Bill Gilmour

[Canada Marine Act, September 27th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a few comments regarding Bill C-44 as it pertains to Port Alberni, which is in my riding. It is one of the six recognized ports on the west coast.

I met with the harbour commission about a month ago. It had some major concerns regarding the legislation. The difficulty, it would appear, is that this legislation will treat Vancouver, which is a huge port, similar to a smaller port such as Port Alberni.

Alberni has an operating budget of $3 million to $4 million. It has operated with a very small profit for the last eight years. In other words, it is not a burden. It is on a user pay system. It is working. The Port Alberni Harbour Commission is working well. It serves the community. It does not cost the taxpayers any money. However, this legislation will change all that.

I have to return to the analogy of treating a huge port like Vancouver similarly to a smaller port such as Alberni. It is the the pantyhose solution, one size fits all. In this case it will not work.

It would appear that the problem goes back to when the legislation was drawn up. It was drawn up by bureaucrats before there was consultation. Yes, a committee will do a cross Canada tour, but the bureaucrats have now got themselves into a position where they are backed up against a wall, defending legislation

which will not fly. Why do we have to have this kind of situation where the bureaucrats draw up the legislation before there is nationwide consultation to get the information which is required to write good legislation?

I hope when the committee travels across Canada that the representations from the different ports and boards will be listened to.

That brings up another point. It is really odd in the Canadian system that a committee is not tied to a minister. A committee can come up with some wonderful recommendations, good legislation, which the minister can then totally ignore if he or she chooses to do so. That is wrong.

I hope that the committee listens well, makes good recommendations and furthermore that the minister and the bureaucracy also listen and come up with legislation that fits all the ports across this country and does the job that we require.

[Canada Communication Group, September 27th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about integrity of government. That is one of the lamest answers we have come across in quite a while.

I have been part of the government operations committee looking into the open bidding system. This has nothing to do with open bidding. This has to do with giving a lucrative contract to one special segment. The government has sold the corporation to the employees and are now giving the employees special access. This is not open government.

My question, again, is for the minister of public works. Will the minister guarantee that the private sector will not be put at an unfair disadvantage and allow all companies a fair chance to bid on all government contracts above $30,000, as required by Treasury Board guidelines?

[Canada Communication Group, September 27th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, Reform believes that government operations should not compete directly with the private sector and supports the privatization of services offered in the private sector at an equal and competitive rate.

We now understand that the new buyers of the Canada Communication Group will get special access to lucrative federal contracts that bypass the bidding process. Privatization should save money, not cost taxpayers more.

My question is for the minister of public works. How can the minister guarantee to Canadians that the government will get the best deal on printing contracts if contracts are not awarded through an open, competitive bidding process?

[Questions Passed As Orders For Returns, September 26th, 1996]

Concerning federal government owned or leased building/space for which Public Works and Government Services Canada is responsible in Canada, would the government provide: ( a ) a list of all buildings owned or space leased for Public Works and Government Services Canada use in which 5 percent or more of useable space remains vacant specifying in each case type of building/space (office, warehouse, etc.), number of square metres vacant and address; ( b ) a list of all buildings owned or space leased in which space is presently available for renting/subleasing to a client/tenant specifying in each case type of building/space (office, warehouse, etc.), number of square metres available for renting/subleasing and address?

Return tabled.

[Supply, September 18th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the questions. If I understood the question on relevance correctly I believe it is relevant to have the senators come before the committee. What is quite relevant is the fact that the Senate is being handed a blank cheque for $40 million of Canadian taxpayers' money. There has to be accountability and that is the whole reason for the motion.

On the second point the difference between the views of the Bloc and Reform of the Senate is whether the Senate should be abolished, as the Bloc is basically moving toward, and the Reform view that it needs to be brought into the 20th and 21st century as a triple E Senate.

I used the analogy of the dinosaurs. If the senators keep going the way they are going with no reforms they will join the dinosaurs. If members wandered into the Senate these days they might think they are mired in a swamp a hundred million years ago.

I hope I have answered my colleague's questions and if there are any more I would be delighted to answer them.

[Supply, September 18th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Kindersley-Lloydminster.

I am pleased to initiate the first motion to amend the main estimates. My motion, seconded by the member for Kindersley-Lloydminster, will amend vote 1. It proposes that vote 1, in the amount of $40,713,000 under Parliament-Payments to the Senate, program expenditures in the 1996-97 main estimates, be reduced by $10 million.

I would like to give some background to that motion. It goes back to the government operations committee. Last March I moved a motion in committee that we invite the Senate to come before the committee to examine the estimates of the Senate. We debated that motion and the vote was relatively close. The Bloc and the Reform voted in favour and the Liberals were split. However, it went through committee.

In order to send a letter to the Senate there has to be unanimous consent of this House, which we got. The letter went to the the Senate inviting it to come before the government operations committee to basically go over the estimates for the $40 million for the Senate. This was not an untoward request. Any business, household, this House or any other institution has to justify how they are going to spend money. All we were asking was for the Senate to come forward and justify how it was going to spend the $40 million.

However, the senators ignored that request. Subsequently I sent a letter to Senator Kenny, the head of the Senate finance committee, which was also ignored. We asked for a conference between this House and the Senate to discuss these issues. That was ignored. We simply have heard nothing.

My point is that if the senators refuse to come before the committee to justify their expenses, there has to be a reason. What is the reason? The reason could be that they figure they are way over there and that they should not have to justify their expenses, or perhaps they do not want people looking into the estimates because there are areas that they do not want to or cannot explain. I would suggest that could well be the case.

In 1991 the auditor general looked into the accounting process within the Senate. Unfortunately it was a bit of a horror show. This request, which originated from Reform, also has the backing of the auditor general's accounting into the Senate. In 1991 he basically found that it is an inefficient and poorly managed institution. There has been plenty of time, five years, for the Senate to address the concerns of the auditor general and to come before the Canadian public. It was an excellent opportunity to come before the committee and say: "Okay. We are open and above board. The auditor general said there were some major concerns, but we are quite willing to come before the Canadian public and justify our expenses". That did not happen.

I would like to go through some of the points because they are significant in that some areas, including travel and how the accounts are processed, really leave a lot of room for concern for the Canadian public. I will go through a number of these points but I will not belabour them.

These are from the auditor general's report: "The Financial Administration Act does not apply to the Senate. Therefore the usual accountability mechanisms simply do not apply". Another point: "The Senate has neither formally nor informally delegated clear responsibility to management, nor has it made it clear what it will hold management accountable for". Basically, it is a very loose relationship within the Senate management team. Again: "The Senate does not adequately report on its administrative, financial or human resource management performance and does not possess significant information to enable it to do so systematically". Again, it is a very loose system of managing the support staff within the Senate.

The public reporting provided by individual committees does not reflect all expenditures and does not provide detailed information on expenditures, so we have a number of committees basically out on the loose. Their expenditures are not recorded correctly. This is simply not the way to run a business.

If that is the way things were going in this House, we would clean up our act. However, because it is the Senate, apparently it can do whatever it likes. That is the appearance and that is what has Canadians' backs up. They feel that group refuses to be accountable for its actions and refuses to come forward and have its books audited.

To continue with the auditor general's points, basic facts about Senate administration such as organizational structure, operational goals, plans and performance are not published. Amounts reported in the public accounts are incomplete and do not give sufficient information to determine whether the expenses incurred were for "the service of the Senate as required by the Parliament of Canada Act".

Senators are incurring expenses and those expenses cannot be back traced to show that they are related to Senate business. It is really getting to the point of being bizarre. Surely there must be some points. We have the Parliament of Canada Act, yet the senators refuse to abide by it.

I could go on and on. Anybody can pick up the 1991 auditor general's report on the Senate. Auditor General Kenneth Dye went into great detail on some of the areas that need to be tightened up.

The auditor general's report is long and scathing and it notes many areas of possible abuse. That is the point and that is the reason I moved the motion in committee to have the Senate come before our committee.

We have a Liberal government across the way. Before the last election the Liberals took the position: "Elected representatives must be permitted more influence on decisions regarding expenditure priorities. This will require their meaningful involvement in the process before government's actual spending estimates are formally prepared". I would like to ask members across the way how much input they had on the estimates going to the Senate. I would venture to say that it was very little, which is unfortunate.

Talk of Senate reform has gone on for years. My colleagues from the Bloc are advocating abolition of the Senate. My Reform colleagues do not advocate abolition; we feel the Senate has to be reformed. It is an institution that can work and can work very well. However, it cannot work in its present form.

In 1991 the current Prime Minister told the House of Commons: "Reform of the Senate is extremely important. I believe in it. There is nothing sacrosanct about the present division of powers. We must look for a division of powers that best serves the interests of all the people, all the Canadian people". This is from our current Prime Minister. If this quote is accurate, I would expect that Liberals across the way and Reformers would all want to have a Senate that works, that is not a patronage haven for the old boys and the old girls, but an institution that works.

I will return to the American and the Australian examples because their Senates work. In each case, oddball goofy legislation does not go through the lower house because they know it will never go through the upper house. Those are Senates that work. Unfortunately some of that legislation goes through this House and lands on a Senate that is ineffective and inactive.

I would like to sum up with the issue of accountability. We have a vote this evening on the estimates of the Senate. I challenge members on the government side. They do not know what they are voting for in the estimates for the Senate. They cannot because other than lump sums, the Senate committees have failed to come before us to justify exactly what the expenditures are.

Are government members going to vote as they are told or are they going to question these estimates? If they are going to question them, why are they not putting more pressure on the senators to come before the government operations committee to bring forward their reasons why some of the travel budgets, some of the staffing and some of the accounting procedures are so out of whack?

I sum up with the analogy of the dinosaur and where I see the Senate right now. A group of dinosaurs are sitting on the edge of the swamp. They can either carry on there and in a hundred million years we will find them as a lump of coal, or they can turn around and back up. Others will say the dinosaurs are gone anyway.

The point is that the Senate has an opportunity right now to come into the 20th and 21st centuries and not become dinosaurs but become part of an institution that really works, an institution that this country is crying for. We need the two Houses to work well together and right now they are not. Right now we have a lower House that moves through the legislation and the upper House that is just rubber stamping it.

My last point is that we must have accountability. The Senate has refused to be accountable. My motion to reduce the estimates by $10 million stands and I move that motion.

[Canada Elections Act, June 18th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, believers in democracy, real democracy, who have taken the time to read through private members' Bill C-276 will have realized that there are at least two possible ways of interpreting the intent of this bill.

One of those interpretations would lead us to conclude that the member who introduced the bill is motivated by a patriotic love for Canada. Unfortunately though, it is also possible to interpret the bill as a direct attack, inadvertently I hope, on democracy itself.

Because of the seriousness of the second possible interpretation, I will deal only with that specific aspect of the bill in the hope that the member who introduced it will recognize the flaw and will agree to withdraw the bill before it goes any further.

The plain fact is that Bill C-276 has the potential to place such unreasonable restrictions on freedom of assembly and equal rights that many people would be tempted to describe it as irresponsible and repressive.

Enactment of its provisions would severely curtail the formation and growth of new parties in Canada, while the old line traditional parties with their worn out ideologies would be protected by legislation from the challenge of new and open discussion about Canada's future.

This bill reminds me, sadly I will say, of a bill that was passed unanimously by the PCs, Liberals and NDP in this House prior to the 1993 election. That bill also attempted to protect the turf of the old line parties at the expense of new parties by requiring the election of 12 members to this House in order to receive official recognition as a party.

As we all know, that arrogant attack on the principles of democracy backfired on the perpetrators in a major way. Two of the parties which supported that repressive bill, the PCs and the NDP, ended up with fewer than 12 seats in this Parliament and are no longer recognized as parties. The PCs and the NDP in effect were hoisted on their own anti-democratic petards while the group or groups they intended to suppress were supported by enough of the voters of Canada that they ended up as officially recognized parties.

It was the voters exercising their democratic rights who determined the fate of these parties, and it is with the voters that the power of democracy should stay. Neither the government nor individual members of this House should be proposing or passing repressive legislation which interferes with the ability of the people to meet, organize and run for office under a common party banner.

Those who think it is their prerogative to try to legislatively influence the outcome of elections through bills like Bill C-276 should recognize that they are playing with fire and that severe burns are most likely going to be the result. It is not the right of members of this place to try to preserve their own futures by restricting the organizational and voting rights of the people who pay their salaries.

If members have read Bill C-276 they will have noticed that in order to achieve party status the bill requires a group to nominate candidates in at least seven provinces containing at least 50 per cent of the population and 50 per cent of the electoral districts of Canada. In other words, Bill C-276 makes the arrogant assumption that there is no value to a party which has its roots in just one or two provinces and would deny the right of voters to determine for themselves whether a new party, regional or not, has candidates who are capable of representing their constituents in this House.

If this bill had been in effect in 1988, it would have prevented the Reform Party of Canada from being recognized as a party. As a direct result it would have prevented the name Reform from appearing on the ballot. Voters would have been unable to determine which independent candidates listed on the ballot were actually Reform Party of Canada candidates, leaving the traditional parties with an unfair advantage. Luckily, Bill C-276 was not in effect at the time and the Reform Party candidates captured a large enough percentage of the votes to achieve public and media recognition which in turn led to further growth and further support.

At the following election in 1993, candidates were run in almost every province and 52 Reform members were elected representing five of these provinces. At the same time, PCs dropped to just two members with no representation west of Quebec, and the NDP dropped to nine members with no representation east of Saskatchewan.

If we want to talk about regional parties, we need look no further than the NDP and the PCs who thought they were invincible, just as the Liberal side of the House thinks it is today. The fact is we are in times of great political upheaval and even the smug members on the government side of the House need to begin thinking about the future of their party. There is no guarantee that the Liberal Party of Canada, if it refuses to become more democratic, can survive the enormous changes which have to take place in this federation over the next decade or two.

The people of this country want more say in the decision making process. They want to see truly free votes taking place in this House on government bills. They want to see MPs representing the will of their constituents ahead of the party line or their own personal biases. They want governments at all levels to begin acting as servants of the taxpayers rather than benevolent dictatorships.

I will return for a moment to the example of the Reform Party of Canada. There is no doubt that Bill C-276, had it been law prior to 1990, would have severely restricted the ability of the party to grow even though the Reform Party of Canada had, and still has, policies which are national in scope. All of the policies of the party are built upon three major foundation blocks: fiscal responsibility; justice and family safety; and democratic reforms which would improve the way government functions.

These policy foundations are national in scope and always were, but Bill C-276 could easily have prevented the party from growing to the point where it has over 50 members in the House of Commons and can deliver its message to voters all across Canada. This might have suited the Liberal Party, but it would not have been democratic. Even if the Reform Party of Canada had not developed policies which are national in scope, what makes politicians in Ottawa think they have the divine right to arbitrarily decide on behalf of their voters whether or not a political party can exist based solely on whether it is regional in nature?

If we believe in democracy, it is the people of Canada who have the right to decide whether they want to vote for a regional party, a national party or simply no party at all. No member in this place should be attempting to interfere with that freedom to choose even if the outcome of a subsequent election is not to their liking.

Certainly there is the potential to end up with situations like the one we have in the House today where the official opposition is a party which makes no secret of the fact that it wants to facilitate the separation of Quebec from Canada and has no desire to become the Government of Canada.

If the member who sponsored this bill does not like having the Bloc sitting as official opposition, he should work on changing the attitudes of his colleagues on the Liberal side who collectively have the power to correct the situation without passing restrictive bills like the one before us today.

This bill throws the baby out with the bath water. Despite the claims of the government member, it is not crucial that every party in the House be a national alternative. Neither is it the business of this House to decide whether regional parties should get the same tax status rights as national parties.

If the members opposite truly believe in the equality of all citizens and are not just paying lip service to the concept, then they are obliged to retain equality of opportunity for all political parties and their supporters whether regional or not.

If the end result of this democratic freedom leads on occasion to a less stable political climate than we would like, it is too darn bad. We will all have to work a little harder as MPs when these situations occur.

The member who introduced Bill C-276 was probably well intentioned but the bill contains restrictions on political freedom which are inappropriate in this parliamentary process. It is my hope that members will join me in opposing this bill.

[Nelson House First Nation Flooded Land Act, June 17th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I will be very brief. Bill C-39, which we debated about an hour ago, and Bill C-40, which we are debating at the moment, are mirror images of each other. The only differences are that they deal with two separate bands and the amounts of compensation are different.

As with Bill C-39, the Reform Party will be supporting Bill C-40.

[York Factory First Nation Flooded Land Act, June 17th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I will be presenting the Reform position on Bill C-39, the York Factory flooded land act and Bill C-40, the Nelson House flooded land act, on behalf of my colleague, the member for North Island-Powell River.

We are here today to debate the second and third in a series of five bills dealing with reserve land that belongs to five First Nations in northern Manitoba which were flooded in the 1970s.

In June 1994 we debated the first bill in this series, Bill C-36, the Split Lake Cree First Nation Flooded Land Act. Bill C-36 was an enlightened agreement dealing with outstanding native grievances and it received support from the Reform Party. Bills C-39 and C-40, while dealing with similar subject matter, are unique to the York Factory and Nelson House First Nations and require some comment.

In the 1970s hydro related projects on the Nelson and Churchill rivers, along with the Lake Winnipeg regulations project, flooded almost 4,800 hectares of reserve land belonging to the five First Nations in northern Manitoba. In addition, more than 208,000 hectares of non-reserve land traditionally used by First Nations members for hunting and trapping were also flooded.

To address the impact of flooding, the Manitoba Northern Flood Agreement was signed by Canada, Manitoba, Manitoba Hydro and the northern flood committee made up of the five Manitoba First Nations: the Split Lake Cree, Nelson House, York Factory, Norway House and Cross Lake First Nations. The agreement included financial compensation, community infrastructure programs and new land acquisition.

Over the intervening years, implementation of the northern flood agreement broke down because the roles and responsibilities of the parties were not clearly defined and the agreement did not anticipate the complexities of concluding such agreements. In 1990 the parties to the northern flood agreement negotiated a proposed basis of settlement. This provided the foundation for negotiating implementation agreements with the five individual native bands.

Allow me to deal with the objectives of Bills C-39 and C-40 which are before us. They are identical in scope and focus but not in compensation. The bills contain four basic elements which my colleagues have touched on.

The first element is to provide that fee simple lands are not subject to becoming special reserves under sections 35 and 36 of the Indian Act.

The second element is to provide that moneys allowed under the York Factory implementation act and the Nelson House implementation act are now payable to the crown as Indian moneys as defined in section 35(4) of the Indian Act, but are administered by a First Nations trust.

The third element is to provide that the claims which may be made under either the northern flood agreement, the York Factory implementation agreement or the Nelson House implementation agreement be administered according to the terms of the applicable implementation agreement.

The fourth element is to enable Canada to utilize the Manitoba Arbitration Act when dealing with any dispute between the parties submitted to arbitration under the terms of the York Factory implementation agreement or the Nelson House implementation agreement.

Both bills are comprehensive and limit federal liability to their normal fiduciary responsibility. Ongoing or unanticipated future liability is placed upon the project proponent, Manitoba Hydro. Essentially the Government of Canada should never have signed such a loose agreement back in 1977 to cover these flooded lands and then foisted it on to the five affected bands.

However, we now have enlightened legislation before us and it is time to move on as we did on Bill C-36, the Split Lake Cree First Nation, and as we will probably do in a year or two with the two remaining flooded land bills dealing with the Cross Lake and Norway House First Nations.

One very comprehensive element of these bills is that settlement moneys will be administered by a trust company to guarantee accountability. To compensate these two First Nations for loss of reserve land, the federal government will contribute approximately six and one-quarter million dollars to the York Factory First Nation and about fifteen and one-quarter million dollars to the Nelson House First Nation.

Both the Government of Manitoba and Manitoba Hydro will make additional contributions of land and money. The province of Manitoba is particularly satisfied with the agreements. In conversations with the ministers and officials, my colleague from North Island-Powell River is satisfied that the deals are fair and just and that the five First Nations have been patient and realistic in their negotiations.

Bill C-39 and Bill C-40 will allow fee simple lands to be held by the respective native corporations outside the normal encumbrances of the Indian Act. The fee simple lands are subject to property taxation and any business originating from these lands is also taxable. Allowing these lands to be used for economic development purposes is both enlightening and allows for new independence of these First Nations.

Bill C-39 and Bill C-40 enable the individual band members to appeal under the Manitoba Arbitration Act if unsatisfied with their own band decisions which affect them. Naturally these agreements have received band ratification. The province of Manitoba is comfortable with these agreements and is promoting them.

As my colleague from North Island-Powell River said in his concluding remarks in second reading debate on Bill C-36, we are dealing with legitimate outstanding grievances. Bill C-39 and Bill C-40 are mirror images of Bill C-36, which passed a year ago, in scope and intent. Consequently, the Reform Party supports them. There are some finer points which may be clarified and elaborated on. However, this will best be done in committee.

[Taxation, June 14th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Minister of Finance spoke about how recent changes to the GST had affected trade-ins on new cars. The vast majority of Canadians simply cannot afford to buy a new car. What what do they do? They buy a used car instead.

By removing the tax credit on used cars, the minister has made it more expensive for the average Canadian to buy a used car. By eliminating the tax credit the government is saying: "We do not care. You already pay tax on the car. We are more interested in getting more people to pay more tax on that car".

How can the minister justify taxing the same good over and over again? Why has he abandoned the red book promise of a revenue neutral tax?