Bill Casey

[Supply, November 4th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I read it in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald so it must be right. It was the October 28th Halifax Herald . It said that Mr. MacKenzie said the province should take the deal now and negotiate more in the future. Can we imagine that? Negotiate more in the future? That man has a lot of faith if he thinks we can take the deal now and negotiate more in the future. That man could take a lesson from a used car salesman too.

[Supply, November 4th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the very distinguished member for Medicine Hat.

I would first like to thank the Leader of the Opposition for bringing this motion forward because it is so important to my province of Nova Scotia. I would like to compliment the member from St. John's East for seconding the motion and on his activities so far in pressing this ahead.

Today in question period, the Minister of Natural Resources kind of said it all. He said that the offer on the table today was great. However Newfoundland and Nova Scotia do not want the offer on the table today. We want the offer that was on the table in the election.

Throughout this debate the Minister of Finance has stood and talked about everything under the sun except the offer that was on the table in the election.

With all due respect to the member for Dartmouth--Cole Harbour, I listened to him talk about housing, education, taxes, health care, equalization framework, services, deficits, benefits and a whole bunch of other things, but all he had to say was that the government will keep the promise it made during the election.

The debate should only be about that. It should not be about all the intricate, complicated, convoluted subjects that are coming up. It is a complete waste of time. Either the government is going to keep its word or it is not.

Members will be pleased to know that I sold used cars for 20 years, but I would not have survived two weeks or even two days if I had done what the Prime Minister did. If I had not kept my promises I would not have survived. In this case the Prime Minister made a promise to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia in order to get the votes that he was seeking in the election but as soon as the election was over he tried to renegotiate the deal.

Mr. Speaker, if you bought a car from me on Tuesday, we made a deal and agreed on a price, and on Wednesday you came back and the car was smaller and the price was higher, you would not agree with it. You would not even renegotiate it, but that is what these guys are trying to do. They are trying to turn this into a fiasco by saying that this is a good deal. We had the deal we wanted. We all agreed to the deal, and that was the deal in June.

If the Prime Minister would take some advice from a used car salesman, if he would keep his word and follow through on the agreement that was made in June, that is 100% of the royalties, no limits, no caps, no conditions, we could all go home and be happy.

The Minister of National Defence stood up in question period and said that he would not make irresponsible promises. If they promised to give Nova Scotia and Newfoundland 100% of the royalties in the election and then did not do it, is that not an irresponsible promise? I think it is. If they are going to make responsible promises, then they also have to keep them. It is not complicated. It is really simple. As a used car salesman, I could give the Prime Minister a few lessons on that.

I want to take a minute to congratulate Premier John Hamm. He started this campaign for fairness in 2001 and he has been on it ever since: same goal, same target. I want to compliment Premier Danny Williams for the excellent job that he has done to raise the profile of the whole subject. They have done a great job of pushing this argument forward. I also think our party here has done a great job. We have some great members who have done a super job on that.

I am from Nova Scotia, a rural part of Canada. My riding is almost all rural. Every day I see government policies that are stealing resources from my riding. I am talking about fishing offices and customs offices. I am talking about jobs. The government is trying to polarize this country, it seems to me, and there is no help for rural Canada, no help for Cape Breton. I get calls from Cape Breton asking for help, and I ask them where their member of Parliament is. It seems that the government has a big city agenda and the heck with us.

However this agreement is important to rural Canada, to rural Nova Scotia and even more important to rural Newfoundland. Rural Newfoundland is going through some of the most financially trying times of any province in the history of Canada. It has an $800 million deficit. Can anyone imagine having an $800 million deficit? That is a huge debt. It has massive unemployment. The awful thing is that the young people must leave their towns and their province to get work because there are no jobs.

Those are the reasons that we need this agreement, the one the Prime Minister made in June during the election, to go ahead, not the offer that the Minister of Natural Resources is putting on the table today. We want the offer that was put on the table during the election when they wanted our votes. It is absolutely critical that we press forward on that.

I think the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore mentioned bringing in the political leaders from the other parties in Nova Scotia. It is amazing that all the political leaders from all the parties have agreed with Danny Williams that we should get the deal that was made in June. In Nova Scotia it is almost the same, except for the Liberal leader in Nova Scotia.

I picked up the paper the other day and read, “Grit leader would have signed deal”. If the leader of the Liberal Party in Nova Scotia had been the premier, he would have signed the deal. He would have sold out Nova Scotia to the tune of about $800 million. So there would be hardly any point in bringing him here to helps us get a good deal for Nova Scotia because he would have sold us out. He would have sold us out and the estimate is $800 million.

I want to raise another point . I do not want to make this sound any worse, or even bad, but four days later I read another article about how the Liberal leader in Nova Scotia has two companies. It was right out of the Halifax Herald . He has two companies and “neither makes money and both have loans” to the Government of Canada. Accordingly, the ability of the corporation to continue as a going concern is uncertain. The loans are somewhere in the amount of $400,000 or $500,000.

I think that a person in provincial politics in a position of influence should move quickly. It does not matter who it is or what party it is, if they are dealing with the Government of Canada they should divest themselves of their interests, their personal guarantees and everything else as quickly as possible to avoid any of the accusations or the perception of conflict. We live in a poisoned atmosphere here in Ottawa because of the sponsorship program. Because of that, I think provincial politicians should make sure they are squeaky clean. I urge Francis MacKenzie to divest himself of his companies that owe the Government of Canada money.

I want to go back to the topic of my riding for a minute. Just a little while ago the Department of Fisheries sent some people to my office and said, “We want to tell you that we are going to close the fisheries office in your riding”. This is just one in a long list of offices that the Government of Canada has closed in this particular town of Parsborough. This town fights for its very life. The people of the town raise money. They do everything they can to fund a brand new theatre and to put on benefits and socials to help people who need help. Again it is the same there as it is in Newfoundland, where the population is declining and the people staying are aging. On average, the people are older.

It gets tougher and tougher for our small communities to survive, and here we have the Government of Canada leading the way. It is just like a big vacuum cleaner going into rural Canada, sucking the life out of rural Canada. It has this big city agenda, and this whole refusal to give Newfoundland and Nova Scotia the resources that it promised in June is just simply a part of that as far as I am concerned.

We can make this argument really complicated. The Minister of Finance comes in and says the proposal on the table--same story--reflects the agreement with the premiers. That is not true or the premiers would have signed it. It is the proposal that was on the table in the election that we want, it is the proposal on the table in June that we want, and we will stand here and we will fight until we get it, those of us from Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador and all our colleagues who have supported us from right across the country. It is really impressive to see the support we have gained.

I call on the government to stop the rhetoric, to stop talking about all these things it is talking about and just get down to the point and say, “We made a promise. Now we are going to keep it”. I will be supporting this motion with both hands.

[National Defence, October 13th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the minister does have one answer to why he tied the boats up and we would like to know what it is.

Here is another question that we have asked a number of times. An urgent report on October 16, 2003 identified a dangerous situation that could jeopardize the lives of our sailors and our subs. It involved the initiating cartridges and it specifically made recommendations to store them in a “fitted, approved and floodable compartment”.

Were these life and death changes made to the Windsor , the Victoria or the Chicoutimi ? If the minister does not know the answer, will he agree to provide the answer as soon as he can get it?

[National Defence, October 13th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, last night the Minister of National Defence indicated that he had information from the team investigating the HMCS Chicoutimi .

What was the single issue that drove the minister to cancel the program when he heard about the details?

[Agriculture, October 13th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, Atlantic Canada farmers have suffered dramatic harm from the ban on Canadian beef by the U.S.A. and other countries. Government programs have been too little too late. Government efforts to resolve the issue have totally failed. Atlantic farmers must now adapt to the possibility of the border never opening again, which means we must create slaughter capacity to process cattle that once were shipped to the United States.

The co-op organization on Prince Edward Island in conjunction with the P.E.I. government have invested almost $20 million in a brand new plant that is almost finished. However, the current circumstances now require the plant to have two additional features not originally planned. First, in order to guarantee a quality product, traceability is absolutely essential. Second, it needs a federally inspected cull cow line in order to process and sell our own beef to Atlantic Canadians.

I urge the Minister of Agriculture to act quickly to help all Atlantic farmers in all four provinces by providing funding for both the traceability program and to help the cull cow line expansion, and to act now.

[National Defence, October 12th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, last Friday I asked the Minister of National Defence about an urgent safety report produced by DND involving the ammunition and cartridges on our submarines. The minister tried to slough it off and said that it was up to the naval officers to answer.

The fact is we asked the minister in the House on March 9 and I met with the minister in his office on April 1. If the minister knows of a dangerous situation he has the responsibility to act.

Will the minister tell us what action he took when he became aware of this dangerous situation?

[National Defence, October 12th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, on the weekend I received an unconfirmed report of a fire that took place a short time ago on the HMCS Corner Brook . It sounds similar to the fire on the Chicoutimi in that it involved the cables that run through the captain's cabin.

Could the minister confirm that a fire occurred on the Corner Brook ? What action did he take to make sure this would not happen on any of our other submarines including the Chicoutimi ?

[National Defence, October 8th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, it is hard to believe the minister does not have an answer for that question.

The captain of the Victoria feared for his ship when he first reported this situation. This urgent report came out last October recommending these changes. I raised the issue of these cartridges in the House on March 9.

How can the minister not know about this safety issue which affects the lives of our sailors on our submarines?

[National Defence, October 8th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, through access to information recently, we received an urgent defect report pertaining to the Victoria class submarines which outlined a very dangerous situation involving the oxygen canisters and their potential to self-ignite and cause great damage to the submarine. This report, which was produced by DND, recommends to remove the cartridges locker from the motor room with a fitted approved flooding arrangement. It says that the current locker is unacceptable and that its situation is a class-wide issue.

Prior to setting to sea did the Chicoutimi have these--

[Agriculture, October 7th, 2004]

Mr. Chair, part of the frustration of being from Atlantic Canada and going through the BSE crisis is that most people think it is an Alberta issue or a western Canadian issue, but there are farmers in my riding, in my province and in all of Atlantic Canada who have lost all their equity.

The federal programs have not been there to help them. I think most of us are coming to the conclusion that we have to adapt to the fact that we are not going to have access to the American market like we have had in the past. Maybe we will not have access to it at all. We have to work to find new markets and prepare ourselves for the new reality.

Right now so many farmers are on the very edge or verge of selling all their cattle and walking away from farms that have been in their families for decades. They need some encouragement, some wisdom and some help from the government just in order to stay on the farm and keep on going.

In Atlantic Canada, we suffer from a lack of slaughter capacity. We have no federally inspected slaughter capacity now in Atlantic Canada. All of our beef goes to central Canada. When there is a market in Atlantic Canada, we should be able to service it ourselves, but we cannot because we do not have federally inspected slaughter capacity.

P.E.I. and the co-op in P.E.I. have invested a great deal of money in a brand new plant in Borden to try to service all the maritime provinces. Both the co-op and the province have put a lot of money into this. They have a tremendous commitment to it and it is almost done, but already they have two problems. One is traceability. They cannot access the government program for traceability. We need traceability in Atlantic Canada so that we can guarantee a quality product and prevent any of the BSE issues that have happened in the past.

The other thing is that we already need an expansion of that plant to do a cull cow line so that cull cows can be processed there in a federally inspected process. Then we could provide that meat to Atlantic Canada, become self-sufficient, stop the importation of beef and help our own farmers survive. That is all the farmers want. They do not want handouts. They do not want gifts. They want the ability to survive.

In the last few days I have had discussions with the minister. He has indicated a willingness to provide traceability and to provide the funding, or he has certainly given encouraging comments on that. I hope he will stand tonight and confirm that and give the farmers in the maritime provinces some hope that they will be able to sell their products and sell their cows for what they are worth. That is all they ask. They do not ask for anything other than the ability to survive and market their beef.

I ask the minister to stand tonight and say to Atlantic Canada that there is help and there will be help in these two areas of traceability and funding for the cull cow line.