moose Jaw just recently reopened as a state of the art liquor store.
Despite the injection of hundreds of millions of dollars into VIA Rail which the government announced recently, I doubt very much whether VIA passenger train service will ever be restored in southern Saskatchewan, except perhaps for the occasional high priced tourist train that will go through in the summer months between Winnipeg and Vancouver.
We do not all need to get to our destination yesterday. Some of us would like to take the leisurely route, but it makes it very difficult given the logistics of getting to where the train is at these days.
The riding of my colleague for Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar is situated on the VIA line that goes from east to west. The train that runs through Biggar in the middle of the night requires people to stand outside in summer or winter because the station is not open to allow folks to board the train. People stand at the side of the tracks, which is clearly not an incentive to take the train.
Let me turn to the highway system. I think we are the only country in the world that does not have a national highway transportation system. About three or four years ago the Government of Saskatchewan committed some $1 billion over the next 15 years to be spent on upgrading highways. Work has been undertaken to twin the highways. There is work being done in the area of Gull Lake, on the east side of the province, that the member from the Canadian Alliance spoke about. There is no question that work would be done much faster if some federal money went into the program.
I read recently that the twinning which is scheduled to be completed in about five or eight years could be cut in half if the federal folks would step up to the plate and put some money into our highway infrastructure program to get the death traps cleaned up and turned into four lane highways. It would be safer for the travelling public and a lot more enjoyable.
There is no question that big trucks are a cause for grave concern. That is part and parcel of our grain transportation system. I will not get into that issue because we will be debating it over the next couple of weeks. As farmers have to move their grain farther and farther to inland terminals and other elevators to get to the main lines, it is putting additional pressure on roads that were never intended to carry the kind of weight that the tandem and the Super Bs are putting on our highways. That is part and parcel of the problem.
The $175 million announced by the government a couple of weeks ago as part of the grain transportation bill that is coming forward will be welcome news. However, we need to note that it is $175 million for western Canada, so it will not amount to a heck of a lot. If it were $1.75 billion it would be significant. Nobody is going to turn down $175 million, but nobody is jumping too high about it either.
We in the NDP support the motion presented by the Conservative member for Cumberland—Colchester, my well travelled colleague. We support this call for collaboration between all levels of government and the private sector. These groups must work together to make sure that our national transportation infrastructure serves the public interest and meets the needs of all.
The federal government must, in partnership with the provinces, invest in highways to facilitate the movement of people and goods. If the government allows the deterioration of our highways to continue, the economic cost will continue to rise.
The federal government must commit to ensuring that our national transportation system serves all parts of the country. That is a concern of my party. The member for Sydney—Victoria indicated that it is a concern in Cape Breton. I am trying to signal that concern from my part of the world. The government has 101 seats in the province of Ontario. It has very little understanding or recognition of the problems that many constituents in the so-called hinterland of this nation feel, the difficulty we have in getting our products to port and getting our people, goods and services moved from our part of the world to tidewater, to the big smoke of Toronto or wherever.
This is a timely motion. I hope the government takes it very seriously, although I am skeptical that will be the case.
The Late Maurice Richard May 29th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, on behalf of my party and on my own behalf, I wish to offer my sincere condolences to the family and friends of the honourable Maurice Richard.
Without diminishing Maurice Richard's stature in Quebec, he was a hero for all Canadians.
For example, to show his longtime adoration, admiration and even friendship for Maurice Richard, a constituent of mine who lives in Pense has a licence plate that simply reads “NHL-9”.
He was considered a second class player during the second world war, and sceptics were saying “Let's wait for our real stars to come back home”.
But during the next decade, not only did Richard break Nels Stewart's record, but he exceeded it by more than 200 goals. As others mentioned earlier, Richard was one of the greatest hockey players in history. His opponents always talked about his glare, especially from the blue line to the net. The Rocket always insisted on saying that he was just another hockey player.
After his father's death on Saturday night Maurice Richard Jr. said, “My father was a simple man”. That may be true, but for a generation of Canadian hockey fans, Maurice “The Rocket” Richard was simply marvellous.
Supply May 18th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, I was delighted to hear the news. If I heard it correctly it was $14 billion more than the projected surplus which is considerable.
What the member is suggesting in his question and what I will suggest by way of response is that there is money. Despite the dripping sincerity of the Minister of Health, one more time as he did this morning, we have the money in the system. What we do not have so far is the will to dispense it in this very necessary program.
Supply May 18th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, the member for Churchill is saying that there was a time and there may be a time again soon when the medical profession will be checking our purse first and our pulse second.
It might help to elaborate on the answer by recalling why Tommy Douglas, the founder of medicare, became so passionate and committed to it. It went back to a time when he was growing up and had a problem with his leg. He was living with his family in the United States. He was an ironmonger's son, as I recall. He was in a hospital and they were getting ready to amputate his leg when a surgeon came along, looked at him, and said that he could fix it without the amputation and did so. Tommy Douglas thought from that day until his death why it was that we would have a two tier system. If his parents had the money the possibility of the amputation would never have been an issue. It was only the generosity and kind services of the surgeon in the Chicago area that actually saved his leg.
This kind of thing has been at the forefront of medicare throughout the years since it was introduced in 1962 in Saskatchewan and in 1967 nationally. It is what we want not just to look back on fondly but to look forward to for coming generations.
Supply May 18th, 2000
Mr. Speaker, I am sharing my time with the member for Bras d'Or—Cape Breton.
I want to say how pleased I am to take part in this debate as a member for parliament from Saskatchewan, the birthplace of our cherished medicare system. I also want to acknowledge all of the hard work that has been done by our leader, the member for Halifax, and our health critic, the member for Winnipeg Centre, to keep this issue first and foremost in parliament over the last several months.
I would like to begin by picking up to some extent where the previous speaker ended in terms of setting the history of what has happened over the last 40 years. As many Canadians know, this is our most cherished and most important social program. It started in Saskatchewan where it was finally brought in by former Premier Tommy Douglas and his successor Woodrow Lloyd in 1962. It was a program that took 18 years to deliver because the Government of Saskatchewan at that time was adamant that it was not going to bring in the program until it could fund it for the long haul. It took from 1944 until 1962 for the program to come in.
Five years later it was extended to the rest of Canada by the then Prime Minister Lester Pearson on the basis of 50:50 funding. I remember well that premiers like John Robarts of Ontario and Ernest Charles Manning of Alberta wanted nothing to do with socialized medicine, but they could not resist the 50 cent dollars that were on the table so everybody joined in. In 1967 we got a national medicare program.
As I said, it has been a cherished program. Until the last few years, medicare has been something Canadians have been justifiably proud of. They have talked about it as they have travelled throughout the world and visited other countries.
The question before us today is what has happened in recent years to the program, which we were so proud of in 1990, 1991 and 1992, that we are anxiety ridden as to whether we will have a national medicare program in the next short while? There are a number of reasons.
There have been cutbacks. I would submit that the principal problem we have today happened in 1995 with the Canada health and social transfer and the end of the Canada assistance plan and established programs financing. At that point the government, on its mantra for balancing the books and eliminating the deficit as quickly as possible, took more than $24 billion out of our health care system.
When we talk about the problems the provinces are having, whether it is Alberta, Saskatchewan or another province, they are problems driven by the lack of cash in recent years from the federal government. Provinces have had to resort to backfilling. Notwithstanding the comments of previous hon. member, the province of Saskatchewan has backfilled 100% on the cutbacks to federal funding for medicare. I worked in the department of health of that province for a brief period of time before I was elected.
I would also submit that many other provinces have done the same. The modern day John Robarts, Ernest Mannings, Mike Harrises and Ralph Kleins have basically no commitment to medicare, especially when there are only 11 cents, 13 cents or 15 cents of funding instead of the 50:50 funding they once enjoyed.
At some point in time, sooner rather than later I would submit, one of those provinces will tell the government to forget its 11 cents or 13 cents and have its own health care system. That will be the end of the national medicare program, which concerns us a great deal.
The government has taken billions out of health care. We have an aging population, as the Minister of Health said earlier in the debate. We have a number of new technologies. Health care is not getting less expensive. We have more demand and less money. There is simply not enough money in the system but the culprit is across the aisle.
I urge members of parliament to concentrate on that issue and not get too bogged down in the backbiting of which province is doing what. Although, having said that, I want to come back at some point before I close to what is specifically happening in the province of Alberta.
I have tried to suggest that there is an end to the partnership and that 1995 was a watershed in that regard. We now have a government of a province with very little commitment to health care, to medicare. I do not think that is reflected accurately by the people of the province of Alberta, but bill 11 would set up a legislative framework for surgical facilities offering overnight stays as far as we are concerned. It would also offer diagnostic and treatment services, services for both medically necessary surgeries as required under the CHA and elective surgeries.
I have been involved in various organizations that have been fighting privatization for decades. The pattern is always the same. Privatization occurs where there is a fast return on profits and the more expensive long term care is left to the public. When we talk about tonsillectomies, cataract surgery and hip and knee replacements, we are talking generally about relatively minor short stays in hospital, quick release in 24 hours or less. People are back home and recovering and not a burden on the health care system. That is what people interested in privatizing our health care system want to do. They will leave long term care for the public system and we will quickly end up with two tiers. That is the heart of what the bill and bill 11 are all about.
By way of conclusion, the initial announcement back in 1995 was that cash transfers would be cut by 40% and for most provinces the cash portion of the transfer would ultimately phase out. In future under the CHST it would be up to the provinces to decide how to allocate their much reduced cash transfer.
I should like to make mention of one point that has not been talked about in the debate. It caught my eye last week that five of the largest pharmaceutical industries in the world have now decided in their benevolence to do something about the horrific problems with the outbreak of AIDS in Africa. They have agreed under an umbrella agreement that they would provide AIDS related drugs to Africa at a much reduced cost. I guess we would say that is a very noble endeavour on the part of the pharmaceutical industry.
We can think about what is driving the cost of medicare and pharmacare in Canada, the high cost of drugs, and the fact that we had to comply with Bill C-92, the 20 year patent protection and the inability to use generic drugs. How is it that the pharmaceutical industry can arbitrarily say that it will provide these drugs as a noble endeavour to the continent of Africa? We in Canada are prohibited from saying that we would like reduced pharmaceutical costs to benefit our population from coast to coast to coast and keep the costs of our health system down.
As I indicated I am sharing my time with the member for Bras D'Or—Cape Breton, but I am pleased to have had the opportunity to participate in this important debate today. I look forward to hearing from members of all parties on the issue.