Allan Kerpan

[Transportation Subsidies, June 10th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food.

The producer payment panel and others studying this matter, including our party, are trying to develop a new program that would ensure that funding to the railways would not simply be cut and lost but reallocated to the agriculture department and paid to farmers as part of a GATT green program.

Will the minister of agriculture assure this House that farmers will still benefit from the $600 million that his colleague is cutting from the Department of Transport?

[Transportation Subsidies, June 10th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday in the Manitoba legislature the Minister of Transport was quoted as saying that the federal government is selling out to the United States if it scraps the $600 million Crow subsidy and in fact it will shut down the grain industry in western Canada.

Farmers all across Canada are asking themselves a question and they want and need to know the answer. I would ask the Minister of Transport who farmers should believe. Should they believe him when he says that the WGTA of some $600 million will be cut by July 1, 1995 or should they believe the minister of agriculture who says that this has not yet been decided? This is not the kind of double talk that farmers want or need to hear.

Will the Minister of Transport stand in this House today and clearly explain what his plans are for the WGTA?

[Yukon First Nations Land Claimssettlement Act, June 9th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, one thing that I have noticed as I sat through the debate today is that the bill uses the term First Nations throughout. It describes these 14 bands not necessarily as bands but as First Nations. Similarly the members of these First Nations are described as citizens of First Nations.

Although the term First Nation has been loosely bandied about lately and is in common practice, to my knowledge this is the first time that it has been formally referred to in federal legislation. It gives rise to a number of questions that I have and I would ask the hon. member's opinion of some of these questions.

First, are native people in Yukon now to have two kinds of citizenship extended to them under what we perceive as Canadian law? If that is the case, would that not be conflicting allegiances? This is a problem that I have had as I have sat through this debate today and listened very carefully.

I would ask the hon. member if he would like to comment. I would like to hear his comments on those types of allegiance, and the conflict that might arise should that be the case.

[Yukon First Nations Self-Government Act, June 9th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member's comments and questions.

The one key element that is missing from this agreement, as I see it, is the inclusion of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. From looking at the bill and studying it in some detail, that to me sticks out more than anything.

The other part of the question that I would like to answer is what we would do or how we would involve this. I do not think anybody on this side of the House, certainly in our party, is against the theory of some sort of native self-government. The problem as I see it is that the process has not been a very open process. In my mind it is something that has been rushed for an issue of such significance. I think it needs to be opened up to all Canadians regardless of what part of the country they live in or what their particular personal heritage might be.

That is probably the key to this whole issue, that we must bring all Canadians into this type of decision-making process. Anything short of that will certainly spell disaster for some idea or theory that may in fact be a good idea to start with.

[Yukon First Nations Self-Government Act, June 9th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to give a Saskatchewan perspective on the issues of Yukon aboriginal self-government and the land claims that are before this House today.

What is happening in the Yukon is very important to those of us in our province as well. Certainly today we are setting legislative precedents. We must be very careful about this, thorough in our analysis and creative in our proposals for solutions.

These issues are of real concern for people in my province. We have a significant and growing aboriginal population. In fact by early in the next century, some believe that the aboriginal population in Saskatchewan will approach a majority percentage.

I would like to raise four specific areas of discussion taking place now as we contemplate the present and future factors. Number one is the concerns of the Saskatchewan rural municipalities regarding land claims. Rural municipalities in Saskatchewan have a deep concern about losing a tax base from land claim settlements.

I sat in on a meeting of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food on April 28 past. We heard the concerns of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities in this matter. SARM represents 297 rural municipalities with over 235,000 rural residents. They are concerned that approximately two million acres are going to be purchased by the aboriginal community.

For rural municipalities this is a large tax implication. These lands are not going to be purchased in large blocks. It will be a quarter here, a half section there, a willing buyer, a willing seller type of agreement. These lands will go to reserve status.

Under federal law municipalities do not pay taxes. On treaty land entitlements there is a compensation fund worked out but on specific claims or reinstatement of treaty land entitlements we do not have an agreement.

If Indian people move into your municipality and they are not going to pay municipal tax, it is going to create unhappy neighbourhoods. If a person on one side of the road does not have to pay taxes and the person on the other side does, and perhaps more because the first does not, this is unfair.

SARM told our committee that it wanted to leave a strong message with us: This is a big problem in Saskatchewan and it has to be addressed.

This is an example in Saskatchewan of decisions and agreements being made without meeting the essential characteristics of good decisions. I fear for the same bills under discussion here in this House today. We must have decisions that are, number one, appropriate. Do these bills respond to the real problem?

Will they transform the present situation into the target state? Number two is attainability. Can these bills be successfully implemented given the resources that we have? Number three is attractive. Do we see these bills as relevant, feasible, understandable, supportable and ownable by everyone? Number four is adaptability. Can we modify things easily if conditions change or if new information becomes available?

In order to make the best decision we may have to do what all good decision makers should do, slow down, retrace our steps, elicit new opinions, present new ideas, give a word of encouragement, suggest a compromise, postpone action and reach out to non-participants. I say this is what we should be doing with the bills before us here today.

We have questions about the effectiveness of these bills and someone has said that questions thrown out the front door have a way of coming in through the side window. We do not want that to happen in this case. In fact we cannot afford to have it happen in this country.

The second concern is the community pastures under the PFRA program. A second type of related issue in Saskatchewan was raised in our committee at the same time in late April. Some of the PFRA community pasture lands will also be up for purchase by First Nations people.

A reasonably good process of negotiation has been put in place for this. The Indian band will need the agreement of 75 per cent of the patrons of any particular pasture in order to proceed to the transfer of the said lands. This process is open and democratic, which all processes should be.

The third concern is the First Nations Council of Moose Jaw. Moving to yet another related issue, an event occurred in my riding of Moose Jaw-Lake Centre about a year and a half ago that really surprised some of my constituents. They woke up one morning to read the daily paper's lead headline, and I quote: "First Nations elect first government. Status Indians take charge of their destinies".

This was during the referendum campaign. The news story we read that morning said that an election held in Moose Jaw Tuesday should pave the way for self-government for urban status Indians throughout Canada. They said that their elected council would negotiate with all levels of government to secure better health care, education, employment and housing for its members.

What surprised people was that this was a group of neighbours and friends in our city who got together, conducted a process of discussions, elected leaders and declared to the rest of us that they were a duly constituted government to which we would now relate in jurisdictional terms. One hundred and seventy people out of a city population of some 35,000 made this decision that the rest of us must now abide by. I have yet to settle in my own mind exactly how one should respond to such an initiative.

The fourth concern was an event that happened last year in our riding. I have raised it before in this House. I believe it illustrates the importance of making sure our decisions and our actions are carefully thought out and applied before we take them.

In our riding we are trying to work together to solve a potentially divisive problem. Last July 22 to 25 an indigenous peoples celebration was held in Moose Jaw. Soon after I was elected as MP in October, local business and organizations that had provided goods and services to this event approached me with the news that they had not been paid for their services. The problem is serious because we have identified possibly as much as $200,000 worth of unpaid bills. I have informed both the federal government and the Saskatchewan provincial government about this situation and the issue certainly has been in the local news.

I have a deep concern that a successful resolution be found to this problem. I am encouraged by the patience of the business persons involved as we work through this problem and by the openness and the responsibility being taken by the newly selected aboriginal leaders in Moose Jaw. I am hoping we can carefully reach a successful conclusion to this matter. I have said that I will keep this House informed. I am of the distinct persuasion, however, that this problem ended up being harder to solve than it would have been to prevent by careful planning.

A wise person once said that one should make sure they count the costs before undertaking an initiative. I am concerned that this is what will happen in the debates about the far-reaching and significant implications of the legislation that we have before us.

[Supply, June 8th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I really do appreciate this question and comment from the hon. member. In fact he makes my case exactly. I would rest my case saying that has been the problem with the Senate. There is very unequal representation.

Fortunately for the member there are 21 senators from Quebec. We do not have that luxury in Saskatchewan simply because we are a thinly populated area.

Having said that, I also believe that an equal number of senators for each province will rectify that problem. Certainly the member will know that if there were to be two to four senators from his province that he should have equal or good representation, the same number as Ontario, Saskatchewan or any other province would have.

I understand the problem with the regional unfairness and the regional representation that is currently not happening.

[Supply, June 8th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his comments and his questions. I think they are valid comments. Certainly there has been significant change in this House. I believe there could in fact be significant change in the other place.

I have to agree however with some of my colleagues from the opposition party when they talk about a policy and the Senate. I believe and we believe that we have to abolish some aspects of the Senate such as the appointments, the perks, the pay and pensions and those types of things.

Yes I was in attendance for the free vote the member speaks of. I congratulate the government for those types of initiatives. I think that is long overdue in this country. I do applaud that.

I look forward to more of those same types of things. If we openly look at the Senate, how it is created, what the process is and how it works I really do not see any other answer other than to make the thing effective. That is the only hope I see for thinly populate areas of this country.

[Supply, June 8th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, in response to the member's first question about who would make the final decision on a bill, it really is a very simple process, almost too simple to believe it could work. Many times in the past ordinary rank and file Canadians have had ideas that seem too simple to work, yet they do.

When talking about where the final responsibility would be for a bill, what would happen under a triple-E Senate would be as is the normal process in the House. We would vote on and pass a bill, send it to the other place and the Senate would then have the opportunity to either accept or defeat it and send it back.

The other part of the solution is that the defeat of a government motion or bill would not necessarily bring down the government. That is the safeguard in sending a bill back from Senate which was not passed in the Senate. The bill would come back to this House, we would deal with it again, make it better and make it acceptable to the Senate. The process would work very well.

As far as the second part of the member's question about one House by itself in a province, I assume he means Saskatchewan. Certainly on a provincial level it is an entirely different issue, or at least it is in my province which is thinly populated, with fewer than a million people. There is no need for an upper and lower house in that type of process. Certainly in a Canadian-wide process where there are 10 provinces, much diversity and many different areas, there is certainly a need for an effective Senate.

[Supply, June 8th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today in response to the Bloc motion. I am happy to stand before the House and say that I and the Reform Party certainly oppose the Bloc motion. We believe the intent of this motion obviously is to eliminate spending on the Senate and thereby achieve the de facto abolishment of it. The

Reform Party is and always has been an advocate of a reformed Senate, certainly not of its abolishment.

In large countries where the population is unevenly distributed there is a fundamental need to balance representation by population with representation by province. This is especially true in a parliamentary system like Canada's where regimented party caucuses engage in bloc voting under the direction of party leadership. In other big federations like the United States and Australia this balance has been achieved by establishing two levels of government and a bicameral legislature in which the provinces are effectively represented in the upper House and representation by population prevails in the lower House.

The Fathers of Confederation intended to provide this type of balance in the Canadian Parliament, but the Senate as currently constituted has failed to play this role and it simply needs to be reformed.

First, the Senate must be popularly elected. In a democratic age an appointed upper House will always lack legitimacy and hence political power. It is time to take democracy seriously.

Second, the Senate must be equal, in the sense that each province must have the same number of seats, such as in the Australian and United States models. In such a Senate the thinly populated areas, provinces of Canada, would have a majority of seats in the Senate, just as the heavily populated provinces hold the majority of seats in this House of Commons.

Reformers will not be misled into supporting a counterfeit regional version of equality according to which the west, Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada will each have the same number of senators. This is approximately what Canada has now and it simply does not work.

Third, the Senate must be effective. It must have adequate power to balance the House of Commons. There is some room for fine tuning here. Reformers do not believe that the defeat of a government bill in the Senate should lead to the defeat of the government. However, the Senate must not be shorn of power so that it becomes unable to amend or veto regionally offensive legislation emanating from the House of Commons.

Reformers believe that only a triple-E Senate, elected, equal, and effective, can balance the interests of less populous provinces with those of the more populous provinces in this Canadian Parliament.

When I talk about regional fairness I like to relate it to some of the things I have been involved with, one of which is my work on the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-food. Certainly we live in a country with diverse interests and diverse problems and certainly agriculture is no exception to that.

Recently Reformers proposed at the committee level a 5 per cent reduction in the overhead costs of the Department of Agriculture. The reason we proposed this was that we believed there was a need for cuts in the department other than those which would come on the backs of farmers or the people who work in that area. I relate this to the regional fairness issue because with the diverse differences in this country only regional fairness and equality in an elected Senate would compensate for those differences.

The Reform Party made the first step toward a triple-E Senate when it pressured the Government of Alberta into holding properly constituted Senate elections in 1988. Most recently the Reform Party asked the Alberta government to pass a resolution which would request the current appointed senators in Alberta to resign so that sanctioned elections could be held in conjunction with the next Alberta provincial election. The Reform Party would herald the accomplishment of Senate election for all senators, both inside Alberta and throughout Canada as a significant leap toward the goal of a triple-E Senate.

There have been many reasons, many arguments, many pressures by politicians and people of all stripes for the abolition of the Senate. The Reform Party favours and has been advocating for many years now the abolition of those features of the Canadian Senate which render it useless and repugnant to voters and taxpayers, namely: Abolish the patronage appointments to the Senate. Elect all senators. Abolish exorbitant perks, pensions and privileges. Establish an independent commission to recommend a pay and pension package for senators and members of Parliament comparable to what is available in the private sector. Abolish inequitable representation in the Senate. Elect equal numbers of senators from each province.

If the Senate is abolished completely, Canada will immediately be governed by a one House Parliament in which the heavily populated centres would have an absolute majority of seats. In such a Parliament it would be virtually impossible to secure effective representation of the interests of the thinly populated parts of the country, namely the west, the north, Atlantic Canada, northern and rural Ontario, and northern and rural Quebec.

The members of the current House of Commons who are suddenly advocating Senate abolition have no interest in establishing any checks and balances on themselves, in particular the regional checks and balances which a reformed Senate would provide. They are simply seeking to consolidate power in their own hands.

If the Senate is completely abolished it is also highly unlikely it would be replaced in the foreseeable future. The premiers who are most loudly advocating Senate abolition simply want to maintain their own monopoly on representing their provincial

interests rather than sharing their responsibility with a reformed Senate.

If the Senate is simply abolished therefore there is very little likelihood a reformed Senate would ever be established. The Canadian federal system would fail to balance representation by population with representation by province, an essential characteristic for any federal system, particularly in a large country with an unevenly distributed population.

It is therefore the position of the Reform Party that the useless and offensive features of the current Senate should be and must be abolished and that an elected, equal and effective Senate created in its place.

In the short term, representatives of an elected body would be more responsive to the desires of the provinces of Canada and it would not require a constitutional fight to accomplish the changes we are suggesting.

In the longer term, Canadians should continue to demand an effective regional federal body to ensure that all Canadians are adequately represented in the Canadian Parliament. The long range interest of Canadian federalism, Senate reform, must be put ahead of the short term expediency of Senate abolition.

As has been mentioned by many members today, we talk a lot about drastic changes in the way this place and the entire federal system operate. Certainly we have been talking about fiscal responsibility, getting government spending under control and cutting government spending.

There are two ways to look at this. One is to cut federal spending; the other way is to prioritize federal spending. We want to take the approach of prioritizing federal spending and we talk about that in many areas and in many programs. Certainly the Senate must be one of them. We must prioritize our spending. If an elected, effective and equal Senate is a priority as we believe it is, then we must use those funds in our Senate and make cuts where there is excess in programs or non-productive programs.

I look forward to questions and comments from hon. members. I appreciate very much having had this opportunity to speak on this subject.

[Western Grain Transportation, June 8th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to provide a brief response to the hon. Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food's statement on the grain transportation system of today.

The minister explained for us in the House what in my judgment was not just a problem or series of problems this year but a real crisis in the grain transportation system. While some of the stakeholders in the transportation industry did not see it as a crisis, I believe most did; certainly farmers who could not get their grain moved.

Granted, a unique set of problems did occur this year with the weather and farmers know a lot about weather problems. I believe we should be able to develop a system that can adjust to extreme weather problems. We must try to be prepared for eventualities of all kinds.

The minister also clearly articulated the repercussions of the marketplace to our problems. Our reputation as a reliable grain provider was questioned by our customers. Essentially they issued an ultimatum to us: "Improve your delivery record or we will be shopping somewhere else". That is very serious.

The minister then outlined some of the ways we have been trying to deal with this crisis, including referring the work of the subcommittee which had two days of emergency hearings and the May 16 meeting of concerned parties in Winnipeg.

We on this side concurred with the report of the co-chairman of the subcommittee, believing that some good solutions were proposed. In all honesty I do question the impact or benefit of the May 16 meeting in Winnipeg when the subcommittee had just heard some of the same witnesses and when certain stakeholders, including farmers, were not at the meeting.

Once again farmers are left out of the problem solving equation and yet they are the ones who bear the brunt and the cost of a crisis such as this. I would implore the minister to get farmers more directly involved in issues that directly affect them.

I have said before and will say again that farmers can fix almost anything if they can get their hands on it.

The minister noted developments which have helped alleviate the situation. A west coast labour settlement occurred, although it does not seem to be entirely satisfactory and in fact may only be temporary. The railways have also increased their fleets.

One amazing thing that many of my colleagues who sat on the subcommittee were incredulous over is why the turnaround time for rail cars on a trip to the ports is not any faster than it was 80 years ago. Surely there must be room for improvement there.

The minister also stated for us today the lessons that we have hopefully learned from this crisis and announced a list of six steps that he and the Minister of Transport will implement by January 1, 1995. Generally we believe they are good and we believe we are on the right track. We would urge, however, that the entire system be overhauled so that there are commercial and financial incentives on the part of all to improve efficiencies and services. If each stakeholder in the entire system held up their end of the bargain and were rewarded for doing so and penalized for not doing so, the system could move toward more excellence.

Farmers are held responsible for their actions, and so should everyone else in the system.

What is also needed is legislation to prevent labour disputes from holding up product movement while still allowing for a collective bargaining processes. My colleague from Lethbridge and I are presently bringing forward legislation to address this.

We on this side of the track are willing to work with those on the other side of the track to ensure that this crisis does not happen again, to revitalize our world-wide reputation and to help farmers get their grains and their goods to market.