Dick Proctor

[Agriculture, November 17th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister of agriculture. The minister will know that B.C. farmers have been hurt by extremely poor harvest conditions about the Okanagan and the Peace River districts this year. The B.C. government wants to help out the area farmers affected by this disaster by developing cost shared responses to these huge crop losses, losses which far exceed existing crop insurance and NISA programs.

Why will the federal government not do its share and help out B.C farmers?

[National Defence, November 6th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the minister of defence. In paying $474 million to cancel the EH-101 in 1993, the Prime Minister said that it was a Cadillac when we needed a Chev. This government is on the verge of reversing itself when it announces the decision to purchase the Cormoran which is the kissing cousin to the EH-101 and if not a Cadillac certainly is a very heavy Chevy.

When the minister makes this announcement next week, what assurances will he give the public that the Cormoran is the top value for money helicopter for our search and rescue team?

[Access To Information Act, October 31st, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to take part in the debate this afternoon. I begin by acknowledging the hon. member from the government party who allowed me an opportunity to speak in order that I can return to my constituency this afternoon.

This is an interesting debate. There is absolutely no question that the government should and could do a lot more to let the sun shine in on the release of polling data that is paid for by the public. As the hon. member of the official opposition noted in his speech earlier, the Minister of Finance went to great lengths to hide the poll results on the goods and services tax of 1996, including the retention of a private lawyer to try to keep that information out of the public view. Clearly that kind of behaviour in a free and democratic society is totally unacceptable.

Our caucus is certainly supportive of change in this area. We also recognize and realize that we live in the real world. This private members' bill seems pretty utopian in its outlook. That is not surprising as it comes from a political party that is 10 years and one day old as I have read in the paper, but a party which is much older in terms of some of its views and attitudes. It is also a party that has consistently refused to run provincially.

In my home province of Saskatchewan, the Reform Party is cosying up to the Saskatchewan party, that ridiculous blend of Conservatives and Liberals. We see evidence of similar activity in the province of British Columbia. There is recognition and realization of why this is so.

The leader of the official opposition is clearly a student of political history. He knows what happened to his father's party, the Social Credit Party of Alberta. He knows what happened to the Social Credit Party of British Columbia and he knows what ultimately happened as a result of that to the federal Social Credit Party. When Peter Lougheed came into Alberta, the Social Credit Party disappeared. In this decade we have seen the demise of the B.C. Social Credit Party. I stand to be corrected but I believe there has not been a Social Credit member in this legislature since 1979.

The member from Stornoway does not want to see history repeat itself so he is not going to run the risk of having the Reform Party elected at the provincial or territorial level, thereby attempting to remain as pure as the driven snow. That is not the way we do it in our caucus and our party. I am very proud to represent a party which runs candidates federally, provincially and sometimes municipally. As our party constitution states, if you are a member of the provincial or territorial New Democratic Party, you are automatically considered to be a member of the federal New Democratic Party.

I will refer to what we do in Saskatchewan. I will take a minute to set the scene. There is no question that in the 1980s the Devine government, probably the worst government in the history of our province if not Canada, had flagrantly abused the public polling situation, as the member noted about the Mulroney government. In 1993 the Government of Saskatchewan introduced some significant reforms. I want to go through them because they are legitimate. I hope the members on the government benches are listening because these are reasonable.

In Saskatchewan four times per year, once per quarter, the Government of Saskatchewan releases all polling information which has been completed for it during the previous quarter. The government has been doing this for the last four years. The information released includes all reports from polling companies, including both the questions asked and the responses made.

The material is released by the government and provided free of charge to the media and opposition parties, and I assume as well to the speaker of the legislature. The same information is available at a modest charge to other users, including interested individuals and corporations. The only material which is not released by the Government of Saskatchewan on its polling data includes that which refers to questions of market research, commercially and prices, in the case of crown corporations for example.

There is a lot more the federal government should be doing in the area of opening up the process and letting the sun shine in. There are some legitimate reasons why an appropriate or reasonable amount of time, 90 days, should exist before government polling is made public.

[National Defence, October 20th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, will the minister admit that no inspector general effectively means no inspection of the generals?

[National Defence, October 20th, 1997]

Which is it, Mr. Minister, these warm fuzzy assurances today or what you said last week that—

[National Defence, October 20th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Defence.

The minister's refusal to accept the establishment of an independent office of inspector general means the truth about Somalia will likely never be told. The minister has caved in to the senior military brass, the same group that so recently elevated secrecy and lack of accountability to an art form.

Will the minister reverse his misguided decision and appoint a truly independent inspector general with a mandate to report to parliament on a regular basis?

[Canadian Wheat Board Act, October 7th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I am very new to the House, but it was my understanding that we were debating Bill C-4 today and not the recent byelection.

[Canadian Wheat Board Act, October 7th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased today to be able to speak to Bill C-4, the amendments to the Canadian Wheat Board.

I am proud to serve the area of Palliser. It is an area of Saskatchewan that includes all of Moose Jaw, a portion of Regina and a good swath of farming country that surrounds those two fine cities.

The constituency of Palliser is named in honour of a former British army captain, Captain John Palliser, who was sent out 140 years ago in 1857 on an expedition to southern Saskatchewan to see whether the climate was hospitable for agriculture. Captain Palliser became famous, or perhaps infamous, for saying that the region was “unfit for human abode”.

Captain Palliser was wrong. There have been developments in agricultural technology that he could not possibly have foreseen. The Regina plains he found so inhospitable that many years ago have now become one of the best grain growing regions in the world.

The climate can be as harsh as he described it, but people in Palliser and throughout the prairies have used the tools of community and co-operation to overcome the obstacles of climate and distance. The Canadian Wheat Board is one of those tools of co-operation. It has served western farmers well since 1935 and they made it clear in the barley plebiscite last February that they want to keep the Canadian Wheat Board as a single desk seller for their grain.

The minister in charge of the wheat board introduced amendments to the act in December of last year. Those amendments were sent quickly to the agriculture committee. In fact our caucus at that time in the 35th Parliament believed that the reference to committee was too hasty. We did not understand the minister's great hurry and we thought there should have been more opportunity for debate in the House prior to the referral. Len Taylor, our former agriculture critic from The Battlefords—Meadow Lake, made known his and our party's unhappiness with the government's procedure at that time.

I note that in Bill C-4 the minister is once again making the same speedy reference to committee and again we are concerned about that. We feel that members of the House would have valuable contributions to make in the debate prior to the legislation being referred to committee. We do not understand the minister's undue haste.

In any event, today the wheat board legislation is back before the House as Bill C-4. Our caucus has looked carefully at the bill and we are pleased to see that it makes some important concessions based on amendments proposed by the agriculture committee that I referred to earlier. I want to review the most important of those changes and to indicate where our caucus can support them and where we feel further amendments are required.

Most important, Bill C-4 contains an inclusion clause. That means that grains can now be added or included as opposed to what was in Bill C-72 when they could only be deleted or excluded. This is a major change and a concession on the minister's behalf. It was the wise course to take and the right thing to have done.

We do however have some concerns about how the process to achieve the inclusion of a new grain would be triggered. It is not clear to us which farm organizations would have the right to ask for such an inclusion. I flag this for the minister to suggest that we do have questions and that we may have suggestions to offer.

Second there are also some welcomed changes in governance. Bill C-4 stipulates as the minister said that 10 of the 15 members of the board of directors are to be elected by farmers with the minister naming the remaining five. The directors will now choose their own chair rather than leave that power with the minister. These are improvements over Bill C-72 but we do not believe that they go far enough yet. We have no problem with the government naming some members to the board of directors.

The government will continue after all to guarantee the wheat board's initial price on grain purchased from farmers. Our caucus insisted that the government continue these financial guarantees and we are pleased that they have been maintained. If the government is going to have considerable financial exposure, then it is only reasonable that it have some window into the board's operations.

However under Bill C-4 the minister maintains the authority to choose the president of the board of directors, a person who will double as the wheat board's chief executive officer. Our caucus opposes this. We believe this gives the government too much control over a board of directors that should really be accountable ultimately to the farmers and it gives the government too much control over the day to day operations of the wheat board itself.

In contrast to the proposal, we believe that the board of directors should have the authority to choose the president and chief executive officer and we urge the minister to make this amendment. We believe that the federal government will have enough influence by its appointment of one-third of the 15 members of the board of directors.

There are those who insist that the government should have no participation on the board of directors. Too often these are the same people who would like to sever all connections before the government and the board. This is a cynical exercise using the rhetoric of democracy as a tool to do away with the wheat board itself.

We believe that the minister has addressed an important issue on the inclusion of grains and has made some improvements on the issue of governance. However there is a third area of concern to us in which the minister has made no concession and that is in the area of cash purchases of grain.

For decades the Canadian Wheat Board has earned the confidence of farmers because they knew that they would all be treated equitably in the purchase of their grain. The board bought grain from farmers at similar prices and under similar conditions. This practice known as price pooling has been the bedrock on which the Canadian Wheat Board was built.

Both Bill C-72 and now Bill C-4 the son of C-72, would give the board the ability to buy grains from anyone, anywhere at any time. This in effect undermines the principle of price pooling. We believe that it would also undermine the farmers' confidence in the board and thereby diminish the board's credibility and effectiveness.

The minister argues that these arrangements would allow the board to adapt more quickly to market developments especially when the board needs a certain grain quickly and supplies are not immediately forthcoming. While there is logic in this reasoning, we fear that the board could in the search for short term flexibility undermine its longer term credibility with farmers. At the very least we would want the legislation to be quite specific as to when the board could resort to cash buying.

We in this caucus believe that it is time to end the uncertainty which has surrounded the Canadian Wheat Board. This uncertainty has been foisted onto the board and onto western farmers by the actions of some of our trading competitors, but what is even more damaging are the activities of that vocal minority of farmers who would do away with the board altogether.

Although the Leader of the Opposition did not refer to what his party is going to propose, undoubtedly it will be a form of dual marketing. We suggest that dual marketing is no more a solution in the agricultural area than two tier health care is in the medicare field.

Despite our lingering concerns about this government's longer term trade agenda, we believe it is best to get on with Bill C-4. This bill makes some important concessions and improvements from its previous incarnation based on amendments proposed by the agriculture committee in the last Parliament. Our caucus supports Bill C-4 in principle but we reserve the option of making further amendments to this legislation in committee.

[Appointment Of A Special Joint Committee, October 1st, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I have a brief question for the member of the Reform Party.

I listened with interest to her comments on the reform of the Senate. I wonder whether she could confirm for the House that the senator from Alberta who died a few years ago, the former Premier Ernest Charles Manning, was the father of the current leader of the Reform Party in this House?

[Helicopters, September 29th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, my question is a simple one for the minister of defence.

There is a lot of chatter about helicopters, Mr. Minister, concerning what is been taking so long to conform to the contract. I would like an update on when the government is going to make an announcement about helicopters for the Canadian people.