Roy H. Bailey

[Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985, April 3rd, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I would like to ask a question of my colleague who just spoke.

As I understand it, the opposition which my colleagues made to this was the fact that the issuance of the bill that came from the Senate was in violation of Standing Order 80 that says:

All aids and supplies granted to the Sovereign by the Parliament of Canada are the sole gift of the House of Commons—

Section 53 of the Constitution Act provides that only the House of Commons may table money bills. It goes on to say that bills which require the expenditure of public funds or invoking a tax or an impost. That means fines, levies, duties and penalties. These bills are totally out of order with Standing Order 80 and run opposite to section 53.

Does the member agree that these bills should not originate in the Senate but should come from here first?

[Canada Shipping Act, April 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, being the last to speak on Bill S-4, I am not going to go through the bill in any detail, which will be good news for everybody.

The bill is long overdue. It will be welcomed across the country and throughout the world.

It was ironic, however, when I was reading the very last of my notes. This is a little humour here. It is talking about the failure to file information with the Minister of Transport regarding oil shipments resulting in a summary conviction of $100 for each day of default. I know there are members who have paid that much of a fine for speeding. I thought that portion of the bill was a little lax. It could have been more. However, this is a good bill.

When the bill was introduced today by the hon. gentleman from the government side, he thanked those people who had worked on the bill. He thanked the Standing Committee on Transport. I appreciated his remarks. We did have a good round of looking at the bill in committee. We had a great deal of support from all the members of the committee. We had a great deal of support from the chairman of the committee.

I spoke to the bill on second reading. I totally disagree with a bill of this nature originating in the Senate and then coming here, even though we can call this a housekeeping bill. Members in my party and other opposition members also disagree. This is not good practice. We do not think we should have a bill come to us to examine amendments made by an unelected body.

That may not seem like a very big thing to a lot of people. I picked up the papers the other day. There were some things in there about me because of some of my criticism, some of the criticism from my colleagues and some of the criticism from all the parties about this practice. I assume it was a generalization that I was being somewhat hypocritical. No one who knows me, who has been on the transport committee with me, would say I am hypocritical. That was the tone, because we disagreed fundamentally.

This is a good bill. There is nothing wrong with the bill. Some amendments were made and passed. But the opposition claims that the last place bills like this should originate is the Senate. Bills dealing with huge amounts of penalties, huge amounts of fines, huge amounts of liabilities should not originate in the Senate and then come here asking the elected people to put our stamp on it. We deem that incorrect. I am sure most members do. If members from the government side really looked at it they would also deem it incorrect.

I am pleased that we are going to support this bill. We think it is a good bill.

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 1997, April 2nd, 1998]

I wonder why.

[Judges Act, April 1st, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague a question. He alluded to his background. I too in various capacities served in this area. I served for 25 years as a justice of the peace in different areas of the province of Saskatchewan. At one time, if the judge was not travelling, he would actually have me conduct court and so on. I am quite used to that procedure.

Is it not true in the member's opinion that in recent years not only the public but those who would like to bring charges are afraid to bring charges on any given case because they feel there is no hope of getting a verdict? Is that—

[Canada Grain Act, March 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, before I go home for the weekend I want to correct the concept we heard from the government side regarding dynamic rural communities and dynamic agriculture and that somehow they were building rural communities. In the area in which I live nothing could be further from the truth.

I have seen villages disappear. Towns will soon disappear. Elevators are being bulldozed. Railroads are being torn up. Just to show how undynamic it is, seven farms were auctioned off the last weekend I was home. Four of them had young people in the same family that could take over the farm but because of the bleak agricultural outlook which has been brought on by the government opposite they are say no way. This is happening all over Saskatchewan.

The reason for Bill C-26 is that farmers are trying to make a living from the traditional wheat crop. They are trying their best. They are doing everything to make a penny out of it. The government, like the hon. member just said, never mentioned the word agriculture in the throne speech debate. The most dynamic and still the major industry, not only in Saskatchewan but in western Canada, never received one word of mention.

Now the government has come up with Bill C-26. Farmers in the west are disillusioned. They feel betrayed. They have been betrayed by the crow rate, by the railways and by their own grain companies. Farmers feel betrayed by the government. They could not care less right now about Bill C-26.

What they do care about is some way to pay their bills. Ranchers are asking for some way for them to pay for the increase of grazing land. Farmers are asking for a way to return to farms that have been in their families for three and four generations. There is no hope. The government has provided no hope.

In the town in which I live the elevators will be gone by the year 2000. The four curling rinks which surround the town have been closed. The government should realize that Bill C-26 does not address the problem of ongoing depopulation in much of rural Saskatchewan.

I can only compare it to another era in Saskatchewan, the dirty thirties when people simply gave up and moved out. Because of the policies of the government and because of lack of planning by the government, the same thing is taking place now. It is a disaster, but we have not hit the worst of it yet. The worst is yet to come.

In two years my daughter and her family will live over 80 miles away from the closest delivery point for grain. Over one-third of the cost of that ticket by the time they pay for the truck goes to freight.

Please, hon. parliamentary secretary, do not talk about Bill C-26 and its dynamics for rural Saskatchewan. Do not tell me about how this great energizing is taking place in agriculture. The parliamentary secretary needs to go out there and look. He will see for himself. Fifty-two towns had hospitals. RMs are closing. It is becoming a wasteland. Those people who have good agricultural wheat producing land are going to have to sell that land for grazing prices and get out.

We have a disaster. This government comes in with Bill C-26 which will do nothing to solve the real problem in Saskatchewan. I feel much better because I have said it. I hope the people in my province are listening.

[Taxation, March 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, all Canadian families need tax relief. However, the government's tax credits discriminate against some families. The government will only give certain tax credits to families with both parents working outside the home. Is this fair?

I represent a rural riding where a third of the farms have both husband and wife running the operation. Statistics Canada says 42% of women provide their own child care. Interestingly enough, a recent poll said 77% of parents would prefer to have provided parental care instead of day care if they could do it all over again.

The Reform Party's family friendly budget would increase family wealth and it would allow parents the freedom to raise their family the way they chose.

[Small Business Loans Act, March 13th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, in discussing and listening to the speeches on this bill I am reminded of two analogies that I think should be made dealing with putting more money into a program that needs to be re-examined.

When I was a kid I always thought that when my mother gave me castor oil she said one dose was good, two doses would be twice as good. I think if we look at this bill carefully we will see that it establishes a plan which this government and other governments for the past 30 years have carried out.

When something does not produce exactly what is wanted, then instead of fixing it internally, looking at the program, we simply add more money. We just keep pouring more money into something in the hopes that it will cure itself.

That has not happened and as a result of that look what we are adding. We are adding more to this program but we have not brought about any conclusions. We have not solved anything that went awry with this plan ever since it was brought into force.

I am reminded of an incident in my lifetime that relates to governments pouring in more money. A World War I veteran had settled near my community. During the thirties he decided to make a living by raising sheep. On one occasion things were so bad he decided to ship a couple of carloads of sheep down to Winnipeg only to receive a letter from the meat company stating that the sheep did not cover the freight cost so would he kindly remit $4.78. My friend wrote back that he did not have $4.78 but he could send some more sheep. That is exactly how we looked at these programs. That is exactly what the government is doing with this program.

The auditor general's assessment of this states: “The lack of financing on reasonable terms and conditions has often been identified as a significant barrier to the growth of small businesses”. The auditor general is saying that by not properly looking at this bill and this program we are hindering the program and what the bill was intended to help.

I agree with the banks, the credit unions and other local financial institutions becoming involved with the money being loaned. The exception is that the small business loans program does not apply to farmers. I have often wondered why. Is agriculture not a business? If it is not a business, why is it not? There is no question that it is the biggest industry, the biggest business on an individual basis across Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba.

The guaranteed loans available to businessmen through the banks, credit unions and so on are not available to farmers. Farmers are disregarded from bringing about loans as such under this act. They have to go to a federal government agency known as the Farm Credit Corporation. The Farm Credit Corporation should be a lending institution. Every major financial institution across the prairies that I have talked to, all the banks and credit unions, disagree in total with this government's giving powers to the Farm Credit Corporation as both the instigator and the banker of these loans. That is wrong.

In our examination of this issue we should consider agriculture, the operation of the farm, as being a business. It is an agricultural business. Farmers should be treated with more equity than they are presently being treated.

Under the present fee structure and the loss sharing ratio, it is uncertain according to the auditor general, and we know this to be true, that the government does not seem concerned about the ratio of losses to the number of loans made each year. When something is broken just pour some more money in and maybe it will go away. I do not think there is a reasonable chance that this government will ever make changes to the manner in which it approaches this very thing.

The auditor general states: “We have found a number of cases where contrary to the Small Business Loans Act the lender has charged administration fees”. We must be careful as we go about adding more money to this loan that those people who need the money and who are borrowing the money are not ripped off in a manner that is not approved by the act itself.

Oftentimes, in my experience in western Canada at least, we find that a loan is made to a business which loan can be up to $250,000. In the small communities in western Canada a $250,000 investment is made in a business in an industry in which there is room for only one business in a particular area or a particular trade. Another business is created in which only one business can normally survive.

What has happened across Saskatchewan in the small businesses in the small communities, the towns and villages and sometimes in the cities, is a new business in an industry is created with government money and government guarantees. That business divides the amount of business in the area in two. The person who has been in business for years suffers as a result of government money going into that business. Both businesses end up being failures. It ends up that the community does not have for example an apple business which was needed in that community.

These things must be looked at in depth. The very program that is designed to help small business often destroys existing businesses and then the other business destroys itself. It is a big problem throughout the areas with this act.

It is a scary thing as we get into the rural areas. There are provisions within this act to prevent a group of related businesses from gaining access to loans beyond what they are really entitled to. I have seen many times and I am sure we could draw a number of conclusions across Canada where groups of businesses have joined together under separate loans. Later they have created a business only to find that the massive debt owing on a guaranteed loan for the venture proves to be a downfall. They have not only ruined the capacity of the community in which they have made their venture but they also have created a debt for the people of Canada.

Instead of putting millions more dollars into a program it seems if the banking institutions were lending the money, more care would be exercised and more caution would be taken. There would be more detail in each loan going out. Instead, what is going on at the present time is all of this money is being sunk into another program and as a result millions of dollars of taxpayers' money will be squandered.

No one would disagree to money going to help small business. However we in Reform believe that it has to be approached in a businesslike manner. We do not think the way the act is right now is achieving that end.

[Ports, March 13th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the Canadian media continues to announce to international criminals that they do not have to worry. Smuggled goods are now being moved freely through Canadian ports.

The Regina Leader-Post recently reported that 90% of all armed robberies in that city are a direct result of increased drug trade.

Canada's port police have been phased out. Canadians are now asking whether the municipal police forces are being specially trained and whether the numbers are adequate to carry out the policing at our ports that Canadians deserve.

It is now imperative that the government announce to Canadians and the world that measures will immediately be put in place to establish a high class, high tech port security that has the power to say no to the international drug trade and provide Canadians with the peace of mind they so richly deserve.

[Presence In Gallery, March 12th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, we have the hon. Minister of Social Services from Saskatchewan, Lorne Calvert.

[Supply, March 12th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I always enjoy listening to my learned colleague. My question will not be negative but will ask for his background to a very important question. I believe it is important to the provinces and to the House.

The provinces have very jealously guarded section 93 of the British North America Act concerning education since its inception. We are into a new era, a new world in which we will have to see a greater amount of co-operation at the provincial level. We are being motivated by a new global educational system, one of universality.

Would my learned friend not agree that we should do everything we can from this level, albeit the provinces want to hang on to their traditions, cultures and so on in that given area? I agree with that, but we should have more universality and a more national scope in our education curriculum and planning than we have now.