Alex Shepherd

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, February 3rd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am always delighted to share my time with the member for Malpeque who has great insight into the economy and the people of Atlantic Canada.

The people of Durham in my riding in southern Ontario are quite pleased with this throne speech. This is very much an innovative document that addresses change, and I do not say change just for change sake. The fact of the matter is our country is changing in some very fundamental ways. We have the demographics of the aging baby boomers and the fact that people are emulating more toward urban centres. This is causing a great deal of strain on municipalities.

I have three municipalities in my riding. Officials are constantly talking to me about the fact that the province has downloaded so much responsibility on them and yet have given them no resources. In some ways that is an outgrowth of our taxation system. I hope we can talk about how to finance municipalities more effectively and more efficiently. I hope we also can spend some time talking about our taxation system. Taxing people on their property values to support things like schools is in some ways very counterproductive. Older people living in their homes are often forced to leave them because the fair market value assessment and taxation on that is out of whack with their fixed incomes.

I was at a meeting last week with the mayor of one municipality who told me that the municipality could not carry on with the services it was expected to provide with the existing cash flow from the province. There is a recognition that the federal government must try to address this kind of issue in our communities.

People might not understand what is called the mush sector of taxation for the GST. Unlike ourselves who have to pay 7% tax, municipalities only pay 4%. They already have a rebate on the purchases they make for their operations, whether they be purchases of equipment or supplies. Municipalities have to pay a certain amount of GST, and that is currently 4%.

The throne speech talks about relinquishing that 4%. As a matter of fact, the Prime Minister stood up earlier today and talked about the fact that this already had been rebated to municipalities.The throne speech is better than a budget speech in some ways because the government has actually started to act on it. Money will be flowing into our municipalities within the month. The municipalities of Durham are thankful that the federal government has recognized this. That it is very important.

We can sit down and argue with the provinces and have long protracted debates, but people think a very sinister part of our governmental system is that we never deal with these things. There is some concrete proof that this issue is being dealt with almost immediately.

I previously talked about demographics, and demographics are important to Durham. The Ontario Institute of Technology, which is Ontario's newest university, is in my riding. It is the only university that is expanding right now in the province of Ontario. Some debate is going on in the provincial legislature about that. Be that as it may, this is a great opportunity for the nucleus of about two million people who surround the Durham area. This area is related to General Motors and other kinds of manufacturing concerns, but there is a recognition that things are changing. There is a recognition that we have to get on with the new technologies that are important to Canada and that will make us a competitive country in the 21st century.

I was happy to see the document dealt with things like student loans. There is nothing else that bothers parents more today than understanding the importance of a knowledge based economy, but knowing that they cannot afford that post-secondary education for Sally or Sam. Even if Sally or Sam gets that education, they come out with such high debt, which can frustrate them in starting their career paths.

The question is how much are students willing to invest in their own knowledge base. More important, we as a nation have to recognize that our future depends on having a highly skilled labour force and a good knowledge based economy because clearly we are not going to compete with countries that have a huge labour base with a low knowledge based economy. Therefore, our role is to promote a more knowledge based economy.

The document talks about increasing the eligibility for student loans. There is recognition that a computer is a necessary piece of equipment. When I went to school, a pencil, a pen and maybe a ruler were necessary pieces of equipment. Today, it is necessary to have a computer. Therefore, the student loan application process will be expanded to include computers as an expenditure. That is very forward thinking. We need some similar reform in our taxation system to realize that computers turn over in one or two years rather than being amortized for depreciation purposes, sometimes indefinitely. These are some other things that we could talk about on another day.

The Speech from the Throne also addresses the issue that even with the student loan program there are people in low income families who cannot make it. They cannot pay those high tuition fees. That is not right. One thing a nation owes to its people is to educate them, to keep them well and in good health. We owe our people a good education, to give them the qualities and skills to go forward in the future. That should apply to everybody, whether they are wealthy or poor. They should have those opportunities.

The Speech from the Throne impressed the fact that within the first year a grant would be given to provide for tuition assistance directly related to tuition. As we know, education comes under provincial jurisdiction. The federal government is always trying to find ways to help those students without directly confronting provincial administrations. I think this recognizes that we have to do these things. Another aspect of the whole intent of the throne speech is to look for a new era of cooperation with the provinces.

The same thing really holds true of health care. We talked about reducing waiting lists. I think most of us know that those things are within the jurisdiction of the provinces well.

When I have meetings with my constituents, they do not care whether it is the federal government or the provinces that are responsible. They want somebody in an elected position to come forward and solve these problems. They know that their Aunt Martha has been waiting three or four months for open heart surgery, and that is not right. They are concerned about that. They want the federal government to take some leadership in this role.

It is clear that we have to get the consent and cooperation of the provinces to proceed on those issues. I am hopeful we will have an era of new cooperation rather than the confrontation we have had in the past. It seems that is happening, and I very much look forward to the new Prime Minister's objectives of attaining that.

Finally, what really has impressed me about the throne speech is it is a well knit document. I talked about the importance of a knowledge based economy. It would appear to me that it has a specific focus on research and development. It is a realization that Canada cannot be excellent in all fields of endeavour. In fact it is to find the fields of endeavour that Canada should pursue.

The throne speech talks about health sciences, biotechnology, environmental sciences and nanotechnologies, which is nuclear research. My riding also includes the newest nuclear reactor in Canada, the Darlington nuclear reactor. We are very concerned that this is another opportunity for the people of Durham to experience this new agenda of research. Canadians like to be all things to all people, but I think there is a recognition that we need to have a better focus.

There has been a lot of talk about our relationship with the United States. However, the world is changing rapidly in front of us, and the name China comes up constantly as an ultimate trading partner, as a great nation with which we have to get involved. I know these kinds of technology are very important to the developing area of China and Southeast Asia.

I can see all these issues coming together in a very specific agenda. It is a very refreshing agenda, and I look forward to supporting the government as we move this through the House.

[Assisted Human Reproduction Act, October 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I feel honoured to follow the hon. doctor from Macleod because he certainly has provided a technological background. I must apologize in that I do not have that background, but I have studied the bill and I have talked to many people in my riding who are concerned, on both sides of the issue, the ethical side and of course the pure science side and the importance of the bill to infertile couples.

These feelings in the local area are very hard felt. Those couples who for whatever reason find themselves in an infertile situation are looking at the science, which has been progressing over the last number of years, and they believe that this is a great opportunity for them to have children. Certainly I understand the importance of children. I have three of them myself and certainly something I think everybody desires at one time in their lives is to be able to raise children. Child rearing is very much the foundation of our country and nation. I certainly understand the concern these people have.

Also, it is unfortunate that in a lot of ways science is passing the legislative process. It has taken us as a legislature a long time to sit down and actually try to deal with this issue.

As we will recall, the history of this file is such that the government almost basically delegated it to the health care community until a lot of members of Parliament became very concerned. They thought that this should actually be formulated in a bill prior to delegating that authority. This is a common theme of this legislation. As we go through it, we see that time and time again there is a delegated authority, delegated to regulations. It is clear to me that there has not been a lot of thought, at this stage at least, put into what those regulations are going to look like.

Worse than this, I suppose, is that it would appear that legislators are not going to be involved in that process. In other words, we are going to delegate this authority to bureaucrats and others to work out, which may or may not be in the best interest of my constituents, the people I represent. I feel somewhat offended by the legislation in that sense.

I also know that there are those who suggest that it is such a technological issue and so complex that it possibly would be very difficult for members of Parliament who do not have a science background to comprehend, but the reality is that all of these things impact people. It is our duty as legislators to try to represent our constituents in the best way possible.

I have some problems with this. I think that sometimes we try to take shortcuts with the legislative process. I certainly understand the concern of people who are infertile or otherwise want to use reproductive technologies and think it has taken too long already, but the object of the exercise is to try to get this thing right.

I do believe that we should go back to the drawing board to some extent on the delegated authority and see if we cannot find ways to work this out, if not at this point in the stage of the legislative process, then at least to provide that those regulations come back before a committee of the House and members of Parliament will have the ability to comment and to maybe indeed even change or object to the regulations as formulated. I think that is a natural and healthy process in a democracy, where people can put a constant check on the regulated authorities in the best interests of people generally.

I have another concern. One of the driving forces to bring the legislation into passage is an industry that seemed to be starting up, that of paid servicing. This, of course, most of us have big problems with, because we cannot understand why people would actually be prepared to rent their bodies. However, I also have talked to people who have told me that it is none of our business, so there are two ends to that. But I think if we take the orientation to science generally, it is incumbent on us to ensure that there is not some kind of profit maximization motive here that would drive people to do these things.

Essentially the bill is attempting to do this, but the bill would permit surrogates to be reimbursed for lost employment income if they have a doctor's certificate, so in fact we have not really ended the concept of paid surrogacy. We can visualize someone opting to leave their employment to do this and possibly earn more money, or whatever the case may be. That would be legal and legitimate under this legislation. Once again, I think that these are areas we should be concerned about and should review a little more before this legislation passes.

What I do want to reiterate is that in regard to this technology, like so many types of legislation in this area, the real world is passing us by in some real and fundamental ways. I read an interesting column about the evolution of spam mail in this morning's Globe . I think there is a correlation between that and this issue, and that is that technology is way ahead of us. The people who are concerned, our constituents, are those who are receiving e-mails they did not ask for. There does not seem to be a regulated authority to control that. Because there are not a lot of controls, we also have a tendency to demean the electronic commerce and its potential.

Here too we are going down a road where technology is surpassing the legislative process. Clearly here we are trying to find a general process within our country that would allow us to use new technologies to the benefit of individuals, but at the same time we realize that really we are playing with the human genome here and there are some significant ethical concerns about cloning.

Having said that, let me say that the bill has some strengths, such as, for instance, stem cell research. Certainly I have talked to a number of disease organizations that see this as having tremendous potential to end or certainly curtail significantly diseases that affect the human species. On that strength alone, I think we should keep on moving down the road with the legislation, but I am concerned about the delegated authority.

I think we could possibly have a better system if we brought the legislation and regulations back to the House, to the committees, so that members will not simply be in a position where they have passed this legislation, it has gone out into the real world and we will have no way to really measure it other than possibly complaining and having another bill in a few years to try to correct some things. It would be beneficial for the House and for the importance of members of Parliament if we were to have an oversight and a review process in place prior to implementation of the legislation.

Other than that, I basically support the general thrust of the legislation. I think it has taken us too long to come to this place. I certainly respect the concerns many people have about using reproductive technologies, about the importance of that in their lives, and about getting on with a significant research agenda.

[Supply, September 30th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I listened to the member for Prince George—Peace River and it seemed to me the one thing that was missing from his comments was the word compromise.

This is a big country and a big federation. It is the second largest geographical country in the world with a small population. The necessity to run this country as a nation is the word compromise. From our point of view, the Ontario voters must find that they contribute more to this federation than they receive from it, but mainly because they are supporting other parts of this country to bring up their standards to the standards of the rest of the nation.

That is why we have such a thing called party discipline. If people are concerned about their own well-being, they will only vote for their own well-being and the well-being of their constituents. They might be forgetting some of our aboriginal people. They might be forgetting about the health care in some of our Atlantic provinces and other places. That is why we have party discipline. There is no democracy in the world that functions properly that does not have some form of party discipline.

As a member I do not believe that our discipline is overbearing. I would like to hear what the member has to say about that. We cannot have everybody standing up here every day doing their own thing. It will not work.

[Supply, September 30th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I am very interested in the hon. member's comments. It seems that he basically wants to take the best out of both systems and somehow evolve that. I personally do not think we can do that. The fact of the matter is proportional representation has a lot of distractions from it and we should criticize it.

One thing that has developed in the debate is the theory that if we have proportional representation, we will bring back the voters to the electoral process. I have some statistics that came from the Centre for Voting and Democracy website, the people who are in support of proportional representation. It shows countries like Switzerland with only 38% voter turnout although it has proportional representation. It shows Italy with a high percentage of voter turnout but a very unstable government.

The previous intervenor talked about Germany. When I was in Germany I was amazed that the Green Party actually had captured control of the government to some extent. It was very much a minority party. The net result was that it had actually got that country to shut down all its nuclear reactors. That party did not represent anyone but it controlled the balance of power.

I cannot understand why the member would support something which he himself has admitted is an erroneous evolutionary process for Canada.

[Supply, September 23rd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy for that question from the member for Perth—Middlesex. The reality is the Prime Minister has spoken to the President of the United States on numerous occasions on this file. We know that the Minister of Agriculture has talked to his counterpart in Japan and indeed his counterpart in the United States, Mrs. Veneman. We know that those discussions are going on.

What I did hear was the member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough talking about the belief that somehow the Prime Minister's stand and our party's stand on Iraq and a number of foreign affairs issues, which really stood up for Canada's independence as a nation, or independent foreign policy, were somehow faulty and that that is the reason we could not open up the border. The motion is simply a cheap political stunt to try to make the opposition parties look like they are doing something on this file.

The reality is those producers are independent-minded people. They do not believe in begging. They believe in carrying on a negotiation on a one to one basis and that is what the government has been doing.

[Supply, September 23rd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to enter into the debate on the issue of BSE. I should say initially that there was a brief time in my life when I actually raised beef cattle. Although I was only a small producer, I certainly learned the trials and tribulations of that industry.

I can well remember back some 15 years ago when it seems to me we were selling beef cattle at 75¢ a hundredweight. Those numbers have not changed very appreciably in the ensuing years, and the BSE issue, of course, has made that even worse.

During that same period of time overhead costs to that industry have increased tremendously. The cost of fuel to run tractors and so forth has multiplied exponentially. The actual profitability of the cattle industry in the first place is very slight.

I heard people talk about the capital involved in, for instance, a feedlot operation. People's margins are very small so they rely very much on heavy volumes. Significant changes in the input and output prices of a commodity will cause tremendous fluctuations in one's bottom line. This of course is what we are dealing with today.

The cattle industry in Canada is a very significant one. It represents something like 20% of farm cash receipts in Canada among all agricultural industries. It represents about a $6.6 billion industry. From the statistics I have seen, Canada has 103,673 beef producers and 77% of these are a small size with less than 122 head. These producers represent over $3 billion in export trade.

When I first heard about the issue of BSE, I, like so many farmers in my area, thought that this would be resolved possibly quicker than it has. I do not think a lot of us fully understood the ramifications of BSE and its impact on our industry.

Cattle producers in my area often wonder out loud why one cow in the province of Alberta caused such consternation. I have often heard them say that the markets in Britain are closer than the incidence of mad cow disease, so why are they caught up in this issue.

Mr. Speaker, I want to remind you that I am sharing my time with the member for Hastings—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington.

The reality is that we do not segregate where in a country the disease occurs. It is simply that the whole country is embargoed. As we know, the Europeans, the Japanese and others have lived through this peril to some great extent.

Quite frankly, Canada is noted as a BSE country. As much as we talk about it and debate it in this chamber, that is the reality. We have a reportable case of BSE and Canada is designated as a BSE country.

I know many of our consumers would demand us to be diligent on the importation of food from other countries that had this disease. Indeed, Britain, which had an incident of BSE, still does not export beef to the United States.

We can see that in the 100 days that we have been talking about this incident since it occurred in Canada, we have actually been very successful in opening the borders to Canadian beef production, more so than any other country. We are also entering into protocols with Mexico to try to find ways of actually importing, exporting and transporting cattle through the United States to Mexico.

Some very positive things are going on. The substance of the motion is that somehow nothing has been happening, and that just is not the case.

I was one of the members of our rural caucus who was able to meet with the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and the Ontario Federation of Agriculture. It was interesting to hear most of those gentlemen, in their opening comments, thank the government for its efforts. They wanted to thank the governments for acting promptly on the file in the sense that it realized the shortfall would impact cattle producers who ship live cattle across the Canadian border and for the fact that we had found a system that would actually get money into their hands to alleviate some pain and suffering.

Some people think that my riding of Durham is somehow part of the Greater Toronto Authority. In some small ways it is, but I can say that General Motors is the largest economic producer in my riding and second is beef cattle. The cattle industry is worth $1.2 billion to the province of Ontario and is rated as the number two generator in Ontario agriculture, only behind the dairy industry. There are approximately 200 producers in Durham. That is just under 1% of all of the producers in the province of Ontario.

Before May 20, finished cattle were selling at $1,500 a head or $1.10 per pound. In July, after the BSE issue hit, that price went down to 30¢ a pound. That is a significant drop in the selling price of cattle.

Since the border reopened to packaged beef products the price has rebounded. I wanted to emphasize that because it seems to have been totally missed in this debate. Producers in my riding have said that this rebound in price back to 75¢ has been a significant boon to those who ship live cattle because they have been able to ship to slaughter houses in Montreal. That has been a significant recovery in the industry but we do not talk about that here.

In fact that was a specific result of government policy and efforts to reopen the border to Canadian beef shipments that has had a positive impact on producers in my riding. Those producers are not, unlike the debate that is going on here today from some of the members in the opposition, blaming the government per se. They are saying that they appreciate the efforts the government is making. Of course they would like the government to do more. They would like the border to be 100% open to live cattle and put them back where they were before May 20.

I know the cattlemen, who are proud, rigorous and independent entrepreneurs, understand that this is an issue that will not go away easily. We are a BSE noted country and all of the discussion in this chamber will not make that issue go away.

The class of livestock that was hardest hit was culled cattle, which is very important to the cattle producers today. Usually they would get 50¢ per pound or about $650 a cow when they shipped them. Today that price is 5¢ to 12¢ and there is no subsidy on culled cattle. The big issue with a lot of producers is to how to cull their herds. The fact of the matter is that there is no cash flow coming from that.

There has been a lot of discussion about the agricultural policy framework. Yes, it is the truth, even within my riding, that people in the agricultural industry are not happy with the way the agricultural policy framework has been put together. My experience with the farm community has been that it is very difficult to get agreement among all the producers and all the industries within the agricultural sector. Quite frankly, I think we are missing the boat if we feel that it is a form of blackmail, as was mentioned here today, because it is not. In fact, we need to have signed agreements to let money flow.

Since agriculture is under federal-provincial jurisdiction, we need agreements with the provinces to make money flow. Money is available. We might not like exactly how the policy framework is put in place. The federal government and Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food has talked about a review process that is in place.

We have the machinery to review that as it is going on but by all means I would encourage the province of Ontario, in particular, to sign the agreement and get the money flowing into the producers hands who really need it. The whole purpose of this program is to deal with risk management .

I know my time is running out, but one other issue I want to talk about is the dairy industry. This is one industry that has been overlooked in this process. I have a number of breeders in my area who ship dairy cattle not only to the United States but worldwide. They are prevented from shipping those cattle today. That has had a tremendous negative impact on them. Of course there is no subsidy. There is a recognition that somehow we should try to address that issue. The reality is they have been negatively impacted through no particular fault of their own but because of the discovery of BSE in one animal. This was certainly the most expensive animal that we have ever seen in this country and possibly in the world.

I do not support the motion. I think it is grandstanding. The opposition does not seem to think that we should have an independent foreign policy, but certainly the producers have an independent mind and think we are doing a lot of positive things.

[Supply, September 18th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, one of the words the previous member used was hypocrisy. As I listened to his speech I thought what great hypocrisy that that party has today in the House. Essentially what members of that party are saying is that Canadians who are successful business people have no place in the country's decision making process.

I have practised as an accountant for many years and there is a difference between the definitions of avoidance and evasion of income taxes. Avoidance is the things that one does in the normal operations to try to reduce one's taxes. Today when people buy an RRSP, they are avoiding paying income taxes. Does the member suggest that those people should also somehow be victimized by the system, that people who use the system to reduce their income taxes should also be subjugated and not eligible for elected office?

We live in a trading country. Canada's GDP represents about 40% of trade. Forty per cent of the income of our banks comes from off shore, from foreign sources. Are we suggesting that they stop doing that, that they stop being engaged with those countries around the world?

The fact of the matter is that the economic activities of Canadian companies do not just occur in Canada. They occur in other countries, and they are taxed or not taxed according to the rules of other countries. Does the member suspect that the opportunities exist in this country for people like that?

[Petitions, September 18th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I present a petition on behalf of 50 of my constituents who are concerned about amendments to section 318 of the Criminal Code.

They call upon Parliament to take all measures necessary to protect the rights of Canadians to freely share their religious and moral beliefs without fear of prosecution.

[Petitions, June 11th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition to present today on behalf of rural route mail couriers in my riding. They are very concerned about their right to collective bargaining. They call upon Parliament to repeal subsection 13(5) of the Canada Post Corporation Act.

[Committees of the House, June 5th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the member went on at great length about the relevancy of this institution and so forth, but at times when I was listening to his speech I could not quite understand that he was talking about bank mergers and the reform of Parliament. I guess that is why people in this country get concerned about their legislators. They are not sure what we are talking about as we do not stay on the topic very long.

There is one thing I would like to ask the member on the whole issue of bank mergers. There was a recent statement by the chief executive officer, I believe it is of the Royal Bank, Mr. Gordon Nixon. He was talking about the fact that the Royal Bank, our largest financial institution by a long shot, feels that there has been a weakening in its competitive position in the sense that it is unable to finance corporate mergers because often these corporate mergers unfortunately come from the United States. For instance, I think MacMillan Bloedel is a company that was bought over by Weyerhaeuser.

When those kinds of mergers occur, companies often look to the financial institutions to provide institutional financing to make the merger work. Because of the sheer size of the Royal Bank relative to some of its American competitors, such as Citicorp and others, it is unable to compete in these mergers and acquisitions.

I know possibly the position of the member's party is it does not like mergers of any kind, but I would like to know what the stand of the member's party is on the fact that our Canadian banks are continuously becoming uncompetitive internationally. Their arms are tied behind their backs in their ability to finance these new acquisitions that are coming up.