Roy H. Bailey

[Budget Implementation Act, 2000, April 13th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to add my remarks to those of my colleague, who serves on the transport committee and who is very definitely concerned with highways.

We cannot talk about highways and highway infrastructure without someone from my area adding something to the debate. It is a national disgrace across Canada and no one from any party on any side of the House will deny that. Our highway system is deplorable.

I would like to make this point to my hon. colleague. The province of Saskatchewan has more miles of highway per capita than any other province. I would like to inform the member that if we extract what Saskatchewan will probably get, it is about $150 million this year.

I would like to explain to the hon. member that if we were to sand-seal only number 13 highway that runs across just my constituency, the $150 million would be gone. That is the end of federal subsidies to highways in Saskatchewan.

I can assure the hon. member that the amount of money that the province of Nova Scotia is getting is comparable to the pitiful amount that we are getting. There will not be any improvement in highway construction.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2000, April 13th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the member knows that I am from a rural area in southern Saskatchewan. I would like to inform the hon. member that I asked for and received some documents from the Farm Credit Corporation about the number of farm closures that would take place because of the situation that had developed because of flooding and the poor commodity prices.

Had the government seen fit to take just a small portion of some of the expenditures the member just mentioned, we could have left many of those young families, if not all of them, on the farm with the hope of survival. At least we would have done something for them and their families. I would like him to comment on that.

[Proceeds Of Crime (Money Laundering) Act, April 6th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the hon. member for the message that he gave us this morning. It is a given that in order to attack the problems in organized crime or any crime we need the manpower.

Speaking from a personal basis, in my constituency I believe I have more ports of entry than any other constituency in Canada. Every detachment along the border with Montana in the United States has been cut in half. When I attended a banquet of a rural municipality government, the sergeant in control of that area reported that because of cutbacks they were not able to investigate all reported crimes.

Knowing that the staff is not available, people are failing to report crimes such as break and enter. The statistics show that the crime rate is going down, simply because they are not being reported. I would like the member to comment.

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, April 3rd, 2000]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to enter into the debate. I am pleased to see that some people are having a moment of enjoyment. However, if people across the country had ever been given the time to really study this bill, like the old poem, there would be no joy in Mudville, there would be no joy in Canada from coast to coast, from the rural areas to the cities. If Canadians ever found out what this bill will do to the sacred institution of marriage that has been preserved in history the bill would be soundly and totally rejected.

I know I have been called a bigot for believing in this. I have been called worse names. I am not one who hates. I was brought up not to hate. I may see a drunk tumbling from the bar at midnight but the only thing I hate about that is what may happen to his children at home and eventually to him. I hate what he is doing but I certainly do not hate.

I know members would like to see me here next week but if I went home to my constituency and gave any indication whatsoever that I would be supporting this bill, I probably would not make it back. If somebody wants to give 98%, I will top that. Canadians are, thanks to their members, totally irate about this sneaked in legislation.

I met with some lawyers last Saturday night and asked them what they thought of this. They said that beyond a doubt it was the loosest piece of legislation that could ever possibly be made. It is not so much about what is not in the bill but about the people who are not protected in the bill.

Let us take a look at my own family. My wife's oldest sister stayed home and looked after her parents. She never married. She does not qualify for any benefits according to this bill. I have a niece with four children whose husband left her almost three years ago. According to this bill, if he was killed in an accident or where he works, his wife and family would not be the beneficiaries.

This government hates marriage. Let me give members an example of what happened in a city in my riding. An accident took the lives of six men just like that. In other words, six widows are made just like that. This bill was never once discussed with the provinces across Canada with regard to the workmen's compensation legislation that every province has. These widows then became beneficiaries of workmen's compensation for the rest of their lives. When three of them re-married, they were cut off from those benefits. The other three just lived with a partner.

There are so many things about this bill that will drive Canadians crazy unless they have an opportunity to take a look at it. I doubt if the justice department of any province was consulted on this bill. If we can talk about 68 federal acts, what about all the provincial acts? There will be that many provincial acts.

So far on social issues, the pornography issue has been the greatest. People have been phoning, writing, faxing, and so on. Guess what is coming second and may overtake it? This bill, Bill C-23. It will overtake it because Canadians are gradually getting to know what this bill is about. A word is placed in a bill and on the side of the bill there is no definition. We see the word conjugal with no definition. We see the word spouse and it can mean almost anything.

The government ought to be ashamed of itself by putting a time restraint on the passage of this bill. I do not know where its constituents are. Are my constituents different from the rest? Not on your life. They may be more intelligent, and they know what is going on with this bill.

I was very pleased on the first free vote that there were enough members opposite who had enough intestinal fortitude to stand and be counted. Let us hope that before this night ends and before this bill comes to the last and final reading that the government has enough courage to say “We had better put a month into this. Let us get the information out. Let us get the judicial people into each of the provinces. Let us throw it out so that people can really examine this bill”.

Has it got the courage to do that? Let us wait and see.

The pornography case has gone to the two lower courts and has been upheld. The question now is, what would happen if the judgment by the supreme court were in compliance with the two lower courts? What would the government do then?

The bill could not be rewritten because it would be too clear to rewrite. Would it have the courage to use the notwithstanding clause for the protection of Canadian children?

I ask that question and I ask one favour. Would the government consider allowing a time period of one month to put this bill out before the public, not just the parts the government wants, but the whole bill, and then bring it back to the House? That would be fair for democracy, it would be fair for society and it would give some credibility to this institution.

[Natural Gas, April 3rd, 2000]

Madam Speaker, undoubtedly the member who represents Churchill River, Saskatchewan, had good reasons for bringing this private member's motion to the floor of the House. I appreciate what his colleague had to say as well.

There is one advantage of being a little older. I remember very well, having lived in what is a remote area, the first time the power came to my farm. I got rid of the old 32 volt wind charger and carrying batteries out of the basement. It also gave me a great thrill when I watched the natural gas pipeline coming in. When I heard the member speak, it crossed my mind that the natural gas pipeline was laid at a speed of about three miles an hour.

My colleague in his motion is referring to unserviced regions. I was busy last summer watching a gas line come in from a little place called Beulah, North Dakota, right beside Bismarck. They were coming north into the oil fields in my constituency. It was taking carbon dioxide gas and under pressure making it a liquid. There was co-operation between two companies and two countries.

A little story about that really angered me this summer. The contract to lay the pipe from south of the 49th parallel to the Weyburn oil fields came to a standstill because of government regulations.

There were piles of steel pipe, grey in colour. I do not know why they were 52 feet long and only 12 inches in diameter, but the laying of pipe was stopped at the border. There was no further development. The reason was that on each pipe 51 feet by 12 inches was indicated. The National Energy Board said, even though it was going four feet below ground, that had to be changed into metric. Steel stencils had to be made and each pipe had to be resprayed before it went into the ground.

I tell the House this story because the member for Churchill should realize what would have to take place. I am assuming he is intending to go north into Saskatchewan, and indeed there would be a number of problems. If it was going north it would require industry input. Otherwise the cost to go through rocky terrain would be almost prohibitive.

I do not know of any place where a natural gas pipeline could be installed above ground. I am not sure if that is possible. However I do know in Alberta, which has 276,000 kilometres of natural gas pipeline, that almost half of it is faulty. Can we imagine what it would be like and the cost to do so? I am not saying it would be impossible.

We have to look at going into the north in another way. With the cost of land acquisition and the environment protection which the north wants and deserves, I am not sure whether it is totally possible. This looks good on paper. It sounds like it is easy to accomplish. If we asked the federal government to sponsor it, what would we do? Would we go back to the provinces where the utilities remain with them?

Saskatchewan Energy in my province committed $50 million in 1999 to the expansion of natural gas pipelines. That is a lot of money for me but not a lot of money when it comes to laying pipelines. It is not a lot of money when it is necessary to go under a body of water, cross several highways and other obstacles.

I want members to imagine 50 miles of solid rock and how deep it would have to be. Natural gas is something like propane. It can freeze even in tanks that heat homes. Saskatchewan provided its school buses with propane gas. It has since taken it out because too many buses would not start at -40°. We would have to make sure there was some way. It would be extremely expensive.

The revenues of Saskatchewan Energy in 1998 were $367 million and it made a 10% profit without municipal help, without industry help and without individual help. It had all these things going on without environment approval. The bill sounds very good, but without all these other things being in place it would not work out. Saskatchewan Energy is having difficulties in that it had to stop its own program of delivering natural gas to farms because $50 million would not take up the new customers.

For this reason and many others I cannot support the motion. I support the intent and I would support a study, but I cannot support the government becoming involved in a massive project such as this one. We are not ready for it. I do not think the groundwork has been done. For those reasons, and with all due respect to my colleague from Churchill River, I simply cannot support the private member's motion.

[Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act, March 30th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I caught only portions of the speech of the hon. member to whom I always enjoy listening. I just want to correct him. We have a new name. It is the Canadian Alliance. We are quite proud of it. I might even make the same mistake too because we kind of get used to one thing.

I appreciate what the member has said. I have been a consensus commissioner. Members already know what a commissioner has to do for those who have failed to file their forms, saying that it was confidential information. In some cases I agreed with them, but it was on the census form. I have done other surveys too.

Would the hon. member not agree that the government should always consider the information it seeks from an individual and apply it to the act, which will undoubtedly be passed, to make sure the information it is seeking is in total accord with the bill?

The reason I mention that is that recently people in Saskatchewan are in hard times and they have filed AIDA forms. One of their fears was the bottom of the form where it is indicated that if they file the form incorrectly they are subject to the usual fines. They went ahead and filed the forms and then by coincidence or otherwise they were at the same time or within a few months being audited by Revenue Canada.

Does the member see what I am getting at? Did that one government form fall into the hands of Revenue Canada? We will never know. How do we guarantee that information is not shared when statistics about the number of cattle a farmer has on hand is collected?

I know these forms are valuable. They are of help to Canada. They are of help to the government. However, how do we guarantee to Canadians that when such forms are filled out they will not be shared with other departments and will be kept strictly in the department of statistics or whatever? That is the key. I am worried about that because I have not fully convinced myself that there is not cross-government sharing. I would like the hon. member to comment on that.

[Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act, March 30th, 2000]

Canadian Alliance.

[Division No. 1258, March 30th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the hon. member for Winnipeg South on a great job. It is too bad that more people could not listen to his speech.

It has been a pleasant relief today to hear a speech from an intellectual, someone who has dealt with this issue without throwing some of the things that have been thrown in the House this morning, and for that I want to thank him very much.

The hon. member has studied this a great deal. It seems to me—and correct me if I am wrong—that we are going to have some problems as this evolves. The hon. member used the term “educate”. Will we not have to educate people about what we can do in this field to protect the personalities of people, their bank accounts and everything else? We have to build some trust into the system and somehow apply the new technology so that it includes a touch of a personality at the same time.

It seems like every time we move into these fields the rank and file people who are not sure complain that it is impersonal when they make a phone call to be told to press button one, button two and so on, or they get a message on the fax.

Would the hon. member not agree that it is the responsibility of the government first to educate and second to put a a human touch to what we are doing as it relates to the people?

[Division No. 1258, March 30th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Edmonton for his proposal, his outlook and the honest and frank way in which he not only presented his position but also answered the questions.

I am pleased to note that he understands, contrary to the former speaker, that there are many ways in which we could improve the bill and that maybe we still need to improve it. I do not take the attitude of the member for Waterloo—Wellington that the government dotted every i and crossed every t . I believe that in a bill such as this one, if the federal government wants to build support across Canada, there is nothing wrong with sending the bill out and asking people for their reasons for not approving it and how it could be improved. To leave the people who are going to be most involved with it out of that very simple process is a lack of basic understanding in a country as wide as Canada.

Would my colleague agree in dealing with information like this, that the government should be in total contact with its counterparts across Canada? Should it let them look at the bill and give them a period of time to come back with their solutions and propositions so that we could study it further in the House? Constitutionally or by any other means would there be anything wrong with that?

[Division No. 1258, March 30th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. We are debating a particular bill. The hon. member, to the huge gathering on the opposite side of the House, is seeking to exercise a predominant dose of arrogance, which is exactly what is going to kill that party. The information I get is that this arrogance, as they attack my colleagues, is exactly the thing that has killed parties in the past—