Howard Hilstrom

[Agriculture, February 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I beg to disagree. The government is hanging our farmers out to dry with this agriculture policy framework. No agreement has been reached with either the provinces or the farm groups regarding safety nets. The April 1 deadline is fast approaching with no agreement. The federal safety net proposals to date will have farmers paying higher premiums for lower benefits.

Why is the federal agriculture minister shoving a bad deal down the throats of our farmers?

[Petitions, February 6th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition from my constituents in regard to child pornography. I have seen tens of thousands of names on petitions like it go through the House already. The petitioners would like to ensure that all materials which promote or glorify pedophilia or other perverse activities involving children are outlawed.

[Food and Drugs Act, December 9th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, we have returned to the House to once again debate the mandatory labelling of genetically modified organisms or food. I guess in private members' business we can return to the same subject over and over as long as that bill comes up, but in listening to the speech of the member who sponsored the bill, I would say we have a situation where he and like-minded members of Parliament, and some members of the public and special interest groups who have a social concept of this issue, are basing the bill, as the member said, on public opinion polls.

That is what is wrong with the bill and that is why the bill was voted down in the last session of Parliament. The questions of labelling and food safety have to be based on science. They cannot be based on opinion. If social opinion were such that even if a majority of people felt a food that was not good for people must be good because they had been deceived through some kind of public relations program, would the government go ahead and say yes, that because they had asked for this unsafe food the government would give it to them? I do not think so, because the principle of science-based decision making on food safety and the laws that pertain to it is paramount over and above an individual member's belief as to whether or not Canadians should have food labelling.

The member talked about the study being done by our health committee, but he failed to mention that in fact another committee, the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, also dealt with this issue. The committee did a report and made recommendations. I will refer to the Minister Agriculture and Agri-Food's response to the report. He said:

The Committee's report and hearings make a valuable contribution to public and government understanding of the complex and cross-sectoral nature of the genetically modified (GM) food labelling issue, and the implications of labelling for the agriculture and agri-food sector.

That is what we on the agricultural committee studied. The minister went on to say the following:

We believe that...[the] findings, along with those of the Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee, provide the Government with strong support for a standardized but voluntary approach to GM food labelling--

That, of course, is to serve the consumer, and it is also to serve the interests of our trade, both for our exports and our imports, and the relationships we have with other countries.

That agricultural committee report was quite clear. Part of the issue that was dealt with was the fact that sufficient analysis has not been done and there is not a sufficient understanding of just what the trade implications are. If we have mandatory labelling here in Canada, for instance, we are telling countries like the United States and other countries that will be sending food into Canada that they have to meet certain labelling criteria set out by Canada. When it comes to trade, that very easily could be seen as a non-tariff trade barrier.

Obviously the world is working on a standardized system. I think that in the meantime we absolutely should wait and work through that process so that we do not end up trying to create these non-tariff trade barriers. That is exactly what is happening in the European Union right now. The Europeans are not against GMOs or advances in science. In fact, they have a mammoth industry right now in the research area of developing these very kinds of foods, as well as technologies and medicines in the case of health. In doing that, though, they are doing so in order to protect their agriculture industry, to keep imports out so they can just consume mostly their own foods and charge whatever price they want. That is why they are rattling the cages about this labelling and what they see as the right way to do it.

I would like to deal with the following point of view for just a moment, as I have touched on the economics of it and the trade implications that show this mandatory labelling bill is so wrong. From my comments it is obvious that neither I nor my party is in favour of this kind of legislation going forward. I find it strange to be siding with the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food on this issue, but sometimes he is right and on this one he definitely is.

The Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Committee has been mentioned. In this world, not everybody is so fortunate as to be from Toronto where people have good incomes and if they have some tough times and need food they can go to the food banks, and/or the government will provide them with some support. We can get a healthy diet here in Canada, but what about third world countries and those countries where there is virtually no income, or there are low incomes, and there are large populations that do need a healthy diet? We see mammoth social unrest around the world because of poor diets and poor education. I would just like to refer quickly to the fact that genetically modified foods have a very big benefit to the world, particularly in feeding the poor and providing a balanced, nutritious diet for them.

The biotechnology advisory committee report mentions vitamin E, saying that it “is the most important fat-soluble anti-oxidant in our diet” and that it is “associated with a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease and some cancers”. Through GMO research on canola and grains, researchers have been able to increase this active ingredient by more than 95% by introducing a gene that aids in the conversion of a certain chemical to provide vitamin E. The report also states, “Iron deficiency is one of the most common dietary deficiencies worldwide and affects an estimated one to two billion people”.

Here is what is wrong with the labelling and the scare tactics of this type of legislation. Of course, I see my good old friend Mr. David Suzuki here too, who also is getting some coverage on the Kyoto agreement. What is wrong with this is that we are scaring the living daylights out of people who do not have the scientific information being put before them in regard to GMO technologies. Before the pooh-poohers and the naysayers get at me on this issue, let me say that we need only look at Zimbabwe, where large numbers of the population are starving and a lot of food aid was sent in. What happened was that the government over there said it would not allow the food aid because there might be something wrong with the GMO corn that was coming in to feed its people. Any government that will let its people starve because it believes the scaremongers who say something is wrong with GMO food just flies in the face of reason and flies against all sense of humanity.

The member sponsoring the bill talks about the acceptance of GMO foods. In Canada we have been eating GMO foods for many years now. Around the world people have been eating it for many years, in corn, soybean, canola and other crops. These crops all provide the base ingredients for most of the foods we eat. We are already eating them and they are safe.

If we want voluntary labelling, which we do have right now, if we want to export and get into a niche market that wants GMO free food, through identity preservation, we can do that right now. We do not need mandatory labelling.

[Kyoto Protocol, December 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the government is blindly stampeding the Canadian economy over a financial cliff to sure disaster if it ratifies the Kyoto agreement. On Tuesday, the agriculture department's assistant deputy minister for research said that his bureau still has not done a cost benefit analysis of the impact Kyoto will have on agriculture.

Why has this research not been done?

[An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (Cruelty to Animals and Firearms)and Firearms Act, December 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, we are here today in regard to the other place splitting the bill dealing with cruelty to animals and with the Firearms Act, which we passed here in the House of Commons.

The question of the operation of this place has already been dealt with by the Chair, so I will not go into that in too great a depth other than to say it seems that the other place is having a greater influence on the House of Commons than it should. Of course the problem with this is that the members of the other place do not have to go back to their constituents in the provinces, have a vote and in fact get a reaffirmation that the positions they are taking are right.

On the issue of this firearms legislation, what needs to be made clear right off the bat is that before Bill C-68 was put forward in 1995, Canada had very good firearms legislation. It had good control over firearms and the people who used firearms. There was good protection for society in general, both in the cities and in the country.

Members might ask how I can make this statement. They might ask if the gun legislation that came through in 1995 is not the best legislation, probably, and if it did not fill a big vacuum.

The fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, you know me, as you are all-knowing about members of Parliament. I was in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for 30 years. I am darn proud of my service there.

I dealt with a lot of the social ills in this country, including abuse and assaults between individual people, some on a social basis in unfortunate family situations and some in a criminal context. Before this billion dollar boondoggle of Bill C-68, how did police manage to handle the use of firearms if crimes were being committed? How did they check out somebody who wanted to have a firearm, or somebody who not only wanted but needed to have a firearm, as in the case of farmers and ranchers in particular, or trappers and people working in the resource industry in remote areas of the country where there are wild animals that actually will attack and kill humans? We did not need the new law. We needed to retain those we had.

Here is what we had before. We had a firearms acquisition certificate. Anybody who wanted to acquire firearms had to have a FAC, as it was called. People got that by going down to the local police station where local officers would do the computer checks through the Canadian Police Information Centre. They would do checks on people's background and character. They would know whether or not people were recorded as having any mental illness and/or criminal record. That was already in place. We did not have registration of every rifle and shotgun, but we did have the registering of handguns. That had been done since the 1930s. There was control of the handguns for the simple reason that handguns are easy to conceal inside a jacket or under a coat. That is legitimate firearms control and that is what we had.

Let us say that a firearm owner had his or her gun stolen. The RCMP would get the firearm owner to give us the serial number of his or her firearm and we would enter that into a computer. If that firearm had ever been used in a crime or if it was recovered, we would be able to immediately find it. However, that did not cost $1 billion. It probably cost a few million dollars to keep that system going. Those FACs are renewed every five years.

What about the situation where someone believes that maybe a person will use a firearm for an unlawful purpose or to hurt himself or herself or someone else? I know from practical experience that police can go to a court of law to obtain an order to seize those firearms and/or to remove the person who might commit the crime against his or her family or whomever.

We had good laws that worked, that were economical and that prevented those crimes which could be prevented. The problem with this legislation is that the Canadian public is given the impression that by registering every rifle and shotgun crime will be cut down. That is not the truth. Criminals cut down rifles and shotguns which make them illegal firearms, according to the Criminal Code. They become concealable weapons with which criminals commit the crimes.

Handguns are already registered. If the registration system is so good and prevents crime, why does the City of Toronto have gangs and criminals shooting each other and innocent bystanders on a regular weekly basis? The registration system cannot and will not prevent criminal activities or criminals from acquiring firearms.

What should we do? Do we take this $1 billion and fight crime or do we take the $1 billion, like the government has, and spend it on a registration system and harass law-abiding citizens? I and the Canadian Alliance say quite clearly that if we had given that $1 billion to the RCMP back in 1995, it would have improved its computers and it would have had an excellent system with regard to handguns. It would have used a lot of that $1 billion to go after real criminals. The money should have gone there.

The report of the Auditor General was recently presented to the House recently. It needs to be stated again in the House that is a scathing report. The Auditor General has used words to the effect that never in the history of Canada has there been such a large cost overrun on a program, a cost overrun that even the Auditor General could not establish from the books.

The Auditor General originally took the position of the government at the time that this would be a $2 million system. As she worked through it, she realized that the cost was around $1 billion and expected that it was likely much higher. However the records of the government were so bad that she could not determine how much money had been wasted on the system. There had been no accountability.

That brings us to the simple conclusion that throwing more money at this will not help. The system is still the way it is. It is still broken. It is still run down. It still cannot be made to work. I think the arguments of the backbench members of the government seem to have finally reached the frontbench and that is, further money should not be spent on the system.

The other day the Minister of Justice asked that $72 million be taken out of the supplementary estimates for the gun registry. The members have not said it, but I think they realize that throwing good money after bad will not do the job.

What would be wrong with not passing the motion and not sending it back to the other place? Let us keep this firearm legislation here. Let us make legislation that is effective in controlling crime, that makes wise use of resources and that is based on common sense and not some phoney Liberal value. That is what we need.

I have described the sensible legislation which the Canadian Alliance would put in place. We would still make fully automatic firearms prohibited. People would not be allowed to carry around handguns willy-nilly. However people could take their handguns to the local shooting range. If people did not want to use them at the shooting range for a whole year, for instance, that would be fine. They are their personal property.

However, with this legislation, the government is saying to people that if they have not used their firearms for year, because they have not signed in and out of the shooting club, then they no longer need them and they will be taken away. That is explicitly what it is saying it will do.

That is what is wrong with this legislation. It is a deception that the government and the Department of Justice have used right from the start to achieve its real goal, which cannot be crime prevention because obviously it does not prevent crime. Its real goal is to harass Canadians who have firearms either because they need them or for plain recreational purposes. The government wants to remove as many firearms as is possible.

The ideal goal as put forward by the lobby group, which is a very small number of people who want the federal government to put this legislation in, is that no Canadians have a firearms. The government understands that free society is not made up that way. A free society is made up of honest, decent citizens making a better country. Just because people own guns does not mean that they are not decent, normal citizen.

The government planned that the registry system would protect Canadians. Who is paying for that? The gun owners. Every blasted penny is being paid by people who own firearms. That further goes to show that the goal of the system is to harass gun owners and take away their firearms through the use of onerous laws made up of a whole bunch of little rules. The costs for that are borne by firearm owners.

The governments plan went a little bit awry when it tried to unload the costs onto the provinces. At that time the provinces said that the system would not work. They said that it was the most foolish plan they had ever seen and that would not participate or help the federal government.

Then we saw the initial court cases in Edmonton, Alberta. I recall very clearly the statistics the Department of Justice used. Because it did not have a good argument as to why the gun registry would help fight crime, it misstated and misused the figures, supplied by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, in court. Subsequently, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said publicly that the statistics were not correct and that they had been misrepresented in court. As a result, that deception continued.

Then the Auditor General found another deception. The Parliament of Canada was not being properly informed of the costs of the registry. That is highly suspect. The ministers are even saying to this day things that I think are questionable. That is the best way that I can put it.

The Minister of Justice said that the province of Ontario, at the time Premier Harris, and the province of Alberta, Premier Klein, were against effective gun control. I hate to quote from newspapers but that is what the minister said. That is patently untrue. It is as untrue as the statistics in the court case. The premiers of the provinces want effective gun control and wise use of resources, as I described at the start of my speech. I laid out how effective the system was before Bill C-68 and that is the system that I still purport we should use today.

That is why I would vote against the motion to send the bill back to the Senate for approval. The creation of a bureaucracy with a new commissioner of firearms reporting to the Minister of Justice instead of the RCMP will be a mammoth cost also and it will do absolutely nothing other than to drive the costs up. The minister will not answer our questions as to how much it will cost to finish registering of firearms and how much the system will cost every year thereafter.

I know that Canadians, both gun owners and non-gun owners, have not given up the battle to have this legislation repealed.

The former justice minister who brought this legislation forward quite clearly stated that the war had been lost by the Canadian Alliance in 1995 and as result it should be ended. The Canadian Alliance is not the only one fighting this. All provinces, firearm owners and people who are angry about the waste of their tax dollars are fighting it. This battle is not over by a long shot; it will continue.

I have a motion that I wish to put before the House, but before I do that I wish to speak to the other part of the motion which concerns the cruelty to animals legislation.

With regard to the cruelty to animals legislation, I only hope that, if the government sends it back to the Senate, that the Senate will retain the harsh penalties for cruelty to animals. I and my party are in favour that anybody who is cruel to animals should be hit with hard penalties. Animals are relatively defenceless when they are dealing with humans and as a result need that protection.

The stated goal here again is different than what the animal rights movement really wants. It does not want animals to be used either for food consumption or in any way other than their natural environment. I guess it would not even let us ride horses if it had its way because that is not totally natural to the animal.

I was talking about opposition to legislation. The Canadian Cattlemen's Association, every farmer lobby group association and the university medical research people are against the legislation. Millions of Canadians are against the legislation because parts of the bill do not protect farmers in the legitimate use of animals.

Once again, why would we not keep the bill in the House and fix it here, rather than send it back to the other place? I guess that is to be dealt with by the House as a whole and I suspect it will go back. Hopefully the Senate will do what we did not have the backbone to do in the House and that is make the cruelty to animal the best possible legislation. I wish the other place well in that regard.

I have made my points that both legislations are drastically flawed and that the opportunity to do the right thing in the House is available to us once again.

If the government sends bills back to the other place to be dealt with, it is abdicating its responsibility to do what is in the interest of all Canadians by the government and that is a sorry state of affairs. I wish to make an amendment in regard to this motion. I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following:

“in relation to the amendments made by the Senate to Bill C-10, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, this House does not concur with the Senate's division of the Bill into two parts, namely, Bill C-10A, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (firearms) and the Firearms Act, and Bill C-10B, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals), since it is the view of this House that such alteration to Bill C-10 by the Senate is an infringement of the rights and privileges of the House of Commons;” and

That this House asks the Senate to consider C-10 in an undivided form; and

That a Message be sent to the Senate to acquaint Their Honours therewith.

[Kyoto Protocol, December 2nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the other day I was speaking on behalf of the Canadian Alliance and the agriculture critic team that I head up. I was making the point quite clearly that the issue in this country and around the world is that pollution actually does have a negative effect on people's health as opposed to CO

2

, which does not have a negative impact. It starts to stretch the imagination to say that CO

2

is connected to this, is connected to that and connected to that, and ultimately somebody gets sick.

I am asking this member if in fact the country should not be concentrating on reducing pollution as an objective as opposed to worrying about the possibility that mankind is affecting, in a very small way, the greenhouse gas effect of global warming.

[Kyoto Protocol, November 29th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question which brings us to one of the key points for a sector like agriculture. The cost of energy is a direct cost in the use of tractors and trucks that are used out in the fields. It is also a cost in the production of fertilizer and many of the inputs that farmers have to buy to raise the food that we need to live.

The Kyoto protocol would add cost to our food production which would raise the price for people on fixed incomes trying to buy food. It would also impact on our exports. We know other countries have a lot of subsidies so some of their costs are borne by society as a whole, but our subsidies are small and limited.

What is the impact if we were to increase the cost of raising grain, beef and all other agriculture exports? The member for Peace River has mentioned that it would make us less competitive in our exports of food and raw commodities.

Once we are less competitive, we would sell less on the world market. What does that mean? That means we would have less hard foreign currency being earned and coming into the country, less ability to pay for health care and education, and less ability in fact to pay for the Kyoto agreement that the government is pushing us into, especially if we would have to buy credits from countries like Russia or others that have this deal to sell credits.

This whole plan would simply make our standard of living even poorer. It would reduce the productivity of Canada as a whole. We already know that productivity is much less than it should be. It is much less than our main competitors in the OECD countries.

Our party is basing its position on common sense, rational thought, and not a belief in some mythical walk in the snow by the Prime Minister. It was probably a walk in too much heat that caused him to come forward with this plan.

[Kyoto Protocol, November 29th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I can say that I do not agree with one connection that the member made. What the Liberals are proceeding on is opposite to what we are proceeding on. They intend to jump over a cliff with a blindfold on and see where they land. The Canadian Alliance is basing its position on common sense. Common sense is an analytical assessment of the situation and what should be done about the situation.

I have laid it out very clearly in my speech that pollution is a major problem in North America and in the world. We should be doing something about pollution. We should not be wasting our time, effort and money on some hypothetical argument over whether global warming is caused by mankind or whether it is an act of nature or a natural occurrence in the world situation. I think the evidence very clearly is that the heating and cooling of the world over the eons is precisely what is happening now.

So I think I will stick with the Canadian Alliance's common sense. We are concerned about the average Canadian. We are concerned about the Canadians with very low incomes. Many live in my riding. We do not have buses or trains that will take us from our farms and ranches to areas where there are medical doctors and we can obtain services. Our people cannot stand massive increases in fuel taxes or for vehicles that are going to be fighting CO

2

gas emissions. That will add mammoth costs for people who cannot afford it.

There is a better way and a right way to do this, and that is the Canadian Alliance way, which is based on common sense and a concern for the economic well-being of people in this country.

[Kyoto Protocol, November 29th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to the Kyoto protocol. A lot has been said about it to this point butt his needs to be debated much longer so the facts can get out. I do not believe that will happen because the government does not have a plan.

Under the Kyoto protocol, Canada has to commit to reducing its emissions by 134 megatonnes below the current levels by 2008 and 2012. Canada will have to reduce its emissions by 30%. Canada is only responsible for 2% of the world's emissions so what we do will not have a gigantic impact. That also begs the question as to whether mankind is causing the global warming or are there other reasons. I will get into that in just a minute.

My riding of Selkirk--Interlake is a rural riding and is agriculture based. A lot of farmers these days are very well educated. One gentleman in my riding, by the name of Randall Stefanson, has a bachelor of science in environmental studies. He has spent 30 years at this and he also farms. He is a very well educated, common sense fellow from the Arborg area of Manitoba. I will be referencing some of his material in my speech.

Canada should be going after the whole issue of pollution. Pollution is causing health problems in the country and it is causing smog problems, particularly in the big cities. However that smog and pollution does not just stay in the big cities where it is created. It drifts around and contaminates a lot of the countryside. We had the issue of acid rain years ago and that is still with us to a certain extent. We know that up in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories the pollution from the industrialized world is contaminating the wildlife food supplies of the people.

Canada is looking at committing to the Kyoto protocol. However what about countries like China, India and other underdeveloped countries that are not in it but put out massive amounts of pollution? We need to look at that area. We need to not only clean up the pollution in the first world industrialized countries, but we also need to help the third world countries to industrialized and improve their economies in a clean manner.

What is the Prime Minister getting us into? He is assuming, on what basis we do not know entirely, that by reducing CO

2

gases that somehow will greatly improve the environment of the world. The jury is a long way from reaching a conclusion as to whether CO

2

gases are the problem.

As I mentioned, as far as global warming mankind is responsible for such a small amount of the CO

2

gases produced. Nature is far ahead of mankind. I think that nature will be seen in the future to be the main driver of global warming, if it continues.

In dealing with the pollution issue, I have heard other members in the House speak on this, from the government side and on our side. In the Selkirk--Interlake region where I live, we had a proposed project. It was the Eastern Interlake Regional Co-op recycling facility. I believe this effort went on for eight or ten years.

The municipalities got together and said that there was a better way than just filling up a landfill. They suggested a recycling cooperative where the garbage from all the municipalities would be brought to a central point, probably located north of Winnipeg, within about 15 or 20 miles. It was meant to service rural areas, not Winnipeg. This recycling cooperative would have not only sorted the garbage, but it would have created a gas that could have be used to generate some electricity as well. By doing this, it would not go into the landfill and create methane forever; that gas would enter the environment.

The problem with the project was this. Across all political lines, the municipalities approached the provincial and federal governments to help. They said that they had a good idea and asked if the government could help fund the project. The federal government put in a few thousand dollars and the province put in some.

This is a very viable idea. This type of facility is used in the United States, in Europe and in other countries. However could they get any real support for it?

When the Prime Minister rams this CO

2

Kyoto agreement through, hopefully there will be some positive silver lining to the cloud and that in fact projects like this will get funded. They could be a real demonstration to the rest of the country on how garbage from municipalities could be handled.

I talked about nature, global warming and how changes in the environment happened. It is pretty presumptuous of mankind to think we can control nature, the firmaments and the heavens. I suppose some day the government would, if it was in power, say that it wanted to change the environment or the moon or whatever.

My question to the government is basic. If global warming is taking place, is it happening as a result of mankind or is it something else? That question depends on the time scale being used. It is a fact that climate change has been going on since the beginning of time. Natural cycles of warming and cooling have been going on before man walked on the planet. Had the earth not warmed 10,000 years ago, the ecology of Manitoba would certainly not exist the way it is today. We would still be under a two mile sheet of ice.

NASA data does not support the warming theory. The United States is not supporting this agreement. I think it is based both on science and the fact that it wants to use its money for its priority, fighting pollution. When we fight pollution, we in fact reduce CO

2

gases. However, by doing it the other way around, fighting CO

2

gases, we will not be doing very much about actual pollution. That point was not lost on the Americans or the Australians. However, it sure has been lost on the Prime Minister and the environment minister who are dragging Canada kicking and screaming into this bad agreement.

Just as a little aside, the Prime Minister and cabinet apparently have the full authority to ratify this agreement without any vote in the House of Commons. That of course brings us to the operation and authority of Parliament but I will not go there today. It is a pretty sad fact when Parliament does not have the final say on some of these international treaties which will affect us so deeply.

Global warming will affect the United States more than us. Is there something I wonder that President Bush knows that we do not know? I think the scientific analysis being done in the United States, just through the resources that it has, will clearly show that concentrating on CO

2

gases is a misguided effort.

On the agriculture side, I would also point out that we have not had any estimates of costs from the government nor have we been told what actually will happen. The estimates that have been put out are pretty questionable. The United States says that the cost impact on its agriculture would be in the $30 billion to $40 billion range. When we look at the net income for farms right now, we can see that these folks are just getting by, with some making a little more than the poverty wage and others who are below that. The last thing we need is much higher costs being put on our agriculture in a dubious cause.

The theory of carbon dioxide causing atmospheric warming apparently was originally conceived to rationalize the high temperatures on the planet Venus, whose atmosphere is composed mainly of carbon dioxide. That theory is no longer in vogue for explaining the high temperatures on that planet. The rationale of those who support Kyoto is that man produces carbon dioxide and releases it into the environment, and therefore it must be causing some of the problem and the problem should be warming because it is a greenhouse gas.

Of course the question is, does that have any basis? Carbon dioxide is perhaps the least noxious product that man has ever produced and released into the environment. Carbon dioxide has never been put on trial to determine whether its concentration is critical in causing warming or cooling cycles. This amounts to a chicken and egg style of debate. The fact is that increased levels of carbon dioxide are associated with warming trends in climate. The fact is that the climate warms the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere and it increases only slightly. This increase does not cause the warming, but is a consequence of warming. If carbon dioxide were put on trial, I think we would find that it is not the major cause of global warming.

These models everybody is talking about are at best just estimates and guesses as to what would happen. We know that depending on what criteria and measures are put on a model that we in fact can get the answer we want out of it.

Should warming be taking place directly driven by mankind and should man's carbon dioxide release be contributing to that warming, then the question that must be asked is whether this is a benefit or a detriment to our society.

As I say, I contest whether or not carbon dioxide is actually significantly changing global warming. If there are plants and forests, for instance, growing in areas that currently do not have it, we know that plants use photosynthesis and the carbon dioxide is used up in that process, so there again, without good scientific evidence it is a little presumptuous to suggest that some warming is going to be bad for the world overall. I think the case can be made just as easily that some global warming will have an overall benefit for the world.

In Manitoba, the premier has been saying that we should in fact be supporting Kyoto. That is the position he has taken on behalf of Manitobans. His eyes, of course, are on the next provincial election and he simply wants to work with the Liberal government for some reason. The big issue in Manitoba is that our economy has not progressed particularly well under the NDP watch. It has always been the idea that if we could get that Conawapa dam going up in northern Manitoba, it would produce some 1.3 million watts of electricity, which we would then be able to export. It would take 10 years to build that dam and that would create a lot of jobs and so on. This proposal was put forward about 10 or 15 years ago and the idea then was to have a transmission line in Canada, particularly down to Ontario, that would buy the electricity from Manitoba.

Now I guess the premier is jumping on the idea that the Kyoto agreement is going to facilitate this somehow. To go back to that time 10 or 15 years ago when Ontario was trying to make some decisions on hydroelectricity, it rejected clean energy from Manitoba. Now, of course, I think there are some serious discussions on the go about building that transmission line and getting it operating. If that is an incidental byproduct of the Kyoto agreement, that will be a good thing for Ontario and for Manitoba, but there again the priorities are all wrong. We are going to be spending and wasting an awful lot of money on the Kyoto agreement and the massive costs it is going to have for individual Canadians, when this hydroelectric project could well have gone ahead without Kyoto.

Ontario could have saved itself all the hydroelectric problems it has now if it had tapped into Manitoba's hydroelectric project. It will probably still be done, but in addition to having to borrow all the money to build and pay for this massive Conawapa dam, and there is only one person paying for all this, the Canadian taxpayer, the taxpayer is going to have to pay for the foolish side of Kyoto as well as for the good projects. I have mentioned two here in a really positive light today: the Conawapa dam in northern Manitoba and the recycling effort that could be made for garbage in my own riding.

These things all cost money and the government has to prioritize where it spends its money. Those two good projects certainly should receive money. I am sure there are many in other provinces that would be the same, but what is the government going to do? It is going to make it harder to fund those projects because we are going to go into the foolishness of this Kyoto agreement, trying to cut down on CO

2

gas specifically instead of going after pollution, as I said at the start of my speech. That will have a secondary effect if pollution from other gases and other particles besides CO

2

gases is reduced. Then obviously we would end up with a much better solution and it would be, to a certain extent, market driven. It would be responding to an actual demand in the country for more energy, for cleaner energy. This is where we should be going.

From my speech members can tell that I do not intend to support or vote for this ratification. I would urge the government members who are thinking seriously about this to also vote against it and give a message to the Prime Minister that before he and the cabinet ratify this they really should have some second thoughts.

I do not have much time left and I would like to take a moment now to move an amendment to the amendment. I move:

That the amendment be amended by inserting before the word “costs” the following: “detailed”.

[Grain Farmers, November 28th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, three farmers, Ron Duffy, John Turcato and Bill Moore, still sit in an Alberta jail for the crime of taking their own wheat across the border.

More cases involving persecution of grain farmers in Saskatchewan are pending and the fate of these farmers will be decided in court in January. These are ordinary Canadians who simply want the fundamental right to sell their wheat to the highest bidder.

The minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board refuses to take any responsibility for forcing these farmers into jail and does not seem prepared to take any action to prevent more farmers from going to jail.

Canada prides itself on being a country that guarantees its citizens the right to freedom of choice. It is what our soldiers fought and died for in both world wars.

With the refusal of the minister to recognize this fundamental right and to remove the monopoly of the Canadian Wheat Board, do we really have the right to claim to be a country based upon equality of citizens and free enterprise principles?