Howard Hilstrom

[Agriculture, October 14th, 1999]

Yes. I recognize, Mr. Speaker, that is not an appropriate statement.

[Agriculture, October 14th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the agriculture minister is a liar. I did not say—

[Agriculture, October 14th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, with all the agriculture minister says that he has done for farmers, why are thousands of dirt poor farmers still getting nothing, no cash?

To date the government has done nothing to address the crisis in any serious way. AIDA does not work and there is no replacement in sight. Families are losing their farms right now, not tomorrow, and the government sits idly by. Why is the Prime Minister allowing our farmers to head into winter with no hope and no cash?

[Requests For Emergency Debates, October 13th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the crisis situation I referred to in my letter to you asking for an emergency debate absolutely involves the statistical analysis of Statistics Canada, which has clearly indicated that farm incomes will be flat and will be dropping as a result of low commodity prices and the actions of our competitors.

This emergency arises now because last fall the standing committee on agriculture held hearings on the problem. As a result of those hearings and the report that was put forward it was determined by the government that the only problem was a sharp drop in income for farmers for 1998-99. According to Statistics Canada, the truth of the matter is that during the past five or six years incomes have been dropping to very low levels and they are projected to remain flat.

The fact is, the federal government has addressed a short, two year program that is not providing money to the majority of farmers. That is the reason we must have an emergency debate. The government has not addressed the issue. Farmers are going bankrupt. Calls to the Brandon, Manitoba stress line for farmers are up three times over what they were a year ago.

We are dealing with a true crisis. The number of farm groups coming to Ottawa to stress their point to the minister requires that we in the House debate the issue to bring forward what the real problem is and what the solutions are.

[Agriculture, October 13th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the government cannot in good conscience allow farmers to head into winter with no hope. The government likes to throw around compassionate sounding buzzwords such as the children's agenda. There are thousands and thousands of farm children whose parents are trying desperately to make ends meet. Real children need real help and the government is turning its back.

If the agriculture minister and government are truly interested in helping children, what do they plan to do for them to get them through this winter?

[Agriculture, October 13th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, today the Prime Minister verbally proved he does not understand the farm income crisis, let alone able to devise a solution. Let us try the agriculture minister.

There is a 98% drop in realized net income and not a whisper of concern in yesterday's throne speech. There was no any mention of children going hungry or parents wondering if they could stay on the farm. Farmers never knew how far away Ottawa was until yesterday.

My question is for the minister of agriculture. Why is the plight of thousands of farm families not a priority for the agriculture minister and the government?

[Agriculture, June 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I think the agriculture minister already knows how serious the flood is. The agriculture minister has been saying that farmers gave nothing back to the country in the good years, implying that they should receive no help today. However, farmers have shared their hard-earned profits through excessive Liberal taxes.

When the minister goes out there, is he going to also meet with the agriculture ministers of Manitoba and Saskatchewan so that this disaster can be declared immediately and help be forthcoming immediately?

[Agriculture, June 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, once again the agriculture minister is showing callous indifference to western farmers. Over two million acres of farmland are under water in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Farmers cannot plant their crops and will have little or no income for 1999. The minister's poor performance on the AIDA program has destroyed western farmers' confidence in this government.

Will the minister look past the Ontario border and declare the flooded region a disaster area?

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, June 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the freedom that we are talking about here is the freedom to be free of government propaganda. It is the freedom to develop a culture that flows naturally from our youth and and from people living in the countryside today.

Out west we spend a lot of time outdoors. Quite often, in order to protect ourselves from the sun, we wear a big hat called a Stetson. That is a kind of culture thing of the west.

If we take this to the logical conclusion, where Bill C-55 is saying that we have to protect culture, the Liberals are protecting what they think is a small little piece of culture like this in the magazine industry. However, culture is much bigger than that. By logical extension from Bill C-55, Canadians should be told by the government that, for instance, since Montreal people like to wear berets all Canadians should wear berets because that is Canadian.

I have a couple of real good quarter horses that I use for sorting cattle and working my ranch. We now have the government and the Bloc on the other side trying to tell me that the Canadian horse is some horse that is raised down here in Ontario and Quebec. Well that cultural horse is not the kind of horse we use out west. Here again is big government imposing its vision of culture on us. We want the freedom to develop it ourselves without all the propaganda that flows when the government puts money into magazines and tells the magazine industry what it should do.

I want to be free from the excessive taxation. The government puts billions of dollars into the magazine industry in order to protect it so that the magazine industry can somehow put out cultural articles so Canadians will know about each other. Why should I as a taxpayer have to pay these magazine publishers to put out a magazine? That is what we will be doing if we subsidize them through Bill C-55.

The government is talking about tax breaks. Every tax break to an industry means those are taxes that I, as a businessman without any subsidy like that, will have to kick in out of my own pocket.

I think those are the freedoms that we are talking about: freedom from big government and freedom from the Liberal government especially.

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, June 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to debate Bill C-55 and the amendments that have come along with it. I would like to share my time with the hon. member for Medicine Hat.

What is Bill C-55 really about? We have heard all kinds of comments involving culture, which seems to be the primary issue involved. I am being told from individuals in my riding and from my own heart, soul and mind that the bill is about big money and big government trying to impose its version of culture on Canadians. Those are the two issues the bill is all about.

I refer to the the order paper of June 8. The Senate is sending a message to the House of Commons on an act respecting advertising services supplied by foreign periodical publishers. It is very clear that it is not about culture. It is about money.

I refer to quote from a Canadian publisher that will benefit from the money aspect of Bill C-55. It is by a gentleman by the name of Jean Paré, publisher of L'actualité . He says that Bill C-55 is a fold, a capitulation. He says that the government is giving our lunch to the Americans, lunch meaning money, and is proposing to give us welfare. Canadians will be providing more money. Rarely do we see any talk about culture until we get into the House.

Maude Barlow is chairwoman of the nationalist Council of Canadians. That is almost a misnomer. The material I have seen coming from Maude Barlow literally makes me sick to my stomach. She does not represent a majority of Canadians by any means. She represents a small minority of people who end up in the NDP camp. That should be made very clear.

She says that this is total capitulation by the government and a farce. Our NDP critic says we are now in danger of not only losing our magazine industry but our national soul as well. That gigantic emphasis of an issue is not even factual.

Had Bill C-55 had not been brought to the House, could anyone say that Canadian culture would have suddenly stopped and we would no longer make progress in developing our culture as individual Canadians? It would have continued with much less waste of money and time than we have spent in the House on the bill. It has cost us gigantic sums in our relationships with the Americans. We may not be able to put an exact dollar figure to it, but why would we as a country want to literally antagonize our best friends in the whole world?

I have personal dislike for the supposed nationalists of the House and of the country slamming Americans. That is exactly what is being done in the House today. My grandfather came to the country in 1902 from Iowa. His family was in that neck of the woods. Whether or not anyone likes it, we in Canada are Americans. We are on the North American continent. We are in a relationship with people and together we comprise the North American continent. When I hear people speak against Americans and refer to the United States, in essence they are talking against ourselves.

Let us talk about the fact that our heritage minister has personalized the debate to make it evident to everybody in the country what the bill is about. I have listened to her many times in question period and in her speeches in the House going on and on about what would happen if the bill did not go through and we do not protect culture. She wants to force the culture she believes is Canadian down the throats of every Canadian. I do not believe she has a full idea of what Canadian culture is, but she certainly wants to force her version and the Liberal government's version of culture down our throats.

She refers to her daughter and providing culture for her daughter and for my daughters and those of everyone else by extension. The government's and the minister's version of culture literally makes my stomach turn. I will tell the House why. The minister and the government have put large sums of money into their version of culture, which includes among other things pornographic movies such as Bubbles Galore . She has put gigantic sums into Canadian culture as she perceives it in a dumb blonde joke book.

The National Film Board, which is funded by taxpayers, is producing movies that degrade, demonize and make our military into something that it was not. Our military was recognized worldwide for the great job it did in World War II. The veterans of the country said that our culture was not expressed in the glory and valour type movie put out by the film board. That is not what they went to Europe to fight for. They fought for the right to be free and to develop the Canadian culture which flows naturally out of the interaction of humans and is not forced.

What is happening is that Bill C-55 is an attack on freedom of speech. I have already mentioned the negative impact it has had on trade and will have in the future. I mentioned that it is force-feeding a culture that is in essence not real. It is an artificial concept of what the government believes.

I wonder how independent this great magazine industry can be when it is going to be subsidized to the tune of millions of dollars, probably per annum, which will not take too many years before it will be in the billions, in order to help it to compete with the rest of the world?

Once anyone receives money from the government, the government calls the shots. Believe me when I say that the magazine industry is going to have to pay attention when the Prime Minister calls up and says that the government would like to slam the NDP or the Reform a little bit more, or wants an article massaged to make the government look good. I wonder if that does not have a real negative impact on Canadian culture and on the country.

We saw what was done with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. If we look at its reports, its media analysis and the way it portrays this country and the various political parties, it might as well have been written by the Prime Minister's office. The Prime Minister appoints all of the directors and the chief executive officers of the CBC.

We see a loss of this ability to be independent. It is a big negative on the country to have that happen. The CBC is a good example of what the magazine industry will be coming up to. The industry will lose its independence. I do not know whether it feels it is independent now, but it will certainly become a lot less independent.

I just want to deal with the issue of culture. Canada's landmass has existed for billions of years. The best historical evidence available is that about 11,000 years ago the aboriginal people came to this country. Even without government subsidies, they somehow managed to establish a culture and have kept it going to this very day.

I look at my riding. The Icelandic people came to this country and established a tremendous culture. They have written tremendous books and magazines and have done tremendous paintings without any government subsidy. They have not been told by government that their culture is not what they think it is, that it is going to buy their culture and force-feed it to them and then they will end up being Canadian.

My final comment is that we Canadians will develop our culture. We will do a lot better developing it without the federal government telling us what it will be and how we are going to do it.