Norman E. Doyle

[Canada Marine Act, December 4th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, Progressive Conservative members will be voting no on this motion.

(The House divided on Motion No. 1, which was negatived on the following division:)

[Privilege, December 4th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today on a question of privilege. I have sent you the required notice of my intention to do so today. I have also informed the House leader of the Reform Party.

Earlier today during debate on Bill C-2, my leader was interrupted by out of order remarks by the member for Okanagan—Shuswap. Following an admonition by the Chair, the member failed to come to order and left his seat making threatening gestures inviting the member for Sherbrooke to engage in a brawl.

The member had to be restrained by the member for Prince George—Bulkley Valley who is his colleague.

With great regret, I feel this must be formally brought to the attention of the Chair. It is not the first time that the member has engaged in this kind of activity. On February 4, 1997 the member for Okanagan—Shuswap created a spectacle in this Chamber when he used threatening gestures and profane language to another member.

Mr. Speaker, it clearly constitutes disorderly conduct, but it also constitutes contempt of the entire House. Threats against members and intimidation are well-known breaches of privilege and they have been found to be in contempt by the House. It is conduct which is clearly meant to interfere with the rights of members to speak freely and within the rules of the House.

The member for Okanagan—Shuswap, not only does he owe the House an apology, but it is time that the House was given the opportunity to judge his continued misconduct. It is not a matter which should be dealt with solely by you, Sir. The House as well should be permitted to judge the matter in the light of parliamentary law on contempt for the House.

Should you find, Your Honour, that a prima facie case of privilege is clear, I would be prepared to move a motion referring the member's conduct to the standing committee.

[Education, December 2nd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, it is time for the federal government to invest in our future. I call upon the Minister of Finance to earmark more money for post-secondary education. Since 1993 the minister has cut billions in transfers to the provinces which has directly resulted in higher tuition for students all over Canada.

In my province of Newfoundland, enrolment at Memorial University has gone down steadily since 1993 while tuition has increased by a whopping 200%. As a result, student debt has reached crisis levels.

If the government does not act soon, accessible and affordable post-secondary education for Canadians will be a thing of the past.

[Immigration, November 28th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, the Geneva convention relating to the status of refugees in Canada, to which Canada is a signatory, states that contracting states shall in particular make every effort to reduce as far as possible all the charges and costs associated with the assimilation and naturalisation of refugees.

My question is for the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. How does the minister square our international obligations under the Geneva convention with a head tax of $970 per adult refugee?

[Employment Insurance, November 18th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Human Resources Development.

Undoubtedly the minister will be aware—and if he is not aware, he should be—that his department has delayed the issuance of employment insurance payments in Newfoundland. These payments are due tomorrow, but because of a looming postal strike, they will not be issued until next week. He should know that these people are living from cheque to cheque and from week to week. They need their money now.

Will the minister give these people assurances that payments due this week will be issued this week, postal strike or not?

[Fisheries, October 31st, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, the collapse of the Newfoundland cod fishery has had a devastating effect on the Newfoundland economy. However, many fishermen are trying to stay afloat in the industry by fishing other species. One fishery that is being developed as a supplementary effort is our seal fishery.

However, when I turned on the TV last night I found that the International Fund for Animal Welfare is running ads back to back condemning that fishery. Needless to say it is causing damage to our marketing efforts in North America and Europe.

The federal government regulates the seal fishery. I call on the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to take measures to counter that ad campaign and thereby safeguard the efforts of those who are still trying to make a living from the sea.

[Newfoundland Unemployment, October 30th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Calgary West might think this is a joke, but it is no joke. I can tell him that.

He said a moment ago in his speech that the smallest violin plays for Atlantic Canada. What a terrible remark to make to the people who are moving away from Newfoundland in droves every year. Some 7,500 people per year are moving out of Newfoundland. All we hear from the member for Calgary West of the Reform Party is that the smallest violin plays for Atlantic Canada. What a shameful remark. The hon. member has a red face now, but I think when he gets back to his office and he gets a call from his leader he will have a much redder face. What a terrible remark for somebody to make.

If the leader of the Reform Party had looked after it himself instead of costing the taxpayers of Canada millions of dollars, there might have been something we could have donated to the unemployed people of Newfoundland and Labrador.

We hear jokes from the Reform Party about the unemployment problem in Atlantic Canada, but we do not hear any creative solutions.

As I said a moment ago, one creative solution, and I know I do not have a lot of time to talk about it, is to change the equalization formula for Newfoundland so that we can take advantage of some of our resource based industries. We are waiting for Voisey's Bay to be developed. That industry is worth billions and billions of dollars. We have to realize that we will have to give away one dollar in equalization payments for every dollar we raise in taxes and royalties.

In summing up, if we had a fairer equalization formula applied to Newfoundland as it applies to its resource based industries, we would be a whole lot better off.

[Newfoundland Unemployment, October 30th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I thank all hon. members for their submissions in this debate.

I reiterate that the unemployment problem in Newfoundland is devastating. The official unemployment rate in Newfoundland is higher than anywhere else in Canada. For a number of years it has had a 20% or 21% official unemployment rate. However, the fact of the matter is that an awful lot of communities in Newfoundland and Labrador have unemployment rates of 60%, 70% and 75%. A number of communities are shutting down all along the coast of Newfoundland, which is causing a lot of social unrest among people. This is an issue that has been with us and on the agenda for many years. It just does not go away.

I appreciate the submission of the government member. I am well aware that half the provincial budget of Newfoundland and Labrador comes from federal transfer payment. We are well aware of it and very grateful for it. I have heard much of the rhetoric before, but with respect we need creative solutions to this devastating problem. We have to look at the problem in its own right.

The hon. member for Calgary West stood a few minutes ago in this place and talked about this problem as if it were some kind of joke. If the member for Calgary West thinks it is a joke, if he thinks that a 20% unemployment problem in Newfoundland is a joke, he had better think again because it is no joke. The member is a joke but this is no joke.

The member for Calgary West has nothing to add to the debate. He had the nerve to stand in his place today and say to the people of Newfoundland that maybe they should move or that maybe the people of Atlantic Canada should go away.

[Newfoundland Unemployment, October 30th, 1997]

moved:

That, in the opinion of this House, a special committee should be established to study the severe unemployment problem in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Madam Speaker, it is no with a great sense of pleasure that I arise today to present my private member's motion that the House establish a committee to study the chronic unemployment problem in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The unemployment rate in Newfoundland is one of the most glaring failures of Canadian Confederation. I am under no illusions today that by simply introducing this resolution we will solve the unemployment problem in Newfoundland and Labrador, but I have to start somewhere. I promised the good people of St. John's east, many of whom are unemployed, that I would bring their concerns to the floor of the House of Commons.

Every poll that has ever been done in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador indicates the one pressing problem that has always been on the top of the agenda is unemployment. As we talk about the unemployment problem in Newfoundland and Labrador today the Canadian economy is rebounding, but in Newfoundland the situation seems to be worse than ever.

Right now in Newfoundland we are losing people at the rate of approximately 7,500 per year. That may not seem to be all that serious in the Canadian context, but when we consider a small province like Newfoundland and Labrador with a population of only a half million people losing 7,500 people per year is very serious indeed. It has a devastating effect upon the collective well-being of the people.

Only a few weeks ago I had a meeting on a little island off the coast in my riding. It is not too far from St. John's. It is a small place called Bell Island. It used to be a great mining town from the late 1800s up to 1966 when I believe the mining operation closed down.

Until recently it had a population of about 10,000 or 12,000 people. Now the population has gone down to about 3,500 people. I had a meeting with the mayor of that island, Gary Gosine, who indicated that he could drive around his town almost on a daily basis and point to houses that are empty because people are leaving to go elsewhere. They do not have any jobs there and the population of that little area has gone down from 5,200 or 5,300 people down to 3,500 people in a very short period of time.

We are losing people at the rate of 7,500 per year. For a population of a half million that is devastating.

The Newfoundland unemployment problem has been studied many times. When I served in the Newfoundland House of Assembly we set up a royal commission to look at the problem. There were no obvious or quick solutions at that time. Our economy is largely a resource based economy. We depend upon fish, minerals and paper products. It is a resource based and export based economy.

The new global economy is a knowledge based economy. While we do have somewhat of a high tech industry in Newfoundland it is a very small one. In spite of that we are to a small extent in the business of exporting some of our engineering skills in the marine area and in the offshore oil and gas sector. The growth we are experiencing in these sectors is not enough to even remotely offset the bleeding that is occurring in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Two areas of our economy that have been hit very hard over the last number of years is the fishery and the public sector. The northern cod fishery is in a very bad way. About 30,000 fishermen and plant workers are on TAGS in Newfoundland, the Atlantic groundfish strategy as it is known. Most TAGS money has been used directly by people to keep bread on the table.

As the auditor general pointed out only recently in his report, the millions of dollars spent on training through TAGS was really a waste of time, a waste of energy and worst of all a waste of money. Most people were in a holding pattern. They were waiting for cod to come and therefore were not all that interested in moving on.

Many fisher people, especially the older generation of fishermen, got involved in the fishery back 25, 30 or 35 years ago. They had limited formal education. When TAGS came out they found themselves in the position of probably having to get a high school education before they could move on to the various technical schools they were expected to become involved in and enrolled in.

I have always said it is bureaucratic insanity to expect people with limited education who have been on fishing boats for 25 or 30 years to suddenly upgrade to a high school education, get into a technical institute and sit down in front of a computer. For what purpose? I do not know. A lot of the money spent on various training programs, we have to agree with the auditor general, fishermen and other people, was a waste of money.

A lot of these people have been waiting for the fishery to rebound but it has not rebounded. The reality today is that the federal TAGS program is about expire. The vast majority of the people on TAGS are at a loss what to do next. They have hung on but it seems now that they will be hung out to dry.

Politicians in the House have shouted across the floor that TAGS was a mistake and should have ended sooner than later. I agree the TAGS could have been a much better program. It could have encouraged people to leave the industry through licence buyout and early retirement programs. Training money should have been directed to people who were either young enough or enthusiastic enough to want to go ahead with a career change. It could have encouraged people to leave the industry.

Most of all I keep saying the federal government could have been brutally honest with people and not given them an indication that their future prospects in the fishery were good. Instead, we are faced with thousands and thousands of people whose incomes will soon be cut off, who have not returned to the fishery, who have not retrained for this new economy that we are into, who cannot afford to move away to find work and whose immediate prospects happen to be welfare.

I get hundreds of people coming through my constituency office in St. John's on a weekly basis. My mind goes back to the Prime Minister at his town hall meeting where he was talking to an unemployed woman looking for a job. The Prime Minister, in a cavalier way, said “Well, maybe you can move on to another part of our country”. At the same time, while the Prime Minister was making that kind of a submission to that woman, he had terminated the mobility assistance program. These people, already facing unemployment, are now also faced with having to stay where they are because they do not have the money to move on.

The public sector plays a very important role in the Newfoundland economy, a much bigger role than it should play probably. Federal transfers for equalization in health and education make up about half of our provincial budgets. We do have our share of equalization payments. The unemployment insurance system provides income to large numbers of seasonal workers.

When the federal government decided a while ago to get its fiscal house in order, it was devastating for the Newfoundland economy because the federal transfers to the provincial government went down hill drastically and, of course, the provincial government started to make its cuts to make up for the federal government's transfers going down.

The provincial government then passed the cuts on to the various municipalities as well who in turn made all kinds of cuts which again had a devastating effect on the economy. The lay-offs at all levels of the public sector not only reduced the services, they also flooded the job market with some of the best and most well-educated people we had. That is why the Liberal Party is doing so poorly in Atlantic Canada. It has not really got into showing the people of Atlantic Canada that it cares about the unemployment problems that we have.

We cannot impose the kinds of dynamics of a central Canadian economy or a western Canadian economy on the people in the Atlantic region because it makes no sense at all.

We can talk about the problem all day but what are we going to do about it? I want to make a few suggestions, although I stand the chance of running afoul of some of the more right wing attitudes that are displayed in the House every now and then. First, the TAGS program cannot be cut off cold turkey. That cannot be done without a transitional program. Thirty thousand people cannot be thrown on to the streets with nothing to do and nowhere to go.

We need licence buy-outs. We need training programs that will address the real jobs that are out there. We need a generous retirement program. If these initiatives happen to go beyond what might be considered to be normal, well so be it. Just as Quebec is a distinct society in its own way, then Newfoundland, when it comes to the kinds of economic circumstances that we have to live with, is distinct as well. The alternative is to do nothing and to run the risk of an awful lot of social unrest.

Newfoundland, like the other provinces, needs a better deal in the equalization program. We need a better deal in Confederation, in particular in equalization. It keeps us from starving but it also keeps us permanently poor as well.

Much has been said about the Voisey's Bay nickel mine in Newfoundland. I have a great deal of confidence that it will be a great mining industry when it is fully developed. It is worth billions of dollars.

We must never forget, however, that every dollar Newfoundland gets in taxes and royalties is subtracted dollar for dollar from our equalization entitlements. To be one dollar better off, we must first raise a billion dollars a year in extra revenues just to overcome the loss of the equalization.

In the case of Hibernia, we had a special management deal whereby we would only loose 70¢ in equalization dollars. This is a good start. We need a better formula than that if we are ever going to catch up and go out on our own. The formula needs to be extended to all major resource developments. On paper we have a lot of resources in Newfoundland and Labrador. Under the current arrangement, we will never break free and close the poverty gap.

I realize I am running out of time. Maybe later on I will have a chance to say a few more words. I appreciate the opportunity to say a few words on this.

[Newfoundland School System, October 27th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, it appears to me the hon. gentleman is asking whether constitutional rights should be perpetually available to all minority groups even though it seems to be evident that they have relinquished these rights. People have asked me that question on a number of occasions. That is not the whole case in Newfoundland.

I keep referring back to the Pentecostal assemblies of Newfoundland which comprise only 7% of the population and which voted overwhelmingly to retain these rights in education. Is the hon. gentleman saying to me that even though they are a minority, even though they have their rights protected under the Constitution of Canada, that we can subject these people to the tyranny of the majority, if he wants to put it that way, and wipe out these rights at will? I do not think so.

If you are going to alter a minority right in this country, one of the responsibilities you have is to at least consult the groups whose rights are directly affected. In this instance these groups have not been consulted. They have had their rights subject to the majority without any consultation whatsoever. That is a grave concern. Minorities should be widely consulted when their rights are at stake but in this particular instance that has not been done.