Grant Hill

[Health, October 25th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the Kirby report has just come out and it is like a breath of fresh air when it comes to the health care system. One thing that is suggested is new money for medicare, medicare that in fact the Liberals have starved.

I would like to get a commitment from the finance minister today, a commitment that if there is new money to be found for medicare, and that is a laudable goal, that it will not be found by raising new taxes.

[Kyoto Protocol, October 23rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister makes an impassioned plea for the environment. He forgets the poor people in Canada, frankly.

This is what Conference Board of Canada economist Jim Frank had to say about the Kyoto protocol. “Ratification has an awful lot of risks.” He said that for consumers, gasoline prices will go up quite a lot.

When will the Liberals admit that the Kyoto protocol will hit every single Canadian consumer in the wallet or the pocketbook? When will they admit that?

[Kyoto Protocol, October 23rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the number of people disagreeing with the Liberals' approach on Kyoto is growing.

For instance, C.D. Howe president Jack Mintz disagrees. This is what he has to say. He predicts higher energy costs and gas prices. He also says, and this is very important, that low income Canadians will bear the brunt of the cost.

Why are the Liberals so intent on forging ahead with the Kyoto protocol when it is poor Canadians who will bear the brunt of the cost?

[Committee Business and Reinstatement of Government Bills, October 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, in a constructive vein in terms of these questions, I would like the Canadian public to know just exactly what the Alliance's disquiet is with Bill C-5 and Bill C-15. I would like the House leader to explain why these two simple things could not be done.

Bill C-5 talks about reasonable compensation. That is subject to a very broad discretion. The Alliance would be very pleased with this bill if fair market value compensation was in the bill. My question to the House leader on that bill is this. Why would the government not put in fair market value compensation for landowners whose land is withdrawn because of society's broad goal?

On Bill C-15 our concern is that farmers and ranchers will have their operations impacted by frivolous animal rights activists. My question to the House leader is this. Why would the government not exclude in the bill normal agricultural practices?

These are two straightforward questions.

[Committee Business and Reinstatement of Government Bills, October 4th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I will say to the member opposite as directly as I can that representing my constituents is not self-interest.

Let me go to the specific rancher who has 30,000 acres. That sounds like a lot of property to someone who comes from an urban environment. Thirty thousand acres of dry land. This is a specifically large ranch. On that ranch he is able to run one cow for 300 acres. It is a very dry ranch with not much feed. Someone comes along and says, “Society needs to protect the habitat that happens to be on your 30,000 acre ranch and it will mean taking out of production 4,500 acres”. Could it happen? It has happened. The impact on that ranch might make it economically impossible to operate.

I ask members opposite, should not Canadian society as a whole take the responsibility for that economic impact? As long as that rancher does not have the assurance that will take place, he will not support Bill C-5. It is profoundly important that he do support Bill C-5 for the advantages that I spoke of before, for the broad advantages of having diverse species. Until that happens, the bill will fail.

It does not matter how many times the Senate looks at it, this specific issue must be addressed by the Liberal government. I wish it were.

This raises the broader issue of property rights in this country that are not enshrined in our Constitution and should be. That is something the Alliance would be very quick to look at when we form the government.

I mentioned the issue that human activity has an impact on the environment. I noted that a couple of my colleagues who I consider to be very keen on the environment were nodding their heads when I said that. Let me give a couple of examples.

A delegation came to Parliament this week and showed that lamprey had a profound effect on the Great Lakes fishing environment. This was an imported species that came from the ocean. It was imported because of the canals that we had built as humans, from boats that we had brought in and the discharge of water. So here we have a species that was not normally in the Great Lakes.

That species, because there was no natural enemy, literally destroyed the wonderful fishery in our Great Lakes. We have taken action against the lamprey, we have actually found where they reproduce and had an impact there, and the fishery has returned. That is an example of human activity having a negative effect on the environment and then a positive effect.

I had an opportunity to be at a lecture by a scientist who looked at botanical indications of human activity. It is interesting to note that downwind of Toronto the lichens, the strange-looking crusty things that grow on trees, are almost non-existent. They do not end up flourishing until almost at Ottawa. It is a huge area downwind. Upwind of Toronto, the lichen population is very healthy. It is another indication of human activity having an impact on the environment.

There is a great interest in wild horses. People love the idea that horses have broken free of man and are roaming the wild. Wild horses are not natural to the environment in some places where they are involved. It is an emotional issue but human activity, releasing those horses into the wild, has had an impact on the environment.

If Bill C-5 had fair market compensation in it, this member of Parliament would have no disquiet whatever.

I am thankful for the opportunity to explain why I am not in favour of Motion No. 2 as it relates to reintroduction of Bill C-5 at the stage it was at.

I move:

That the motion be amended by adding after the words “prorogation of the previous session” the words “provided that Bills C-15B and C-5, introduced in the previous session, be excluded from this process”.

[Committee Business and Reinstatement of Government Bills, October 4th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, for the benefit of those who could not hear what the comment was, it was that compensation is going to be put in the regulations. That is not fair market compensation. This would be so easy to fix with the phrase “there will be fair market compensation if there is a withdrawal of proper use”. The member opposite knows how easy that would be and my disquiet on the bill would evaporate.

Let me move to probably the most significant area where land is likely to be taken out of use. That is for my rancher. I represent a very large ranching community and my rancher--

[Committee Business and Reinstatement of Government Bills, October 4th, 2002]

The House leader asks what that has to do with reinstatement. I am trying to explain to him why my party and I have disquiet about reinstating specific bills. I will move toward the specific bill that I personally want to focus on today and why I have disquiet toward that specific bill.

The re-introduction of Bill C-5, the species at risk bill at the stage where it is at gives me disquiet and, more important, gives my constituents disquiet. Effectively, prorogation results in that bill being stopped. My constituents say, “Please stop it where it is at. Please listen to our concerns about this bill.”

From the perspective of someone who loves the environment, species at risk is important. It is a broad societal goal. Diversity of species is important and is a broad societal goal. The trouble with this bill is that species at risk are not being looked after by society as a whole. They are being looked after by certain specific individuals. When I say looked after, I mean economically.

Genuine diversity has enormous benefit. I think of tourism. I think of people coming to visit our country specifically because of grizzlies in a wild state in our mountains. It is an indication of how man-made activity affects the planet. We can make a change in that regard. Man-made activity does affect the planet. We can have an impact in that regard.

I think of the success story of the whooping crane, a bird that Canadians decided to look after, to protect. It was almost extinct. What a wonderful success story that was; protecting them, finding out more information, tracking them, raising whooping cranes in a tame environment, releasing them to an external environment. We now have a population of whooping cranes that is much more likely to survive. For these reasons and more, I support protection of and action on species at risk and their habitat.

If this is a broad societal benefit, it should be paid for by society in the broadest sense. I believe that Bill C-5 will be a failure because society as a whole is not taking the responsibility. One group in our country will be asked to inordinately bear the burden. That group is the landowners.

I listened to the Prime Minister talk about establishing new national parks. I know that in some cases those new national parks are going to take in land where there was previously private interests, forestry interests. Forestry companies went in, explored, spent money putting in roads and had started to harvest timber. There is an economic interest in that area. What will the government do as it takes away those interests in establishing a brand new national park? It will extinguish that right of the timber company and it will pay for it. It will pay back the lumber company for that interest. What would happen in the instance of a species at risk where there was an economic interest? There is no provision for compensation.

I think of another example of a landowner who buys a property on a beautiful habitat by a river to build a senior citizens home. He goes to the architect, goes to the municipality, gets approval for all those things and is ready to build. Suddenly it is found that there is a special habitat in that area and the process cannot proceed. It is reasonable in my view if there is a societal benefit to protecting that habitat, to give that landowner fair compensation for the purchase of the property, the architectural design, the municipal process, and the time and effort expended in that process. In the bill there is no provision for that to take place.

In the bill there is no provision, and I will say this as plainly as I can so that everybody--

[Committee Business and Reinstatement of Government Bills, October 4th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I listened to the comments of the House leader with interest. I noted a couple of glowing tributes to members of the Alliance Party. That is not all that common coming from a Liberal member. I would like to thank him for his candour. The members for Langley--Abbotsford and St. Albert are two members to whom he paid specific tribute.

I look upon a motion like this as though I were not a part of the Parliament of Canada. I look upon this as though I were a citizen simply reviewing this. Motion No. 2, which would return bills at the same stage that they were at the in previous Parliament before prorogation, makes pretty reasonable sense. Reinstating the committee on the non-medical use of drugs, an issue that I am personally interested in, makes sense. Re-establishing prebudget consultation by the finance committee makes sense.

I would like to say to the House leader that this debate would not be necessary if this place were more democratic. I would like him to listen to this portion. He can depart if he wants, but this is the part of this debate that would be sterile if this place were more democratic. Liberal members across have come to me and said, “I have disquiet about a particular bill because I was forced to vote on it by a somewhat autocratic process”. I choose those words in a gentle sense: a somewhat autocratic process. I have had Liberals say to me, “I cannot vote my constituents' wishes on this bill. I am in fact forced to vote otherwise”.

Let me mention two things that would make this place more democratic, and the House leader knows that this is not a debate on everything, if we had free votes in the House of Commons on issues that were not campaign platform issues for the Liberals. If we had an elected Senate, the Senate would be more accountable to the public.

[Government Contracts, October 3rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, here is the problem with that answer. We now find that the Privy Council Office and the Prime Minister's Office had their hands in this scheme. That is the problem with that answer.

Every parent and every teacher in this country tries to teach their children to not break the rules. Why does the Liberal government do exactly the opposite?

[Government Contracts, October 3rd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, here is one example of why we need an independent ethics commissioner. A senior government official just admitted that he was asked to bend the rules when awarding ad contracts. He said, “I was requested by the Privy Council Office to hire agencies without going through the normal competitive process”.

Why is this Liberal government demanding that its employees break the rules?