Howard Hilstrom

[Supply, December 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the member's question raises the point that a united alternative would certainly help us put forward the position that he purports to be putting forward right now.

The member termed my remarks as slamming the PCs. That was not my point at all. The history of agriculture policy and programs over the past 20 years the PCs and the Liberals have been in power has not resulted in the long term program which everybody is identifying needs to be in place. They are talking about it again today. If this is not done in another five or ten years, the MPs who follow us to this place will be talking about the same thing. This is my criticism of past governments.

The lack of subsidy in Canada for farmers, not all farmers but just those who are being hurt by trade distorting subsidies of other countries through no fault of their own, is the issue that has to be addressed today.

[Supply, December 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, certainly I support a campaign along those lines but we would have to look at the details. The Leader of the Opposition and I met with the ex-premier of Manitoba this summer, along with the Rural Disaster Coalition people. We in fact called for the very same thing.

The consumers of Toronto are very important to agriculture in not only the west but all areas of agriculture because they consume and pay for food. They also vote to put MPs into the House to represent them. The interest of consumers is served by keeping a viable agriculture sector and reasonably priced food. As a result I support that.

The last comment I would make gets back to the performance of the agriculture minister. The government and the agriculture department have to be very careful about putting out press releases with regard to what is happening by way of support. He mentioned again today that farmers received $1.1 billion. He did not say this today but he has said that provincial governments put in their part, bringing the figure up to $2 billion.

Consumers in Toronto think that farmers have obtained $2 billion. They have not. They have a portion of it but they are still to get it all. We are in agreement that consumers are important.

[Supply, December 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, today we are debating the business of supply. In the Supplementary Estimates (A) the President of the Treasury Board has indicated that Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada requires an additional $63,196,279 to continue its programs which began in this fiscal year. The Reform Party and our chief critic, the member for St. Albert, are opposed to this money being added to the spending of the agriculture department.

The questions that always go unanswered are: Why did the department not foresee what was happening? Why did it not plan better? Where has the money gone that it originally had? Was it simply wasted or was it shifted to some other area, resulting in additional funds being required?

In debating this appropriation of money we have to look at the overall operation of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. The department's operations are of course directed by the minister in charge. The agriculture minister sets the tone, examines what is happening and determines how the money will be spent.

The performance of the Liberal government and the agriculture minister is on trial. When someone takes over a major department like agriculture and agri-food, that person has to demonstrate by action, not words or spin doctoring, that a good job is being done. When we see what is happening in regard to western Canadian agriculture in particular, we have to question very seriously the performance of this minister and, indirectly, the government itself, because the problems that are evident in the west are not being addressed and have not been addressed.

Over the last 20 years we have had successive governments which have failed to put in place a program of long duration to address the problems which we know come up continuously. The Progressive Conservatives certainly had opportunities through the eighties, with massive majorities, to put long term programs in place. Ad hoc programs have been shown time after time to be insufficient in taking care of the problems which farmers encounter.

The problems which agriculture is encountering are not of its own making. The agriculture sectors that are in trouble are the ones which are dependent on export markets. These farmers contribute gigantic sums, in the tens of billions of dollars, to the Canadian economy. As a result, when they are harmed by the actions of our competitors, namely, gigantic subsidization for cereal grains and oil seeds, our farmers are not on a level playing field. They cannot compete against these massive subsidies.

This is nothing new. This has been going on for some time. Successive governments have failed to put in place programs that will enable Canada to have a viable agriculture sector. This is a bit astounding. Maybe over the years governments have become complacent because there is always food at the grocery store. Anyone can go to the store to pick up food relatively cheaply. This complacency has done nothing for the agriculture sector in having a long term program to guarantee that the sector will remain viable.

There are many things the government could do. Certainly what comes immediately to mind is what the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool brought up. There are user fees of $138 million that would have been applied to farmers. The auditor general has questioned whether or not the farmers are getting value for that, whether they have any say about those user fees and whether the sub-departments that are charging those fees are accountable for how they use them.

Fuel taxes are a good example. The federal excise tax is four cents per litre and that is applied directly to the farmer. That is one case where we could quite easily lower his costs. The farmer's problem, as I mentioned, is that input costs have gone up drastically and net returns have gone down.

I have mentioned previously and in my question today in question period, when a natural disaster strikes western Canada as in the case of the flooded areas in southwest Manitoba and southeast Saskatchewan, there is no declaration of a natural disaster. We heard the defence minister tell us today that unless the premier of Manitoba and the premier Saskatchewan initiate a call for a natural disaster area, he will not do anything. The premiers and the defence minister had better get together and make that declaration for farmers. The chairman of the agriculture committee of this House is telling farmers that there is still a chance that a natural disaster area could be declared to get the help they need to recover from that disaster.

There are places besides the department itself where we could get the money. The government has to look carefully at how it is using the money it gets. It must bear in mind that agriculture, our food supply and the basic necessity of life which is food, should be the country's primary importance.

The government has subsidized our magazine industry to the tune of $150 million. Here again it is farmers versus magazine moguls, which is what I would call them. They are limited in number and have massive influence with the government. They are getting $150 million. It is a case of their merely not wanting to meet the competition from other magazine producers. In the case of the farmer, he is not getting the subsidy and he is up against competitors who are subsidized. In the case of the magazine industry, competitors in other countries are not getting subsidized so it is not the same issue. It is mispriorization in government spending in regard to agriculture and other sectors of the Canadian economy.

I saw an interesting little example in the National Gallery of Canada the other day, the famous “Voice of Fire”. That beautiful art piece was purchased for about $1.2 million and the gallery staff told me it is now worth $7.5 million. When hearing that, the question farmers ask is if it has gone up that much in value, why not sell it and use the money for some good priorities such as keeping a viable agriculture sector?

There was the infamous Winnipeg situation of $15,000 in St. Norbert for a display of dead rabbits hanging in the trees. That was funded by the government. The government is being asked for money for agriculture. Lots of money is being wasted and foolishly spent and it lets the agriculture sector sink.

I should not go on too much about the extra money. Other examples such as the movie Bubbles Galore have come up. The coast guard and Corrections Canada spent $6,000 on a party on the east coast. The ships with the helicopters on them probably cost about $30,000 an hour to run. It was probably $200,000 or $300,000 no doubt for that little trip.

The $130 billion budget for the federal government's operations is a pretty big figure. With that amount the government knew it was getting and would be able to spend, it should have simply planned for that spending and used it properly. It should not be coming back to the taxpayer time after time to get more money.

The last thing I will mention regarding wasted money is the figure of around $200 million on the famous former Bill C-68 on gun control, the Firearms Act. What a tremendous waste of money. It is evident to virtually every Canadian.

We should look at what the agriculture minister and chairman of the agriculture committee are saying and doing in regard to the agriculture crisis that is happening in western Canada. We know what they are saying to the people of southwest Manitoba and southeast Saskatchewan in the flood area. Let us look at what else they are saying.

The agriculture minister was talking about farmers who are in trouble and possibly going bankrupt. One of the most famous statements he made rates right up there along with Mr. Trudeau's “Why should I sell your wheat?” The minister said, “I have been there, I have done it and it is now time for tough love”. He continued, “We are sorry but that bottom 30% of farmers who cannot make it will just have to go and do something else and we will continue on with the remaining 60%”.

That seems to be the vision of the government regarding agriculture. Some of the policies the government brings out encourage that kind of activity.

One of the best examples is the Canadian Wheat Board. A lot of people believe that the Canadian Wheat Board will keep the small farmers around. In the timeframe that the Canadian Wheat Board has been going, since the 1940s, we have lost tens of thousands of farmers, and the small farmers are disappearing.

The reason is that the wheat board does not have the ability to provide independent marketing for the individual farmers who could by looking at their own marketing maximize their prices. The wheat board wants to tell everybody it will do all the marketing and get a price which will be shared among every other farmer. That has not worked.

I propose that the Canadian Wheat Board assets be sold off. They should be sold off to a consortium named the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool and the Agricore. That would become their marketing arm, two organizations that are set up to pool the returns for all farmers and would voluntarily go in with them. The farmers who did not want to be part of that organization would end up marketing on their own.

We have the solution for marketing grain on the prairies. This would actually add income for a lot of farmers. Those who would be hurt by not having pooling and not having somebody to do their marketing for them, would have farmer owned co-operatives, namely Agricore and the marketing ability of the wheat board to do that. It is pretty clear there are things which could be done.

I would like to talk for a minute about a couple of farmers who are telling the government what is necessary. One of them mentions the Canadian Wheat Board and marketing freedom, but they also get into other areas such as transportation.

One farmer said “I have been a producer representative on the old senior grain transportation committee that existed”. He went on to say that what it really comes down to with the current regime is that it is based on a command structure. We could say that about the wheat board as well, because the wheat board is set up by the House as a command structure where one has the sole right to sell wheat and barley for export. However, if one wants to try and do it by oneself, the wheat board says “Sell it to us and we will add some costs and return what is left over”. The command structure there again is not working.

The farmer went on to say that the transportation system runs on layers of regulations and formulas. He said that the irony is that over the years it was the farmers who asked for that. We see now that in fact a command structure does not work. It does not work in agriculture and it does not work in the case of transportation.

There is a lot of supply management in Manitoba where I come from. We are glad to have it. That is different from the Canadian Wheat Board. The Canadian Wheat Board is not supply management. There has been a lot of deception by the government over the years that the Canadian Wheat Board is supply management. That is absolutely not the case.

The supply managed sector operates under legislation and the cost of production is included in a formula on which it prices its product. That is a good thing. I support that supply management is a good sector for agriculture. Supply management does not seem to be applicable to the whole agriculture sector.

The hog producers have said that they do not want to go back to supply management because they are export dependent. As long as we force agriculture just to be in the domestic market, we can say that if we do not want to export, let us have supply management in the whole agriculture sector and we will pay those farmers who are able to be in that enough to keep going. But what we see is that the country makes tens of billions of dollars in the non-supply managed sector. That is new money coming in from outside the country.

Why the government can stand here and not support western Canada's farmers and also those in Ontario who export grains and earn the country tens of billions of dollars is beyond me. In the planning of the government and the agriculture minister, one would think the importance of these export sectors and what they contribute to the country would be recognized.

One other farmer saw fit to talk to us about farming on the question of whether or not this government could afford to help agriculture and maintain a viable sector. He commented that “The finance minister is projecting a $90 billion surplus in five years. I may say this government can find money for support for those who are under siege”. He used the example of East Timor. He went on to say:

But it is time to recognize the farm industry at home here is under siege as well. Because farming is a renewable resource every year employing people directly and indirectly by the thousands, the government must come to recognize that those dependent on the farming industry are under siege as well. What is being offered so far to combat the record foreign subsidies through AIDA is at best insignificant. The farmers and the business people both directly and indirectly have demonstrated, sent petitions, made trips to Ottawa, staged rallies and have given presentations by the dozens in the months that followed seeding and the harvest in 1999, all in an attempt to get Ottawa to recognize the farm crisis in Canada.

There is no point in the government going around talking and asking everyone what should be done. The facts are on the line. The government has been told what is going on. Number one, the low net margin in the west for the export crops and in Ontario have to be addressed. The net margin has to be brought up.

The lack of a long term program necessitates a massive infusion of cash into Manitoba and Saskatchewan in particular. That infusion has been identified by the premiers of both those provinces to the federal government as being in the neighbourhood of $1.3 billion. It is time the government rolled up its sleeves and gave us the viable agriculture sector that is so important to our national interest.

[Agriculture, December 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the chairman of the agriculture committee is telling flooded farmers that while it is late in the day, they should not give up trying to have southwest Manitoba and southeast Saskatchewan declared a natural disaster area. The government has waffled on declaring this a natural disaster area for seven months. His own caucus members are saying that help may still come.

My question is for the Minister of National Defence. Will he declare the flooded region a natural disaster area, yes or no?

[Supply, December 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the member from Pictou—Antigonish has brought up the fact that agriculture has a lot of problems today and something has to be done. That is what we are here to debate. He also brought up alienation, east versus west, Quebec versus the west, all the different parts of the country fighting against each other.

I have one question for the member. Back in the 1980s, Mr. Brian Mulroney was the prime minister. Fifty percent of the alienation in western Canada today is directly related to that prime minister. Not only did he take the CF-18 contract away from western Canada, from my own city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, but he turned off the farmers. Where was the long term disaster assistance program for farmers? Why was it not created during the Mulroney years, the Progressive Conservative years, when they had the biggest majority ever as the governing party?

[Supply, December 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for recognizing the official opposition's responsibility in the House to ask the first question.

The history of agriculture in Canada is written one page at a time. The agriculture minister has been writing his pages certainly since the start of his appointment to the ministry in the House.

My question for the agriculture minister deals with his administration of the agriculture department. He briefly mentioned that he had responded to the drastic drop in income. In the good administration of a minister's department, particularly agriculture, why is the minister simply responding to requests as opposed to administering the department and foreseeing that ad hoc payments have not worked out over the past 100 years? Why has he not been able to put in place long term programs over the past two terms of this Liberal government?

My question relates to the $1.4 billion budget that he has to work with and why an additional $63,196,279 has to be appropriated in extra payments from taxpayers at this time.

[Nisga'A Final Agreement Act, December 6th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, as I was saying, the duty of opposition members in the House is to question closely, to hold the feet of the government to the fire, so to speak, and say “You prove to Canadians that in fact what you are saying is factual, that in fact you have had full disclosure, that in fact you have given all Canadians a full opportunity to understand something that affects them as fully as it does when the country signs an agreement with a people who were sovereign at one time in the British Columbia area”.

The extent of the government information sharing has been a website which is becoming more accessible. Certainly in my riding it is more accessible all the time. However it is still not sufficient to make sure that people are informed. Many people, in particular middle age and older, are not too familiar with computers and as a result do not have the information. They still have to live with the agreement that is signed and their children, on whose behalf they are making decisions, also have to live with it.

It is the duty of the opposition parties to clearly identify the good and bad as I have stated.

To simply stand here and say that they are not doing their job, while it may be the truth, is not sufficient either. The question is whether the other opposition parties are worried that the bill may not go through, even though they would like to see it go through. However, we have repeatedly seen in the House that the Liberal government can quite quickly have its members vote the way it wants and pass the legislation that it wants.

In speaking to why we in the Reform Party want to question the Liberals closely on this, let us look at a couple of facts that have already been demonstrated. The first one that concerns me, and should concern all Canadians, is that in a couple of sections, Nisga'a law, when it is passed by the Nisga'a people, will supersede Canadian law where the two are in conflict. That strikes at the very heart of the supremacy of parliament.

The second obvious thing I find right off the bat is that the land, which has been negotiated on behalf of the Nisga'a people, has overlapping land claims from neighbouring aboriginal peoples who also have a legitimate claim on the land. It would seem that after it is signed, put into law and put into the lands registry office in B.C., it will be too late to have another negotiation later to sort out just what will happen to those Indian people who also deserve a share of the land. It is their land as much as it is Nisga'a land.

Why would we want to create this kind of dissension for our children, our children's children and our children's children after that? That is exactly what is happening.

The other thing that really bothers me is that aboriginal women, who I have spent a lot of time with over the last two years and have spoken on behalf of with regard to their rights under the Indian reservation system in the Indian Act, are not being specifically addressed here, particularly in the area of matrimonial rights.

I conclude by saying that the government has failed to fully inform Canadians and give all Canadians a say in this treaty.

[Nisga'A Final Agreement Act, December 6th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to stand on behalf of Selkirk—Interlake and speak on Bill C-9, better known as the Nisga'a treaty, the Nisga'a final agreement act.

There has not been a great deal of information distributed in my riding by the government to inform people about what is actually in the Nisga'a treaty from the government's point of view. This should have been done in a proactive way so that we could have understood. As well, the government has distributed its information to selected entities in British Columbia and I am not sure where else.

I would like to touch for just a moment on the fact that Bill C-9 is a treaty for the Nisga'a people in northwest British Columbia. It has been passed by the British Columbia legislature which used closure in effect to stifle debate in that legislature. There was a referendum in the Nisga'a treaty lands and the people there had a say on it. However, this right of referendum was not extended to the people of British Columbia.

We see in the House also that closure is being used to stop debate in the House where we are attempting to look at all the facts, at all the sections of the treaty and to expose to the government and to the Canadian people parts of the treaty that are not as perfect or as good as they could be. What I am talking about is certainly the role of an opposition member.

The Nisga'a people never received a treaty from the British crown at the time of European colonization. From the late 19th century to the mid-20th century the issue remained on the back burner without resolution. Successive federal governments refused to negotiate or even acknowledge the need for a treaty relationship. To a certain extent we have the Liberals in particular, and the Progressive Conservatives also as johnny-come-latelies recognizing that in fact they have been one of the biggest problems to the aboriginal people of Canada.

In 1996 an agreement in principle was reached between the three parties after some seven years of closed door negotiations. The final agreement was drafted over the next two years and was initialled in August, 1998. Although the Nisga'a people had a referendum on the final agreement, the federal and B.C. governments, as I said earlier, have refused to allow a referendum to consult the people in British Columbia who live outside the Nisga'a reserve and in fact all Canadians through the idea of giving them information so that they could reach some conclusion on their own.

On May 4, prior to the agreement even being introduced in parliament, the three parties concerned signed the final agreement. Then it was presented to parliament. It would seem that perhaps the Canadian people should have had their say first before presenting this bill to parliament for debate and before the final signing was done.

I would like to say that I believe and acknowledge that treaty agreements should be signed and that the treaties signed in the past have to be honoured. In Manitoba full entitlement is being given in lands and money where the original compensation was deemed to be inadequate or was contrary to the treaties that were signed.

This agreement contains both sections that are good and sections that leave some doubt as to whether or not they really serve the needs of Canadians and the Nisga'a people themselves. We have a case of both good and bad in this treaty.

I have a question for the Progressive Conservatives, the NDP and the Bloc. What is their role in this parliament in dealing with legislation put forward by a government? The role of an opposition member of parliament, whether in the official opposition or just another opposition party, is to critically look at legislation the government brings forward and not just to rubber stamp it saying, “Yes, that must be good. The government brought it forward and it has been working at it a long time”. In fact, it should closely question and monitor what is actually happening.

Ultimately an opposition party may vote in favour of the legislation, but to stand here day after day, as the NDP, the Progressive Conservatives and the Bloc members have, and to simply applaud the Liberal government just does not cut it for an opposition member. It is not doing the job we were sent here to do. As a result—

[Petitions, December 6th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition from residents of my riding of Selkirk—Interlake.

They are concerned that the dredging that has been discontinued by the federal government, the Canadian Coast Guard and public works on our navigable waters of the Red River and Lake Winnipeg is seriously hampering both commercial fishing and pleasure boating. As a result, these 900 plus petitioners would like the federal government to reinstate dredging on the Red River and Lake Winnipeg and the harbours associated with these waterways, which will help Manitobans to a great extent.

[Agriculture, December 6th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the government seems to be saying “We tried. Better luck next time”. This does not help farmers who cannot afford to wait for the deadlocked WTO talks to succeed.

Given the failure in Seattle, Canada must pursue bilateral agreements on agriculture and provide urgently needed short term assistance. Will the Prime Minister immediately enter into negotiations with the members of the Cairns group and the U.S. to create a trading zone free of agriculture subsidies?