We cannot afford it.
House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 1997, with 49% of the vote.
Alternative Fuels Act June 16th, 1995
We cannot afford it.
Alternative Fuels Act June 16th, 1995
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to address my amendments to Bill S-7. There are four in number but all deal with one subject which is mainly to remove crown corporations from the effects of this bill.
It is a well known and well developed tradition in this country that crown corporations at the basic managerial level should be able to operate at arm's length from the political sector. This type of interference is totally unwarranted. The companies are inefficient enough as it is. If the managers are going to have to be constantly looking over their shoulders to see what the politicians want them to do, they are going to be even more inefficient.
There is a basic thrust to this bill which is expressed very well in a briefing note I received from I know not where. It says that legislation is preferable to government guidelines. That is fundamental Liberal policy in just about every sphere of activity. This will be about the fifth time in this House I have drawn attention to what I consider to be the very basic philosophy of the Liberal Party of Canada, that everything that is not prohibited shall be compulsory.
My colleagues are going to address the environmental concerns. I will leave that to them, except I would like to state that as somewhat of an engineer and scientist, I find there is a lot of voodoo science involved in some of the lobby documents I have received backing this bill.
This is not a black and white situation. Certainly propane and natural gas do have some environmental advantages over gasoline and diesel, but they also have disadvantages. On balance perhaps they are better. Over all, ethanol is undoubtedly deleterious to the environment if we consider all of the aspects.
I see an hon. member grinning over there. He wants to have an ethanol plant in his riding. If we study the scientific literature, from a basic, scientific point of view the evidence on ethanol does not add up.
I have noticed there has been an incredible amount of corporate lobbying on this bill. As a matter of fact the corporate lobbying on behalf of this bill has been more intense than anything which has taken place on the Hill since the halcyon days of Dome Petroleum. It is incredible. I have a huge stack of papers.
If this is such a good idea, if the producers of the conversion systems and the people who want to sell propane and natural gas have such good products and they are so sure of their position here, why should government have to interfere in the marketplace to mandate markets for them? This is not the business of government; this is the business of business.
If they cannot break into this market, albeit a small market, I do not know why they are fighting so hard to get it. It is a small market. Let them prove themselves, flex their muscles, talk to the people who do the purchasing, put on some demonstration projects and win the market fair and square in the marketplace instead of getting the politicians to do their marketing for them and shove it down the throats of the bureaucrats. This is not the way government should be run. This is not the way the civil service should be operated.
I most emphatically oppose the bill. However, if we must have it, as it has very clearly become a government bill now, then let us at least have my amendments which will permit the people who operate our crown corporations to continue the unfettered management of these companies on our behalf.
Criminal Code June 15th, 1995
Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for York-Simcoe seems to suffer from the same misapprehension as her colleagues in that she believes Bill C-41 is a bill with only one clause. We hear nothing except the so-called hate clause over and over again.
The member from Thunder Bay-Atikokan wants to play on that field. I will join her there.
My mythical Jewish gentleman wanders into a bad section of town and is beaten half to death by someone who does not know he is Jewish in order to steal his wallet. On another occasion he suffers the same type of treatment from someone who knows he is Jewish and decides that for his daily kicks he will beat up on Jews. As an afterthought he steals the wallet. The gentleman in both circumstances is equally damaged and ends up in the hospital. Why in the name of justice and common sense should one thug get a stiffer sentence than the other one?
Criminal Code June 15th, 1995
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Thunder Bay-Atikokan for lowering the tensions in the room and debating on a somewhat lighter level than we have been getting. Of course I think that is only just, because we are dealing with a very frivolous bill.
All the members opposite who have spoken seemed to zero in on one section of the bill. No one remembers that the bill is thick and includes a great number of clauses many of which are as equally bad as the one all of them seem to want to debate.
However, the gauntlet has been thrown down on that one issue which lists and categorizes people and says that only they and no others are entitled to protection against hate. It was a bit frivolous when he started saying everybody has a race, a religion and so on. The hon. member knows it goes much deeper than that. In any event I will play on his turf and by his rules.
This is not a very hypothetical question, but if a man who happens to be Jewish goes into the bad section of town and is beaten half to death by somebody who wants to take his wallet, does that man suffer any less than he would have suffered had his assailant known he was Jewish when he was beating him? I would like a straight answer to that question.
Electoral Boundaries Readjustmentact, 1995 June 15th, 1995
Madam Speaker, I do withdraw my pejorative comment. However, I would again request that we have quorum.
Electoral Boundaries Readjustmentact, 1995 June 15th, 1995
Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. My hon. colleague for Lethbridge has some very important remarks to make. Could we not have some Liberals in the House to listen to them?
Electoral Boundaries Readjustmentact, 1995 June 15th, 1995
Madam Speaker, since the reapportionment commission was holding hearings quite actively at the time the government heavy handedly intervened, and since in my riding there were no complaints about the way the redistribution had been planned nobody went to a hearing, including me.
I would like a little information. I would like to be informed as to how these things work. I wonder if the hon. member did have hearings in her riding and if she did if she would enlighten those of us who were not involved in that.
Electoral Boundaries Readjustmentact, 1995 June 15th, 1995
Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I wonder if the hon. member would classify a non-believer as I am as being part of the religious right.
Electoral Boundaries Readjustmentact, 1995 June 15th, 1995
Madam Speaker, on a point of order, has the word hypocrisy when applied to an individual in the House become parliamentary language when I was not looking?
Cn Commercialization Act June 15th, 1995
Mr. Speaker, I am not going to ask you for any extra time or for anything over 10 minutes. As a matter of fact I may not even speak for five minutes.
I have noticed a certain ambivalence on the benches opposite toward this privatization bill. Clearly privatization is not something you do just to do it. It is done for a reason. The reason is to try to put a crown corporation in a position where it becomes an efficient money making organization.
The hon. member for London East has spoken on several occasions about the fact we must not apply constraints to the company after it is privatized. If we do that we defeat our purpose. One of the constraints the government is proposing to apply is to maintain the Official Languages Act for this private corporation. The Official Languages Act is intended for government organizations.
If CN has to maintain the extra cost and the extra inefficiencies of having the hand of the official languages commissioner on the throttle of every locomotive, it is not going to be as competitive as it needs to be. It is unnecessary. Most of CN's operations are west of the lakehead. There is very little French spoken by either the employees or by the customers.
There will certainly be circumstances in any company working in Canada where it will want to maintain the use of two languages voluntarily.
I worked from time to time in mines or other work sites where workers spoke two or even three different languages. We had to use these languages correctly for the sake of efficiency or safety, but never for political reasons. That is sensible bilingualism. It is not always necessary to impose rules for everything.
I would like to speak even more briefly on Motion No. 14. Again, we have an example of an attempt by government to maintain control over the corporation after it is privatized. No one but the management of a company should be in a position to decide what bridges it is going to maintain, what tracks it is going to maintain.
This is something that is not done if the government really means what it says about making the thing run properly. It does not allow bureaucrats or politicians to stick their cotton pickin' hands into the operations of a private company. If it does that, it may as well forget about privatizing the company, just keep on dictating to it. Government cannot have it both ways.
Either the company is going to be private or it is going to continue to be a semi-crown. I strongly agree with the proposal to privatize it.
On the last motion, the question proposed by the hon. members of the Bloc to simplify the regulatory regime, to give the provinces more regulatory powers and the federal government less, in principle I agree with that but this is neither the time nor the place to debate that question.
It certainly should not be written into the bill. With that, I have had my five minutes.