John Solomon

[Construction Contracts, March 12th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government and the ministers continue to insist that Mr. Cloutier was retained for his work since he was on site and met their security criteria. If security was such an important consideration in selecting Mr. Cloutier to work on the Prime Minister's home, then why was Mr. Cloutier allowed to turn around and subcontract the sensitive work to two other companies, Continental Asphalt and Mario Gélinas?

[Construction Contracts, March 12th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the public contracts awarded to Renald Cloutier, the Prime Minister's personal contractor, not only were untendered, they did not follow other normal rules either.

For example, the RCMP guard post was built in November and December 1998, but the municipal building permit shows it was not applied for until after this work was done. As well, there was no environmental assessment of the road construction even though the Prime Minister's neighbours believe it could contaminate their local water supply.

Can the minister explain why these rules were broken when matters relating to the Prime Minister are supposed to bear the closest public scrutiny as his conflict of interest code says?

[Construction Contracts, March 11th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister's conflict of interest code requires ministers to arrange their private affairs to bear the closest public scrutiny and not to accord preferential treatment to their friends.

In view of the facts that Mr. Renald Cloutier built the Prime Minister's private cottage in Grand'Mère, is the father-in-law of the owner of the Grand'Mère Inn, and donates regularly to the Liberal Party, could the Deputy Prime Minister explain how the Prime Minister's conflict of interest code would permit the untendered awarding of these public contracts to his personal contractor, Mr. Cloutier?

[Construction Contracts, March 11th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, my question for the Minister of Public Works relates to two public projects built adjacent to the Prime Minister's private cottage in Grand'Mère, Quebec. The first one, worth $72,000, was to build an RCMP compound. The second one, worth $65,000, was to build a road. I sent the contract award records to the minister.

Could the minister confirm that these two contracts were awarded without tender to the firm Construction R. Cloutier, Inc. in violation of Treasury Board guidelines for construction contracts over $25,000, and if so, why?

[Petitions, March 11th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure today to present to the House of Commons, pursuant to Standing Order 36, a petition signed by Canadians who are very concerned that the OECD and the head of the OECD, Don Johnston, are continuing to negotiate a multilateral agreement on investment.

These Canadians are very concerned about the negative impact an MAI would have on Canada, our economy and jobs in our country in particular. They are asking the House of Commons to impose a moratorium on ratification of the MAI and to ask Don Johnston to stop negotiating something that is not wanted by anyone in the country except the large multinational American corporations that support the Liberal government.

[Competition Act, 1998, March 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, as the New Democratic Party spokesperson for consumer affairs I am pleased to speak to Bill C-393 which was proposed by the member for Sarnia—Lambton.

In the last parliament the NDP caucus supported the member's earlier effort to ban negative option billing through Bill C-216, a private member's bill that was seeking to do the same thing at the federal level as had already been done by the NDP government of British Columbia which amended its consumer legislation to ban negative option billing in that province.

The current bill proposes to amend not the Broadcasting Act, but rather the Competition Act to ensure that negative option billing or negative option selling and marketing is prohibited in all sectors under federal jurisdiction, including telephone services, cable television services, financial services and so on.

Banning negative option billing is a way of telling the providers of those federally regulated services that, where their customers are concerned, yes means yes and no means no. There is no implied consent in silence. If they want to charge customers for a new service, they have to be asked first. Ask them nicely and make the sale by convincing them that they need it or want it. The service has to be sold, not forced down people's throats, who are then charged for it. The rules cannot be changed in the middle of the game without their permission. It is just not fair from the consumer's perspective. That is a principle with which I agree.

There are some members who are concerned that this bill will defeat the licence that was recently approved by the CRTC for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network. This approval was the creation of the network, APTN, and it requires the cable companies to carry this channel on their basic package. I am assured by members, and in particular the sponsor of this bill, that Bill C-393 will not impact on the CRTC's order to include APTN on cable companies' basic services.

It was a most significant and sad day in the last parliament to see the earlier version of this private member's bill, which achieved the extraordinary step of being approved by the House of Commons, effectively killed by the unaccountable, unelected Senate which made a somewhat pointless amendment and sent the bill back to the House where it died on the order paper when the election was called in April of 1997 for June.

I was a member of the House at that time and I well remember the public outrage in the winter of 1995 when the cable companies introduced new specialty channels and restructured their cable package lineups. Let us face it. Winter is cold in Canada sometimes, except in Saskatchewan where I come from, and people like TV.

The cable companies removed some channels from their basic cable lineups and were expecting their customers to pay extra for them unless they read the fine print and cancelled the services, all this with the approval of the CRTC.

New channels were also introduced into what was a much more hostile environment than the channel originators probably deserved simply because people were so appalled at the negative option billing.

I heard a lot of negative comments about that in my constituency office. No wonder the bill enjoyed support on both sides of the House. Since senators do not have constituency offices, or even constituents to whom they are accountable, it is also no wonder they did not respond to the outrage but responded instead to their friends, the giant cable companies.

In the town of Lumsden, after receiving numerous phone calls from very angry cable subscribers, I personally met with Image Cable Systems and persuaded it to hold public meetings with its customers in Lumsden. Subscribers who attended the meeting said overwhelmingly that they did not support the proposed changes to the cable lineup and Image Cable Systems retracted its initial billing.

What made the customers most angry was simply the fact that they were never asked in the first place what they wanted. I am pleased to see the measure before us in parliament and pleased that the member has seen fit to include other federally regulated industries in its scope. I agree with him that we are also seeing the phone companies and some banks testing the waters with these kinds of marketing schemes. It needs to stop now.

Let us remember that most federally regulated industries are granted certain privileges to conduct business in a protected way for they provide essential services to the economy and the people of Canada.

In return for this privilege, which often means they are guaranteed certain levels of profit as well, they have a higher duty to conduct their business in an ethical way. Because the bill proposes to change the Competition Act, we should have disposed of any concerns that the legislation somehow intrudes into the jurisdiction of the provinces. It is very clear that the federal government is responsible for competition policy and federally regulated industries.

Perhaps it is time for parliament to take some time and undertake a more comprehensive review of competition policy and the Competition Act. Private member's Bill C-384 sponsored by the member for Pickering—Ajax—Uxbridge, which proposes another change to the Competition Act, ought to be before committee for study in the next few months.

I have had longstanding criticisms of the ability of the Competition Act to deal with pricing in the retail gasoline market, for example. With the changing nature of the international economy, the simultaneous trends of increased mergers and acquisitions, and the growing number of small businesses in our economy we need a much more active competition policy to ensure that the marketplace works well for consumers and for small business owners.

I have raised the concerns of independent gas retailers in Saskatchewan with the Competition Bureau, concerns that affect consumers in my province in particular. The number of independent gas retailers has declined dramatically. I would argue, not coincidentally, that we now have the highest gas prices of any jurisdiction in Canada even though our tax regime is identical to those of British Columbia, Manitoba and Ontario. I understand the Competition Bureau is investigating for the criminal investigations branch.

Also this week the leader of the New Democratic Party, my leader, the member for Halifax, raised very grave concerns about the impact of Sobey's assuming control of 75% of the food wholesale market on the east coast. The takeover of Oshawa Group by Sobey's controlled Empire Ltd. would mean that small family restaurants and corner stores will become price takers from one food wholesaler. That hurts them and it will hurt consumers dramatically. It is a competition issue and it is a consumer issue. It is time we made a comprehensive re-examination of the whole policy area.

I want the government to stand up and fight for ordinary Canadians by establishing a comprehensive consumers protection act. We are the only country that does not have one to protect consumers. Instead we have an act that protects giant multinationals and huge corporations from the people and guarantees them huge profits. That is unacceptable in this day and age.

We do not have one-tenth the amount of competition legislation the United States has. I am not saying that more is better but what we have now is not, as I am told every day, working for anybody but the large corporations and the very wealthy families.

In summary, I support the principle of the member's bill. I hope it receives wide support from the House once again and is not stalled in the unelected, unaccountable, unacceptable Senate of Canada.

[Petitions, March 3rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure on behalf of many constituents in the province of Saskatchewan in communities like Rama, Invermay, Margo and Hazel Dell to present a petition to let the House of Commons know that they are sick and tired of the waste of $50 million a year on the Senate.

They think this is an undemocratic place where only friends of the Prime Minister are appointed and that they are unaccountable. They want the House of Commons to commence action to abolish this terrible waste of taxpayers money on the Senate.

[Division No. 317, February 15th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, on October 22, I asked the former solicitor general to back away from any decision to implement the so-called alternate service delivery at the RCMP depot division training academy in Regina, in my riding.

Alternate service delivery or ASD, as it is called, is the latest bureaucratic buzzword for privatization, a bad policy of right wingers who do not believe government has or ought to have any role in providing public services. We have lots of experience with privatization and right wingers in my province in Saskatchewan, lots of fiascos that I wish the federal government would try to learn from.

Privatization is synonymous with lost jobs, higher costs, low wages and reduced services. ASD or privatization has been tried in various federal government departments like CFB Goose Bay.

Here is what happens. The government fires you and then if you are one of the lucky 55% a subcontractor offers you your job back at about half the pay. Privatization: jobs are lost, costs go up to the taxpayers, wages do down and public services are reduced.

ASD is being invoked as a potential money saver by this right wing Liberal government. The Liberals believe they need to save money at the RCMP because the force's budget is in a management mess. Things are so bad that when treasury board realized last October that the RCMP had apparently overspent its budget, treasury board would not release any more funds without undertaking a $1 million audit of the operation of the entire force by management consultants KPMG.

How bad a budget management problem do you need to justify spending $1 million on an audit? The RCMP has a budget of $1.2 billion. By October it was overbudget by $11 million, mainly in B.C. and Alberta. Ten million was transferred to B.C. from other divisions of the force, cadet training was frozen at the depot in Regina and other serious cuts in policing were implemented, leaving Canadians dangerously under protected.

Now they are looking around for scapegoats and they have seized on the civilian workers at the depot as prime targets. For the record, civilian services at the depot account for $1.9 million of the division's $40 million budget, or 4.75% of the salaries are for the support services by the public servants in that depot.

I met with many of these workers who are concerned for their jobs and their families. They are also concerned about the RCMP and the credibility the force has. They provide a dedicated and cost effective service to the depot division and the RCMP, a quality service that would be lost if plans for privatization proceed.

These employees have already participated in one study of privatization, a study that proved privatization cost the force more money than if they had just kept the status quo.

There is plenty of evidence that the high management and administrative costs of the RCMP are the real culprit. The rights and privileges of the officer class also come at a very high price. If I were working at KPMG that is certainly where I would be looking first.

But in a rush to jump the gun on any other recommendations that KPMG might suggest, a last minute report from depot division management to old division headquarters in Ottawa is recommending that privatization be pushed ahead instead. The report was not done by outside consultants but by area RCMP management. It was based on out of date and incorrect information and in spite of claims that they consulted, the so-called consultants never actually consulted the affected workers. It is strange but it is true.

I wrote to the President of the Treasury Board and the solicitor general last week based on further meetings with my constituents. I have asked them to hit the pause button on the drive to privatize and to make sure they receive and read the KPMG report before making any fundamental decisions like privatizing the civilian depot employees in Regina.

This is no laughing matter for the civilian depot workers or their families and it is no laughing matter for me or the RCMP. I hope the parliamentary secretary can report to me today that there will be no new moves to privatize those civilian services and that any decisions about the depot will wait for the KPMG report.

[Royal Canadian Mounted Police, February 9th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the RCMP is short staffed 400 constables. In seven years more than half of the 16,000 member force will be eligible for retirement but no new cadets are being trained at the RCMP training depot in Regina.

Last week the solicitor general said he was giving the RCMP “the tools it needs to fight crime”. What action will the solicitor general take to make sure we have enough RCMP to use these tools to fight crime and can he assure us there will be sufficient funds in the budget to address this dangerous development in police protection?

[Supply, February 9th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I just want to say a couple of words and then ask my colleague the member for Winnipeg—Transcona a question.

I congratulate the member for moving this motion and the seconder, the member for Yukon, and the NDP caucus for taking this issue to the public once again and for trying to get the consent and support of the House of Commons in this very important issue.

As Canadians know, we need three elements for life on this planet. We need good soil, clean air and water.

I want the members and the people who are watching this debate to understand that we have international agreements when it comes to the flowing of rivers and other bodies of water south. These agreements are agreed upon. We have to release a certain amount of the water that flows into these basins and that is something that will remain status quo. We are not planning to dam the waters if this motion is passed. Those waters will continue to flow freely.

We are very concerned about the great water supplies that we have. I do agree with the hon. member for Winnipeg—Transcona that we should be husbanding our resources. We should be conserving them. We should be recycling water. We should be reusing water as many countries are now doing. We have not done enough of that.

The question I want to ask is extremely important to many Canadians, not just on the issue of water but on other issues pertaining to trade agreements. The United States has in all its trade agreements, whether the NAFTA or the WTO, a public interest clause which says that if it is in the public interest of the United States, its governments can make decisions superseding trade agreements.

I ask the member how our amendment would sit and whether we need to go further on the trade agreements to have a public interest clause for Canada as the United States does?