Norman E. Doyle

[Airline Safety, September 19th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, in view of last week's tragic events in New York and Washington, it is incumbent on the Minister of Transport to take measures to ensure the safety of Canada's airline system.

Canada has pledged to support the U.S. and our NATO allies in rooting out terrorism. That means we need to be in a state of heightened awareness with regard to possible terrorist attacks. Security at our airports needs to be strengthened now and in the foreseeable future. We should also consider having security personnel on randomly selected flights.

Terrorism knows no national boundaries. The countries of the civilized world are all in this crusade together and the Government of Canada would do well to implement security procedures that allow Canadians to travel with the same confidence to which we have grown accustomed.

[Equalization Payments, June 5th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I will not let the Minister of Finance forget a promise he made in St. John's during the federal byelection campaign. The minister, supported by the current Minister of Industry, promised that he would take a serious look at a different equalization arrangement for the Atlantic provinces.

As the minister knows full well, the Atlantic area will always be playing catch-up under the current equalization formula. Provinces like Newfoundland will never truly benefit from the development of our resources while the federal government insists on clawing back the lion's share of revenues from those resources.

Will the Minister of Finance keep his promise to the people of Newfoundland? Will he give Atlantic Canadians a chance to become equal to the rest of the country by adjusting the equalization formula that is currently designed to keep us have nots forever?

[Canada Marine Act, May 17th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to have the opportunity to say a few words on Bill C-253, an act to amend the Canada Marine Act.

The summary at the beginning of the private member's bill indicates that the bill would create a new class of port under the name “local port council”. The summary goes on to say:

Regional and local ports that become local port councils are not required to be financially self-sustaining when they are incorporated and may receive financial assistance from the federal government.

It goes on to say:

When a local court council becomes financially self-sustaining, some aspects of a local port council may be transferred to the government of the province where the port operated as a local port council is located.

As this is a private member's bill I assume the hon. member proposing the bill must have a port or ports in his region or constituency that fits the thrust of the bill. In the ordinary course of events many ports that were operated directly by the federal government over the years have been placed under local port authorities.

It is interesting to see what has happened in some of the eastern Canadian provinces and, in particular, in my own province of Newfoundland. The federal government has been delinquent in how it has been treating small communities that have these wharves. These little wharves and local ports were built under Canada works projects or LIP grants. Since the current administration came to power about 10 years ago it has completely abandoned those small communities and has sent them adrift.

When communities look for money to do repairs on these small local wharves they are given the old song and dance routine that it is no longer viable to keep these wharves and ports operating. As a result they have become dilapidated. The federal government waves its hand and says that they are not getting any money because they have become dangerous and a hazard to navigation.

Therefore it is okay for ports that have sufficient traffic and an appropriate infrastructure already in place. They are able to get along quite well. They have financial viability combined with the flexibility and sensitivity that can only come from independent local management. However, in the case of small communities, the viability of these small ports and wharves cannot be maintained without the involvement of the federal government.

The problem arises when the local port has dedicated local users or it is vital to the local economy but it is not viable in the financial sense. The government appears to be getting out of the business of running such facilities as a service to the public.

For example, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is currently divesting itself of 325 harbours nationwide. That is a blow to the communities. A full 42% of these ports are located in the province of Newfoundland. I would say to my colleague that there is quite a number of them located in Nova Scotia, in Guysborough county, and in New Brunswick. However 42% of them are in Newfoundland.

Given the state of the province's rural economy, many harbours will have nobody coming forward to set up a local port authority. Perhaps many of the harbours in other provinces on the list are also non-viable in a financial sense. What will become of them?

In the past, many of the wharves, sheds and breakwaters were put out to tender for dismantling or demolition, but the watchword of the federal government these days is viability or debt. If it is not viable it goes. The parliamentary secretary gets up and gives such glowing reports on the federal government and how it is looking after all these things when that is simply not true.

I invite him to come to Atlantic Canada. He should get out of central Canada for a change and get out in the boondocks. He should come to Atlantic Canada and see what is going on in the small communities. I am sure the parliamentary secretary and the Minister of Transport would have a much different outlook on what they are doing to these small communities. The watchword of the federal government is viability or debt as far as ports and harbours are concerned.

Incidentally the same applies to airports. We have many airports in rural Canada that are being forced under local airport authorities and are now facing a struggle for their very existence. Such airports might be invaluable to the local people and economy, but the traffic volumes are not there to sustain an economically viable operation. The end result for many of these ports and airports would be closure unless the government is willing to subsidize the operations.

Bill C-253 does not directly address the policy question about whether or not the federal government should directly maintain financially non-viable ports as a public service. However the member proposing the bill is offering the federal government an indirect route to maintain non-viable ports by setting up a new entity called local port councils.

In the bill the government is being offered a vehicle through which it can subsidize the continued existence of financially non-viable ports. The parliamentary secretary and the Minister of Transport would do well to listen to the member who is proposing the bill.

I note that the wording in the bill reads that the minister may approve the setting up of a local port council. The Minister may make financial assistance available to such a port council. The Minister may transfer all or part of such a facility to the provincial government if the port becomes financially viable.

The local people in an area might be all for setting up a local port council to save a financially non-viable port, but they would be dependent on the goodwill of the minister to turn any of that into a reality.

To give it more teeth, a bill such as this one should try to establish certain objective criteria for port viability. Once the port meets those criteria, it is appropriate for there to be wording in the bill to say that the minister shall provide funding until such time as it becomes viable. The problem is that I am not sure the minister would want to be bound by the word shall.

The government appears to be getting out of running all kinds of services that are not financially viable. If local entities cannot run services on a self-sustaining basis, we can expect their closure or elimination. As I said a moment ago, with the current government the watchword has been viability or death over the last seven or eight years.

If nothing else, the member's bill points out a growing reality of the total elimination of federal services in institutions in rural Canada. The post office is now in the local drug store. The rail spurs are gone. The local airport is closing. Ports and harbours are being abandoned or dismantled.

The member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough said that the federal government was hot to trot on trying to get out of a whole range of services. It is looking at banks. It is looking at an awful lot of things. As I said, viability or death is the watchword of the government.

If the bill helps the member draw attention to a potentially viable port in his area, and if it sheds light on the problems we are having in rural Atlantic Canada, it is worthy of the effort. I congratulate the member on presenting the bill. We certainly support it.

[Pension Plans, May 17th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the nation's police and firefighters face daily dangers in their service to the public that can exact a heavy toll on their lives and their families. In recognition of that fact, police, firefighters and other public safety officers have the ability to retire early. However that means many of them retire with less than the usual 70% of what they had been earning.

In an effort to correct that problem, firefighters and police have been asking government to change income tax regulations to allow them a pension approval rate of 2.33% as compared to the usual 2%.

I call upon the Minister of Finance to make this regulatory change so as to provide full and fair recognition of the service that our firefighters and police make to the rest of us in the community at large.

[Canada Shipping Act, 2001, May 10th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I want to say a few words on Bill C-14, the Canada Shipping Act and amendments to the Shipping Conferences Exemption Act.

When the bill was tabled, the minister's press release stated that it would update, modernize and streamline Canada's marine law and that it would delineate new roles for the Department of Transport and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

The minister also indicated that the bill would allow the entire marine community to operate in a manner that is safer, more efficient, environmentally sound and responsive to the needs of Canadians in a global community and a global economy. These are laudable aims that we in this party can support.

The proposed amendments to the Shipping Conferences Exemption Act are purported to generally streamline the administration of the act and to promote greater competition in the marine shipping industry.

Shipping conferences of course are groupings of shipping lines that are essentially cartels. The word cartel brings to mind OPEC, an organization dedicated to fixing the volume and price of oil on world markets. Similarly, shipping conferences collude on prices and services and claim to prevent wild fluctuations in same as regards the marine shipment of goods. The conferences claim that the benefit to our importers and exporters is stability in the shipping industry.

In general, most stakeholder witnesses at the transport committee felt that Bill C-14 was generally an improvement over the current situation. However, just about every group of witnesses had one or two complaints about one clause or another. As an opposition critic and a layman in the field, one is faced with saying yea or nay to a complicated piece of legislation where the average witness says that he or she is in favour of 95% of the bill but that he or she is strongly opposed to clause x or y.

One major change that the bill brings in is to put all commercial vessels under the jurisdiction of the Department of Transport and all pleasure craft under the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

The Department of Transport will now have to create an automated small vessel registry as small commercial vessels under 12 metres in length used to be handled by DFO. One hopes that this will not result in a bureaucratic nightmare for small commercial vessels.

One concern that has come up is that the boats are not always pleasure craft or commercial vessels, depending on usage. In many rural areas of Canada, the family pleasure craft is sometimes rented out to say a sports fishing or outfitting company if there is a large increase in clients. The vessel that met the pleasure craft standards yesterday may not meet the Department of Transport rules for commercial vessels tomorrow. This will preclude rural people from making a few extra dollars if the transport department rules are strongly enforced. There are implications down the road for ordinary people that may not be evident at first glance.

One witness asked the committee “What if a pleasure craft gets into an accident with a small water taxi?” Whose jurisdiction is it to straighten out that mess, the Department of Transport or DFO?

There are millions of pleasure craft in Canada and this bill would allow the minister to make regulations on standards of construction and equipment carried on boats. A number of witnesses expressed concern that the government may require pleasure craft to be upgraded in order to be licensed. This could lead to financial hardship for many small boat owners, especially pleasure craft owners, whose boats were bought many years ago when standards were different or not as high as they are today. Are we going to run into a situation that sees people being refused a licence unless considerable money is spent on a small boat?

I am given to understand that federal legislation requires that a boat with an engine larger than 9.9 horsepower be licensed, and that includes many boats in Canada. At present we have a paper only licensing system where a form is filled out that goes into a file cabinet and nowhere else. If a boat is licensed, carries a number and gets lost or stolen, how do police trace it? At present they cannot look it up on their computers because the only copy of the licence is in a file cabinet in some government office halfway across the country. As a result, thousands of small boats in the country are not licensed at all, and because the boat may be at a lake near a cottage, no one in authority really knows it exists.

The solution of course is a computerized licensing system, but I wonder if the general public out there is ready or willing to get into a new bureaucratic system on boats that has been taken for granted for years. I realize that boat traffic in some of the lakes and waterways in the mainland of Canada can be very dense during the summer months and tighter controls are necessary. In rural Canada, however, such a new intrusion into peoples' lives may not be welcome. My problem of course is that the bill raises more questions than it probably answers.

Bill C-14 claims to be progressive in that enforcement mechanisms would allow for administrative penalties in addition to the usual court proceedings. In theory, this would allow the minister to take action against lesser infractions without dragging someone into court and maybe giving him or her a criminal record. That could be very good.

However, in court one must be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and one has the protection of the charter of rights. In an administrative penalty, the onus on the minister to prove guilt is far less onerous. Just about all the witnesses commented that they disagreed with the administrative penalties because one would not have full access to due process as one would have in a court of law. I do not know if that is good or bad. I guess we will have to wait and see.

At the beginning of my remarks, I mentioned that the amendments to the Shipping Conferences Exemption Act were purported to encourage more competition in the shipping industry. The exemption in the act's title refers to exemption from Canada's competition laws which would normally outlaw cartel activities. In particular, the Minister of Transport claimed that the bill would bring our legislation more in line with our American trading partners. The shipping conferences generally agreed but people with goods to ship, the Canadian Shipping Council for instance, did not. We will wait to see where that leads as well.

Shippers want to be able to enter into confidential contracts with individual shipping lines so as to get the lowest price for shipping their goods. This bill would allow them to do so, but there is no clause requiring the owner of the ship to keep the details of such a contract secret from other shipowners in the conference.

In the United States a shipper can enter into such a confidential contract but in the U.S. the owners of the ship and the members of the conference are expressly forbidden to share the details of the contract with fellow conference members. The change in our rules would be a step toward the American rules but falls a bit short of them.

The shippers wanted a dispute settling mechanism in the legislation but were also disappointed. As well, they wanted a sunset clause ultimately phasing out the cartels over a number of years, and they lost that battle as well.

All told, the shipping conference legislation changes little that would help our exporters and importers. The bill merely makes some administrative improvements to the status quo.

I am given to understand that changes to Canada's shipping laws have been in the works for many years and there have been extensive consultations with many stakeholders. I am reluctant to vote against the bill if there has been that kind of wide consultation. However, I have grave reservations about the implications for small pleasure and commercial vessels. I fear that in due course the public may be in for more bureaucratic entanglements than they currently expect or want.

[Marine Liability Act, May 9th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, it is a great pleasure to make a few remarks on the marine liability act.

First, we support the bill and would advocate its speedy passage in the House of Commons. As a layman in the field, I am somewhat astounded that such a bill is necessary at this time. As a Canadian citizen, I take for granted that I have to carry liability insurance if I want to operate a motor vehicle, be that vehicle the family car or local school bus. As a Canadian, I take for granted that tractor trailers full of freight are fully insured, especially regarding liability insurance.

There is no such assurances if one is a passenger on a ship or is shipping goods overseas. Bill S-2 would consolidate various existing marine liability regimes. It would incorporate certain international conventions on marine liability into Canadian law.

Bill S-2 is long overdue. Canada is playing catch up with its trading partners on this issue. We support speedy passage of the bill.

One of the substantive aspects of the bill is part 4. It concerns the long overdue adoption into Canadian law of the Athens convention relating to carriage by sea of passengers and their luggage. The convention sets forth an internationally accepted comprehensive liability regime for injuries and loss of life by passengers. We support that.

Existing Canadian legislation deals only with global limitation of liability for maritime claims. Part 4 of Bill S-2 sets out the basis upon which liability for passengers may be established. The new regime would apply to both domestic and international carriage of passengers by ship, and accordingly would finally bring Canadian law into line with that of our trading partners. We support that.

The bill also sets out a new regime for apportioning liability for maritime claims where the blame falls on more than one person or vessel. It clarifies what at present is a very confusing area of Canadian law.

There is another area of the bill that is good. Part 1 of Bill S-2 confirms that claims for wrongful death and injury could be made against persons as well as ships. It would enable relatives of deceased or injured to claim for loss of care and companionship. Otherwise, part 1 would generally re-enact the fatal accidents provision of the existing Canada Shipping Act.

One change that sparked debate in committee was the provision of clause 46 that would extend Canada's legal jurisdiction to deal with the cargo claims of Canada's importers and exporters. Representatives of the shipping lines did not want Canadian jurisdiction specified, preferring instead to have clauses on arbitration and judicial proceedings in their contracts of carriage.

Indeed a culture has grown up that sees most of these disputes resolved in British boardrooms and British courts. That suits the big shipping lines and the British legal profession just fine. However I would submit that a small Canadian exporter would be badly outclassed going up against the big boys in that kind of a setting, so we are supportive of asserting Canadian jurisdiction.

Left to themselves, the big boys as they are called, used to insert clauses into their carriage contracts denying liability for loss of goods, or life or limb. Such liability exemptions are no longer allowed in France, the United Kingdom or the United States. Bill S-2 now forbids the opting out of liability in Canada, putting us more in sync with our trading partners. We are pleased that clause 39 of the bill would allow the minister to introduce regulations making marine liability insurance compulsory.

There was some disagreement among stakeholders as to whether or not liability insurance should be compulsory. Some committee witnesses said it would take time to set up a more comprehensive system. They indicated that there was currently no system in place in this nation for licensing vessels to carry less than 12 passengers. However once the provisions of the new Canada Shipping Act currently before the House are enacted, there will be a consolidation of all commercial vessels under the Department of Transport and all pleasure craft under the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. I can see licensing for all these vessels coming and insurance cannot be that far behind.

I assume bank financing and provincial tourism rules might require small tour boat operators to carry liability insurance, but I still feel a little uncomfortable with the fact that the insurance at this point in time is not compulsory.

The Canadian Passenger Vessel Association wrote me recently to indicate that it favoured compulsory liability insurance to protect itself, its passengers and the reputation of the Canadian tourism industry.

I want to indicate to the minister and the parliamentary secretary who is here today that we do support the bill. All in all it is a good bill. It is long overdue. It is worthy of support.

[St. John's Harbour, May 8th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I thank all of my colleagues for their submissions on this very important issue. I thank the Alliance members, the NDP members, the Bloc members, members of the backbench and the Liberal caucus for their remarks as well.

It is too bad that we have to come to the House of Commons to make a case for a project that is very basic and vital to the development of one of North America's oldest and most beautiful cities. However we have to come here because of the inaction of government. We have to come here because politicians make promises during election campaigns that they have absolutely no intention of ever keeping.

It is getting all too common that this type of politics is infiltrating the country. People stand and make promises. They have no intention of ever keeping them. They want to get through a couple of weeks or months in an election campaign. They hope the public will have a very short memory and that it will all go away.

The public does not forget. We cannot let the industry minister forget the promises he has made to the people in St. John's to get this project moving. This project deserves to be moved along. Some 120 million litres of raw sewage a day is going into one of the most beautiful harbours in the world. If we do the mathematics, 43 billion litres of raw sewage per year go into St. John's harbour. Is it any wonder that in 1994 the environmental watchdog, the Sierra club, gave this project an F and in 1999 downgraded it even further to an F-minus? I do not know how much further it can go than that.

I want to make a comment about the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry who came here with a prepared text today. I am really surprised that he did not even run the remarks by his boss before he came here, saying that we could take advantage of the Canada-Newfoundland infrastructure program to fund the project.

There is only $50 million from the federal government over a five year period. There are hundreds of small municipalities for that $50 million over five years or $10 million a year. The Minister of Industry himself has indicated that we cannot apply under that program to have St. John's harbour cleaned up. It has to be a separate side agreement.

Let me say to the other Newfoundland member, the member for Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, who said that since we have $60 million committed to it now why would we not proceed. We cannot proceed. There is an agreement involving the municipalities of Mount Pearl, Paradise, St. John's and the provincial government and it cannot kick in until the federal government comes up with its share of the funding.

It is conceivable to say that the project will never move ahead unless the federal government comes up with its share of the money for the project.

I want to compliment the people who do so much work on this from year to year and who do not get discouraged. The city of St. John's has been working very hard on it, along with the mayor. There are the ACAP people who put their backs into it on a daily basis as well and try to keep it in the public eye. They are the people we should be complimenting for the work they have put into it, not the politicians.

If the Minister of Industry has any feeling that getting the money would somehow give some credit to me or the member of the Alliance or NDP for the very limited submissions we have made, he can forget about it. That is not the case at all. Making money available for this project would be saying thanks to the people who have made such a difference, people like the mayor of the city of St. John's, the people on the St. John's city council and the ACAP people. They are the people who deserve the real credit for the effort that has gone into this so far.

I sincerely hope that the Minister of Industry is back in his office somewhere listening to this and will take it into account, into consideration, step up to the plate and make money available for what is a very good project.

[St. John's Harbour, May 8th, 2001]

moved:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should immediately commit its one-third share of the funding for the St. John's harbour cleanup

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on my private member's motion I submitted for debate here in the House of Commons concerning St. John's harbour.

Why, hon. members may ask, is St. John's harbour worthy of special mention here in the House of Commons? How is St. John's harbour special in the context of the business here in the House of Commons?

Let me tell all hon. members here in the House that St. John's is not just another city. It is one of the oldest cities in the new world. It is the most easterly city in North America and, as such, is Canada's easternmost gateway. It is a capital city where responsible government took root long before there was a nation called Canada.

St. John's is history and it is culture personified. This year we are celebrating the 100th anniversary of Marconi's wireless speech. The site of these celebrations is up on Signal Hill, just above the harbour.

St. John's harbour is the recipient of 120 million litres of raw sewage every single day. That is more than 43 billion litres per year. The narrow entrance to the harbour prevents the sea from effectively flushing the harbour of pollutants. As a result, the Sierra Club in 1994 gave St. John's harbour an F on the national sewage report card. In 1999 it downgraded that F to an F minus.

In 1993 the St. John's harbour ACAP committee was formed. ACAP stands for Atlantic coastal action program, a program set up by Environment Canada to assist Atlantic Canadians in restoring and sustaining watershed areas in adjacent coastal towns.

With regard to the St. John's harbour cleanup, the ACAP committee is doing a very good job in keeping the harbour pollution issue in the public eye. It is a problem that the mayor of the city of St. John's and the adjacent municipalities of Mount Pearl and Paradise are working overtime to cure.

The mayor of the city of St. John's is in the gallery here today. He held a press conference in Ottawa today in an effort to draw national public attention to what is a very serious environmental issue.

The leader of the opposition in the house of assembly in Newfoundland, Mr. Byrne, was in the gallery today. He travelled here to show his support for this particular issue.

One might ask why the federal government should be involved in the cleanup of St. John's harbour. The federal government must have placed a priority on these projects at one time because the Atlantic coastal action program is a federal program. I do not understand why the federal government would set up a program like that if it were not prepared to help out financially in the process of environmental cleanup.

The federal government is already involved in that project in that it did commit a paltry $1.5 million to the project. However, those token gestures on the part of the federal government are not enough. We need the federal government to kick in its one-third share of that $93 million project.

Federal funding has been applied for but to date there has been no response. There has been no indication from Newfoundland's federal cabinet minister that he is even remotely interested in this project. We should not need a special program to deal with a $93 million project like harbour cleanup. From a multibillion dollar national infrastructure program, Newfoundland gets only a minuscule amount simply because these funds are distributed on a per capita basis.

Some 93% of Canadians who are serviced by sewer systems have at least primary sewage treatment. Less than 50% of the people of Atlantic Canada have any kind of primary sewage treatment. We have much less than that in Newfoundland. We probably only have 5%, 4% or 3%. The bottom line is that our need is much greater than the rest of Canada and that fact should be reflected in the amount of funding we get.

A Memorial University economist by the name of Dr. Wade Locke did a cost benefit analysis of this project. If we consider the tax revenues to the Government of Canada during the construction and over the 25 year lifespan of that project, the analysis shows that the government would take in more than twice the $31 million cost of that project. In other words, in terms of the national treasury, over the long run the federal government would be money in. If the Minister of Industry is unable to take anything else to the cabinet table, he is able to take that fact to convince his colleagues to make money available for this project.

This was a big issue during the national federal election campaign. During the dying days of that campaign, the Minister of Industry, flanked by his two St. John's candidates, called a news conference on the waterfront of St. John's. The people of St. John's held their collective breath expecting the minister would make a financial commitment to the harbour cleanup project.

Instead, all we got from the Minister of Industry, as usual, was bafflegab and a firm promise that he would work very hard on making money available for the St. John's harbour cleanup.

The minister is now back in Ottawa and all we have heard from him on the harbour cleanup project is dead silence. The Minister of Industry has done nothing.

Because of that inaction, I submitted the motion today for debate in the House of Commons. Since it has been several months since the federal election, I would ask the minister today what he has done to advance the cause of the St. John's harbour cleanup. Obviously the minister has done nothing.

The Minister of Industry is an individual who loves to deliver. Since the federal election he has made the rounds of the entire country announcing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of projects in every conceivable industry in city after city, everything from genetic research to building airplanes, but still not a single penny for the St. John's harbour cleanup project.

I am sorry to be continually yapping at the heels of Newfoundland's industry minister. I know it must be an awful distraction from his leadership ambitions. However, let me say that he might as well get used to it because as long as I am in the House the Minister of Industry will not get off the hook on this one. He made the promise and he will have to deliver. This is a very serious environmental issue for the city of St. John's and it will not go away.

Let me also say that this is a minister who has taken on the senior and leading role in the government. However, in the Newfoundland context, so far at least, he is no Don Jamieson, no John Crosbie and no Jim McGrath. These gentlemen not only stood tall in the nation, they delivered at home as well. This minister is not delivering the goods to fix the problem that is an environmental hazard and a major deterrent to tourism in North America's oldest city and one of the most beautiful cities in our country.

What will the minister do to advance the cause of the St. John's harbour cleanup?

At the beginning of the last election, the Prime Minister and the industry minister contributed about a half billion dollars to give Toronto harbour a facelift. I supported that. However, the reason they made that contribution was to make Toronto harbour more aesthetically pleasing and to get it ready for an Olympic bid. Again, I support that. The Olympics are very important to Toronto, fine and dandy, but, I ask members of the House, where is the fairness in that kind of approach? It was a half billion dollars to a harbour in Toronto to make it more aesthetically pleasing for an Olympic bid and thumbs down on St. John's that has a very serious environmental problem.

The environment minister was recently mentioned in his local paper for getting $4.5 million for Victoria harbour, Canada's most westerly capital city. I support that. It is a good project and it should have money. However, it looks like the ministers from Ontario and B.C. know how to deliver the goods.

What is wrong with our minister? Why can he not deliver? Perhaps he has other ambitions or priorities. I hope he does not because he has a duty to his province and to his province's capital city. He loves to use the jargon “we are working on that file”. Let me say to him that he should get to work. This file needs national attention. It is time for the minister to keep the promise he made to the people in November on the waterfront in the city of St. John's. The minister is not good at keeping his promises but he had better start because this one will not go away.

If Newfoundland's minister feels lonely at the cabinet table when he is looking for money for St. John's, he should remind his mainland colleagues that Newfoundland became part of Canada back in 1949. If Canada wants our fish, paper, iron ore, hydro power and oil, it should treat us like we are part of Canada.

We are not being treated like we are part of this great nation. We have made our contribution to the nation and it is time that the nation came to our aid on this issue. When we are faced with a group of Newfoundlanders being forced to live among sewage, we are faced with a group of Canadians that are being forced to live among sewage.

When a German tourist looks over the rail of a cruise ship at the mess floating in St. John's harbour, he does not ask how Newfoundlanders put up with that. He wonders how Canadians put up with that kind of mess.

St. John's is Canada's easternmost city. It is a gateway. Due to the history and culture of the place, and being a port of call for the American and European cruise ships, tourism is a very important industry; it is a growth industry. The mayor of the city of St. John's and his council have done a fantastic job in attracting cruise ships. They have doubled the number of cruise ships coming into St. John's. They deserve a great deal of consideration and compliments for what they have been able to do, but they do not have the federal government and the Ministry of Industry at the moment helping out with their great effort.

This harbour is a health hazard. Studies have shown that sediment on the bottom of the harbour is laced with chemical pollutants and heavy metals. St. John's harbour is a septic soup that is an environmental time bomb. What has the Minister of Industry, Newfoundland's federal cabinet minister, done about it? He has done absolutely nothing. He has given no indication that he even cares. It is about time the minister came to the aid of this very important project.

The harbour cleanup project is not an optional nicety. We are not looking to dress up our harbour to grease the wheels of an Olympic bid. We want to lessen the health risks to our people and at the same time help to develop a fledgling tourism industry that the mayor of the city of St. John's and his council are working very hard on.

St. John's is North America's oldest city and it plays a very historic role in the country. Newfoundlanders should not have to get down on their knees begging, scratching and pleading with the federal government to make money available for this project. The federal minister representing Newfoundland should be front and centre on this issue. He should go to the office of the mayor of the city of St. John's and to the various municipalities in the province and offer help on this project because they are doing such a good job.

The minister has done nothing on this project. He refuses to even be in the House today to talk about this issue and to hear what is being—

[St. John's Harbour, May 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow I am sponsoring a private members' debate on the St. John's Harbour cleanup.

Federal funding for one-third of the $93 million project has been applied for but to date we have had no indication that our federal minister is even interested in the project.

This morning the federal minister was in St. John's talking about his interest in the municipal infrastructure, but he failed to use that occasion to announce a long term federal commitment for the St. John's Harbour cleanup.

The declining reputation of Canada's water and sewer system is very much in doubt these days. Given that the national budget has a surplus, it is about time Canada put some significant dollars into our inadequate municipal infrastructure.

I call upon our federal minister to live up to his election promise and obtain federal funding for the St. John's Harbour cleanup.

[Blue Water Bridge Authority Act, May 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to say a word or two on Bill S-5 simply to get on the record, because it is not a very controversial piece of legislation. It is quite mundane, as a matter of fact, and I want to say on behalf of our party that we support the bill.

The bill will simply update the borrowing rules that apply to the Blue Water Bridge Authority. The current and complex rules for borrowing money are replaced by a requirement that the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Transport approve the authority's borrowing. A cap of $125 million is placed on all borrowing by the authority and the government will not be responsible for repayment of the authority's debt, so there no reason why anyone would not support the bill.

The bridges are operated by the Blue Water Bridge Authority, which includes Canadian and U.S. representatives. The authority operates at arm's length from government and receives no appropriations. It is not an agent of the crown and the government assumes no responsibility for debt incurred by the authority. As I said a moment ago, there is no reason not to support and approve the appropriations outlined in the bill.

The Canadian law governing the authority's ability to borrow money sets out a complex and antiquated set of rules and restrictions such as the maximum rate of interest to be paid, the maximum length of time to maturity for bonds issued in the authority's name, and the maximum rate to be paid on bonds redeemed early by the authority.

The borrowing authority sought under the bill is about $125 million. It is more than double the current outstanding debt of $60 million. The government says that is adequate to handle planned multi-year capital spending of $55 million. That is all we have to say on the bill. We support it.