Ken Epp

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, April 10th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, agriculture is a tremendously important issue. After almost 13 years of Liberal dithering on this file, farmers have struggled and suffered. There is no doubt that there has to be a major shift in the kinds of policies that we have affecting the agriculture and the agrifood community.

The member asked why agriculture was not in the throne speech. I would like to point out the fact that there is a whole paragraph on agriculture in the throne speech, which is about 150 times as much as there was in the last throne speech delivered by the Liberals.

I think that under the Conservative government there will be a major shift and improvement for the agriculture community. I look forward to the fact that our new and energetic agriculture minister will actually deliver. We have already done that, as is known. The Liberals thrived on announcements. They would announce and announce and re-announce but never deliver. In our first few weeks of office our agriculture minister actually--

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, April 10th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite asked why this or that is not in the throne speech. Our leader and our government chose to have a throne speech that was very direct and focused on the primary issues. When it comes to gun control and addressing the issues of crime, the gun registry is but one part of it. I think we ought to remember that.

With respect to the criminal use of guns, it is well recognized that criminals do not register their guns. I cannot imagine two guys on their way to rob a bank and Joe saying to Bill, “Hey, Bill, our guns aren't registered”. And Bill says, “Well, why don't we stop by at the police station and register them and then we'll carry on”. Let us give our head a shake. It will not happen.

When we address the issues of crime we need to ensure we have enough police on the streets and in service so they can find, arrest and charge the criminals. Then we need to enable our courts with proper laws, including minimum sentences, so that those who are accused and found guilty receive a penalty that is befitting the crime. That is the issue and that is why it was stated that way.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, April 10th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin my first speech in this Parliament by acknowledging and thanking the wonderful people of Edmonton--Sherwood Park for sending me back here again. It is indeed an honour. I feel particularly privileged, but also I feel the burden of responsibility to represent them well.

I had the opportunity this past weekend to stand at the Sherwood Park Trade Fair. I do not know whether other members do things like that, but it was my 15th year that I have had a booth at the fair.

On Friday I was there but I was interrupted because I had to go to a funeral of a friend. I was standing at the booth for about six hours, and on Saturday it was close to 11 hours. My knees complained at the end of the day, but my brain and my heart got a lot because there were hundreds of people who came by. I hardly had a chance to sit down. They were telling me how happy they were that the Conservatives have formed the government. The main theme that I heard from them was that finally we have an end to the mismanagement of the money by the Liberals. That was a constant theme.

A number of people asked about the gun registry and how soon we would be able to scrap it. I told them that we have a minority government and on the parts of it that will require legislative approval we expect that the other parties will finally come to their senses and support some real measures in addressing the question of crime and not waste it, as our leader and the Prime Minister said, targeting duck hunters. They are not the ones who perform criminal acts. It is the criminals who do, and it is those very criminals of course who have access to guns and will not register them.

The main issue was the corruption that was unearthed by the independent Auditor General of Canada and also the independent Judge Gomery and the fact that under the previous administration money was literally stolen from Canadian taxpayers.

Consequently, those are the issues they had. At the end of two gruelling days of standing there, I felt elated because I listened to my constituents and they almost unanimously expressed great support and gratitude that we were now on this side of the House.

With it of course comes added responsibility, and I believe that I and my colleagues bear that honourably. We want to do what is best for our constituents, for our individual provinces and for our country as a whole.

I am very pleased that the throne speech addressed the major issues. Instead of making 85 promises and hoping to deliver on one or two of them, we focused on just five primary issues. They have been iterated a number of times here, so I will not repeat them individually. I will simply say they are the issues that resonate with Canadians. These are the things they want done. We are committed to do our very best to get those things through Parliament and have them enacted.

During the short time I have today, I would like to speak primarily about families and child care. It is no secret that over the years I have been a strong advocate for strong families. The members who were here before this Parliament and have heard me speak noticed when I was on the opposition side that whenever issues of the family came up, I made strong statements. I have always done that.

As a matter of fact, I am quite convinced that the viability, the strengths, the very character of our country is based not on all of the other issues which sometimes we look at, but rather on strong, vibrant families. In my view, both from my own experience as a youngster growing up, which now is a long time ago, and also in the raising of our own children, I realize more than ever the importance of a strong family bond.

I remember reading not very long ago that if a father wants to have the best influence on his children, the best thing he can do is to love their mother. I thought how significant that is, because it shows the basic unit of the family, the marriage of a man and a woman, and the children, and their care for the children.

I am very pleased that in our throne speech and in our election platform we were careful to put in measures that strengthen the family. I do not know whether I should give too many personal anecdotes; I think I will probably limit it to two or three.

We decided that when our children were born my wife would be a full time mom. I had a fairly above average paying job as a professional math instructor at NAIT, the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. With the high taxes and all of the expenses, we had difficulty making ends meet and so I took on the additional job of teaching night classes. Besides the additional income that I earned, I also enjoyed those adult night students who were there to further their careers.

I brought home a little extra income. This was many years ago. I remember saying that Tuesday nights I worked for Trudeau and Thursday nights I worked for my family because even back then, about half of our income went to taxes. It is very important that families be given a tax regime that will allow them to look after the needs of their families.

To a great extent I was an absentee father. I was also involved in volunteer work and worked two nights a week there and came home usually after the children were in bed. I am really grateful to my wife who did the major role of raising our children. I am so glad that she was there for them. She was there in the morning to send them off to school. She was there with them before they ever went to school. She was there for them when they came home from school. I think it helped to add to the character building in our children's lives.

Then I think of our own children. Our daughter, Beverley, has two children, Dallas and Kayla. She, too, was a full time mom. Her husband is a farmer. Often the parenting went on in the truck while they were sitting waiting for the combine to bring another load of grain or wherever. There was a lot of good bonding time. It was an excellent opportunity for the parents to influence and to build character into the children.

Our son, Brent, and his wife, Susie, have three children, our wonderful grandchildren, Noah, Hannah and Micah. They are so beautiful. We just love all of five of them. That is why I mention their names here. I am so happy that Susie also is able to be a full time mom. But that is not without sacrifice. We must recognize that every family that makes that decision makes it at a considerable financial sacrifice. They forgo one income in order to do that but it is so valuable. I wish that more Canadians could do that.

I recognize there are some families where it simply is not possible. The economic demands are great. In far too many cases, there are single parents who have been left with the responsibility of raising their children and child care is needed. But I am absolutely adamant that it is the parents' decision as to what care they use.

After our children grew up, my wife took on the job of being a full time nanny for neighbours of ours. She was not a registered government sponsored day care but I can say that those children in the Schaufele residence got the absolute best personal care they could in the absence of their mother. She looked after them and we have grown to love that family as if it were our own. In fact, we have often said that we have become their surrogate grandparents, even though they have grandparents of their own.

The plan we have for child care is absolutely the best. I support it. I urge all members of the House to support the measures we are taking to strengthen families and to strengthen child care.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, April 10th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate you on your appointment to the chair. We are very proud of the fact that you have been selected.

I would like to respond to one of the things the hon. member opposite said. She said something about the government inheriting such a fine fiscal position from the previous government. I wonder whether she has ever stopped to consider the reasons the previous Liberal government was able to balance the books. There were a number of reasons. One of them was that the Conservatives howled about it until finally the government was pressured into doing it, but it was also the policies of free trade, which bring about $1.5 billion everyday into this country. That was what the Liberal Party campaigned against and that is what has given it to a great extent the fiscal gift which has permitted it to balance the budget and stop the interminable borrowing.

I would also like to point out the GST, which the Liberals said they would eliminate in their campaign. I remember Mr. Chrétien saying during an election campaign that it would be gone. That GST brought in billions of dollars and using that money the Liberals were able to balance the budget. I think also of the $30 billion that they took out of the civil service employees pension fund, who were entitled to half of that. Half of it belonged to the employees. I think about the $50 billion they took out of the EI fund.

The ways in which they balanced the budget and gave us presumed fiscal health is questionable at best. Let us not forget that in fact the amount of debt that the Liberals left the Conservatives when we took office on January 23 is pretty well the same as the debt that they had in 1993. I think they should probably be a little more sensitive to where all this money came from. I would appreciate the comments of the hon. member on these things.

[Telecommunications Act, November 25th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know how the member is going to answer my question because in a way it is a rhetorical question, but in another way it is a very serious question.

Obviously, having hundreds of thousands of names on a list requires considerable administration and a computer system. Members know where I am going with this. The gun registry, which presumably had a list of potentially seven million Canadians and I do not know how many individual firearms because most firearms owners have more than one, cost $2 billion.

I wonder what assurance the government can give us that having a registry is going to be within the fiscal capacity of the people of Canada, who will pay for it. The last thing we want is another computer boondoggle like the gun registry.

[Supply, November 24th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased with the speech of my colleague from Medicine Hat. He hit the nail on the head. The Liberals over the years have thrived on announcements. They love announcements and announcing. They will announce the same money once, twice, three times, four times and then they will re-announce it. Meanwhile, the Liberals are travelling around the country on government jets announcing their money, taxpayer money. I commend my colleague for pointing this fact out to us and to Canadians around the country.

Could my colleague go a bit further on this topic and indicate exactly what kind of financial and fiscal responsibility a new integrity bound Conservative government would give the country?

[Parliament of Canada Act, November 21st, 2005]

I know that is exactly what it says. That may be okay. I could support that in principle but I think even then there might be times that the constituents would object to that and should, by way of referendum in the constituency, be able to trigger a byelection or at least a petition with sufficient names on it.

In conclusion I would simply like to say that it will be an interesting vote when the bill comes to a vote because I think a number of people will be on either side of it. My present inclination is that it will be about 60:40. Right now I am inclined to support it because it goes in the right direction. I believe the element of saying to the people that this person was elected under this banner and if he or she changes the banner then the constituents have the final say on it. Because I support that aspect of it I will probably vote for it, although I will still be doing a little thinking. I am sure the bill will be subject to intense lobbying from the hon. member to garner my support.

[Parliament of Canada Act, November 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to speak to Bill C-251. I happened to be listening to the Rutherford show the day the hon. member introduced this bill. It was interesting that he was actually scheduled to be on this radio talk show in western Canada but he had to be in the House to introduce his bill. I noticed that the radio stations CHED in Edmonton and QR77 in Calgary broadcast live from the House a portion of his speech while he was introducing the bill. He therefore has received a good amount of publicity on this bill.

There are various ways of looking at this issue. When a member who is elected as a Liberal decides that the Liberal ways just do not cut it and decides to, say, join the Conservative Party, this bill would prevent that member from doing that.

My gut feeling says that I would rather not want to discourage that because, obviously, there are Liberals nowadays who are starting to see the light and are seeing that the direction their government is taking is not the right direction. I think that if they sincerely believe that the Liberals need to be defeated and they would like to give added strength to the Conservative Party, in a way I like that idea.

On the other hand, I can see where there are some problems with this. That member ran in the election as a Liberal candidate. During the election he said that he supported the policies and principles of the Liberal Party of Canada and, rightly or wrongly, the voters in that riding accepted that argument and elected him.

I am sure it would have been by a very narrow margin but he or she did get in. He or she comes to this place and sits in this Parliament on the government side because the Liberals got more seats than any of the other parties. Therefore the member represents what the plurality of the voters in his or her riding wanted. If during the time of that Parliament the member says that he or she can no longer sit here, that is a personal decision, a decision that says that he or she feels what happened is wrong and that he or she needs to do something about it.

I can see where that would present a real dilemma. In that sense, I have some reservation with a bill that says that when a person leaves the party to sit with another party that person should automatically lose his or her seat in Parliament and there should be a byelection. I know the intent is really well-founded.

Bill C-251 addresses that in allowing the member to sit as an independent. I sort of like that idea as a way of countering it. It is a reasonable solution in the sense that the person, as an independent, could then, probably even more than members of political parties, as we have seen in all parties, sometimes having to sort of bite their tongue and vote in a way which may be somewhat inconsistent with not only their personal beliefs but perhaps the desires of the people who elected them in the first place. That happens occasionally.

I know it happened big time in 1993 when a lot of members were chastized by the electorate because of their stand on the GST. It became quite a large issue, as members know.

If there were a crossing over from one party to another, or from a party to an independent, or from an independent position to join one of the parties, perhaps Parliament could respond to a petition in the riding. It could well be that the members of the voting public in the riding would support this position and then a byelection would actually be unnecessary.

If there were sufficient numbers of people in the riding who took umbrage at what the member had done, then, by a petition, which I will not speculate here on the number of names that would be required on such a petition, but a petition would return power back to the people. It would allow them to ask for a byelection so they could vote for a member who is with this party or that party, or even the same member under that party, but they would be able to reaffirm him or her. A byelection would have to take place because the people demanded it rather than it being triggered by some other process.

Another conundrum arises from both this bill and the one from one of my colleagues on this side, Bill C-408. Both of these bills address the issue of power of the leader.

I think one of the things that got me elected in 1993 was the stand of our party and me personally, that a member of Parliament has as a first obligation to represent the constituents who elected him or her. That is true.

I remember back in the old days, because I am old enough to remember this, that when the old CCF came in I believe it was a true grassroots party. It responded to the wishes of the people. I hesitate to say this but I think to some degree at least the NDP too has been greatly overtaken by the influence of special interest and lobby groups. I would mention unions for example and then there are others as well that I think have too great a control. However that is okay. If they can garner support from among union members I have no problem with that but I do have a problem when they get the support of the union leadership and the union then takes some of the union dues and gives it to that party. As an individual who never did support the socialistic side of the NDP in that sense, I took some objection to the fact that when I was a forced union member they took my dues and contributed them to members of the NDP to help them get elected. To me, that was a violation of my democratic right. We have these different issues.

It is important for us to remember, whether we are Conservatives, Liberals or NDP, that our strength and our legitimization comes from the support of our constituents, which is why I propose that the bill would be improved if there were a clause in it that said that a member who leaves a party may sit as an independent and perhaps not trigger a byelection as long as he or she remains independent and does not align with another party, which would be opposite.

[Points of Order, November 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I really must question this. The member has taken up time in private members' business, which I assume will be added to the time for it, and he seems to indicate very loosely that he may possibly be apologizing for the fact that he issued statements which were not accurate. I want to know whether he is ready to make a statement in the House that totally rescinds the bad and untrue things that he said.

[First Nations Commercial and Industrial Development Act, November 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has reiterated a number of the concerns we have in the province and in the country about the way in which the Liberal government mismanages pretty well everything that it touches. It has what we call the inverse golden touch: everything turns to lead when the Liberals touch it.

I remember, probably three Parliaments past, when we were debating issues in the Criminal Code, that the Liberals had the gall at that time to introduce sentencing regulations that differentiated between natives and non-natives, where they said that the judge in passing sentence must take into account whether the individual was a native.

What was wrong with that and what the Liberals just could not get into their head at the time was the fact that most native women happened to be abused and assaulted by people from within their own group. However they refused to listen and, because they had a majority, they rammed the legislation through without amendment.

A number of those women contacted us and asked us why, if another woman who is not a native gets attacked, her attacker gets a more stringent sentence than the one who attacks a native woman. The Liberals did not twig on that at all. They just missed it.

I go back to the basic principle that is so important. We have a set of rules which applies to Canadians, whether they are in this province or that, regardless of their cultural or ethnic background, the rules should be consistent so people are treated equally and have equal respect.

It is a known fact that over the years Liberal governments have dominated the government of our country, unfortunately. If we were to go back to when Jean Chrétien was the minister of Indian affairs, we would see that they were totally insensitive to the needs of the natives then and they still are. The fact is that in 12 years of Liberal government, 11 of them in majority, the Liberals have taken so few and so tepid steps and the things that they have done, in most instances, have been totally misdirected and going in the wrong direction. It is either inaction or going in the wrong direction.

I certainly concur with my colleague in the fact that in so many areas the Liberals have just failed to act or have acted incorrectly and, unfortunately, it is the natives and, indeed, all of our citizens who have had to bear the brunt of it.