Lee Morrison

[Budgetary Policy, November 28th, 1994]

Beam me up, Scotty. Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce says he wants to cut the deficit all right but in doing so he is going to ignore the 63 per cent of our budgetary expenditures that are used in transfers. Then he makes this gigantic leap and says that all the cuts that would be made in those would be made on the backs of the poor. I have news for him. There is more money taken out of social programs by the middle class, including the upper middle class, than there is by the poor. He can read that in the statistics in his own reports.

I give the hon. member some credit for telling us that the programs work great as long as there is strong economic growth. That is what we have been saying all along but we cannot continue to throw money out the door with abandon when we have a weak economy.

Let us not say that these programs have never caused any economic decline in countries that have had them. Look at Sweden. Sweden has hit the wall economically. I have personal knowledge of that from people I am dealing with who are trying to get past immigration into Canada because there are no jobs in Sweden any more. Sweden is worse off than we are.

If as the hon. member suggests the deficit is not as great a problem as we Reformers suggest, I find it passing curious that the Liberals have accepted their half-hearted attempts at deficit reduction. Either we have a problem or we do not. Let us be consistent. Let us decide what we are saying here.

Finally, there is one part of his dissertation which I did find a little bit offensive. He said the government and taxation are not to blame for the deficit or government overspending. It is all those evil, ordinary little people who insist on wasting their money on consumer goods when mother government could spend it so much more wisely on their behalf.

I would like to hear the hon. member's response to my comments.

[Global Climate Change, November 22nd, 1994]

I thank the House. We have two well-established facts before us. The carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere is higher than it was a century ago, and the average earth temperature has been increasing for a little over a decade.

Are these two phenomena related? We do not know. There is no convincing evidence to say that they are, and I would say that it ain't necessarily so. There are just too many variables and they are not well understood.

The earth's reflectivity, for example, varies from year to year, depending on the amount of frost and snow we get in the polar regions, or depending on the amount of cloud cover. Ocean currents, particularly in the eastern Pacific, have a gross effect on temperatures. Solar flare activity is probably the most important, and yet this is a factor that has never been thoroughly studied and is only partially understood.

However, let me play devil's advocate and say that, okay, CO2 increasing in the atmosphere is truly a problem. Termites are said to contribute 50 billion tonnes a year of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. That is more than is produced by all of the human consumption of fossil fuels on earth. If we are having an increase in CO2, the major contributor is probably a negative rather than a positive effect. I am referring to the destruction of the world's rain forests which serve as a carbon sink. If the carbon dioxide has nowhere to go it stays in the air.

To proceed with an energy plan based on flimsy and rather badly scientifically studied evidence I would say is irresponsible, and I wonder if the long term motive behind all of this might be to excuse the installation of the carbon tax. We have discussed that several times in the House.

But suppose global warming is a real threat? What are the reasonable alternatives? The motion speaks of alternative energy sources, but in my experience alternative energy, as most people describe it, could more properly be described as "supplementary energy". Wind, solar and biomass all have a legitimate place in the energy mix but to quote Dr. Petr Beckmann: "You cannot run a modern industrial state on sunbeams, summer breezes, fumaroles and chicken manure". There are only three practical energy alternatives and those are coal, oil, and nuclear.

The hon. member for Davenport as a scientifically trained man knows that wind and sunlight are very diffuse sources of energy. For example, the total energy output from the sun which can be received on earth under optimum conditions at the equator is not much more than one kilowatt per square metre.

I would suggest that my colleague's estimate of land requirements for solar thermal conversion are low by a factor of about five. I sharpened up my own pencil and using very optimistic assumptions of thermal and mechanical efficiency, panel spacings and so on, I calculated that a 600 megawatt solar plant would occupy a land area of about 50 square kilometres.

This monster, according to the Solar Energy Research Institute, or some figures I have extrapolated from one of its publications would require about 20,000 tonnes of aluminum, 1,200,000 tonnes of concrete, 350,000 tonnes of steel, 45,000 tonnes of glass, and 4,500 tonnes of copper.

What would be the energy balance? I would hesitate to try to calculate it. I do not feel I have the competence but I wonder with all of those extremely high energy consuming materials if we would not end up with a solar plant serving out its total operational life and giving out less energy than what went into building it in the first place.

I had a few more words but I think I have run out my four minutes. I got in what I really wanted to get in and I thank the House and the Speaker for their courtesy.

[Global Climate Change, November 22nd, 1994]

About four minutes.

[Global Climate Change, November 22nd, 1994]

I would like to present some facts and figures.

[Global Climate Change, November 22nd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot support this motion because the framer has used the old debater's trick of setting up a straw man in order to knock it down.

The motion is predicated on the assumption that because there has been a recent warming trend, that we have entered into a period of global climate change. This is alleged to be due to intensification of the greenhouse effect by increased atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide due to combustion of fossil fuels. If that sounds convoluted, I guess it is because it is convoluted.

The framer of the motion, the member for Davenport, has inferred that this hypothesis is universally accepted by climatologists. I would hasten to say this is not true. In fact, I believe that the concept of catastrophic global warming has a lot more popularity in the press than it does in scientific journals. We are now confronted with doomsday scenarios. The hon. member for Cumberland-Colchester repeated a few of them.

It reminds me of a quotation from Goethe who said: "The phrases that men are prone to repeat incessantly end by becoming convictions and ossify the organs of intelligence".

Climatic changes have been observed throughout recorded history and they have been a feature of life on earth for millennia. I am not talking about the gross shifts which resulted from continental drift many millions of years ago. I am referring to changes that have recurred throughout the Pleistocene period.

There have been a series of ice ages and some climatologists suggest that we are still living within a warm cycle of one of them. In any event, it is only a few thousand years ago that this site was overlaid by many hundreds of feet of ice.

On a smaller, more humanly comprehensive time scale there is much evidence of climate change within the last couple of thousand years. For example, I have examined ancient mine workings in the deserts of North Africa and Yemen. These mines date from the very early days of the Islamic period. They come complete with very large piles of slag and piles of water-washed tailings which to me is absolute proof positive that there were, within recorded historical time, large numbers of trees and lots of water available in what is now desert. I am not talking about simple desertification of the sort that we have going on in the Sahel today. I am talking about massive climate change. This has been within the last 1,200 or 1,300 years at most.

There have been cold periods too. The Norse settlements of Greenland, which existed between the 11th and 14th centuries, disappeared because of a climate change. The glaciers actually advanced out over the settlements. They lost all contact with the old country and some hundreds of years later when people came back they found some genetic vestiges of them in the Eskimos. It is only in very recent years that they have begun to find their ancient stone and earth works because the glaciers have been receding again.

Less than 300 years ago Europe had what was called the little ice age, when hundreds and thousands of peasants died of exposure or starvation because their crops failed. We had this terrible cooling period.

Cores of ice from Greenland and the Himalayas prove that carbon dioxide levels on earth have varied radically over time. Curiously one peak period of atmospheric carbon dioxide corresponds to the period of the little ice age.

How much time do I have left, Mr. Speaker?

[Supply, November 22nd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I will have to ask the hon. member what he means because I did not follow the gist of his question. If what he meant was do I think the same rules should apply to people in trades, people who have professions and people in business, the answer is yes. Anyone who comes here draws the same salary while here. Anyone who comes here would be in the same position to contribute to his or her own personal RRSP to the same degree. Therefore I see no relevance to what a person's background might have been.

[Supply, November 22nd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I have made the same observations as the hon. member. This is almost a non-subject in the media. I do not know why. People in the ridings certainly think this issue is important. They think it is important to the extent that it tends to override a lot of major national issues.

When talking to somebody, as soon as the words "politics" or "politician" are mentioned they do not come at you about the national debt or the justice system. The first thing they come at you with is the pensions. Then they get into the big issues, the justice system, the national debt, and so on. The thing that grates them, that burr under every person's saddle from sea unto shining sea is this disgusting rip-off pension plan.

[Supply, November 22nd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, in response to the hon. member's question, no I have not. I serve on other committees. No one can be everywhere on every subject. If the hon. member would care to take my place on the natural resources committee then I will take hers on the finance committee. How is that for satisfaction?

[Supply, November 22nd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, from time to time, including about 15 minutes ago, I have heard apologists for the MPs' gold-plated

pension plan say that we need something like this to attract "good people" to Ottawa.

I doubt very many members would admit that they were motivated to come here in order to rip off their fellow countrymen. I am sure that if the question were placed on an individual basis, the terms most often heard would be civic responsibility or love of country.

Unfortunately, anyone who favours this outrageous dip into the public trough is by definition suspect, and those members opposite who defend the system are dirtying the reputations of all of us by their actions. Everyone in this place is touched by this national scandal, regardless of his or her personal stand on the matter.

A little over a year ago when I made my little pilgrimage across Wellington Street to sign on at pay and services, I also signed a simple, hand written document regarding the pension. It said, in part: "I have no wish to receive nor will I accept any benefits". My contributions to the plan are still being deducted at source because the Prime Minister, in spite of his repeated hollow assurances that opting out will be permitted, has declined to act because he did not want to embarrass or inconvenience the 52 cochons de lait who made their way to the trough yesterday.

Why did I and about a dozen others, of whom I am aware, make that particular form of protest? I certainly did not do it because I do not like money. I am not a hair-shirted masochist and I am definitely not well-to-do. I did it because my mother taught me not to steal.

I submit that an elected body in control of its own finances which concocts a scheme through which its members can collect six or seven taxpayer dollars for every dollar that they contribute is involved in something for which an ordinary Bay Street promoter would be sent to prison.

The suggestion that to attract quality MPs they must be bribed with a golden parachute is patronizing and insulting. Some of our greatest parliamentarians, besides working virtually ex gratia, had to return to their day jobs when they retired or were defeated. They knew what to expect when they ran for office. They did not sit back and say: "Oh dear me, no, I could never run for office. I need security".

People with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads would be precisely the sort of people we would not want in this place. Can anyone imagine John Diefenbaker or Stanley Knowles, when contemplating their first run for office saying: "What's in it for me?"

The non-pension generations forged a nation. They guided Canada through depressions and two world wars and then like other citizens they relied partly on personal savings and partly on the professions, trades or businesses to which they returned. Does anyone seriously contend that they were inferior to the current crop of legislators, that they were less worthy than members of the Bloc who will receive pensions for trying to destroy the country?

At this point I must confess I am going to get a little off track from some of my colleagues. I support this motion because the adoption would lead to major improvements in the pension scheme. However, if I had my druthers there would be no MP pension scheme at all. Since RRSPs became available, people willing to save diligently have been able to build up modest retirement nest eggs.

In my own case, because I am forced to contribute my $1 in $6 to this goody bag, I have to stop adding to my RRSP. Surely MPs with annual salaries and benefits equivalent to about $100,000 in the real world should have enough wit to be able to manage an honest retirement package. I should be allowed to do so.

We are entrusted with running a country, or at least that is the theory around here. Are we so dependent and ineffectual that we cannot provide for our own old age without participating in a scam?

In conclusion, in addition to putting a lid on the trough, existing pensions should be retroactively adjusted in the interest of fairness. I do not suggest that anyone be forced to make restitution on money already received, but anyone already drawing a pension should be cut off until he or she reaches age 65. At 65, the monthly payments should be adjusted to reflect a fair return on actual contributions and nothing more.

In this country retroactive legislation to relieve governments of contractual obligations is nothing new. The only novelty in my proposal is that it would be aimed at politicians instead of the public. Saskatchewan did retroactive financial legislation with the GRIP. Alberta did it in order to tear up royalty agreements. This 35th Parliament has already done it once and would have done it twice if the sleepy folks in the other place had not woken up and intervened.

Remember I am not, I repeat not suggesting that MP pensioners be deprived of a fair return on investment. I am suggesting that they be prohibited from further looting the public treasury.

The person I replaced here was an ineffective and rarely heard backbencher. He served nine years in this place. He is 53 years old and is currently raking in $27,000 a year to augment his income as a practising lawyer. If he lives to age 75 he will have collected over a million dollars. During the 1993 election campaign he made it clear that he would take every nickel that was on the table. That might be one of the reasons he came within 100 votes of losing his deposit. People opposite who are so intent on getting their snouts filled should perhaps bear that

little anecdote in mind when they hear the Prime Minister shouting: "Soo-oo-ey".

[Department Of Natural Resources Act, November 21st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry to hold up the business of the House with my questions, but it is nice to know where one is going.

With respect to Motion No. 4, the principle that the federal government does not interfere in matters under provincial jurisdiction without first gaining the co-operation of the provinces is a well-established Canadian custom.

I do not see any harm in spelling this out by insisting on the word "shall" in paragraph (1)(a). It appears to belabour the obvious but since the motion will be voted on with Motion No. 6, in order to support Motion No. 6, I will support Motion No. 4.

Motion No. 6 is an amendment that would restrain the federal government from entering into forest protection and management agreements with private entities. I hope the object of this amendment, although the mover did not spell it out, would be to restrain federal porkbarrelling. Certainly it will have that effect if passed. Therefore we support the motion.

The object of Motion No. 5 seems to be to prevent the federal government from acting on purely technical matters without a unanimous request by the provinces. In a federal state this is absurd. The 10 provinces of Canada can never agree on anything. We are not talking about policy. We are talking about simple technical decisions.

An excellent case can be made for reduced federal government in technical activities under provincial jurisdiction but this is a matter of policy. It requires no changes to the act. It only requires a change to the government.

Therefore I will have to oppose Motion No. 5 because it is so couched that it would hamstring or put into a straitjacket the functioning of this department.