Yves Rocheleau

[Questions On The Order Paper, February 5th, 1997]

With respect to family trusts: ( a ) to date, how many family trusts have taken advantage of the ruling Revenue Canada issued on December 23, 1991 enabling them to transfer their assets abroad tax free and ( b ) what is the value of the assets and the province of origin of each of the family trusts that have been transferred abroad?

[Questions On The Order Paper, February 5th, 1997]

What is the impact on the Canadian tax system of the shortfall since 1972, per year, from the establishment of family trusts?

[Questions On The Order Paper, February 5th, 1997]

With respect to family trusts: ( a ) exactly how many family trusts have been recognized by Revenue Canada since 1972; ( b ) how many family trusts have accumulated assets in the following amounts: (i) $100,000 and less, (ii) $100,000 to $500,000, (iii) $500,000 to $1 million, (iv) $1 million to $5 million, (v) $5 million to $25 million, (vi) $25 million to $100 million, (vii) $100 million to $500 million, (viii) $500 million to $1 billion, (ix) the number of family trusts worth $1 billion or more, with an individual description of each and (c) specify what percentage of all the trusts in each category is held in each province?

[Questions On The Order Paper, February 3rd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. I would like to remind you once again that I put four questions on the Order Paper last September and that, according to our Standing Orders, the government has 45 days to answer this type of questions. We are now at the beginning of February and I am still awaiting answers to my questions, which concern family trusts.

I can assure you that during the holiday season, I met many people from my riding and from other ridings as well and that, generally speaking, taxpayers from Canada and Quebec are very much interested in these questions.

I find it deplorable that the hon. parliamentary secretary has already told me here in the House that the government was preparing to respond to this type of question on the number of family trusts, a ranking of categories of family trusts by size, the impact on the Canadian taxation system of the creation of family trusts in 1972, and the number of trusts transferring their assets out of the country, about which we have learned recently after revelations by the auditor general.

Mr. Speaker, I am counting on you to ensure that the government answers these questions, which are of major public interest. Judging by the reaction of the parliamentary secretary, there is something to hide.

[The Late Father Guy Pinard, February 3rd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Bloc Quebecois, I would like to express our profound sadness on learning of the assassination yesterday morning in Rwanda of Father Guy Pinard, a Quebec missionary from Trois-Rivières, who had worked in that country for 37 years. Father Pinard was parish priest in Kampanga parish.

He was the third Quebecer belonging to a religious order to be killed in Rwanda. Father Claude Simard was killed because he apparently knew too much about the 1994 genocide, and Brother François Cardinal was killed in 1992 after speaking out publicly against the diversion of Canadian aid to benefit the Rwandan government.

This tragic event is a reminder to us of the devotion and, in particular, the courage of all those working abroad to help the poorest inhabitants of this planet.

In my own name, and on behalf of my colleagues in the Bloc Quebecois, I would like to express our sincerest condolences to Father Pinard's next of kin.

[Canadian Food Inspection Agency Act, February 3rd, 1997]

Yes, it is. You know that this kind of criterion no longer exists in Quebec. Competitions are held and there are several selection stages; as a result, out of x number of candidates, one is selected on the basis of the applicable criteria and this is as neutral a process as can be, while in Canada, the selection method used is a toss between antiquated and imperialistic. To know that the Liberal Party is present in every backroom of the Canadian government is to understand why, today still, positions as influential in our democratic system as that of returning officer are being filled by individuals whose main qualification is the fact that they belong or used to belong to the Liberal Party of Canada.

This in itself is reason enough to voice any concern we may have about the establishment of an agency with an advisory committee whose president and vice-president are appointed directly by the minister.

It is also baffling to realize that the entity created by merging these three departments responsible for food inspection will operate on a $300 million budget, according to our information. This represents a $44 million reduction, probably to please the Minister of Finance, whose objectives you know as well as I do.

So we end up with $44 million less and 600 fewer inspectors who used to work in the fisheries, agriculture and health departments. If I remember correctly, there used to be 3,400 inspectors, 600 of whom will be eliminated. How can we be expected not to worry about the quality and quantity of services that will be offered in the public interest, in an area essential to the very functioning of any society, especially against our claims of being a civilized and developed society, when faced with cuts of 600 jobs and $44 million, affecting, as I said earlier, all Canadians and Quebecers in their daily lives?

I hope this kind of comment will be heard so that the public interest can take precedence over any other interest in this matter.

[Canadian Food Inspection Agency Act, February 3rd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise for the second time to speak to Bill C-60, an act to establish the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. As agreed with my colleague from Frontenac, our critic in this area, I will deal with the amendments in Group No. 9.

But first I would like to extend my best wishes to my colleague from Champlain, currently hospitalized in the Hôpital régional de la Mauricie, who is quite concerned by this kind of issues dealing with agriculture. Farming is the mainstay of a good part of his riding, especially the whole area north of Cap-de-la-Madeleine, and I know that he too would have liked to speak to the bill again today.

I particularly want to send him my greetings as he is to undergo, maybe today, a major operation for which he is well prepared. He is very confident and we are looking forward to welcoming him back here.

I also want to mention my colleague from Frontenac, the Bloc's agriculture critic, who has done a tremendous job on this issue, working long hours and making numerous amendments to try to improve this bill we do not support.

We disagree on a fundamental point, namely the food inspection issue, and I would like to digress a moment to show how important this issue is, even though it is not a spectacular one. It concerns the health and safety of every Canadian, every Quebecer, on a daily basis.

When we talk about food, we are talking about everybody's daily life. We should probably pay more attention to this bill than we have so far, because it will have an impact on all of us in our everyday life. This is a public health issue. When we are talking about food, we are talking about public health and the ability to achieve one's full potential. Unfortunately, right now, a food inspection agency is still the privilege of so-called developed countries.

That is why any change we make should be made after thoughtful consideration, because they will reflect on our so-called developed society. We must remember that three persons out of four in the world, perhaps even four out of five, do not have well-paid public servants to inspect or otherwise monitor what they eat everyday. It is hard enough for them to get any kind of food, even something not subject to the controls provided for in this bill.

Yet, we still disagree with this bill, because we consider that it is not the business of the federal government. According to the Canadian Constitution, this area comes under provincial jurisdiction, especially in Quebec, where food inspection was reorganized in 1978, in much the same way as proposed in this bill.

Indeed, when we talk about this food inspection agency, we are talking about a merger of services which already exist within the Department of Health, the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. They will now come under a single agency and be the responsibility of a single minister and department, namely Agriculture and Agri-Food.

I remind you that this has already been done in Quebec: there was a consolidation so that there would be no duplication, to prevent a restaurant from having, within two or three days or during the same week, one, two or three inspectors come in, disrupt things and invade the place by demanding, with all the paperwork and energy this implies, that such and such document be filled out, always for the sake of the public interest. Except that, while the

restaurant owner or other manager is doing this, he is not doing something else, and this may jeopardize service.

This is a jurisdiction that already belongs to the provinces, and which Quebec, in particular, has assumed very well, and we cannot see why the Government of Canada would get involved, when the public interest is already well protected by the Constitution.

It is all the more annoying to see how the minister is going about managing this agency. Like the Liberals and their proverbial solidarity-we know how the Liberals can help each other in all the provinces of Canada-the bill provides that the president, the vice-president and all the members of the advisory board working within the agency will be appointed by the minister, without any mention of an adequate representation for Quebec, that is, 25 per cent of the membership-and this could have been written into the bill-or the representation of some groups, such as the UPA, that are greatly involved in agriculture or food on a day-to-day basis.

The minister has taken upon himself to make discretionary appointments, using criteria that may be his own. We know how the Liberals think, how their feelings are deep when they want. The Liberals have credentials in that respect; just think of the outdated mechanism by which returning officers are appointed in Canada. These days, and you know it as well as we do, the basic requirement is past or present membership in the Liberal Party of Canada or service as association president or vice-president, and we will not name names.

[Canadian Food Inspection Agency Act, December 12th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to speak to Bill C-60, an act to establish the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

First of all, I would like to congratulate the hon. member for Frontenac who did a tremendous job. He introduced a host of amendments to the bill which, as was to be expected from the hon. member, are based on common sense and the public interest.

Although the subject has not been widely publicized, it is a very important one that affects the daily lives of Canadians and Quebecers. The bill merges the inspection services of three departments, health, agriculture and fisheries, which from now on will be consolidated in one and the same agency that comes under the department of agriculture or the minister of agriculture.

This agency will have an annual budget of $300 million-this is big bucks-for three years and a staff of 3,400 employees. That being said, now for the bad news: the three entities that existed before had a total of 4,000 employees, so we are losing 600 inspectors. When we say $300 million, we must not forget that this reflects a budget cut of $44 million. So there is every reason to be concerned, but I will get back to that later.

The general position of the Bloc Quebecois on this issue is negative. We are against the principle of creating this agency, because we in the Bloc Quebecois consider that constitutionally, this is an area that comes under provincial jurisdiction, in Quebec and in the other provinces. So we are against the very entity that will be established by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

We are annoyed and concerned. Annoyed because considering the powers given to the minister by this bill, the minister will be able to appoint the chairperson, the deputy chair and all the members of the advisory board that will be created along with this agency. We are concerned because, as other members have already pointed out, this is a new patronage mill, and when we make this kind of remark to the government, it is clear we are referring to the patronage appointments made by the Liberal Party of Canada.

When we talk about patronage and the Liberal Party of Canada, we know what we are talking about, and so does everyone else. In Canada, in Quebec, for instance, returning officers, who play a very important role in our electoral process, are still appointed on an exclusively partisan basis. Nowadays we would have to look far and wide in Canada to find a returning officer without solid Liberal roots.

We had another example today, when a new lieutenant-governor was appointed, a lady who probably comes from a good family and has the qualifications. I know she was president of the Quebec Office des personnes handicapées, but all of the insiders know that her greatest qualification is, no doubt, having been a Liberal Party of Canada candidate in the past. So her appointment today as lieutenant-governor of Quebec is because of her good Liberal connections, and we can be pretty sure that there has been no great consultation with the Government of Quebec.

We had another example this morning, and another yesterday in my very own riding. It was announced, a bit prematurely because the official announcement had not been made, that the port of Trois-Rivières would be recognized as a Canadian port authority. And who was on the guest list? Two people who could not have been representing anything other than the Liberal Party of Canada. When it comes down to it, it is like an opening ceremony for a section of highway, a Cegep, a hospital or a CLSC in Quebec attended by a representative of the Parti Quebecois.

That is not how we do things in Quebec, not even, I think, how the Quebec Liberals do things. Here we have an imperialist mentality, Mr. Speaker, which you no doubt recognize. We must speak out against it, because it is such a primitive notion, as if the Canadian state belonged to the Liberal Party of Canada.

Returning to Bill C-60, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the powers assigned to the Minister of Agriculture, there are certainly grounds for annoyance here. We know that this is just one more den of patronage that has just been created by the Liberal government to which it can appoint its buddies. Justification for annoyance, justification for concern.

Concern, because, as has just been said, when food inspection services affecting the daily lives of Canadians and Quebecers are cut, when 600 inspector positions are cut, when $44 million are cut from services, one cannot help but be concerned about the quality of services that will be delivered throughout the country in future.

We are all the more concerned because there is a trend to privatization in an area as vulnerable as food inspection. According to what we hear, a new system has been developed, which may well take the place of the present system, if we are not careful, rather than complement the government system. That is very important.

According to our information, the inspectors could be in conflict of interest or the business could be in conflict of interest with itself. One wonders whether private funds are involved. If the owner of a slaughter house has to provide direct or indirect payment to the inspector supervising his production and if the inspector is pressured by his employer, where does his loyalty lie?

Whose interest is the inspector going to want to protect, the private interest or society's? His employer, who has power over him, or the public whose interest and health he is paid to protect?

With this sort of privatization, which is so fashionable, in the neo-liberal context of deregulation, we are dealing with a basic issue: people's health. I would be very happy to be in my own skin rather than the government's in the event of public health problems involving poisoning as the result of laziness or some sort of lack of control in which the interests of the employer and those of the public are in conflict.

To conclude, I would like to reiterate the concerns of the Union des producteurs agricoles. It has significant reservations regarding this bill. It would like to have people from the agricultural milieu who know what they are doing, who are capable of making the distinctions and recommendations required in food inspection, rather than masses of pals of the Liberal Party.

Furthermore, the Union des producteurs agricoles wants all the budgets-and this may not be easy with the $44 million cut-currently with health, agriculture and fisheries to be transferred. The three budgets should be combined, and not cut.

There is the danger of cost recovery. It underlies all of that. We hope all of this will not be done on the backs of farm producers, and it is the hope of the UPA as well.

[Port Of Trois-Rivières, December 12th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, last Monday, I asked the Prime Minister to make the commitment that his government would give the port of Trois-Rivières the status of Canada port authority. I have been informed that the Minister of Transport confirmed this morning, in a letter, that the port of Trois-Rivières would become a CPA.

There is no need to thank the federal government for that since the port of Trois-Rivières meets all the established criteria. As the minister representing the Mauricie region, the Prime Minister had the responsibility of ensuring, right from the start, that the port of Trois-Rivières would be given CPA status since it meets all the established criteria. His responsibility was to do that and not to make a pitch for some local personality through various means.

Furthermore, the Prime Minister voluntarily ignored the second part of my question concerning the $12 million accumulated by the port of Trois-Rivières. The Bloc Quebecois is concerned about that and demands that the government leave this money for the

development of the port of Trois-Rivières instead of dipping into this surplus, as it did with the port of Quebec City.

[Port Of Trois-Rivières, December 9th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, out of respect for what people want, can the minister assure us that, in making his evaluation, he will endorse the chamber of commerce, the evaluation committee, the Corporation économique de développement industriel et commercial and the cities of Trois-Rivières, Trois-Rivières Ouest, Grand-Mère and Shawinigan-in the Prime Minister's riding-that he will abide by the will of the community instead of yielding to a small group who is hustling around the Trois-Rivières Liberal Association?

Can he assure us that the $12 million reserve accumulated over the years by the port of Trois-Rivières will not be siphoned off to the Canadian consolidated fund like the reserve of the port of Quebec was by the previous Tory government?