Lost their last election, in 2000, with 10% of the vote.
Canadian Wheat Board March 18th, 1996
Mr. Speaker, I would surely love to hear those answers on the Order Paper and I will bring my questions to the minister.
First the RCMP lost my complaint on the wheat board, then the information on an outrageous severance package disappeared, then the wheat board held secret in camera meetings before the grain marketing panel hearings. Will the minister finally make an effort to provide accurate information on the problematic grain marketing industry?
Canadian Wheat Board March 18th, 1996
Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister of agriculture. On Friday the minister said with regard to the Deloitte & Touche report on the Canadian Wheat Board that since the report has been completed the board has acted on its recommendations.
Would the minister please inform the House how the wheat board has addressed the report's criticism that accredited exporter relationships with the board are neither sound nor positive, nor is there any evidence of an ongoing corporate strategy plan.
The Budget March 18th, 1996
January 11, 1996.
The Budget March 18th, 1996
Mr. Speaker, I always like the positive rhetoric I hear from the other side, especially when it comes from the member for Hamilton West.
Looking at the Environics poll, if things are so positive how come only 14 per cent of the people think the recession is over and 86 per cent believe we have a recession? Statistics Canada said that in 1995 we had a record number of bankruptcies at 78,000.
That does not sound quite as positive to me and maybe I could be filled in on some of those things which I have not taken in from the hon. member's speech.
The Budget March 18th, 1996
Mr. Speaker, I listened to the speech and was quite impressed at how good things are in Canada.
I wonder if the hon. member would comment on some questions Environics polled from December 12, 1995 to January 11, 1996. The first question asked was: Generally speaking, do you approve or disapprove of the way the government is handling the economy? Approve, 26 per cent; disapprove, 68 per cent.
The second question asked was: Generally speaking, do you approve or disapprove of the way the current federal government is handling the deficit reduction? Approve, 24 per cent; disapprove, 67 per cent.
It gets even gloomier. What about taxes? Generally speaking, do you approve or disapprove of the way the current government is handling taxation? Approve, 19 per cent; disapprove, 77 per cent.
Where is the rosy picture we were just hearing about?
Canadian Wheat Board March 14th, 1996
Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food.
A Deloitte Touche report shows the scandalous lack of planning and budgeting at the Canadian Wheat Board. It has now been leaked to the public.
Will the agriculture minister finally give farmers accurate information on the wheat board's marketing problems or will farmers have to wait for more leaks to get the truth?
Bill C-212 March 11th, 1996
Mr. Speaker, my private member's Bill C-212 proposes that the Canadian Wheat Board be audited annually by the Auditor General of Canada. It also proposes that the auditor general receive a monthly statement from the board for his inspection.
Canadians have been demanding more accountability from their government institutions. The auditor general has no jurisdiction over the wheat board and the wheat board is not even subject to the Access to Information Act.
Wheat board commissioners set their own pensions and those of their dependants and nobody knows that they are. Clearly this is not accountability.
I urge all members of the House to support this bill which will ensure farmers and Canadians that the board is operating in a more open and accountable manner. This will send a positive message to Canadians.
Government Business March 4th, 1996
They have been starving for 30 years now, ever since the Trudeau era. Mr. Trudeau ran not on ideas, not on philosophy but on charisma.
That is what we are trying to determine today. Can another election be won on charisma or on ideas? Which are we going to go for? It looks to me as though charisma and ideas are dead, and so Reformers will have to take over because we have something that has not been seen before in the House: honesty, accountability and the freedom to do what one thinks is right, not what the hierarchy tells us.
Democracy comes back to the idea that we vote on a ballot and nobody knows how we vote. Publicity can be put out saying: "I was against the government and I did not vote for it", but what was done behind closed doors? That is what I see in a lot of the backbenchers.
We do not agree with the frontbenchers. We do not agree with what the government is doing. When it comes time to make a decision, it is not willing or able or capable. Why? Has anyone ever thought why? The Prime Minister says: "If you do not do what I told you to do in the House, I will not sign your nomination papers in the next election". Does that not sound like coercion or intimidation? I would hate to have a leader who would tell me he will not sign by nomination papers because I am going after the wheat board and the commodity exchange because they are the sole entity of what I am doing.
Why are we even debating this? We should prorogue the House for the rest of the two years. We would probably do more good outside of the House than sitting here debating things we know are a fact and that we cannot change. That is the problem in the House.
What can I say to a Liberal government that does not want to listen?. We can tell the Liberals what was told to the Conservatives in the last election. The Liberals were not elected, the Conservatives were defeated. In the next election history will change and we will defeat the Liberals because the people will vote for the Reform Party. We will throw the Liberals out of the House once and for all. We will have a reformed House that is honest and accountable and that will really do something for this country.
Government Business March 4th, 1996
Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House today to speak on some of the issues the Liberals have tried to convince us are right. Finally we see the light of day and they see the light of day.
We are seeing that the electors in the last election were kind of double crossed. They are finding out they elected a party that does not keep promises, that is, a party that is not of action. It is a party of misguiding the constituents and the electors. That will change in the next election. It will be back in the opposition benches if at all.
One thing that really surprises me is that members on the other side were so honest and probably sincere with their comments in the last legislature that they were not afraid to get up and call a spade a spade, and try to run on that basis during the election.
As a farmer it has been a disappointment to me when I see they have made huge promises of how they would reorganize agriculture, how they would go to the farmers for some input in marketing, how they would allow these people to make the needed changes and yet did not fulfil those promises. I do not think they ever intend to.
When I see what is happening in the agriculture field today, they are trying to more or less digress from what they said and put more government rules and regulations into the system to get more control over food processing and agriculture marketing.
It was astounding to me when I read an article in the Ottawa Sun about a year ago when the former agriculture minister was a little upset. Mr. Whelan, a man I always respected very highly in agriculture during the early years when I farmed, said: ``We have gone from a corporate, capitalist, democratic system to a non-democratic, czarist, socialist system''.
Hold it a minute, boys. That is something I thought I would never hear from an agriculture minister who served in the House, a Liberal saying we had gone from a democratic, corporate system to an undemocratic, czarist system. That is what eastern European countries have experienced and we know what the results have been there.
Is this something the Liberal government will keep promoting in the House when I see, during the elections of the standing committees, we do not even have a ballot to elect a vice-chair? Somebody from the hierarchy dictates to the Liberals on the standing committees how to vote.
What does that remind us of? That reminds us of a Hitler or a Stalin telling his people exactly how to vote. Is that not correct? Democracy to me means voting by ballot in seclusion where nobody knows how we vote. It is supposed to be free.
Look at what has been done in the House over two reorganizations. Last fall we went through the same issues and the same principles. People were told how to vote. "We would rather have a separatist party siting as official opposition than you real Reformers".
Real reform is what the House needs; not just the word reform, it needs real reform. That is the only way we can start addressing some of the problem in the House. It will not be done by backbenchers moving their heads in conjunction with the rope those on the front benches pull. It is like puppetry.
That is not a democracy. That sounds more like a kids game, which is what I see happening a lot of times in the House. It seems we are not really trying to run the country, we are trying to control the minds of the people and their ideas by the way we influence one another, the same way cabinet influences backbenchers.
Backbenchers for some reason are trying to influence the opposition into seeing they are correct. They are trying to make us believe we really do not know what the issues are. That is very sad. When we start manipulating minds and ideas we go back to what the former agriculture minister said, an undemocratic csarist system. That really scares me. In all the countries where there has been that type of democracy, a csarist system, people began starving not just for food but for ideas and freedom to vote.
Canadian Wheat Board Act March 1st, 1996
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-212, an act to amend the Canadian Wheat Board Act (audit).
Mr. Speaker, it gives me pleasure to rise in this House and introduce this private member's bill to amend the Canadian Wheat Board Act audit.
Currently the auditor general does not have the authority to audit the Canadian Wheat Board. Over the years the auditor general has provided a valuable service to Canadians by pointing out waste in federal government as well as showing where Canadians have received value for their money.
This change to the act would not only provide for more trust but would also make the wheat board more accountable and acceptable to producers.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)