John Bryden

[Supply, March 15th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, this is not really a debate about monetary policy. My colleague from Durham came closer to the truth when he mentioned words like sovereignty in this debate. This is really a debate about national identity and the preservation of national identity.

As far back in time as money began, in the ancient city states of Greece, money represented and contained on it the images of the state. Usually on one side was a god or goddess and on the other side, some symbol of the state. In Roman times, the Romans put the effigy of Caesar on their coinage. They used that effigy to establish their identity throughout the civilized world at the time, all of the Mediterranean. In about 100 AD a coin with Caesar's head on it could be found anywhere, even in Britain. That coin said Rome.

Money still conveys that image. It still has that purpose. No country knows that better than the United States of America. The Americans know full well that when their dollar is circulated around the world, it says to the world “We are the most powerful country in the world”. It also says “We are successful. These are our values”. As the member for Durham mentioned, in the Soviet Union the real money of commerce is the American dollar.

Earlier this year I was on holiday in Belize. Belize is a small English speaking country on the shoulder of the Yucatan Peninsula in Central America.

Belize uses the Belizean dollar. It looks identical to the Canadian dollar, complete with the Queen. On the reverse of the Belizean dollar, the paper currency, there is a scene of Belize. Nevertheless, when it is flipped over, the Queen can be seen. It is similar to a Canadian bank note. I suspect that the Belizean dollar is actually manufactured in this city. Of course, the Canadian authorities print money for many countries around the world.

In Belize things can equally be bought with the Belizean dollar or the American dollar. I suggest there already is a pan-American currency in use everywhere in the western hemisphere and that is the American dollar.

In any store on Sparks Street paying in Canadian currency is fine, but paying in American currency is fine as well. We already have precisely the kind of pan-American currency that is proposed by the Bloc motion.

In Europe there is a long tradition of national independence, especially in France and England. The arrival and the power of the American currency in Europe has caused great concern and distress. Particularly France is concerned about losing its national culture, symbols and sense of identity to a kind of American hegemony worldwide.

This sentiment is echoed worldwide, the fear that the United States will establish its values everywhere. We have reason to fear that because global television now penetrates every corner of the world. English and American values are dominating the cultural message that is going out across the world.

One of the few things we as national identities have left to preserve our sense of self is our money. I was absolutely mortified and distressed in the 1980s before I ever became an MP when the previous government, the government of Brian Mulroney, came along and changed the Canadian currency, changed it to make it more neutral, less patriotic, less Canadian.

When I was young, as a paper boy I can remember the first time I obtained my own earned money. Collecting door to door I would be given a one dollar bill or a five dollar bill. Money in those days had scenes of Canada. I remember as a child looking at those bills and thinking that is my country.

Mulroney came along and as part of this whole pandering to the Quebec nationalists, the Quebec sovereignists, Mulroney tried to take away many symbols that represented Canada from things like our postage stamps and our money. I suggest that if we, and when I say we I mean all of us, French-speaking Canadians and English-speaking Canadians, want to preserve a sense of who we are, whether we think of ourselves in one region or another region, then we have to preserve those few symbols that are left to us as Canadians.

I suggest that in no independent country of Quebec is there ever going to be a currency that could survive for more than two weeks. Even in the proposition of independence was the suggestion that a separate Quebec would adopt a Canadian currency.

If that is the rule, that Quebec separate, alone or together, cannot have anything better than the American dollar bill to represent the French-speaking fact of this country, then how long would that French-speaking fact survive? It would not survive because the Americans are not tolerant of the nature of this land. The nature of this land is this beautiful country that includes two very strong linguistic cultures. That has no part in the American plan.

I see members of the Bloc Quebecois smiling. If they were to go to France they would hear the French talk about the Americans and the dominance of the English language in France, of Disney World and all the symbols of the United States that are invading France. The French understand how necessary it is to protect their country with its own symbols.

I suggest there is a reason for the Euro. It was recognized in Europe among those 11 countries that if they were going to survive not just as an economic entity but as a sovereign entity against the American cultural power, they had to have their own currency.

What is behind all of this is not monetary policy because it really has nothing to do with that. We are in a global economy. This really has to do with images, symbols and a sense of ourselves, be we Canadians or Albertans.

[Supply, March 15th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, in my opinion there is already a pan-American currency, one that is used throughout the world, and that is the U.S. dollar. Many countries do not like this situation, among them France, England and the other European countries.

I have a question for the member across the way. Is it true that the real reason the Europeans created the euro was to protect European sovereignty?

[Supply, March 15th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the member across the way knows that the United States is one of the most powerful countries in the world. Is it true that the only currency the Americans would accept would be their own currency, the American dollar? Is that true?

[National Housing Act, March 11th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I say to the member opposite that I feel very keenly that the government has not yet done enough in terms of the housing needs of the people living in remote communities.

I hear where she is coming from. She has my sympathy. I hope the government will continue to look in this direction to find ways of bringing adequate housing to Canada's remote communities regardless of whether they are on reserve or off reserve aboriginals.

I come from a riding very close to the city of Hamilton. Hamilton must be the capital of social housing in Canada. Huge tracts of social housing were built in the 1980s and early 1990s on Hamilton Mountain. This basically emptied the 19th century housing in the downtown core and transferred the population from downtown Hamilton to uptown Hamilton.

Essentially in the lower city there is block upon block of empty apartment buildings, empty storefronts basically because the people have been moved to brand new social housing on the mountain.

I suggest to the member opposite that perhaps what is wrong here, where the government should be going and where I think this actual legislation has a beginning is that it is not really a question of spending more money. It is spending money wisely.

There is no reason in my mind that the existing housing stock in Hamilton could not have received some government assistance, either directly or indirectly, so that people could be housed in the city's core rather than transferring them to the suburbs.

Surely what we are really talking about here is a reallocation of resources and not necessarily more money.

[National Housing Act, March 11th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot said about homelessness and the lack of money for housing. But is it not true that over the last decade various provincial governments, including the provincial governments in Ontario and British Columbia, have systematically deinstituionalized all kinds of people who normally would be in an institution? They have been put into subsidized housing in the community, which in turn has led to a lot of these people turning up in the streets, often by choice.

Would the member not agree that part of this problem is actually a reflection of a change in the attitude of provinces toward institutionalizing people? Schizophrenics are a classic example of people who are now in the streets who 20 years ago were in institutions. Would the member comment on that please.

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, March 8th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot in the debate about Bill C-55 serving to protect Canada's culture. I suggest the more correct term is to protect Canadian values.

When we think of culture we think in terms of the entertainment industry and we think in terms of the arts. What we are really dealing with is something far more prosaic. It is magazines that may deal with issues that are very much every day in Canadian life. It is the very fact that they are every day in Canadian life that makes it so important to preserve them as Canadian voices rather than American voices.

I will give a simple illustration. When we think of sports magazines and we consider the Canadian coverage of sports, be it sports occurring in Canada or sports occurring in the United States, we are liable to get a very different view from a Canadian on something like the use of drugs in sports than we might get in the United States. I am thinking of using certain performance enhancing drugs in baseball which has been the subject of a great many articles in both Canada and the United States. American society has a much more broad minded approach to this kind of cheating than does Canadian society. Americans would not consider it cheating at all but in Canadian society we might.

When we talk about the magazine publishing industry we are not necessarily talking about music magazines or arts magazines. We are talking about magazines dealing with home decorating, social issues, anything imaginable. Canadian values are reflected in this type of venue.

I will give another example. It is very important in Canadian society that we believe as Canadians that fundamental human rights pertain to the individual. In our charter of rights we do not even mention the issue of property. In the United States property rights are very much an issue. Americans are very conscious of the need to protect property. This has created a huge division in attitude between Americans and Canadians.

In magazine articles, even indirectly, this difference in values will be expressed. When a Canadian writer deals with issues at home, issues of safety, the safety of Canadian cities, that person will look in terms of the protection of human rights, of individual rights, not in terms of property rights.

I remember a vivid example of a National Geographic article that dealt with a tornado that struck the community of Homestead, Florida. It devastated that community. The article had illustrations of the various damage of the tornado. One illustration showed an individual property owner standing amid the wreckage of his property with his furniture and everything all smashed, including his home. He had a small silver plated gun to the head of a looter. The caption simply said something like Florida homeowner protects his property from looters.

That illustration is an example of the gulf in value that exists between American attitudes toward property, the protection of property and the use of force to protect property and Canadian values which would say that under no circumstances would anyone every have the right to hold a gun to the head of a person merely trying to steal something or looking at the rubble after a tornado. That would never happen in Canadian society. What is really at issue here is not just the protection of Canadian culture but the protection of Canadian values.

I note the Bloc Quebecois is very much in support of the principles of Bill C-55, and well it should be. It is well established that Americans feel very strongly that there should be only one official language. They cannot understand a society that actually has a whole bureaucracy, all our engines set up to accommodate two official languages operating in a society. That has made us into an exceptionally tolerant people.

That is not what we get when we read American publications. When we read the language and the stories of a society, underneath are that society's values. It is the same in television. Unfortunately we cannot do much about the airwaves but we can do something about the publishing industry. Bill C-55 tries to do this precise thing.

How is it doing it? As someone who comes from the publishing industry, I am impressed that the drafters of this law have recognized some realities of the publishing industry. One is that companies have fixed advertising budgets. The more advertising venues one has for a company that wishes to advertise, the more that money will be spread around and less will go to any individual organization. I will give the example that is occurring right now.

The National Post is trying to enter the newspaper marketplace and it is up against the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail . What we really see here is a conflict over trying to obtain what is essentially a limited amount of advertising revenue.

A story in the Sunday Star this past weekend claims that the National Post is making no progress. All we have to do is look at the National Post 's pages and we will see very few advertisements.

It is the same kind of thing we are talking about now. If the government does not act in this area there is no doubt that Canadian advertisers will be attracted to split-run publications coming out of the United States because there is no doubt they have more bucks behind them, they have more resources in producing the glossy finished product to get those topic interviews that are so expensive. There is no doubt that money would be streamed to some of these American split-run publications at the expense of Canadian publications which may be doing essentially the same story but that story will always have an undercurrent of Canadian values as opposed to American values.

At that level this legislation acknowledges that there is a problem here that must be addressed because if it is not addressed, there will be less of a voice for Canadian articles, indeed on the same subject, reflecting Canadian values.

One might say that if the government feels that way why does it not just give all these Canadian magazines a direct grant. Why does the government not give a direct grant to Canadian writers in these magazines? This would encourage Canadian content.

I suggest the problem with that is when government interferes with culture or a freedom of expression or function in Canadian society or any society, it becomes the government's values or the bureaucratic values that begin to operate what is actually happening with that publication or cultural expression, be it music or print or whatever.

The only measure of whether something is worth saying is whether people will pay their own money for it or go to the trouble to hear what is being said. That is why it is so important to have this cultural responsibility in the hands of free enterprise. We do that by doing exactly what this legislation does, encouraging Canadian advertisers to invest those dollars in Canadian publications so that we can have Canadian stories about Canadians and about Canadian values.

[Supply, March 4th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I am actually delighted to take part in this debate because I have been waiting for it for a very long time.

My connection with this problem goes back to my beginnings as a politician. I ran for the first time as a politician in 1993. One of the platform planks of the Liberals in 1993 was the creation of 150,000 day care spaces.

Both before and after I won the nomination I made it very clear to the press and to all members of the Liberal Party in my riding that I did not support the creation of 150,000 day care spaces. That resulted in a telephone call out of the blue from Ottawa. I picked up the phone. I had never met the man before but he introduced himself on the other side of the phone as Mr. Martin. It turned out that this Mr. Martin was one of the architects of the Liberal platform for 1993. He said on the phone to me “I understand that you don't agree with the Liberal platform”.

I said “No, no, Mr. Martin. That is not it at all. My problem is that I do not believe that the creation of 150,000 day care spaces is the best way to spend money in comparison to possibly finding a better way, a tax break for stay at home spouses”. I also said “Mr. Martin, when I win I expect to convince you of the rightness of what I am saying”, and he said “Well, fair enough. See you in Ottawa”.

That is just a little illustration that the Liberal Party is an inclusive party. It permits and encourages dissent on key issues, but one has to be able to persuade, to convince the leadership that the suggestion is the right suggestion and should be given priority.

I was very fortunate after 1993 because I did not have to aggressively pursue this issue. The member for Mississauga South took up the issue with a great deal of eloquence. He was constantly arguing that we should do something to give better tax breaks to stay at home spouses. He was very good on that issue.

A year ago he became sick when we were in caucus out west and debating this budget. Because the member for Mississauga South was unable to attend that caucus, I rose and there was the finance minister taking suggestions from members of caucus.

I said to the finance minister that I thought in this upcoming budget it would be a very appropriate and very effective way of spending money, with such surpluses we might have, to give better equity to those families that choose to have a spouse stay at home to look after their children.

I do not need statistics to know that there is merit in the motion that has been proposed, quite apart from my long history with the issue. In my riding I have frequent fall and summer fairs at which I have a booth. It gives me an opportunity to meet thousands of my constituents.

There is one young couple who always comes to these events. The first they came they had two children; the last time they had three. They ask me when I will persuade the finance minister to adjust the Income Tax Act so that there is at least fairness for those who choose to stay home to look after their children rather than go out to work. There is merit on that side of the issue.

The other side of the issue we heard at various times today is that the government has been very aggressive in addressing the needs of children, although I have not won so far on the issue of getting tax breaks for stay at home spouses.

As we have heard today, there have been all kinds of government programs since the government came to power to try to address the problem of children in need and to try to give them the best opportunity in life, including the child tax benefit and various other programs.

Where it has been difficult to convey the logic and and where there is some genuine disagreement is on the idea that a stay at home spouse actually has real monetary value to the state and that there is justification for supporting a stay at home spouse through the tax system.

It is clear that we can address money to specific problems, but it is not so clear to some people, though it is clear to me, that it is in the state's interest to encourage through expenditure, which is what a tax incentive is, that some spouses at least have the choice to stay home if they so desire. That is the other side.

I can understand why some members on my side will disagree with the motion and why I have had difficulty in persuading the finance minister that this is indeed something we should be doing.

One of the reasons I welcome the motion that has come before us today is that as a backbench government MP I do not have the opportunity the opposition has to bring this kind of motion before us for public debate, so the whole country can debate it. If I could have put the motion forward years ago, I would have done it. The problem is that the only option I have is a private member's motion, which is a lottery and the chances of actually getting the motion on the floor is very remote.

We heard earlier one Reform member opposite explain that the reason the Reform Party did not bring the motion before the House earlier in the five years it has had to do it was that it had other priorities like chasing pedophiles and dealing with hepatitis C. It also made choices.

More power to the finance minister. If he did not move on the issue as fast as I would have liked and as fast as the member for Mississauga South would have liked, at least the reason he did not move as fast was that his priorities were looking after children, providing benefits for children and looking after low income families rather than trying to bring various criminals to justice. It is a matter of choice. The priorities demonstrated by the finance minister are the kinds of priorities I would prefer to follow.

We have accomplished much by this debate. Regardless of how members on either side vote on the motion, the finance minister today in question period said that he felt this was an important issue and that he would send directions to his parliamentary secretary to get it on the agenda and hopefully debated in the finance committee. Finally, the member for Mississauga South and I will see the initiative to give equality and opportunity to stay at home spouses come to pass.

[Supply, March 4th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, there is an element of holier than thou in this debate. I have sat here quietly for the last three hours and I have heard the Reform Party opposite constantly ask why did the finance minister not do something on this issue, that since 1993, for five years this government has not moved on this issue.

The opposition party has an opportunity to present an opposition motion every week or so. I would like to ask the member opposite why has it taken five years for that party to bring this motion forward in this House?

[The Budget, February 17th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, the party opposite is always fond of supporting family values.

The member overlooked in his speech that portion of the budget which dealt with the tax breaks to low and middle income families. I refer him to page 130 of the budget plan. A one earner family of four earning $30,000 is going to get $353 more in tax relief as a result of the budget. Similarly, a family of four earning $50,000 is going to get tax relief of $373 with this budget.

The member should acknowledge that we are doing something very positive for the nuclear family.

[The Budget, February 17th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Kings—Hants used what he thought was a clever turn of phrase when he complained about a budget surplus and a leadership deficit. I submit that when that party was in power there was a $42 billion budget deficit and a leadership surplus that the Canadian public dealt with by firing every member of that party but two in 1993.

Would the member not agree that when 36 cents of every tax dollar collected goes into paying off a $560 billion deficit created by that party, it is contributing more to creating homelessness because the government of the day did not have the money as a result of the overspending of that party when it was in power?