Ian McClelland

[Department Of Industry Act, September 26th, 1994]

By saying that we are going to put a stop to this foolishness. We got elected by saying we have had enough of that. People in Alberta have learned that you cannot get yourself elected by continuing to spend other taxpayers' money

like it was someone else's. We have to start treating this money like it is our own.

I will give three reasons why we should not be in this business, MagCan, NovAtel and Gainers. We have no business being in business.

How did we get here? It is 1994. Here we are sitting in the Parliament of Canada. Many of us are sitting here because the last government imploded upon itself-Kim Campbell. How did we get into this reorganization in the first place? I guess that is the first question we have to ask ourselves. How did we get here in the first place to do this reorganization?

We got here because Kim Campbell noticed that there were a few bumps on the road ahead and she figured that perhaps one of the things that she could do is reduce the size of government, reduce the size of the cabinet which had grown to 40 or so members.

It makes sense, right? It does not make sense if you do it for the wrong reasons. It should have been done for the policy reason, not because they wanted to get elected, not for political reasons, but because it was the right thing to do.

Most people realize that before you make substantive organizational change you would do a review to make sure that you are making the change in the correct way and going at it carefully.

What did we do? The Liberal government inherited Kim Campbell's last gasp to get herself elected. It then had the opportunity and, recognizing the wisdom of downsizing government which was definitely a step in the right direction, carried forward and added to it.

Let me quote from Organizing to Govern . This is a book written by Gordon Osbaldeston and most people in this House would certainly recognize that name. For the benefit of people watching, Gordon Osbaldeston had a distinguished career in the Canadian public service. He has held posts in the foreign trade commission service and was a deputy minister in the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs and the Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce.

He was secretary to the Treasury Board, Minister of State for Economic Development, under-secretary of state, Department of External Affairs, Clerk of the Privy Council, on and on-35 years of distinguished service to our country.

He wrote a book called Organizing to Govern .

I heard him being interviewed on the news the other day and it was interesting because the radio interviewer said if he was a proponent of radically downsizing government and retracting the tentacles of government from the daily life of Canadian business, how is it that he for the best part of his life was involved in the expansion of the government's role in everybody's business.

His response was that as we age we sometimes learn something and he hoped he had learned something over his long career in the public service.

In any event, rule number one in organizing and governing, three rules to live by, is resist proposals to reorganize unless you are certain the benefits of the proposed change outweigh the costs. He goes on to say organizing is not as free lunch, adding new organizations or ministerial portfolios adds complexity and reorganizing existing ones causes disruption. Neither of these costs should be taken lightly. At minimum it can take three years to implement a major organizational change and in many cases five years.

Our public servants, all 6,000 involved in this reorganization just in industry, and all of the public servants all over the country deserve some kind of a medal for the chaos they have had to live in and endure over these last 20 or so years.

If we believe Mr. Osbaldeston to be accurate, and there is no reason to think we should not, look what has happened in the Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce since 1892 when the then Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce, Mackenzie Bowell, went to Australia and drummed up business for the CPR. We are still doing it. We started in 1892.

In any event remember, according to Mr. Osbaldeston, it takes at least three to five years to be able to accommodate change and so here we have industry trade and commerce from 1892 to 1969-virtually nothing. They probably ran the thing out of a reasonably small room. Then it started to grow.

In 1963 it changed; 1965, 1968, 1969, 1971, 1978, 1983, 1983 again, and then we started adding to it and adding to it. What happened was that all of a sudden after the war C.D. Howe really ran the whole government from his position in the Department of Defence Production. He became the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce and a very powerful figure in government.

Through his seat of power it started to expand the department of industry. The department of industry did not become obtrusive and get its tentacles into everything. For those of you in business who have a daily relationship with Statistics Canada you know exactly what I am talking about when we talk about intrusive.

Walter Gordon became the minister and I am going to quote again from the book Organizing to Govern by Gordon Osbaldeston: ``Since their defeat in 1957 the Liberal Party have been honing ideas for the next election campaign. One individual who played a key role in ensuring that a new department of industry was part of the Liberal platform was Walter Gordon''.

If it sounds like déja vu, it is déja vu. Someone lifted the red book over there and there it was all over again-how are we

going to go about getting elected? We are going to hone the Department of Industry. We are going to get more intrusive. We are going to make sure that we can say, let us get on with it.

I am quoting again: "Gordon lead a royal commission appointed in 1955 to look at the economy. Few of the commission's recommendations were adopted by the St. Laurent government. When Lester B. Pearson became the new party leader, Gordon's ideas came to the fore and in a party that was looking for new ideas and keen on economic reform he found fertile ground. He had long been a friend of Pearson and now he became a trusted adviser".

It is really interesting to see how we got to where we are today. Nobody really planned it. It just sort of happened. All of a sudden we have $3 billion a year going through the Department of Industry, with that department's civil servants, bureaucrats and politicians picking winners and losers in the marketplace.

I will get back to my quotation: "The reason the Department of Industry was created was because Walter Gordon wanted one and he had the personal influence with Pearson and those close to him to ensure that he got it. But why did he want it? What pushed Gordon's thinking to a new department? Undoubtedly Gordon's overriding motivation was his personal philosophy regarding government and industry. When his royal commission reported in 1957 it described severe problems with foreign investment in Canada and an associated weakness in the Canadian industrial sector.

A senior official who worked closely with Gordon on the royal commission described Gordon's views as follows: "The whole idea of a separate governmental entity to concern itself with Canadian secondary industry really was inspired by Walter Gordon. He was an interventionist, a bit of a nationalist with a protectionist kind of mentality".

Is this not the same Liberal government opposite that signed the NAFTA? I will quote again: "His protectionism took the form of using-" Listen to this. This will send chills down the back of everyone here. You people in television land may want to turn your TV sets off, folks. You are not going to like what you hear.

"His protectionism took the form of using government power, government funds, government leverage and pushing these things in one direction rather than another. Almost all of it had protectionist overtones, albeit in the form of subsidies rather than higher tariffs". Where has that put us today?

[Department Of Industry Act, September 26th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, it has been a very interesting morning and afternoon in the House as this debate unfolded.

I am moved to ask rhetorically one question. What is it about getting elected that makes politicians venture capitalists? Is there some magic laying on of hands or something that we go through that I missed, that all of a sudden somehow we have the right to extract tax dollars out of the hides of people who are barely getting by earning $8 or $10 a hour, take it into government and then regurgitate about 20 cents to give it to somebody to go into competition with the people who gave us the money in the first place?

What is it about getting elected that gives us the wherewithal to start taking money from individuals and giving it to other individuals or giving it, worse, to corporations?

[Department Of Industry Act, September 26th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I will follow the Liberal speaker.

[Department Of Industry Act, September 26th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I believe that my hon. colleague was splitting time with me so that I should probably be up at this time.

[Department Of Industry Act, September 26th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I very much enjoyed the impassioned address of my hon. colleague from Richmond-Wolfe. If Quebec were to have exclusive jurisdiction in regional development, should Quebec also have exclusive responsibility for raising funds in Quebec for disbursement in Quebec? If so, would Quebec be able to maintain spending at current levels?

[Department Of Industry Act, September 26th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I again commend the member for Halifax West for his comments.

I recognize the hon. member for Halifax West did not make these comments, but being from the same party as the member who did earlier that member had difficulty finding the appropriate role of government in business. He did not like too little and of course did not like too much. What would the hon. member say is the appropriate role for government in the business affairs of the nation?

[Department Of Industry Act, September 26th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Nepean for her reasoned discourse this afternoon.

I have a question concerning the program reviews currently under way. Why would we have the reorganization and the consolidation and then have a program review? Would it not make more sense to do the program review first and then consolidate on the basis of the review?

[Department Of Industry Act, September 26th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my colleague's discourse regarding this bill.

Of particular interest was the concern about overlap. It is a concern many members on all sides of the House share based on the concept that we should get as many efficiencies into government as we possibly can.

My question for the hon. member would follow that if we were to simply remove the federal government from this debate, we would be left with the provincial governments which would then have an overlap problem with the municipalities. Would it not be better for us, as a national government, to set priorities nationally? Then to the best degree possible we could devolve responsibility for managing these programs to that order of government closest to the people being served.

[Tribute To The Late Gaston Péloquin, September 19th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, fellow colleagues, I was deeply saddened to learn of the tragic death of our friend and colleague, the hon. member for Brome-Missisquoi.

In the first days of the new Parliament Mr. Péloquin and I developed a friendship that transcended our political differences. We agreed to maintain our friendship throughout the travails that lay ahead of us in Parliament. We both looked forward to enriching our own lives by learning more and sharing experiences with each other.

Gaston was a gentle man, a person of character and resolve. He wanted to do right and on occasion was genuinely perplexed when his motives were questioned from a purely political perspective.

Like many of us, Mr. Péloquin was a new member and we all did not get a chance to know him as a person. Had we had the opportunity to know Gaston, we would have learned of his life's work as a teacher, we would have known that he wrote a children's book and that he adopted a young Haitian orphan, Pascal, his son.

Perhaps the untimely death of our colleague will cause us all to give some thought to the bonds that unite rather than divide us, to think first of each other as individuals with hopes, dreams and aspirations, than as politicians.

On behalf of the entire Reform caucus, I wish to express to Gaston's son, Pascal, our sincere condolences. Nothing we do or say now will lighten the burden of grief you bear today, but may you find peace in the certain knowledge that your father, Gaston, rests with those who are a force of good in this life.

Canada, Québec and Parliament are poorer for his passing but were enriched by his presence.

[Excise Tax Act, June 21st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his observations from across the aisle.

I do acknowledge how difficult it is for a farmer or for anyone else for that matter when they see their livelihood changing in front of their eyes and they have to retool their lives in order to accommodate changing circumstances.

This does not happen exclusively in the agricultural industry. It happens all across the nation. It has happened in Ontario particularly over these last four or five years as all aspects of Canadian manufacturing, particularly that in Ontario, have been struggling to retool over these last few years. We find that as we go down the path of life sometimes the road changes, the path changes, and we have to change with it.

The hon. member mentioned that over 50 per cent of the people previously engaged in farming, tobacco farming, are no longer doing so because they recognize that this is an industry at least in Canada that has a sunset. Smoking is less and less socially acceptable and it will eventually be banned virtually everywhere except outside because people who are the victims of cigarette smoking, the unintended victims through second hand smoke, will not tolerate it anymore. You cannot for instance smoke in the precincts of Parliament Hill or any federal government building.

The Alberta government has legislation before it today to ban smoking in any public place, including the workplace. If you are in California you can hardly even smoke outside which begs the question why on earth are we so upset about the noxious fumes from car exhaust when we are walking around inhaling them?

I recognize my hon. colleague's concern for his constituents or any farmer, particularly the tobacco farmers who are living with the imminent demise of their industry. Make no mistake, it may not happen this year, it may not happen next year, but it will happen. These people are going to have to convert their livelihood. It is no longer socially acceptable in Canada to smoke.

If I were a banker I would not spend a whole lot of time figuring out a loan to allow anybody to get into the tobacco business even given this setback to the anti-smoking people in Canada.

I do recognize how difficult it is for those who are faced with the imminent change in their lives driven by this and it is a generational thing.

To my hon. colleague, I am cognizant of the problems he raises and I have sympathy for the people who must make those life decisions as farmers. They are decisions they must face and they must be prepared to make them.