John English

[Prince Edward Island Fixed Link, February 15th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I am speaking today in support of this resolution not because I am following the party line. However I listened with great interest to the remarks of my colleagues. It is an indication our party is willing to accept a diversity of viewpoint. I am not affected in my decision because I sit beside the hon. member for Halifax and the hon. member for Egmont who are speaking strongly in support of the resolution.

What we have heard today in the debate reflects a very good argument for the fixed link and for the constitutional amendment. In terms of jobs we have heard that the proposal will create 5,300 jobs over a period of three years. Moreover, we have heard that 70 per cent of procurement requirements will be filled in Atlantic Canada.

We have also heard that tourism will be increased-and I say in respect to my colleague from Davenport that tourism should be considered in this respect-by about 30 per cent during the period of the bridge construction and about 25 per cent thereafter. This is a significant economic stimulus for a province and an area which has suffered greatly in the past decades.

One of the members opposite mentioned that the project was supported by a plebiscite in 1988, six years ago. We have also heard requests for consultation. Surely six years and 80 public meetings is adequate consultation.

We heard other members from Prince Edward Island, including the member for Egmont, say there are waiting times of three to five hours for the ferries. It affects transportation to the island. We also heard the hon. member for Halifax describe how she had to party for seven hours on a ferry that could not get across the water.

These are all impressive arguments which have convinced me without question that this proposition should be supported.

I come from the province of Ontario as do many other members on this side. My province through its support of the general revenue will support this project. I have heard several comments today which made me think that in this kind of basic proposition where we share responsibilities, it is not always recognized.

Someone suggested this particular project affected all parts of Canada because of its need for constitutional amendment and the general revenues of Canada would be used and therefore it should be subject to the interests of all of Canada. That member who comes from the province of British Columbia should recall there have been many items of this kind in the past, including a case in the province of British Columbia.

When British Columbia entered Confederation there was an agreement in the terms of union for British Columbia that a railway would be built with subsidies amounting to $50 million, enormous sums at that time equal to the total general revenue of Canada. That is in the Constitution, just of course as the ferries were in 1873.

We have an obligation along these same lines. When a constitutional amendment which so clearly affects a single province or two provinces in this case, for the sake of the efficiency of the Constitution such bilateral amendments should proceed without requiring even more protracted consultation or negotiation in the constitutional realm.

The people of Prince Edward Island have waited a long time for a bridge. We heard from one hon. member earlier that it was over 100 years ago in the 1880s when a fixed link of a certain kind was first proposed. It was again proposed in the 1950s and 1960s. In those cases it did not come to fruition. Many other

things did in that period, including the CPR and the transcontinental railways. It would seem they were not in the best interests of Prince Edward Island.

If Prince Edward Island has 138,000 people as someone referred to earlier, that is a population larger than that of the province of Saskatchewan or part of the Northwest Territories when the commitment was made to build the CPR or the Grand Trunk Pacific or other railways.

I do not think it stands simply because the population is of the order of 130,000 that this is an enclave and that long term commitments this country has made to that wonderful island should not be honoured in the most modern ways possible. It seems to me this is a very modern way of recognizing the commitment we made to maintain a communication-transportation link with Prince Edward Island.

This morning I toured the Department of External Affairs and saw the communications system it is replacing at very great cost. I was reminded by the person leading the tour that this simply has to be done. It is essential because the link with the rest of the world has to be as modern as possible. Here too we have no choice. Indeed we have a greater obligation, a moral obligation to go through with this project.

In summary this fixed link will provide a stimulus to the economy of the province that currently requires the largest amount of federal government subsidy per capita. It will create jobs. It will give an economic boost in procurement, in direct jobs and in long term tourism jobs.

We all know about Prince Edward Island from Anne of Green Gables. All of us should have the benefit of visiting that wonderful and unique part of Canada. In the case of tourism this country is running a deficit on the current account of about $10 billion. This is an extraordinarily large deficit, one that costs us enormously over the long term. Prince Edward Island is one part of Canada where tourism has been successful. With this bridge it will be even more successful.

For that reason I believe the project taken in the longest term-and here I dissent from the view of my colleague from Davenport-is economically sensible and feasible. The benefits will be indirect and long term but they are important to the people of Prince Edward Island.

As some hon. members have pointed out, the subsidy will be larger than the current one, but it would be no more than the cost of replacing the ferries.

Finally, it is important to carry out the long term commitments that have been made to Prince Edward Island to link that part of Canada with this part in the most modern and efficient way possible. It seems to me this proposal meets those obligations.

[Supply, February 10th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, there is one progress report already which the member has probably seen. It was given to some members of your party a couple of days ago. Two members of your party asked for that report.

The second report is being prepared now. It has been slowed down by the election and the events in between. It is in almost final draft form, but I can check that. It is one that compares what we are doing with what is being done in other countries. I refer the member of course to the Auditor General's comments which make those comparisons as well.

In terms of the whole business of renewing the public service and looking at these questions, it is being given active consideration.

[Supply, February 10th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the motion we are discussing today reflects the fact that many Canadians are concerned that governments are inefficient, unresponsive and too costly.

It is not simply Canadians who are concerned. Australians, Britons, Americans and Germans are now looking at government and those same kinds of complaints.

This government has decided in light of these concerns that the time has come for decisive action. In the speech from the throne it was said it will be the policy of the government to seek to clarify the federal government's responsibilities in relation to other orders of government, to eliminate overlap and duplication and to find better ways to provide services so that they represent the best value for taxpayers' dollars and respond to the real needs of people.

At the first minister's meeting on December 21, 1993 the first ministers agreed to give priority to efforts to improve the efficiency of the federation. In this regard, in responding to comments made earlier by the member for Fraser Valley East, PS 2000 to which he referred has in fact one progress report and another progress report is being prepared. The responsibility for renewal of the public service, as he indicated, is the responsibility of the government and of course the members of the House. I welcome his remark that he does believe that civil servants acting effectively can carry out the mandate under PS 2000 with the direction of course being given by the government.

The shared commitment to change which emerged from the first ministers meeting is evidence of a flexible adaptable federal system, one that is based on sound principles and offers both long-term stability and the capacity to evolve. That evolution can come through reasoned discussion as needs and priorities change.

To meet these ends the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs has written to the premiers and to territorial government leaders to launch the process of eliminating overlap and duplication as is suggested in the motion today. The overlap, duplication and delivery of federal and provincial government programs and services is of major importance to this government.

The process being undertaken aims to, first, clarify federal-provincial roles and responsibilities to ensure that limited public resources are used to provide necessary services in an efficient way; second, to ensure public service activities facilitate economic investment and growth; and, third, to redesign programs and services to achieve more efficient delivery and greater client orientation. This morning the member for Ottawa West talked in a very fascinating way about changes that are coming in the area of telecommunications that offers such prospects as 24-hour service.

In implementing this process the government will, one, establish constructive partnerships with provincial governments; two, use federal-provincial administrative agreements to provide Canadians with efficient responsive programs and services; and, three, utilize both bilateral and multilateral negotiations to obtain timely results and ensure maximum flexibility. Those negotiations are going on constantly. Finally, we work to ensure that the negotiation process is transparent to all participants; that is, based on equality of treatment and sound public policy objectives.

The government then is entering this process with an open mind and is prepared to be flexible in accommodating provincial needs and priorities.

We recognize that in many areas provinces have developed the best practices and that the federal government has much to learn from them and we are following in our negotiations with the provinces a path where we are looking at their programs to consider which are most effective in that regard.

Therefore we are prepared to consider, one, what level of government is best suited to delivering a certain service or program. As I said before, we are open-minded in this regard. We are furthermore considering how to make policies and programs more effective and affordable and more accessible to clients. As the minister said earlier today, the goal is service enhancement above all else.

In terms of the flexibility about which I spoke earlier we want to be flexible in developing common objectives and in choosing issues for negotiations. These will be done item by item, province by province, department by department. We will conduct negotiations bilaterally if necessary and multilaterally if it is possible, again depending upon particular needs.

We will where possible use pilot projects such as the New Brunswick works project which was referred to earlier by the member for Peterborough. That project offers real hope we believe in the area of employment training and social services reform.

All of these initiatives we believe demonstrate important features of our federation, ones that are the envy of many other nations. It is especially gratifying in an age where disputes between governments are an every day occurrence that our leaders, provincial and federal, have agreed to set aside differences and search together for solutions that are in the best interest of the public.

In that regard, Mr. Bruce Doern, a student of governmental reform in England, Australia, New Zealand and most recently Canada, has written about the experience over the last two decades and I would like to bring attention to his comments:

What the full experience of the last two decades perhaps shows most of all is the need to reduce ideological blinkers and be much more selective about which functional and organizational aspects of government are efficiency and democracy enhancing-and which are reducing.

A thinking view of the State is far more important to Canadians than an ideological one that simply bashes bureaucracy and government or attacks market-based approaches as a form of ritual sport.

It is not a time for ritual sports of that type, it is a time to work together in service enhancement and making government work.

In terms of the PS 2000 report, a progress report as I have said is being produced. We are comparing what is being done here as the Auditor General did in his report. We find that in many ways we have not kept up. It is true the previous government did not. However in comparing our progress with that of the United States, in fact in the terms of the re-invent government agenda of Vice President Gore, one finds in that agenda that we have done many of the things he is calling for in the United States.

The federal government views the reduction of overlap and duplication as called for in this motion as a win-win situation for governments and for taxpayers. It will render programs more affordable and thus sustainable over time while providing Canadians with the best service possible within the limits of available resources.

[Social Security System, February 3rd, 1994]

The hon. member for Peterborough is a professor at Trent University.

The University of Waterloo has pioneered co-op education in Canada and has done so so successfully that it far out-ranks Trent University in the rankings every year in Maclean's . The member for Port Moody-Coquitlam went through this co-op program, one which I know very well because I taught there for 20 years myself. In that co-op program she benefited enormously from the support of the government. That co-op program, which is being copied by many universities throughout Canada, is an excellent example of what business, government and educators can do together.

The initial idea for the program came from the business community in the area as did the idea for the university. The business people came to educators and said: "Let us work together to make sure that the transition from the educational place to the work place is made easier, that students have work experience and they can carry that experience further".

The result has been a much higher degree of success in getting jobs on the part of graduates. There has been a lot of satisfaction, as the hon. member herself said. The program has worked very effectively. It is a program that worked not because of private initiative, but because a government worked with business and educators to create a coherent system of training and education.

In the Waterloo area, the example of the University of Waterloo has been followed by Sir Wilfrid Laurier University and also by our secondary school boards, particularly the Waterloo Catholic Board of Education. I have worked with that board myself in working out training programs for students to enable them to move from the high schools and universities into the work place. Students who are within those programs and who

have a more direct experience in the work place find the transition to higher education and to work much easier.

The difficulty we find is that so many training programs are just not working in the way we had hoped. That is why we are calling for a restructuring. This is most relevant of course to any discussion on human resources development.

In a recent study done by the Canadian Guidance and Counselling Foundation, 73.9 per cent of the community employment agencies, 72.4 per cent of Canada employment centres and 45.2 per cent of counselling services in colleges and CEGEPs report that they turn clients away because they do not meet funding criteria. This is simply not good enough. The costs are high.

The human costs of not watching what happens with training at the lowest level, at the intermediate level and at the post-secondary level are very high for our society.

As an educator, I personally feel-and the hon. member for St. Boniface has written some excellent pieces on this subject-that we need to restructure our training programs in the broadest possible way. I would echo the thoughts of the member for St. Boniface in suggesting that we all share these problems together. Training and education in this country is very costly. When we compare the international rate of spending on education we find that Canada, a very wealthy nation, spends a percentage of GNP that is higher than almost any other nation. If we are not the highest we are certainly close to it. All of us are aware that we could spend this much better.

Our responsibility as members of this House, of all parties, is to work together to improve this very crucial sector of Canadian society. In doing so we will start to recreate that sense of initiative among younger people and that sense of purpose that is so lacking now.

I think we can work together and we would achieve so much for this great country if we would do so.

[Social Security System, February 3rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I had not expected to participate in this debate today, but I welcome this opportunity to speak in this debate on human resources development.

What we have heard today are many excellent presentations such as the presentation by the hon. member for Hamilton-Wentworth which reminded us that there are many organizations in Canada that are made up of relatively wealthy individuals who receive grants and awards. Perhaps those organizations, just as members of Parliament, just as many other Canadians who have more, should think about giving up their privileges, opportunities and grants to help those who have less. It is certainly something worth considering.

I want to say in response to a comment made by the member of the Bloc Quebecois earlier that there are reform Liberals and there are social democratic Liberals, that in fact all Liberals in this party today, I am certain, are committed to Canada's social welfare program. Moreover all of them like myself regard the development of Canada's social welfare program as one of the greatest accomplishments of Canadian liberalism and the Canadian Liberal Party.

There have been several interesting observations and very fine speeches by members of the Reform Party. One speaker alluded earlier to the example of Great Britain and compared it to the kinds of things that are happening in Canada today and to what has been called by others the British disease. We have heard that kind of term, not simply from Mrs. Thatcher, but from others. I think it is one of those terrible simplifications that obscures a broader truth.

If we look at western Europe since 1945 what we find is that many of the countries that have had the highest growth rates have been countries where government participation in the economy is higher than it was in Great Britain. In fact if we look at government participation in the economy since 1945 the western economies, many of them built up from the ruins of the wartime period, are those which have spent more on social welfare and have done better in terms of economic growth.

It may be a surprise to learn it, but between 1950 and 1990 the country that had the fastest rate of economic growth in Europe of the major nations was Italy, a country that had a high degree of spending on social welfare. Germany is another example.

Second, in looking at British society, those who have looked most closely and most recently, including Mrs. Thatcher's supporters, have said that the difficulty with Great Britain is not so much the fact that Great Britain spent more on social welfare, not so much that it tried to develop strong programs to help the poorest in society, but rather because Britain failed so badly in training and education.

Maurice Cowling, one of Mrs. Thatcher's academic supporters, has written a book about British society. What he points out is that Britain has failed very badly in the area of training and education while other countries in continental Europe have done so much better. I think that bears a lesson for us.

In Canada we too have spent a lot of money on education and training. The hon. member for Port Moody-Coquitlam, who spoke earlier today, talked about this question in her address. She talked about the need for improvement in training and suggested that training could be done best by the private sector.

I am pleased to report that the hon. member for Port Moody-Coquitlam is a graduate of the University of Waterloo.

[Foreign Affairs, January 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I represent the constituency of Kitchener, an urban southwestern Ontario riding that possesses, like Canada itself, a diversity of industry and people.

Like so many constituencies in this country it has been profoundly affected by events in Bosnia, the former Yugoslavia, today and was affected also in the past. In the summer of 1914 a shot was fired in Sarajevo and World War I began. Two years later in 1916 Berlin, Ontario, which was called Canada's German capital became Kitchener and Kitchener changed profoundly after that date. After 1945 Kitchener riding received thousands of immigrants and refugees from what was Yugoslavia.

I take these examples to illustrate that nearly all Canadians were affected by those two terrible wars and those two terrible wars were concentrated in the area where we are looking at such carnage today.

I think everyone in Canada took the same lesson from World War I or World War II and that was the notion that Canada's foreign and defence policy should have as its fundamental principle the notion that its national interest was best served by the construction of an international order based on law and strong multilateral institutions.

From that commitment came Canada's major contribution to the world after 1945. This period which is known as Canada's golden age of diplomacy was marked by a strong Canadian commitment to the United Nations, and a belief that the cold war had created a special middle power role for Canada. Of course the best example of this was the role of Lester Pearson in the Suez crisis of 1956.

It is often said that Pearson invented peacekeeping in 1956 but I think it is more properly said that he codified the procedures of peacemaking. The concept was simple and has been extraordinarily useful not simply for Canada and the United Nations but for the interests of world security.

It was held by Pearson at that point that the UN should use the armed forces of nations that were not major powers and those nations should supervise peace settlements. Furthermore such supervision should be carried out with the consent of and through continuous negotiations with the parties in the dispute. This was a central character of peacemaking as it was defined in 1956-1957.

In fact Pearson was disappointed with the outcome of the negotiations in 1956 because there were limits on what Israel

and Egypt would accept. He had wanted more carefully defined terms and conditions but he was unable to convince others, including the Secretary General at the time, that these arguments had validity.

Ten years later, however, in 1967 we saw the validity of his arguments when the United Nations emergency force was forced to withdraw when the agreement made among Egypt, Israel and the United Nations did not hold.

Canadians at the time who would express great pride in our peacemaking participation and tradition were bitterly disappointed and many then began to speak about Canada no longer being the helpful fixer, no longer going out and serving in peacekeeping missions.

After the early successes, as in the Middle East, there had been a series of failures. It was not simply the United Nations emergency force in 1967 but also failures in Congo and to some extent a failure in Cyprus. We hear such sentiments today in similar circumstances and we need to remind ourselves that we faced such challenges to our peacekeeping commitment before.

In the Saturday edition of the Kitchener-Waterloo Record Pam Goebel, a Kitchener native and a reserve army captain who had recently returned from Bosnia, described our work in these terms: ``It is a waste of soldiers' lives, a waste of taxpayers' money. Basically the soldiers feel they are keeping someone alive today so they can be killed tomorrow''.

Captain Goebel's reaction is understandable and seems to be shared by many other Canadians. Bosnia has been an enormous tragedy not only for its own people but also for the United Nations, for NATO, and for us.

What happened with the end of the cold war is that the original concept of peacekeeping has been stretched far beyond its original concept and limits. First, the number of operations is so much larger than it was before. In fact, there has been, as we heard earlier today, as many UN peacekeeping operations after 1989 than in the previous 43 years of the United Nations. Most of these have been successful, a few have not.

Second, it has become clearer, as preceding members have suggested, that the United Nations is unable to meet the demands either physically, conceptually or financially.

Third, and I think this is Canada's major difficulty with the new kind of peacekeeping, peacekeeping is no longer a middle power phenomenon. It is forgotten that in 1956 the peacekeepers who wanted to be there were the British and the French, who after all were the invading armies. It was Pearson's job to tell the British and the French that peacekeeping was not a job for great powers or for super powers, it had to be a job for middle powers. That definition held for many years. But after 1989 and the end of the tensions of the cold war, suddenly the question has to be asked: why are the great powers not there? Britain and France are, but of course Russia and the United States remain outside.

All of these factors deeply influence our position in peacekeeping operations, but I do not think they change the basic precepts. We have participated in every peacekeeping operation but I do not think we can do so in the future. Our resources are limited, the missions are too many.

As we have heard earlier from several speakers, the weakness of the existing UN structure suggests that it would be better for Canada to concentrate on efforts at preventive diplomacy rather than on peacekeeping itself. In the last few years I think it is fair to say that peacekeeping has dominated too much of our foreign policy agenda.

Our skills and knowledge in this country are not simply military. Lester Pearson, after all, the father of peacekeeping, was a poor soldier but an outstanding diplomat.

We should keep in mind that in Bosnia the mistakes that have been made were not made in Sarajevo but rather in New York and Washington and other European capitals.

Canada at one time last year accounted for approximately 10 per cent of the world's peacekeepers, even though our UN assessment was roughly 3 per cent. The United States, whose assessment is 25 per cent, arguably too high, had no soldiers participating under UN command in peacekeeping operations.

We should impress upon the Americans the importance of accepting their responsibilities. It is not enough to issue idle threats of air strikes and pull back from the kinds of commitments to multilateralism that we heard the United States talking about two or three years ago. Indeed there are troubling signs in the United States that recent international events are leading to a resurgence of unilateralism and even isolationalism. That would be a tragedy for the world and especially, I think, for Canada.

What then should we consider doing about Bosnia? We should recognize, above all, that we must do everything possible, politically and diplomatically, to bring an end to this terrible war. However we should not become embittered with the United Nations or relax our involvement with it.

I would argue, as several other speakers have, that we should in fact devote more effort to strengthening that institution. It is not so much the United Nations that has failed but rather the European nations who failed to take responsibility as a regional entity with an event that has such terrible consequences in their own back yard.

I also think that we should, as much as possible, try to make peacekeeping less of a national affair where individual military officers, whether Italian, Canadian or French, are identified as national officers rather than officers serving under the UN command. I think the previous government responded too

quickly to the glamour of peacekeeping and did not recognize the dangers that are so clear today.

[Speech From The Throne, January 21st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the member for Simcoe Centre for his excellent address. Like him when I campaigned in my constituency I did hear those kinds of remarks about politicians.

However, there is a larger problem with the question of representation that he is talking about. In the House of Commons over the last few days we saw the example of a question from a constituent that was sent in to the hon. member for Calgary Southwest. This person was a doctor. It seems this method of gaining public opinion, replying on a fax which you pay for and secretaries in some cases when you can afford it, illustrates the kinds of difficulties faced with making democracy more representative. The previous speaker from the Reform Party related the same difficulties.

We have heard questions from the Reform Party about reform of RRSPs. I recall reading recently in the newspaper that only four out of ten Canadians use RRSPs and there is certainly a role for government if that is the case. Only about 20 per cent of Canadians make the maximum contribution allowance to RRSPs.

When I was canvassing in my constituency I encountered people who were in opposition to the gun control legislation. I make these comments with respect because it is a broader question for all of us who are seeking to represent our constituents. These people said they were joining the Reform Party because they were told to do so by their local executive. All of these things strike me as a real problem with the member's definition of what representative democracy is. I believe it was the Prime Minister who said that you are the grandchildren of

the Social Credit movement. The Social Credit movement raised these questions in the province of Alberta many years ago and it did not follow through with them despite three decades of government.

How can you ensure that those who are not wealthy and those who do not represent special interests and those who do not have access to fax machines can be heard as well as the people we have heard from before.

[Speech From The Throne, January 21st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I too would like to express my congratulations to the member on his address.

I was particularly interested to hear his references to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. They were of particular interest to me because I had a grant from the council that I had to give up when I joined this Chamber. I was the first person to do so since the member for Winnipeg South Centre gave his up in 1974. Also the remarks about Madam Leduc were appropriate. She has been an excellent leader of that organization.

In addition to the possibility of support from the SSHRC in the province of Quebec there is the possibility of support from the provincial government which I did not have in the province of Ontario. In other words, social scientists in Quebec have more substantial opportunities for funding for their social science research than do social scientists in Ontario.

Second, having served on juries for the SSHRC, I recall that the province of Quebec received a proportion that was higher than the portion of its university population. In terms of the member's larger remarks about sovereignty, in considering these questions he should recognize that over the past 25 or 30 years these councils have developed social science research. The province of Quebec has had an extraordinary amount of research supported by the SSHRC and the federal government. Social science research in the province of Quebec has benefited admirably by this contribution. In a sovereign Quebec it would be lost.