Yves Rocheleau

[Questions On The Order Paper, June 18th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, for the fourth time now, I would like to call to your attention the fact that, on March 11, 1996, I put four questions on the Order Paper concerning the choice of Shawinigan instead of Trois-Rivières as the site for the Department of Human Resources' regional management centre.

I will say outright that I am counting today on your support to make all necessary representations to the parliamentary secretary in order to get legitimate responses to these questions before the House ajourns for the summer.

[Oceans Act, June 12th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to speak again in this debate, this time on the motions in Group No. 12.

But before I go any further, with your permission, Madam Speaker, I would like to pay special tribute to our venerable colleague, the member for Richelieu, who surpassed himself these past few hours, last night especially, when he made an improvised speech that lasted a good half hour and in which he succeeded in casting the government in a bad light and in forcing it to think. The few members who were around, even those in the government members' lobby, heard the relevant and judicious speech delivered by our colleague.

We saw how his experience as a former Conservative member served him well because he knows the rules of procedure. We saw how generous the member for Richelieu is, deep down inside, because he succeeded in rallying all the members present, as well as all those representing the region that will be affected by the bill. This man is really a natural leader.

I would now like to recall the principal points of the speech I made last night in the House. First, the whole process by which the government presented this bill is questionable, very negative and lacks transparency, starting with the study made by a private firm called IBI, study that was denounced and ridiculed by all kinds of experts, all interested parties and all stakeholders. As I mentioned yesterday, one witness who appeared before the committee went as far as to say that this report was not worth the paper it was written on, which says a lot.

It is all the more serious not only because the report was paid for by the public purse, but also because this document that is not recognized by the people involved forms the basis of the minister's rationale for implementing these fees. So if we want a healthy debate where everybody agrees on the general parameters, we are off to a very bad start. We do not have this basis for discussion since the document in question is not recognized by the people involved.

Then, under pressure from the official opposition, the fisheries and oceans committee heard witnesses. There again we saw the same attitude on the part of the government, an attitude of non transparency, of narrowmindedness, a kind of military attitude in some way-it is understandable-from the commissioner to the minister, who both happen to have the same profile. It is an attitude of non openness to the very sensible and very sincere arguments presented by witnesses who came maybe not to talk about their survival, but about good management, in the public interest.

Unfortunately, our colleagues opposite did not listen seriously to the evidence presented to them and made absolutely no effort to follow up on it. There was a huge gap between the comments made by the commissioner of the coast guard, our first witness-I sat on this committee as an associate member-and the comments made by the other witnesses, the users, who came to criticize the commissioner's position and to tell us how they perceived the situation and how they intended to co-operate. In point of fact, by this operation, the government is trying to get money from

users-though we do not know at what cost and what the impact it will have-to the tune of $160 million by the year 2000, in four years.

Witnesses mentioned three major grievances concerning the approach adopted by the government and it is obvious users are also upset for three basic reasons. First, no impact study was done to evaluate the impact of the fee structure although several witnesses talked about the potentially destructive effects of this new fee structure. Secondly, no detailed description has been given of services actually provided by the Coast Guard to users, despite the fact that the term user-payer is used. The government wants them to pay because they use services but there is not precise description of those services. I find that approach a bit clumsy and arrogant. If they said: "From now on, you will have to pay a precise fee for such and such a service", that could facilitate a positive dialogue between the parties. Instead, people are plainly told they are getting a service for which they will have to pay a given amount.

Finally, despite what users wanted, the Coast Guard made no effort, in their opinion-and this is the third complaint-to streamline its operations. This would have reduced potential costs to users all the more. These then are three aspects of the debate to bear in mind, because they illustrate the almost extemporaneous and extremely arbitrary position taken by the government in this matter.

Yesterday, I related a number of distressing facts, but I would like to carry on in this debate. It was said, among other things, that Canada is being arbitrarily divided into three regions with different rates for each: the west, the centre-Quebec and the Great Lakes-and the maritimes. Three different rates for three different regions, to the great chagrin of the federalist witnesses.

We were told that for a 25,000 tonne vessel-as the member for Richelieu said earlier-with respect only to aids to navigation-buoys-the cost would be $112,000 a year. That is awful. Imagine the shipowner with 12 or 15 ships. He will have to pay $112,000 per ship just for aids to navigation, the least expensive of the three items, the others being ice breaking-the most expensive-and dredging-of both the St. Lawrence and approaches to harbours and wharves. That means $112,000 for a single 25,000 tonne vessel, just for aids to navigation.

Another fact we should take into consideration is that a foreign vessel entering the largest inland waterway in the world-the St. Lawrence River-en route to an American port will pay nothing. There is no charge to such a vessel for aids to navigation and ice breaking, because it is not stopping in Canada, but going directly to the States. This will no doubt increase competition between American ports on the Great Lakes and the ports along the St. Lawrence. There will therefore be no charge to foreign vessels heading directly to the United States.

Another item that arose out of the committee's deliberations concerns ice breakers and ice. The fact is that, in the case of the ports along the North Shore, such as Baie-Comeau, Port-Cartier and Sept-Îles, there is no ice. There is no ice in Halifax, another major port, either. Except that user fees will be charged for ice-breakers in Port-Cartier, Sept-Îles and all along the North Shore whereas Halifax will not pay a cent for ice-breaking. Members must know that Halifax is the home port of the big ice-breakers that come all the way up to lake Saint-Pierre, where I come from, so the economic impact on the region will be dramatic.

Finally, I want to say a few words about Trois-Rivières, in my riding. For the port of Trois-Rivières only, the new fee schedule will entail additional costs of $500,000 per year for navigational aids and buoys alone, not including ice-breaking and dredging. This is awful and unacceptable. Everybody will have to pay these new fees even though there was no debate.

This measure is based on an accounting approach not even tempered by political sensibility and not taking socioeconomic consequences into account. We must put all our energies in denouncing such a politicy.

Hopefully the government will come to its senses and postpone until the fall third reading of this bill to allow all stakeholders to make their opinion known once and for all, after having heard from the minister and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Hopefully the minister and his whole department will bow to public pressure and come to their senses in the best interests of everyone.

[Petitions, June 12th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I wish to table a petition today signed by some 3,000 residents of Pointe-du-Lac and environs. Pointe-du-Lac is located in the federal riding of Trois-Rivières.

This petition asks Parliament to halt immediately all testing of explosives at the National Defence Proof and Experimental Test Establishment located at Nicolet-Sud in the riding of Richelieu. According to the petitioners, this testing is causing shock waves that are damaging to both property and people and therefore is harming the environment of the people in the surrounding municipalities and in Lac-Saint-Pierre.

[Oceans Act, June 11th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I rise also to express my opposition to the government's plan to offer Coast Guard services on a user fee basis. According to our information, this is not the first time the government tried to invade this field in order to raise new funds for the national treasury. We must examine carefully the content as well as the form of this proposal.

This time, the government's objective, through the Coast Guard, is to take in close to $160 million by year 2000 from users, starting, in 1996, with an amount of $20 million only for navigation aids, such as buoys and lighthouses that guide ships on the St. Lawrence River. The issues of icebreaking and dredging of the St. Lawrence River and approaches to ports are being determined. According to our information, the icebreaking plan will take form next fall.

As part of its strategy, the government asked a private firm, IBI, to study this question. As member of Parliament and associate member of the committee, I had the honour to take part in the proceedings of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, and I am also very pleased to speak as critic for regional development. Many witnesses said that the IBI study was a hollow sham. Yet, the study was quite voluminous, but, according to a witness, it was not worth the paper on which it was printed. This gives you an idea of the quality of the work done because it seems that it was all a bogus consultation process.

Afterwards, the government had to yield to the pressure exerted by the official opposition and call a meeting of the fisheries and oceans committee which, in turn, invited witnesses to appear before it in order to know the opinion of those we could call victims

of this government operation. Again, this was a bogus consultation process.

Many witnesses, and important ones at that, expressed their views. On the one hand, we saw the arrogance of the Coast Guard commissioner, Mr. Thomas, very self-confident, very proud to talk about the IBI study, and on the other, there was the disappointment, concern and even the anger of users who will have to foot the bill without getting any real explanation of what was going on.

It must be said that over the next three years, people who play a very important economic role, as I will explain later, will have to pay $160 million without any impact study. Some witnesses talked about the devastating effects of that policy, for example, the SODES, which is an association of many highly credible maritime stakeholders in Quebec. There is no description of the services provided to users by the Coast Guard, nonetheless the user pay principle will be applied.

They did not feel the need to demonstrate rationally, as logically as possible, as convincingly as possible, the services actually rendered to these users they want to see pay in future. As for conviction or the moral aspect of the matter are concerned, the process is extremely arbitrary, as well as extremely authoritarian, somewhat typical of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and the Commissioner of the Coast Guard, that is for sure.

As well, there has been no demonstration of any effort whatsoever of rationalization of Coast Guard operations, because if the Coast Guard-which, if memory serves, costs $860 million and change yearly-had successfully rationalized its operations, as the users suggest, those who have seen it in operation just about everywhere in Canada, there would be less money to collect and less reason to penalize users of these undefined Coast Guard services. This is extremely shocking. It is obvious to people that the Coast Guard has not cleaned up its own act before going and setting new user fees.

All of this gives rise to what I would term some disturbing facts. For example, the problem comes from Ottawa. Ottawa needs money and has decided to find a new way to intervene to meet this need. For its purposes, it has divided the country into three major regions.

So, while the problem is exactly the same from coast to coast, the country is divided into three parts: the west, the centre-that is, the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence-and the maritimes. As it happens, Quebec is the one that gets it in the neck, because it will end up paying, with the Great Lakes, nearly 48 per cent of the $20 million at issue this year.

I have heard federalists say, for your information, that, if there is a country, there is a country. Unless Ottawa decides simply to divide up the country, to acknowledge in some way that there are differences, big ones, we are obliged to talk sovereignty. There are therefore federalists who are legitimately upset, and, we hope, shaken by the federal government's move to divide up the country into the three regions I just mentioned.

What is more, according to user estimates, the government is raising costs, plus what this policy will mean eventually, by a dollar a tonne. The Coast Guard's response to this argument is that it is not a dollar a tonne, but ten cents a tonne. This is the kind of debate that can generate a lot of anxiety since some will think that 10 cents is important, but a dollar is even more so in a field where competition is exceedingly high. According to users, this will double the cost of maritime transportation operations in the St. Lawrence, if ever the contention of users is confirmed, that is, a $1 increase.

So they caved in to the eastern and western lobbies, but especially the eastern lobby, that is, the maritimes, and decided on a fee structure that seems to be clearly in favour of Halifax as opposed to one of its competitor ports called Montreal. The port of Halifax is a port of call for big container ships whereas the port of Montreal is an unloading port. It seems that the decision to apply user fees based on the tonnage of transhipped or unloaded cargo favours Halifax, while the decision to impose user fees based on the size of vessels would have favoured neither of these two ports.

This is a rather sneaky way to favour one port over another one when both are competing against one another.

There is a disturbing fact which gives a very concrete idea of what to expect: For navigational aids, a single 25,000 tonne vessel will pay $112,000 per year. A vessel of 25,000 tonnes, $112,000 per year. Not only that, but policies are also being designed which will cost far more, in particular with respect to icebreaking operations. This gives us some idea of the scope of the problem we will soon be facing.

One wonders if this is not an effort to severely reduce the competitiveness of the ports on the St. Lawrence compared with those ports of the maritime provinces, of the east coast of the U.S., even of the whole Mississippi valley. St. Lawrence harbours are in direct competition with those harbours and if shipowners decide it is too expensive to sail through the St. Lawrence, the danger for not only the Quebec economy, but also central Canada, is that they will have missed the boat.

Aluminum plants, the whole pulp and paper industry, the oil industry, the mining industry might then be in jeopardy, together with tens of thousands of jobs related to all these sectors.

This is a major issue and the official opposition is asking for a one-year moratorium. One wonders if, in a sovereign Quebec, it

would even occur to the leaders to come up with such a scheme to hurt the economy instead of helping it develop.

[Oceans Act, June 10th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to take a few minutes to speak to this bill, which in my view reveals the federal government's true intentions with regard to the evolution of Canadian federalism.

It seems an obvious response to all those who dream of a decentralized Canada that could, for some federalists, be a response to the legitimate aspirations toward sovereignty of the people of Quebec.

According to one school of thought, Canada could be more decentralized. Since the provincial governments are closer to their constituents, they should have more powers to provide for the welfare of the people.

Here is a bill where the federal government barely recognizes the existence of the provincial governments, putting them on an equal footing with aboriginal communities, coastal communities and other stakeholders, even though this legislation affects directly Canadians from each of the 10 provinces. When one adds that to what it wants to do with the securities commission, the coast guard, etc., one gets a pretty good idea of the government's intentions.

This can also be seen in another aspect of the activity of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, where the government wants to impose a tax on all water equipment. If you have a cottage and if you have the misfortune of owning a pedalboat, a canoe, a rowboat or a sailboard, your pleasure will be diminished from now on because you will have to pay a $5 to $35 tax to the federal government for this equipment. And all that without any direct involvement of or consultation with the provincial governments. The federal government intends to establish partnerships with all kinds of regional organizations so it can collect these new revenues. And the excuse-the minister has mentioned it several times already-is public safety, because there have been some drownings. Well, of course, when you are around water, there may be drownings every year.

It is hard to disagree, all the more so because public safety is the only argument the government has really used to justify slapping another tax on the humble citizen in his pursuit of recreation, not being sure it could count on those whose boats truly qualify as pleasure craft, with all the costs that these entail, when you are talking about boats 20, 30, 40 or 50 feet long that must have a captain on board, and knowing that this falls in the private domain. Personally, I would be curious to know how these people actually are taxed, how they do their bit for the national treasury, when we know that the reason the operation concerning pleasure boats is so extensive is to ensure that the tax man gets his bite.

To get back to my premise, I would just like to say that the very fact that the federal government is going ahead in this way is a complete contradiction, and should sound a warning among English Canadians, who are wondering what to do about the rising tide of sovereignists. Despite what some people might think, I do not

think that right now in Ottawa, in the Langevin Block, there is the will to decentralize the Canadian federation. There is an increasingly obvious desire to see that the real decisions are taken here in Ottawa.

That may be fine for Canadians, because it seems that English Canadians' primary sense of loyalty is to the federal government, in a proportion, compared to Quebec, of 20-80 according to our information. Twenty per cent of English Canadians say that their first loyalty is to their provincial government, and 80 per cent say that it is to the federal government. In Quebec, the percentages are reversed: 20 per cent to the federal government, and 80 per cent to the Government of Quebec.

So, that is all very fine and well, a form of decentralization which is only a dream at the moment, because there is no actual sign of it. But in the case of Quebec, if they ever manage to decentralize the Canadian federation, it will be contrary to the profound aspirations of the people of Quebec, who are turning, and this is becoming increasingly clear, unanimously, legitimately and ever more decisively, in the direction of sovereignty, that is to say partnership, the fairest, the most legitimate, the most harmonious and undoubtedly the most cost effective direction for Canada and Quebec in an economic partnership that respects both political entities.

[Questions Passed As Orders For Returns, June 10th, 1996]

I rise on a point of order, Madam Speaker. I would like to draw your attention for the third time to the fact that, on March 11, that is three months ago, I put four questions on the Order Paper, Questions Nos. 20, 21, 22 and 23, and requested, pursuant to the Standing Orders, that these questions be answered within 45 days. That will be three months ago tomorrow.

These questions deal with the transfer of the human resources development department's regional management centre from Trois-Rivières to Shawinigan. These questions were put in the public interest, in the interest of the constituents of Trois-Rivières and the whole region.

These questions come from a member of Parliament who, according to our rules, has the right to question the executive branch of government, who, in turn, has the responsibility to answer these kinds of questions asked in the public interest.

I therefore count on you, Madam Speaker, to make the necessary representations with the executive so these questions get a proper, honest and quick answer.

[Hydrogen, June 10th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières recently inaugurated a new building for the Institut de recherche sur l'hydrogène.

This $6 million investment seeks to promote research in the areas of safety, storage and transportation of hydrogen, a fuel which, along with electricity, is the energy of the future. The institute greatly helps to make Quebec a world leader in pollution-free energy.

I also want to stress the incredible work done by the initiator of the project, who is also the director of the institute, Tapan K. Bose. Mr. Bose, an emeritus professor and researcher, was president of the Canadian hydrogen association in 1994 and president of the International Organization for Standardization in the same sector, in 1995.

[Civil Air Navigation Services Commercialization Act, June 4th, 1996]

Love knows no borders.

[Civil Air Navigation Services Commercialization Act, June 4th, 1996]

She must be good looking!

[The Constitution, June 3rd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for her comment. That is precisely why we readily support this bill, because it rests on an overwhelmingly and profoundly democratic basis. I do not know what more I could say. We are pleased with it and we hope and trust that the Government and the people of Canada will acknowledge and respect the same democratic process Quebecers, notably the sovereignists, are putting themselves through, because you must know that, as sovereignists, we could very well just use the same traditional British parliamentary rules,

using Parliament to effect sovereignty at goodness knows what political price.

We have accepted for many years now, as a rule, the need to have a public consultation process in which a majority of Quebecers will hopefully vote for sovereignty, but we are nevertheless accepting this rule for ourselves. It important to realize this.