Alex Shepherd

[Supply, February 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, in spite of the comments of the member from Halifax, who I think said my comments were somehow ignorant and that we would have an intellectual discussion, I refer her to the fact that my political science professor was Dr. Pauline Jewett.

The member for Regina—Qu'Appelle made two what I think are conflicting statements. First, he went through a dissertation of majority governments in Canada and said we would never have a majority government had we had proportional representation. That is the very point I am was trying to raise: we would never have majority governments in the country, which would basically weaken the federation.

He said the individual opposition parties would have a great national vision. Why should they when 40,000 votes from anywhere in the country would give them one seat? We would not have five political parties over there, we would have about 30 or 40.

[Supply, February 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed the opening remarks of the leader of the New Democratic Party. In spite of her belief that proportional representation is a cure-all for our political system, probably just as many Liberals stayed home in the last election as supporters of the opposition. Even if we had proportional representation we may well have ended up with the same results. I know she would not appreciate that.

I am concerned about proportional representation in areas where it has been used exclusively. I am thinking of Spain before Franco where there were 100 parties and Ukraine where there are 60 parties because they had proportional representation. Basically proportional representation would assist regionalism in Canada. It would allow for a multiplicity of political parties representing every little interest, every little farm community and so forth across the nation. It would weaken our form of government.

The leader of the NDP talks about strengthening national unity. I think it is a panacea for creating a weakened federation and a weakened government in Canada.

If the leader of the NDP wanted to talk about people who are concerned about relevancy, rather than bring an issue like proportional representation to the floor of the House of Commons, why did she not talk about health care? Why did she not talk about child poverty? Why did she not talk about the environment? Those are things that mean something to people, not proportional representation.

[Pay Equity, February 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, on October 29, 1999, the Government of Canada announced a review of section 11 of the Human Rights Act.

The review responds to numerous concerns about the current pay equity regime and how it is administered. The minister remains very committed to the principle of equal pay for work of equal value. I look forward to contributing to the review and the support of the Minister of Justice.

In addition, the government is currently examining options for implementing a gender neutral job classification system.

[Canadian Flag, February 14th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, everyone knows that today is Valentine's Day, but I rise today to reflect on another truly loved symbol of Canada and Canadians, our Canadian flag. Tomorrow marks the 36th anniversary of the first day that the flag became our country's distinctly Canadian national symbol.

Much more than a piece of coloured cloth, it is the symbol of a nation that is recognized around the world. It was 36 years ago tomorrow that the flag was raised over this building and became our official symbol for a great nation.

A number of years ago I promoted flag day with a number of our elementary schools to provide young Canadians with the opportunity to better understand the significance of our flag. I am happy to say that this initial undertaking has taken root and is now an annual tradition for me.

Tomorrow I will celebrate this day with the staff and students of the Good Shepherd Catholic Elementary School and the Gordon B. Attersley Public School in my riding. I hope all Canadians can and will take a few minutes tomorrow to reflect on our flag, which is the embodiment of our common heritage.

[Agriculture, February 13th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for giving the House the opportunity to debate this very important issue.

Some people consider Durham to be part of the GTA so that therefore we would not know about farming. In fact, my riding is proud that its second largest industry is agriculture. Our first one is General Motors. Agriculture is a big feature of the Durham riding.

Just as a personal note, I spent about eight years of my life farming on a part time basis. I can well remember the years when I could not get my farm crop in because of weather conditions and the elevators in the spring would not give me the proper pricing for that. I had to dump the crop on my farm floor and feed it to pigs. I can certainly understand the trials and tribulations that have occurred in the agricultural industry. Some things are predicated by weather conditions, others by market forces. The decisions are made way beyond the farm gate.

Our farmers are having a crisis. Every member in the House has agreed that we have a significant one.

I was just speaking to a number of farmers in my riding last Friday. They belong to an organization called the Canadian Foodgrain Bank. This is an organization that many people would not understand. The farmers get together to volunteer their time and labour to grow grain. They basically have a storage facility. CIDA actually purchases that grain and ships it overseas. The farm community, even in its time of need, has found ways to reach out to those less fortunate in other countries.

It is only appropriate that farmers are looking to us in their time of need. It is time for us to discuss their issue and to ensure that they are properly taken care of.

I do not have to tell hon. members that a couple of world wars have taught a lot of nations that it is very dangerous to be dependent on other countries for their food supply. Even though some people will argue, improperly I think, that other agricultural countries could possibly outproduce us, I do not believe that is true. I think it is dangerous if it is true. We must sustain our Canadian agricultural industry.

It seems to me the farm sector is broken down into a number of areas. We have a very dangerous tendency in the House to talk about agriculture as if it were some kind of holistic thing. In fact it is many industries all at once.

We have the supply management industry. Some people have suggested it is doing well. Others have suggested it is simply on a life support system. It is actually crumbling under the weight of international pricing and the move toward tariffication as opposed to a quota system for some of our supply based industries. It too is in jeopardy and needs to be protected. We as legislators need to stand up for that industry.

However it is true that the supply management industry is not under the strain of grain and oilseeds and the other sectors of the agricultural industry that do not have a supply management industry.

These industries are coming to the government and saying that it is their supply manager. As a bunch of small producers they find it very difficult to compete, not only internationally but domestically. After all, there are only two or three major buyers of livestock in Canada but there are many livestock farmers. There is a great disproportionate disparity in the marketplace. I believe another member talked about the failure of the market to deal directly with farmers.

Many people talked about the crisis today and suggested that we need money and cash injection. I agree with that. However I would like to talk today about the whole concept of program delivery.

Before I started to study this debate I sourced some interesting statistics, Canadian revenue income statistics. These figures are for people who reported their incomes in 1998 from farming. They may be somewhat inaccurate because they come from people's tax returns. This is on a personal income tax basis, so it does not reflect people who carried on farming in a corporate entity. They would not show up in these figures. However it gives us a rough overview, a sort of barometer of what is actually going on in the agricultural industry.

A total of 439,990 tax filers who claimed that their chief source of income was from farming had a total income of about $2 billion. That works out to a median income for farmers of $4,552.

What is even more startling is the report of the National Council of Welfare in 1998 which talked about a low income cutoff for people determined as being on welfare. For a family of three it indicated $20,000 as the low income cutoff level. That is lower than for people who live in the city because it is believed that their taxes and other expenses are possibly cheaper. They were taken into consideration.

It is amazing to see, as people have losses from farming, up through the income stream that we have 214,470 farmers with $20,000 worth of income. Basically that indicates that 50% of the people who filed their tax return in 1998 and declared their chief source of income to be from farming are living in poverty. That is a very sad testament for our country. Basically the people living in urban areas are the net benefactors of that policy.

It is not so much government per se, but for whatever reason we have been the beneficiary of a cheap food policy. Nine per cent of our disposable income is spent on food. That is lower than the United States which has a bigger per capita income than we do. We have a cheap food policy in Canada but it has been driven on the backs of our farm community.

We have heard the concerns of people regarding various government programs. Historically what has happened is that every time we have had a problem or a crisis in the farm sector a plan has been developed to prevent it, to adjust it or deal with it. As a consequence, we have created a band-aid solution to farm income support systems.

We have talked about a safety net system. The intentions of governments, no matter what stripe, have basically been good, but they have not been able to take the time to sit down and look at the long range aspect of farm income support systems. I suggest that we look in another direction, which is to create a negative income tax for farmers.

We have an AIDA system, a NISA system, a CPIF system, a market revenue system and a crop insurance system. We have a multiplicity of systems. We normally put $1.6 billion toward agriculture support. We put another billion dollars per year up to $2.5 billion. I just said that the total income of farmers reported in 1998 was $2 billion. There is no question that we could afford a negative income tax system to support our farm community without making every farmer an accountant or a lawyer.

In my riding, half of the people who are entitled to these programs are not getting money because they cannot fill out the damn forms. The first category in this group lost $255 million. These people cannot afford to pay $1,000 for an accountant or a lawyer to fill out these forms, so they do not get the money. The money is not getting to the people who need it.

Yes, we do have all these programs in place but the money is not getting to the people who are entitled to it. We will have to do things in a better way.

[Speech From The Throne, February 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to the speech by the member, which I think is his first one in the House.

The member, who I believe is from Manitoba, talked about there being an exclusion in central Ontario. I suppose I am part of that process because I am from Ontario. He went on to talk about the agricultural community and how we have no understanding of it.

The province of Ontario produces more agricultural products than all the western provinces combined. The reality is that it rains on both sides of the field. We have agricultural problems in my riding. I used to farm at one time. Is the member telling me that there are no programs, that there is nothing the government has done to recognize the plight of farmers?

Our caucus has been very active in creating new moneys for farmers. We continue to make the argument that it may not be enough, but Manitoba and Saskatchewan in particular have received additional funding in the last three or four years. In fact, it was his former government that came here asking for money and we were receptive and listened to that.

We have tons of farm programs. I can think of programs like NISA, the Ontario market revenue program, CFIP and AIDA. Yes, we are very concerned about the issue of family farms. I talk to my farm group almost on a daily basis about their problems. Some of the things that the member is talking about is because of the people that he is hanging around with. They actually believe in western alienation. The reality is, it is all psychological. It is because of how long it takes them to get here that somehow they are discriminated against. It is nonsense.

There are more people in the province of Ontario who feel discriminated against because of agricultural policy than in all the west. We have a problem here in agriculture.

The member goes on to say that we need to help farmers. The same party gets up day in day out and says no to subsidies. Its platform document in the last election specified no subsidies to farms. Those members do not believe in subsidies but that is exactly what they are asking for today. They cannot have it both ways. What is it going to be?

[Speech From The Throne, February 6th, 2001]

He is on your side.

[Standing Committees, October 20th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to the 13th report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

[Economic Policy, October 19th, 2000]

Madam Speaker, quite frankly the decision to engage in the tax point exercise was in 1977, certainly a long time ago. I was not around. I believe that the government confronted with the same choice would not do that.

It simply has not worked out. In the province of Ontario, the premier continually ignores tax points. In fact he delights in spending millions of dollars of taxpayers' money showing how little the federal government is contributing to health care, totally and erroneously misrepresenting the position of the province of Ontario.

When the member says that this is a fair and equitable arrangement if we give tax points, it is not in reality in the day to day push and shove of politics. Provinces will not come clean. They will not stand up and say “We honestly understand what happened. We honestly understand that tax points were given to us. We will give you credit for it”. They just say “You are not doing your share. You are only giving us 13 cents on the dollar and therefore you have nothing to say in the area of health care”. That is not true. We are not willing to accept that. We are not going to accept it in the future.

[Economic Policy, October 19th, 2000]

Madam Speaker, the member for Elk Island said that I was distorting his party's position. This was concerning the list of people, possibly in Alberta and British Columbia, who are required to pay their own premiums and if they did not, it was possible they would not get access to the health care system. I am only repeating what I heard the member for South Surrey—White Rock—Langley say yesterday. We can go back and look at her speech where she said those very things. She is stating presumably the position of the Alliance. I would not say she was misleading the House. I presume she was telling the truth.

On the issue of other private sector provided health care, I think members will find that in the area of dental care where people do not have some kind of coverage whatsoever with their employer they get poor dental care. We could go to the dental association and others who will confirm that. Reality is where the service is not readily available people do make economic choices. If they have less money, they get less health care. That is all there is to it and that is the kind of system the member is promoting.

On the member's final point he said that I was distorting the position of his party regarding the facts or the balkanization of the health care system. I would like to mention some statements from his own leader who sent a letter to the premiers. In the letter he talked about allowing for, more or less, a system of tax points being transferred to the provinces. This will allow any province to opt out of cost shared programs in areas of provincial jurisdiction with full compensation. Opting out. Have we ever heard of opting out? That was Quebec's thing years ago, “Opt out of this. Opt out of that. We will create our own program”. That is exactly the health care system that this party wants to promote, an opted out system where everybody is going off on their own little bailiwick with no accountability, with no commitment to the people of Canada and certainly no harmoniousness across this country that we could all share and respect as our health care system.