Mr. Speaker, after reading the Bloc Quebecois motion, I have more questions than anything else. The motion reads as follows:
That this House condemn the government for its unacceptable delays in developing and implementing a genuine strategy for the conversion of defence industries-
This certainly raises questions. I am pleased to say first of all that some of my questions were answered by the first speaker, the Bloc critic, and also by the Minister of Industry.
Before listening to this morning's speech, I had decided that I should speak for the motion for one part and against it for another, based largely on the interpretation of certain key words in the motion.
In listening to the first speaker, the member for Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, some of the answers came clear to me. One was that first of all he was making a very Bloc Quebecois statement, one that is enshrouded a little in mystery. In fact, it was partly brought out by the Minister of Industry saying: "Why are they talking about this defence industry when their long term motivation is to withdraw and perhaps have no armed forces at all". That part of it is still a bit of a mystery to me.
I noted also that the speaker talked really only about Quebec. He did mention regionalism. I think regionalism is a very great consideration to all Canadians partly because we do not see sufficient consideration on the part of the government about regionalization or the necessity for developing different regions. We see a total concentration, it seems to me, on one at a time and giving way to political considerations rather than human or industrial ones.
The main question I had in listening to the Bloc spokesman was what is the motivation behind the motion. I think that came very clear that the motivation was to get money for industry in Montreal. I do not think that is sufficient. Perhaps it needs money. Perhaps it needs help. Perhaps it needs government leadership. However, to just say: "Let's have more money for Montreal or for Quebec" is not acceptable. It should be put in the context of what is needed in the rest of the country.
I heard the statement by the Minister of Industry in response. I have to say that the thrust of his statement was good. I did agree with a good part of what he said. He said there should be no question of just giving cheques to industry, that industry must take the initiative itself.
I would put a little caveat in here in saying that the government must show some leadership for industry, but the minister said it correctly in saying that the defence market has to take care of its own. It has to be market driven and, he said very clearly, there must be no major subsidies or bailouts. I could not agree more with what the minister says in that regard. He wound up in effect saying the whole process must be industry led. I agree with that also.
Having in a cursory manner described what I heard from both of these presentations on the part of the Bloc and on the part of the government, I have to admit that my own thought processes on this process were much more objective. I am looking at the context of the world situation, of Canada's foreign policy, Canada's defence policy and what industry has to do within that whole milieu.
Let us see how objective I am.
The motion introduced by the Bloc Quebecois refers to unacceptable delays in developing a genuine strategy.
My comment on that is that some delay is inevitable in that it must await the evolution of foreign policy and defence policy. That review is under way now. We will not see anything until the end of September. There is an inevitable delay there.
Having said that I have to criticize the government for some of its dealings with defence policy. For example, that it did a whole base closure program before the defence review was done.
That does not make good sense to me. I know the government was under the gun to save money. I agree with the government and compliment it in the sense that it has allowed the Department of National Defence to rationalize its own infrastructure. The government did well in that regard, but there is a certain backwardness to putting the closures ahead of the defence review.
Coming back to the motion, let us talk about the development of policy. Here the point to be underlined I would think is that government leadership is required. The government should be talking very seriously with industry, not but bailing it out but saying here is what we foresee, here is what is falling out so far from the defence review, which incidentally I understand is being done in a pretty non-partisan way by the special joint committee on that and good for them.
The government nevertheless can take some leadership here. It should be talking with industry, perhaps it is but we do not know about it, saying here is what we see in the medium term and the long term. Let us look ahead 5 years, 10 years, 15 years and let us build on the strengths of Canadian industry today as demonstrated in the field of electronics, communications, extrasensory perception-not ESP, sorry-but the remote sensing as practised by and developed by firms like MacDonald Dettwiler of Richmond. These are the areas where Canada is a leader. Government I think should be sitting down with industry and saying, fine, how can we exploit the advantages that we have in this country in these industries to give us a long term benefit of employment.
While at it the government should make a firm resolve to have no political patronage or interference once the policy has been decided. If you look back over a number of governments, Mr. Speaker, that is precisely what you will find. When the Bloc talks about contracts for Quebec, what I have seen from a western point of view is the scandalous putting aside the contract of Bristol Aircraft of Winnipeg on the F-18 maintenance and giving it through pure political patronage to Canadair in Montreal.
That sort of thing has to stop. I hope the government will take a lesson from the past and say yes, it is resolved to do that.
In the development of policy I would urge the government to do a continuous strategic review of our defence policy, update it from year to year. The government should not leave it hanging in the balance for five years at a time and then say, now we must do a review. It should do a continuous, ongoing strategic policy reassessment year by year so that we do not have to make these sudden shifts, some of which of course affect industry. If industry cannot see what the long term prospect is and be able to adjust year by year to smooth things out, it does not know where it is.
The final point in the development of policy is that I would encourage the government to please get more public input. The public of Canada is very supportive of defence and the armed forces in time of war, but it is not that supportive as it is uninformed during most of peace time. Therefore I would encourage the government please to get the public more involved in the review of policy.
We have been talking about developing policy. In implementing this policy the emphasis must be on industry rather than government. Again I take the words of the Minister of Industry and emphasize them.
Government must emphasize research and development. It has a role to play. We have a fairly sizeable research and development expense year by year in national defence. I suggest that it should be more tightly attuned to what is going on in industry to give us more bang for the buck.
I agree with the motion when it calls for more jobs in high tech. That is the direction in which we must be going. Look at what has happened in the past because of government policy. Look at the Avro Arrow. The Avro Arrow has been talked to death over the years but I would like to bring it back as a reminder. It had wonderful potential for Canadian industry but it was chopped and thousands of jobs were lost because of a political decision. That sort of thing should not happen.
Closer to our time, perhaps not as severe but nevertheless of high impact is the EH-101 helicopter decision. I understand clearly that the government of the day, the Liberal Party, as part of its election campaign, said that it would cancel the contract. It stuck to its promise. By sticking to its promise, it hurt the country and it hurt industry. I am not sage enough to say how the government could have got around breaking its promise but if it had had an all party review of that project, perhaps that would have given them the answer.
The predicament the government got itself into by cancelling the EH-101 contract is that it says: "Fine, we are probably liable to $250 million in cancellation charges" but the word is that perhaps those cancellation charges will be as high as $1 billion. Whatever the figure is, we have nothing for our money
and yet we still are going to have to pay out hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars to acquire a replacement helicopter.
The Bloc is talking about good paying jobs and high technology and they were there with the EH-101 contract. Ten per cent of the manufacturing of every helicopter produced worldwide would have been done in Canada. That would have meant a lot of jobs and a lot of money.
People will say that we are at peace. We are not at peace and I will come to that later. I remind members that some of the applications of this helicopter are peaceful as well as warlike. It had a naval version, a transport version and a passenger version and I think we are going to see more of this helicopter in the future.
I have heard estimates there is a market for 800 such helicopters. More recently I heard that the U.S. marine corps is thinking of buying 500. Think of the market that Canada has lost. Think of the jobs. Think of the high tech job creation we have lost by putting that behind us.
Let us talk generally about the defence industry. When anyone says defence industry it sparks emotion. It sparks emotion on the part of the general public which says it does not want a military industrial complex. I agree with the public that we do not want a military industrial complex that drives the government, such as we saw in the former United States model. We do not need that in Canada.
At the same time, however, we must be realistic and recognize that there is a defence industry. It will continue, we can be a contributor, and government should take its leadership role in asking industry what it can do best and how can government best encourage it without necessarily giving them dollops of money.
The idealism that gets involved, the exaggeration that is involved when one says defence industry, should really be moderated in Canada. It is too much of an extreme view when we hear people saying: "Oh, you can't even say the word defence industry because it is bad". The fact is there is a positive role for the defence industry, not just in employment but in creating new products for the good of all people. The government's role vis-à-vis the defence industry must be one of preserving a minimum base for that industry throughout the years ahead.
In this connection there is an organization called the Canadian Defence Preparedness Association, which I understand gave testimony to the joint committee in the last day or two. It has a real role to play with the government. Its objectives, if I may read it, are "to foster an industrial framework to achieve both the sustainment of forces in being and a modest mobilization capacity in times of conflict." I think that is a worthy objective.
What government can do in conjunction with a group like the Defence Preparedness Association and other defence minded groups is to look ahead and ask how they may co-operate. Can we have the production of aircraft, for example, that are stressed so as to land on rough terrain but have an application, a use, in time of peace but are available to the government, to the Canadian forces in time of emergency?
The answer, if the government looks long term, is yes we can have things like that. Can we have, for example, roll on roll off ferries that are in day to day use, let us say with B.C. Ferry Corporation in British Columbia, subsidized to a degree by the Canadian government? If we can have these used in peacetime but also available in time of emergency, we have something that is a good combination for peace and war, if you will.
There are other things that the government can do in its leadership role vis-à-vis organizations such as the Defence Preparedness Association. One such is legislation. It should be listening to these organizations and asking how we can best support the militia or members of the militia by ensuring that they have a job once they come back from either peacekeeping operations or militia training. Things of that order can be done.
Implicit in the Bloc motion, or at least my interpretation of it, is that we are now in a time of peace. If that is so, I have to say we are not there yet. You simply have to look at Rwanda, the situation in Somalia and the situation in the former Yugoslavia. You can look anywhere in the world and if there is no trouble there right now, you can see it coming in the future.
In summary, there is good and bad to be said about this motion. I was cheered by the reply of the Minister of Industry. I think the government is going in the right direction. However, government can do much more in the planning sphere to create jobs and to make better life for us all.
