John Solomon

[Royal Canadian Mint Act, October 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, NDP members present tonight vote no to this motion.

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, October 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, members of the NDP vote no to this motion.

[Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act, October 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, NDP members vote yes to this motion.

[Royal Canadian Mounted Police, October 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, now that they have frozen RCMP cadet training, the Liberals want to impose alternate service delivery on the RCMP support staff at the Regina training academy.

ASD is another step down for our public service, where they are fired and then offered their job back at half pay. Under ASD government employees are always sitting ducks and all services are defunct.

Why is it always Saskatchewan that is devastated? Will the government back away from another silly decision or will this be another solicitor general debacle for the RCMP?

[Petitions, October 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to present a petition in the House of Commons today on behalf of many of my constituents who do not believe Don Johnston at the OECD with respect to the MAI. They are very concerned that the MAI might likely still proceed and it would have a very negative impact on Canadian life, including environmental protection, employment, wage levels, health care and other programs.

The petitioners are asking the House of Commons that when Don Johnston and the government decide to proceed with the MAI that they have public hearings to express the concerns of all Canadians.

[Scholarships Named After Olympic Athletes, October 7th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I ask the House if it would consider allowing this motion to be referred to committee for further study.

[Scholarships Named After Olympic Athletes, October 7th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments made by members tonight with respect to this motion. I thank the member for Churchill for seconding this motion. I thank as well the member for South Shore from the Progressive Conservative Party who supports this motion. That is a very important thing to do at this moment.

I assure the member for Calgary—Nose Hill from the Reform Party that this bill is not a double standard. It does provide an additional amount of support for our young people for their education. She says that if we repealed Bill S-9 it would tie the hands of young people. This will not tie the hands of young people. It will provide them with all kinds of opportunities.

There are 25,000 Canadian young people attending American universities and other institutions which is 500% more than the number of Americans attending our institutions. That was the case before Bill S-9, which provided tax deductions for making contributions to U.S. universities, was implemented in the House. I disagree with the member on that. It is something she should look a little closer at.

With respect to the Liberal Party, the member for Ottawa—Vanier mentioned that he thinks this is a good idea. I appreciate that. However, the member for Mississauga West who read the response from the government side did not read the motion. He is still fighting the 1995 Ontario provincial election. That was the indication I had from his remarks. They were quite provocative. He was speaking for his government and basically it missed the point.

It is not surprising that he attacked the New Democratic Party. He attacked athletes. He attacked young people. He attacked the unemployed. He is playing politics. He thinks this motion is something that is not worthy of consideration by this House. As a matter of fact, what is more political is that he and his government have cut back education, in particular post-secondary funding for education, to such an extent that there is a looming crisis in education for young people in terms of their opportunity to access it.

In order to buy some political capital the government institutes a new program called the millennium fund which may over a number of years provide additional scholarships for 6% or 7% of the eligible students. It excludes 93% or 94% of all students who may require some additional funding. The government in my view has intruded in the provincial scene with respect to the millennium fund scholarship program initiatives.

The Bloc made a correct observation when the member indicated that we have not included in the motion funding for cégeps or technical schools. That is a good idea that could be incorporated in this motion.

I thank members for participating in the debate. I appreciate their viewpoints. Although the motion is not universally embraced, I would ask for unanimous consent to allow this motion to be votable.

[Scholarships Named After Olympic Athletes, October 7th, 1998]

And members of Parliament too.

[Scholarships Named After Olympic Athletes, October 7th, 1998]

moved

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider establishing full tuition scholarships named after each and every Canadian Gold Medal Olympic athlete starting with the 1998 Winter Olympics to encourage talented young Canadian athletes to complete their education at Canadian universities while continuing to excel in their particular Olympic sport and with the consideration of naming the first of such scholarships after the Sandra Schmirler Rink of Regina.

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House today to speak to this very important motion.

This motion was inspired by the incredible victory of the Sandra Schmirler rink earlier this year. In fact it was on Sunday, February 5, 1998 at the Nagano Olympics, a victory that was watched by virtually every resident of Saskatchewan and made every Canadian proud.

This team of Canadian women from Regina's Caledonia Curling Club had racked up six provincial championships and three world titles by the time they claimed their first ever Olympic gold medal for women's curling since it became a full medal sport at this year's winter Olympics.

These women have become heroes to a new generation of young Canadians dreaming of representing Canada in the Olympic games, in particular those in winter sports. The skip of this rink, Sandra Schmirler, the third, Jan Betker, the second, Joan McCusker, the lead, Marsha Gudereit, and the alternate, Atina Ford, are all Saskatchewan born individuals. They are all Canadians and they excel in their sport.

I believe we should be establishing this particular scholarship for many good reasons and I will get into them right now.

I believe it is time to consider what steps go into making Olympic calibre athletes in Canada and how we can promote excellence in athletics and academics in our country. Canadian universities have long had a policy that they will not provide athletic scholarships in excess of $1,500 annually and not at all to students entering first year.

I support the main thrust of that policy because it is intended to steer our university system away from some of the excesses of the American system in which more money and attention is sometimes devoted to athletic teams, especially in bigger and richer schools, than the academic performance of the students they subsidize.

The big schools raise fairly large dollars from their alumni and draw the best athletes. They have not always been the best students, but it leaves the smaller schools scrambling for funding for their academic programs, which is, after all, supposed to be their core business activity.

This is what Canadian universities have wanted to avoid. However, the generous U.S. scholarships are drawing some 1,800 Canadian students annually to study south of the border. For many young athletes it represents the chance of a lifetime.

For example, the NDP leader of Ontario, Howie Hampton, left Fort Frances, Ontario as a young boy on a hockey scholarship to go to an American university. He returned years later after completing a law degree in Canada to practise law in his hometown, after, of course, making a stop in Saskatchewan to share in some of the experience of the New Democratic government of the late 1970s.

When Mr. Hampton went back to Fort Frances he coached some local hockey teams. From there he was elected to Queen's Park to serve as attorney general and minister of natural resources, and is now leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party.

But the point is that those scholarships are the chance of a lifetime.

Canada has a $350 million education deficit with the United States in terms of foreign students and now some of the universities in our western Canadian provinces are trying to make changes to Canadian policy to stem some of the flow of our best athletes to American schools, because when the students go the alumni and parent donations follow.

We all know that the federal government recently made those contributions tax exempt under Bill S-9 in the last parliament, while slashing federal funding for post-secondary education student aid.

I would like to share with Canadians this incredible betrayal to Canadian education. The Liberal government in the last parliament passed Bill S-9. It was supported by the Reform Party, by the Bloc and by the Conservative Party. The NDP was the only party to suggest that this bill was only a bill for the rich and the wealthy and that it was totally unfair to our education system.

While the Liberal government cut education funding in Canada by $2 billion a year, it is allowing Canadians to make contributions to U.S. universities and post-secondary institutions and take a tax deduction in Canada. Now the tax system in this country is supporting the U.S. education system while we cut back our own students. This is the Liberal, the Reform, the Tory and the Bloc way.

Bill S-9 is an insidious bill. I think the Liberals in this House should be absolutely ashamed of themselves. The opposition parties should be ashamed of themselves for abandoning young people in this country for the sake of American institutions. I cannot believe it.

When I tell people about Bill S-9 they are shocked. We now have tax deductions in Canada for making contributions to U.S. universities and post-secondary institutions. Some people say there is reciprocity. However, the facts show that over 25,000 Canadian students go to the U.S. Following them are donations to U.S. campuses from their parents, family members and wealthy corporations. But just under 5,000 U.S. students come to Canada.

It is a five to one ratio. We are supporting the education system in the U.S. with Canadian tax dollars while we abandon our students, while we abandon our young people in terms of supporting their educational desires and needs. It is incredible.

My proposal is designed to create full tuition scholarships, paid for by the federal government out of public funds. If we can afford to subsidize U.S. universities we can afford to subsidize Canadian athletes and Canadian institutions. My sense is that this will assist young Canadian athletes and provide them with the proper academic qualifications they will require in the global economy.

This would help Canadian universities as well. It would keep some of our best athletes at home, without unduly taxing their own alumni fundraising efforts and without creating further disparities between Canadian universities such as we have witnessed in the U.S.

By naming the scholarships after Canada's Olympic gold medalists, starting as I have suggested with the Sandra Schmirler rink of Regina, we would serve the dual purpose of recognizing their accomplishments and taking advantage of their status as role models to inspire the next generation of Olympic calibre athletes.

The government could finance this proposal easily, by the way, out of the savings it could reap in tax expenditures if it reversed the odious provisions of Bill S-9 to which I referred a few moments ago.

I also want to take some time to express the concerns we hear every year at about this time in my Regina constituency office from students and their parents about the state of student aid in this country and about the outrageous levels of debt students are required to take on if they do what governments, industry and indeed the future of our economy demands they do, which is to acquire at least an undergraduate degree.

Post-secondary training has never been more essential to the future of our country and it has never been more expensive. The benefits accrue to industry, government and society as a whole, as well as students, but the associated costs and risks are being more and more assumed by only the students. In fact many recent changes to student assistance on the federal side, including some incredibly discriminatory provisions last year prohibiting bankruptcies for 10 years to anyone carrying a student loan, are being driven by the big banks, which hypocritically lobby against student grants and lower tuition and then make money from the interest charges on student loans.

It is no wonder the banks are among the targets of next week's week of action planned by the Canadian Federation of Students. I salute and support those efforts by the Canadian Federation of Students.

The big corporations are tying the hands of our young people because those corporations will not pay or assist in funding their education, which would benefit our own country, but we allow the Reichmanns and the Bronfmans to write off hundreds of millions of dollars, almost on an annual basis, against our tax system, and they can write it off in the regular term of one year. Our students are now handcuffed. They have to take 10 years to pay back the loans because we have burdened them with an average debt of $25,000.

To come back to where I started with this proposal, this morning I reread some of the news stories about Schmirler's win last February and was reminded of something she said at that time.

She was asked about being called the best-ever female curling team and her answer typified the Canadian ideal of sports personship that endeared her so much to the people in my province of Saskatchewan. She said “It does not matter if I believe it or not. We go out there, we play for fun and we play the best that we can, and we happen to play at this level. Yes, we have won quite a bit, but I even know that back in Regina there are plenty of good teams”.

“But are they the best?” she was asked. “It is a good combination for us and it has been right ever since the day we put this team together. The personalities click and we are not bad curlers to boot”.

Wherever they went the women talked of their families, of their communities and of their country. Their win was an accomplishment for them. However, it was not in boasting as an individual achievement, but more as an expression of the importance of teamwork within a supportive family and community environment.

Sandra Schmirler and her team represented the best values of Saskatchewan and they still represent the best values of Saskatchewan. We in Saskatchewan are very proud of our athletes for their values of family, of community, of hard work and of modesty.

We need more heroes like that. This is why I am proposing a federally funded, full tuition scholarship program to keep young athletes in Canadian universities to benefit Canada. I can think of no more fitting example than Sandra Schmirler and her rink to name the first fund after.

I happen to have a list of other gold medalists who I would like to see these scholarships named after. They are: Ross Rebagliati, a gold medalist in snowboarding; Catriona LeMay Doan from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, a gold medalist in the 500 metre long track speed skating event; Annie Perreault, a gold medalist in the 500 metre short track; Marc Gagnon, Derrick Campbell, Eric Bédard and François Drolet, gold medalists in the 5,000 metre men's relay short track; the women's curling team, as I mentioned, which won the gold medal; and Pierre Leuders and Dave MacEachern, gold medalists in the two-person bobsled.

We also won silver and bronze medals. At some point I would like to see this kind of a scholarship program extended not just to the gold medal winners but to those who receive silver and bronze medals in the Olympic Games.

In summary, I believe this is a very significant move which the government could make to assist some of the challenges that face our athletes in Canada and to make them Olympic calibre athletes.

I submit that we could pay for this probably 10,000 times over on an annual basis if we repealed Bill S-9, which literally drains money from our Canadian education system and gives it to the Americans. This is again a bill that was supported by the Liberals, the Reform Party, the Bloc and the Conservatives.

I think the more young people learn about this insidious legislation, which is costing them their birthright in terms of sufficiently funded post-secondary education, they are really going to make a serious decision come the next election and decide that maybe what they need is a government that will look at education from a very serious minded perspective and from a perspective that will be supportive for our young people because they are the future of our country.

I look forward to hearing the comments of my colleagues when they stand to speak to this motion. I will be happy to provide a five minute wrap up at the end.

[Request For Emergency Debate, October 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I seek leave under Standing Order 52(2) to propose an emergency debate to address the crisis in Canadian farm incomes.

The incomes of Canadian farmers are in steep and rapid decline. This constitutes an emergency for farm families in every rural community in Canada. The situation has become desperate and many family farms are facing economic disaster.

With declining global farm commodity prices, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture is now predicting that farm incomes may fall by as much as 40% this year alone and perhaps even more on the prairies. Statistics Canada has reported that farm cash receipts for all Canadian farmers in the first half of this year already declined by 5% and prairie farm incomes were down by between 10% and 13%. These earlier numbers do not reflect the most recent declines or the quickly evaporating demand for Canadian products in the wake of the economic meltdown in Asia that is now spreading around the world.

Canadian farmers do not receive subsidies like European and American farmers receive from their governments.

An emergency debate is required to allow us, as elected representatives, to inform the government of the gravity of the situation and to have parliament consider what urgent measures are needed to address the looming crisis on the family farm.

The minister of agriculture in this House on Friday indicated he would welcome any comments with respect to this particular farm crisis debate.

I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for your careful consideration of this very important and urgent matter.