House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 1997, with 49% of the vote.
Petitions April 26th, 1995
Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I wish to present a petition signed by 54 Canadians including three resident in my riding.
The petitioners are calling upon Parliament to maintain the single desk selling monopoly of the Canadian Wheat Board. They further request steps be taken to expand the powers of the wheat board so that more grains and oilseeds can be placed under monopoly control.
Health Care April 5th, 1995
Mr. Speaker, half a century ago North America's first medicare plan, Saskatchewan Health Region Number 1, was established in what is now my riding.
It was an experiment, a prototype and it was a Godsend. It worked well and it cost little. This was partly because people accustomed to doing without medical care did not abuse or over use it and partly because it was run mostly at the local level by country doctors and municipal reeves.
Unfortunately, the lessons of the experiment were quickly forgotten. A great system was eventually suffocated by the cold dead hands of political and federal bureaucracy.
The Liberals say there is nothing wrong with our health care but Canadians know better. They know about the waiting lists and the lack of accessibility.
It is time to be bold, as our Saskatchewan predecessors were, and using common sense rather than grand schemes, revise the Canada Health Act to allow the provinces to bring health care back to health.
Supply April 4th, 1995
Madam Speaker, I liked that little history lesson at the beginning. Unfortunately I do not see what relevance it has to what we are debating today, current economic conditions in Canada.
Since the hon. member has only left me one moment, I will have to direct myself to one of his statistics. He talks about an increase in the hog production, I believe he said 39 per cent in the west and a decrease of 16 per cent in Quebec. With the feed freight assistance, if the farmers of Quebec cannot compete with the west, he is bad mouthing his own province. He is speaking ill of Quebec. I would not think of doing that.
We are progressive. We are working hard to diversify. We are not asking for handouts and as far as the $1.6 billion, all the hon. member has done is reiterate his previous arguments. He did not raise anything new. He said the same thing over-
Supply April 4th, 1995
Shame on the Liberals. There is going to be a $1.6 billion buyout. This buyout is equivalent to what the subsidy has been paying over each three-year period, or would have been paying over the next three years. After that, nothing. But the dairy farmers will still be in there for 70 per cent of their subsidy. If this is inequitable to Quebec then please help me here. What would they regard as equity?
There is another little cute trick in the budget, which I have not heard the Bloc mention. That is the Feed Freight Assistance Act for feed grains to the eastern part of Quebec as well as the Maritimes. We are talking about Quebec here. That is going to be phased out over a 10-year period.
It now appears, from the rumours I have been hearing, that this is not even going to begin for another year. There is going to be a one-year moratorium on phasing out the FFAA. All this means is that we will continue in the west shipping our feed grains to Quebec to be turned into beef and milk products, whereas if we did not have this subsidy to work against us, we could do it at home more economically and export the finished product. However, that is not the way Canada works. We are still locked into the old colonial system where the two central Canadian provinces get the milk, the grass is eaten in western Canada, and we all know what happens in the Maritimes.
This motion speaks about diversification and the fact that because we are going to get this buyout on the Crow rate it is going to be a great encouragement for us to diversify. In my riding farmers have been diversifying for the last few years, not because of the availability or lack of availability of subsidies, but in response to market forces. They are growing crops they never grew before.
When I drove around my riding last summer I saw canola, lentils and even sunflowers-big acreages of them. These are not native to my part of Saskatchewan, but we are swinging over
to them in order to profit from the market that is out there and to get away from our low-priced product, which is wheat.
In conclusion, I want to digress a bit from agriculture and talk again about the question of who gets what out of Confederation. I am sure that hon. members of the Bloc are aware of a recent study that indicated that over the last ten years Quebec has had a net benefit of payments in, over-taxation out of $168 billion. During that same period the province of Ontario has come up short by $45 billion. Do not let us ever forget that my neighbouring province of Alberta, during the days of the national energy policy, had to forgo $90 billion in revenue in order to support the economies of the two central Canadian provinces. I find it more than passing strange that those of us who want to hold our country together, who care about this country, are the ones who have been paying the bills, and the people who want to tear it asunder are the ones who have been benefiting the most economically from Confederation. They are saying, in effect: "We want to be free; we want to go it alone, but please, keep giving us money".
Supply April 4th, 1995
Madam Speaker, I was not very surprised reading the text of the Bloc motion that we are addressing today because I find that its members are following their usual strategy of being vexatious and provocative, trying to pit Canadians against Canadians. They do this under the pretence of representing their constituents, but I do not believe that Quebecers as a group do not believe in fairness. By and large, they are like the rest of us. What we are seeing here is a classic example of what the Bloc does in this place day after day after day.
I asked a couple of Quebec members from the other central Canadian party how they felt about the fact that the Bloc engages in this type of rhetoric. I asked them if they were at all embarrassed by the constant whining and by these efforts to put out their hand for more and more. The answer that I got from these other Quebecers was: "Yes, it does embarrass us".
Let us take a look at this terrible abuse that we hear is being heaped upon those Quebec dairy farmers with their guaranteed 40 per cent share of the domestic milk market in Canada. Yes, they are going to have their subsidies cut; they are going to be cut by 30 per cent over two years. Therefore, their $217 million subsidy will be cut by $57 million.
What the hon. members from the Bloc neglect to mention is that all the dairy farmers in Canada do not reside in Quebec. The rest of us have cows too. We are going to be losing our pro rata share of that same subsidy, which is causing this inordinate amount of whining.
On the other hand, the Crow benefit is not going to be phased out gradually. We are not going to lose just a few percentage points per year over any given period of time. It is going to be cut by 100 per cent immediately and forever.
Natural Resources March 22nd, 1995
Mr. Speaker, that answer reminds me of that old song by Stompin' Tom Connors, "We'll Save a Bunch of Money Spending Money We Don't Got".
Most members of the mining fraternity who are still willing to work in British Columbia are based in Vancouver. They use the facilities of the GSC library, the map sales, and they consult with individual geologists.
What is the point in having a geological survey in B.C. at all if we are going to move it completely away from the people it is intended to serve? There are exactly four potential clients for this thing in Victoria-
Natural Resources March 22nd, 1995
Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Natural Resources.
The Geological Survey of Canada recently announced that it was moving its British Columbia office from Vancouver to Victoria. This will involve transferring more than 30 geologists and their support staff and breaking a 10-year lease worth about $6 million on new quarters.
In these times of economic restraint, how can the minister justify this boondoggle?
Petitions March 17th, 1995
Mr. Speaker, it is my honour and pleasure pursuant to Standing Order 36 to present a petition signed by 295 of my constituents residing primarily in the villages of Coronach, Fife Lake and Rockglen and the surrounding districts.
These petitioners state that except in police states there is no evidence that the suicidal or criminal misuse of firearms is impeded or restricted by legislation.
They therefore humbly pray that Parliament desist from passing additional restrictive legislation with respect to firearms or ammunition and to direct its attention to the apprehension and punishment of those who criminally misuse firearms or other deadly weapons.
I wholeheartedly concur.
Gun Control March 17th, 1995
Mr. Speaker, the Franchi is a shotgun with a short stock.
The seizures of registered previously legal firearms under Kim Campbell's orders in council have been declared unlawful by Alberta courts. The crown is appealing but the minister has, nevertheless, bulled ahead with more potentially illegal OICs. Why is he not prepared to await the legal outcome to let this run through the courts before confiscating more lawfully owned property from honest citizens who trustingly registered them before the orders were issued?
Gun Control March 17th, 1995
Mr. Speaker, last month a plain clothes policeman appeared at the home of Darrell McKnight near Fredericton with a warrant to seize his Franchi shotgun, banned by order in council effective January 1.
Mr. McKnight's teenaged daughter, home alone, phoned her father and on his instruction surrendered the gun's receiver, the minimum legal requirement. The officer insisted that she produce the rest of the gun and told her that he could tear the house to pieces to find the parts.
Given that when Mr. McKnight arrived with his lawyer, two backup police cars had arrived to deal with this dangerous criminal, can the justice minister understand why gun owners are afraid of setting themselves up for future harassment by registering their guns?