Bill Gilmour

[Fisheries Act, November 19th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I barely got started on my speech on the fisheries act about two or three weeks ago so I would like to resume. For those watching, if they wish to look back in Hansard , they will get the first part where I was dealing basically with the aboriginal fishery and what Bill C-62 is all about.

This bill is about power: power for the minister and power for the bureaucracy. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans already has all the power and strength it needs to manage the fishery. The difficulty is that my colleague from Delta challenged the minister's authority and right to an aboriginal commercial fishery, not an aboriginal food fishery. Nobody disputes that. It is the right of aboriginals to fish commercially with other fishers not being allowed to fish that is being challenged. There is no equality in the fishery. That is what this bill is about.

Talk about overkill, the bill will extinguish the public right to fish. I have fished in the Alberni Canal for the past 15 years. That has been my right as a Canadian and this bill will overturn that. The only way that I or anyone in this House can go fishing will be with a decree or some kind of ministerial authority and that is absolutely wrong.

In a nutshell that is what is wrong with DFO. It manages from the top down. I have worked in the industry with the people at the bottom and they are a hard working and dedicated bunch. But it is the top end. As the member for Skeena has often said, why is it that DFO, a couple of blocks from the House of Parliament, has to have an office with 1,000 people? It is a two-hour plane ride to the nearest fish. The problem with DFO is that it is a top down bureaucracy.

This bill would give the minister complete discretion to manage the fishery through ministerial decrees and that is absolutely wrong. As well, within the bill there is absolutely no detail as to how this will be carried out. How are we as members in this House supposed to look at the bill and deal with the bill when there are absolutely no details on how it is going to be enforced? It will all be done through regulations at a later stage.

The Fraser River fishery has almost been eliminated. There has been practically no non-native commercial fishery on the Fraser River and that is this government's action. What happened to the equality of all fishers?

In British Columbia native fishers form 40 per cent of the fishery. They are already well represented in the fishery yet this bill will give them exclusive rights. This is not a slam against native fishers. What this country is about is equality of all Canadians. All Canadians regardless of their origin should have the right to that fishery and the minister wants to overturn that.

This is not just hearsay, it has been shown in the courts and it is law. Only commercial fishers have the right to sell fish. This has been shown in the Van der Peet, the NTC Smokehouse Limited and Gladstone supreme court decisions. The court ruled that aboriginals have no right to an exclusive commercial fishery yet this bill will overturn that. Bill C-62 is the minister's attempt to work his way around the law to give exclusive rights to specific groups which is absolutely wrong.

I do not believe the minister understands the bill, but do his bureaucrats? Absolutely. They are right on. This bill is coming from the bureaucrats, not from the minister. This is a classic example of a minister being run by his own bureaucrats.

This minister has shown his incompetence on the west coast through the lighthouse issue, the coast guard issue and now on the fisheries issue. He does not understand and does not care to look into what is going on on the B.C. coast. He is bungling once again by fundamentally taking away our public right to fish.

Let me quote the Liberal red book: "Conservation and rebuilding of fish stocks will be the top priority of Liberal fisheries policy, a policy that will also encompass broader ecological and environmental decisions. A Liberal government will implement effective conservation measures immediately, because if remaining stocks are not conserved now, there will be no fisheries industry left on which to build sustainable development".

One of the very first actions of this new minister was to close down a substantial number of hatcheries on the west coast. Clearly that is not conservation. The government continues to ignore the fact that the fishing industry is in serious danger from declining stocks. There are problems with the Americans mainly in Alaska. We need strict enforcement of the conservation measures.

The Liberal red book states: "A Liberal government will deal with foreign fishing outside the 200-mile limit and scrutinize foreign quotas within the 200-mile limit". This has not happened under this minister.

The west coast fishery is being ignored by this government. British Columbia has 12.9 per cent of the population. We have over 3.8 million people. We are a cash cow to the government and we are tired of being ignored by the government.

Earlier I mentioned issues that the minister has ignored, for example, lighthouses. The former minister and the present minister have taken the people out of the lighthouses. The cost is very small, about $3.5 million.

They say that automated lighthouses will cover the fishers and aircraft but they do not. People are needed to tell them about the fog. A person needs to tell them about the size of the waves. During the last storm in British Columbia a significant number of the automated lighthouses went down. They did not report the weather at a time when the aircraft and the fishers needed that information.

The B.C. coast is one of the most dangerous coasts in the world because of the topography, the weather and the all-round climate. It is not a nice place for flying in the fall or winter, nor for taking fishing vessels through the inlets and coves. We need those lighthouses; we need those people. Yet the government has decided to trim them out at a paltry savings of $3.5 million. But the largesse is fine when the government gives Bombardier $87 million as a gift because it happens to be in Montreal. What happened to east and west? This is what happens to the west coast time and time again.

The same issue arises with the coast guard. The coast guard and the fisheries were amalgamated. A number of bases have been shut down. Search and rescue on the west coast is extremely important. Timing is important. Yet the safety of people on the west coast does not seem to have any effect or impact on the government.

I could go on at length on what the government has not done for the west coast.

This bill is significant to all Canadians. The public right to fish is a right which we have had in common law since Confederation, yet the minister and the government want to extinguish it. They want to

put the right to fish under ministerial decree. That is absolutely wrong. It is a signal of where the government is going.

In conclusion, Bill C-62 only deals with the government's official problems. It does nothing else. It does not deal with the issues. There is no reason to support it. Therefore, I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word "That" and substituting the following therefor:

"Bill C-62, an act respecting fisheries, be not now read a second time, but that the order be discharged, the bill withdrawn and the subject matter thereof referred to the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans".

[Petitions, November 18th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I am pleased to present the following petition from my constituents of Comox-Alberni.

There are 4,028 signatures here for a total of 5,528 signatures of petitioners from my riding. That represents 10 per cent of the voters in my riding, a significant number.

The petitioners request that Parliament allow Canadian citizens to vote directly in a national binding referendum on the restoration of the death penalty for first degree murder.

[Forestry, November 8th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask that the minister avoid the secrecy and table the allocation documents in this House now.

[Forestry, November 8th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I would invite the minister to tell the families out of work what a good deal this is. They tend to disagree and disagree strongly.

The reason for the losses of thousands of jobs is not that the lumber mills overproduced, as the minister said, but that the quotas allotted to those mills came in at far below expected levels.

Yesterday the minister refused to table a full list of quota allocations for the mills all across the country. I suspect the reason for the secrecy is that in this way only the minister and his staff know the whole picture. There is a large unallocated portion of the quota sitting in this minister's pockets.

It appears that the minister is refusing to disclose the entire allocation list because he wants to reward his Liberal friends with the unallocated-

[Forestry, November 8th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Minister for International Trade blamed the forestry industry for the job losses caused by this government's caving into the American lumber lobby.

Blaming the industry is absolutely inexcusable. This government negotiated a bad softwood lumber deal with the Americans and now it does not have the backbone to admit that this government, not the industry, is the cause of the loss of thousands of sawmill jobs in B.C., Alberta, Ontario and Quebec.

The Liberals ran on a platform of job creation, yet now with thousands of sawmill workers losing their jobs they refuse to show leadership to rectify the situation.

What is the minister going to do now to ensure that these sawmills remain in operation?

[Canada Post, November 8th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, this government promised jobs, jobs, jobs in its red book. Yet the minister responsible for Canada Post recently axed 10,000 posi-

tions in the ad mail business with her recent changes to Canada Post.

Most of these people read about their dismissal in the newspapers. The minister did not give these employees any notice or offer a transition period to either find work or consider purchasing portions of the ad mail business from Canada Post.

Clearly, the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. Canadians are faced with more unemployment, higher taxes and fewer jobs under this Liberal government.

The national unemployment figure this morning is now at a record high of 10 per cent. Economists say improved growth prospects remain only a hope, not a fact as this Liberal government would have us believe.

The only real hope for Canadians is the Reform Party who will get us out of this rut through smaller government, lower taxes that will create more jobs.

[Fisheries Act, November 8th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I will just begin my speech since I have only a couple of minutes left before question period.

This fisheries bill gives the minister too much power. The Fisheries Act, as it already stands, gives the minister the necessary power that he requires.

The bill is about allocating the resource unequally. For example, it gives the minister the authority to dedicate fish not to a native food fishery but to a native commercial fishery. This has been a huge problem within my province of B.C. Forty per cent of the commercial fishing fleet is already native. The natives have a good portion of the commercial fleet. Nobody questions the need for a native food fishery. That is not the question. The issue is a native

commercial fishery that is carried on at the expense of non-native fishermen.

The resource is owned by the people of Canada. The resource should be allocated equally to all the people of Canada, native or non-native. That is the issue. This bill gives the minister the authority to move a public resource into one sector of our community. That is absolutely wrong. The minister should not-

[Lumber Industry, November 7th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, when the minister ran on a platform of jobs, he forgot to tell Canadians that they were American jobs at the expense of Canadian jobs.

Many lumber mills, particularly the smaller ones, are laying off staff or closing down altogether because their quotas did not materialize or they came in far below the expectations. A number of companies in B.C., Alberta, Ontario and Quebec are desperate for help.

This government ran on a platform of creating jobs yet in this case thousands of jobs and livelihoods are being lost.

My question for the minister of trade is plain and direct. What is the minister going to do for the families that he has now put out of work?

[Lumber Industry, November 7th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the government has once again caved in to the American lumber lobby and it is costing Canadians thousands of jobs in our lumber industry.

I am a professional forester and I have spent 25 years in the forestry industry. Never before have I witnessed such secrecy surrounding the allocation of quotas to individual lumber mills; quotas that are far below expected levels and are forcing mills to severely downsize or shut down altogether. What I find most disturbing is that producers have been instructed by the minister not to divulge their individual quotas.

My question is for the minister of trade. To clear this veil of secrecy regarding quotas, will the minister table in the House a full list of quota allocations showing all lumber producers in all provinces?

[Program Cost Declaration Act, November 6th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to address the Bill C-214 put forward by the hon. member for Durham, an act to provide for improved information on the cost of proposed government programs.

Bill C-214 contains several proposals all of which address or seek to address the need for accountability in federal spending, particularly on government programs. The objective of this bill is simple: accountability. This is an issue which must be addressed and without question I support this objective. Accountability is critical to good government, and unfortunately there is a need for accountability within this government.

I support this bill in principle and I believe some of the proposals contained in this bill merit support. However, there are also many areas that must be amended before the bill can be supported in its entirety.

For example, to make government more accountable, Bill C-214 proposes that a minister of the crown make a public declaration of the cost of each new program funded from public money. This public declaration would include the estimated annual cost of the program in each of the first five years of its intended operation expressed both as a total cost and as a cost per capita for every resident of Canada.

Providing annual projections for the first five years of operation is a reasonable expectation for new programs. This should be a matter of course. However there is a problem. Projections are not binding once they are published. There is nothing to ensure that the amount published will be the amount spent. One possible solution could be an amendment to the bill that would require amendments beyond 5 per cent to be announced as well.

The proposal in Bill C-214 to provide estimated costs for each program on an annual basis is clearly a good idea. However, I have concerns that the proposed cost calculations for each program may take the issue too far.

Estimating each program as a cost per capita for every resident of Canada does not appear to be a necessary or cost effective procedure. This proposal would be an inefficient use of government money and has the potential to create an unnecessary bureaucracy within government.

Bill C-214 also proposes that program costs be made available in the House of Commons if it is sitting at the time, by publication in the Canada Gazette , a letter to each and every member of Parliament and a statement to the media if the House is not sitting at that time. I fully support this proposal. In fact, this proposal should be strengthened so that the minister's statement to the media is not limited to periods when the House of Commons is not sitting. The public should be informed each and every time a new program is proposed.

Another concern I have is that Bill C-214 proposes that following each new program declaration, the auditor general should provide to the minister responsible for the program an analysis of the cost proposal. The main purpose of the auditor general is to report on how federal government departments and agencies spend taxpayers' money. The role of the auditor general in providing a measure of accountability between the government and the people cannot be underemphasized. On first sight, the proposal to have the auditor general evaluate the cost for each new program may appear valid. However, this is not necessarily a good idea for the following reasons.

I have concerns that such a proposal will create unnecessary work for the auditor general. The independence of the auditor general gives him the freedom to criticize and to form independent assessments on how things are working. There is clearly a risk of overloading the auditor general. Forcing many small projects on him and his department as proposed in this bill would hinder the auditor general from examining more significant issues.

Such a proposal also steps on the independence of the auditor general. He must be allowed to use his own judgment in choosing which areas to report on. Government must not legislate the auditor general to evaluate specific programs.

However, if we wish to be more accountable, we must make changes that allow the auditor general more freedom to report on government spending. The auditor general should have access to reporting on the costs of all government programs and initiatives, including crown corporations and the Senate.

The auditor general provides a very valuable service to Canadians and to parliamentarians. As it stands, he only has limited

jurisdiction as to what he can now report on. If Canadian tax dollars are funding it, then the auditor general should be able to investigate it. It should be that basic.

Bill C-214 also proposes "that program costs be clearly and publicly displayed at every place under the jurisdiction of or contracted to the Government of Canada at which the program is delivered and in every document in which the minister or a person acting with the authority of the minister undertakes to deliver to any person a good or service under the program".

Although I agree with the principle of this idea, I have concerns that this procedure may also run into unnecessarily high expenses that may not be essential. I suggest we maintain the principle of the proposal, yet it should be revised with a more realistic goal.

Costs of programs and initiatives must be public and accountable to the public, but how far we should go in this respect needs to be discussed in depth. As it stands, Canadians have been left out of the picture for too long. Canadians do not find out about the cost of programs until they are already established and by then the money is committed.

Bill C-214 must be applauded for its efforts to make governments inform Canadians. This is a step in the right direction and it is good to see it coming from the other side of the House.

Governments clearly must be accountable to the people. Canadians need to know what the costs are. After all, they are the ones who are paying for the programs in the first place.

Certainly costs of advertising must be balanced against the extent of advertising. The proposal in this bill appears to go too far in advertising the costs with too little concern for the cost of doing so. A balanced approach is needed, as both sides of the issue must be addressed.

Government fiscal policies must be open and within the scrutiny of the general public. The minister of heritage's complete lack of accountability with her flag money is a typical example of the kind of mismanagement and utter lack of accountability that goes on in this government, and this type of irresponsibility must be brought to an end. Spending millions of tax dollars without a clue of where the money is coming from is utterly irresponsible.

Another issue is our debt, which is out of control. Canadians want to know where their money is being spent. The member for Durham, in his move toward accountability, is moving clearly in the right direction.

Canadians want to know what they are paying for. Canadians deserve to know what is going on in Parliament, in its departments and in its crown agencies. Yet time and time again this government

has voted down initiatives that would give Canadians open and accountable government.

For example, if this government is truly committed to open government as it claims, it would open all crown corporations to the Access to Information Act.

Last week I asked the minister of public works to open Canada Post to the public by putting it under the Freedom of Information Act and to the scrutiny of the auditor general, but the minister responsible for Canada Post refused. The government's refusal to open crown corporations to the public makes its commitment to open and transparent government somewhat hollow.

As well, there is complete lack of accountability in the Senate. The Senate continues to spend over $40 million a year with absolutely no accountability to the taxpayers who pay its way. Actions must be taken, yet this government voted down a motion that would require the Senate to account for its spending to the elected members within this House.

The government voted for the Senate budget of over $40 million without knowing how the money would be spent. This is very poor accountability.

Open government means not only opening the finances of government to the people but conducting the affairs of government above board. Open government and accountability are the two main principles within this bill. I believe the member is right on track when he attempts to target these areas.

The member sees there is a lack of accountability and openness in his government and is doing his bit to address the situation.

In conclusion, I support the member in his efforts and, as such, I will support this bill.