Bradley Trost

[Civil Marriage Act, June 28th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I have done a head count and by my numbers there are not 20 members here. I would like to call for a quorum to ensure we have enough proper representation.

And the count having been taken:

[Civil Marriage Act, June 28th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the minister's remarks. He kept implying that to use the notwithstanding clause was a negative and somehow dirty thing.

Coming from Saskatchewan where in the days of constitutional negotiations and so forth with Pierre Trudeau, my understanding was that the NDP premier of Saskatchewan, Mr. Alan Blakeney, was one of the people who pushed for this for various reasons. One of the reasons may have been the health care ruling we saw from the Supreme Court where three of the justices referred to the national charter of rights and four of the justices referred to the Quebec charter of rights. However, listening to the minister speak, he continued to imply that using the notwithstanding clause was a bad thing.

The Prime Minister himself has said that under certain circumstances he would use the notwithstanding clause and that with the ruling of the Supreme Court it may be necessary to use the notwithstanding clause to protect a one tier public medicare system.

Does the minister disagree with the Prime Minister because the Prime Minister has backed the use of the notwithstanding clause in certain circumstances? Does he criticize the province of Quebec which has repeatedly, for language legislation, used the notwithstanding clause? Other provinces have, including my home province of Saskatchewan for one piece. Does he disagree with all those uses and criticize every use of the notwithstanding clause including the protection of medicare?

If we are to be consistent, we must be either completely opposed to the notwithstanding clause or we must actually think that it is a part of the charter of rights, which it is, and a part of our Constitution. We should embrace the entirety of the charter of rights and not merely pick and choose different parts.

So, my question again, which is it? Is he completely opposed to the notwithstanding clause or is he opposed to his own leader's position on it?

[Petitions, June 27th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to present a petition on behalf of constituents from Saskatoon, Muenster, Bruno, Humboldt and also people outside of my constituency, particular the towns of Estevan, Weyburn and Vanscoy in the province of Saskatchewan.

They petition the House of Commons that whereas marriage is a sacred institution that forms the basis of the family union and whereas Parliament overwhelmingly affirmed its understanding that marriage is the union between a single man and a single woman to the exclusion of all others in 1999, therefore the petitioners humbly call upon Parliament to pass legislation that will protect the traditional definition of marriage as it has before affirmed.

[Petitions, June 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to present a petition on behalf of my constituents, in particular, constituents from the towns of Munster, Middle Lake, St. Benedict and particularly the town of St. Brieux. It appears almost that whole town has signed this petition.

The petitioners are requesting that Parliament consider that marriage is exclusively heterosexual in nature, a truth respected by every major culture throughout all recorded history. Therefore, the petitioners humbly call upon Parliament to pass legislation that will protect the traditional definition of marriage as it has before affirmed.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Halifax was quite eloquent about all the wonderful imaginary things that would supposedly come through this budget.

I remember reading this short bill and thinking of all the different shell games the Liberals have played over the years. They say one thing and do another. I will give the House an example.

For many years there has been bracket creep, a de facto tax increase because of inflation. It is a tax hike which is automatically built into the system. When the Minister of Finance and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance stopped those systematic and continuous tax hikes after many years of criticism from the Conservative Party, they claimed it was a tax cut. It is weird and twisted logic that the lack of a tax hike is a tax cut. I use that as an example because whenever we look at a piece of government legislation, we are not always sure what we are getting. For example, a lack of a tax hike being calculated as a tax cut.

When I looked at the bill, I began to see what it was. It was vague generalities without any accountability. I believe $500 million is listed for foreign aid. Knowing the reputation of the government and how it defines things, I thought that it could define subsidies to a business connected to the Liberal Party or perhaps to many other things as foreign aid instead of something substantive and real such as money for wells in Africa, immunization programs et cetera.

We in the Conservative Party are not naive about how the Liberals do things. Why were the NDP so naive as to actually believe the Liberals meant what they said? How does the NDP know that at the end of the day the Liberals will not play shell games with the finance books, make spending adjustments in other areas, and that this will actually come to pass?

The hon. member believes that every last expenditure in the bill would build a better society. Fair enough. I do not necessarily agree. Does she actually believe, with the government's lack of credibility, that it will actually deliver?

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it was interesting to listen to my friend comparing economic statistics around the world. I do not really care how badly many of the other economies in the world are run. Canada needs to do what is best for Canada.

He was comparing Canada with other countries around the world. Let us take a look at Germany, a country that is not partially run by his ideological allies, but completely run by his ideological allies. Germany has a 12% unemployment rate. That country followed policies similar to those in which the government is engaging.

The hon. member was crowing about a 6.8% or 6.9% unemployment rate. The President of the United States, and I have some pretty harsh criticisms of his economic platform too, almost lost the last election because that country had a 5% unemployment rate. That is using calculations which are stricter than what we have here in Canada.

I am not quite sure what the hon. member is tooting the government's horn about. Great Britain has a lower unemployment rate than Canada has, to a large degree caused by the previous Tory administration which followed a strict monetary policy that emphasized tax cuts, growth, ownership society.

I am really not quite sure where the hon. member is coming from. He is claiming credit for low interest rates, low inflation, et cetera, but let us take a look at the record.

I agree that previous Tory administrations did not follow correct and strict monetary policy. They were Keynesian in their approach. The member is taking credit for that. The Liberals criticized that for many years. Pressure was put on our economy to force up inflation because of reckless policies followed in the 1970s in this country and in other countries around the world. It is known as Keynesian economics, spending to prop up the government, put it on the demand side, and end up with stagflation, higher unemployment rates, lower productivity, no growth, no future, no plan.

That was why the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, chambers of commerce and so forth condemned the government. The government knows how to take credit for everything that was done before it, but it does not know how to actually get things done. It knows how to surf.

Hon. members on that side heckle about a previous administration. I am not here to defend any previous administration. In the 1872 election I would have voted Liberal because that was the party of honesty and integrity back then, something which the present Liberal Party is not. We have a duty as members to speak for policy now and policy for the future. I really do not care about previous governments. They all need to stand on their own record in history. We need to stand for what is right now.

I was too young to vote on all these issues that many members are discussing. I am one of the younger members in the House. My job is to look forward to the future. My job is to look forward to the future for my riding, the future of the people of Saskatoon--Humboldt, the future of all Canadians, young, middle age, old, however Canadians describe themselves.

Canadians need a growing economy. They need a robust economy. The low expectations of 6.9% that the government has made are simply not good enough. Canada should have the greatest economy in the world, the lowest unemployment rate, and the highest standard of living. This country has the natural resources and the talent. We have everything we need to make Canada the greatest nation in the world.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to the bill. To give a little history of where I am coming from and what I am speaking to in this bill, I will go back to the original budget bill because, as has been well established, this is budget bill part two.

On the morning right before the finance minister brought forward the bill, I had an S. O. 31 member's statement about what the priorities were for people in my constituency, what the people of my province cared about. I want to revisit that.

In that statement I talked about my good friend, Andrew Duff, a farmer who works on a feedlot in eastern Saskatchewan. I talked about some of his priorities for his family. I want to go through a few of them again.

One of his priorities was tax cuts. He is on a farm and makes no money, yet he still pays taxes, some of which admittedly are provincial and municipal, but largely because of the unequal equalization, those taxes are difficult to lower. Other taxes are through his job, such as his EI premiums, which are applied in Saskatchewan. As a farmer he is ineligible for unemployment, so that is nothing more than a payroll tax. Of course there is the fuel tax, the inputs on his fertilizer for his grains and so forth.

One of his priorities was to have a tax cut so that he could afford the farm, something which is being productive and supplying jobs for other people through his purchases in the community.

Another of his priorities was a real and sustainable plan for agriculture. We held our noses the other day when we voted for the other piece of legislation that really did not do anything for agriculture. We did that because of the dire straits of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, a province which has been shortchanged repeatedly by the federal government. That province needed help and needed the prosperity from its own natural resources returned to it, as it rightfully should be. We in this party, even though we knew that there were large elements of the larger budget bill that were not good, reached out to help a part of the country receive its rightful due.

There was nothing in that plan for agriculture. There is nothing in this part two of the plan for agriculture. I am not talking about announcements of money, because as has been proven, announcements of money often are not delivered. What is needed is real substance, a real plan to be delivered.

Finally, the third thing my friend and his family would need, and which is true for many young families in rural Saskatchewan, is the child tax credit, something that could help them raise their families. My friend and his wife come from a dairy farm. The children are a part of the farm. They work. They cannot just run to and from town to an organized government day care centre. It is impractical. It costs more for them to drive in, drop the children off and then come back to work. It just cannot be. The only way they are going to get any help is if there is a direct child tax credit given to them. In the original budget and in this new piece of legislation that we are debating, it is not there. The priorities of Canadians from my riding and of Saskatchewan residents in general were not brought forward.

Another reason I am unhappy, displeased and opposed to this legislation is the lack of accountability. This point was brought up, quite succinctly I might say, by some members during the debate last night. A major priority and the main purpose of Parliament, of the people's representatives, is to hold the government to account for the spending of the dollars.

That is what all the battles were about. When we go back into British parliamentary history, in dealing with the problems of the funding, the king would not recall Parliament because he did not like Parliament's views, but he was forced to because Parliament ended up controlling the spending. We have seen the English civil war, various reforms, Gladstone and Disraeli, et cetera, as history has gone forward. Accountability is something of extreme priority that we must hold to.

One thing that is most disturbing about this current piece of legislation that we are debating is there is no plan and no real guidelines. As has been stated, that is true for the previous legislation. That is the justification and rationale used by some members who have been saying during the debate that there has been other inept, ridiculous, poorly thought out legislation which I and my hon. friends in the Conservative Party held our noses and supported, so why not support all future legislation that is poorly thought out and poorly planned?

We are sometimes forced to support things for the greater good. This legislation has absolutely no greater good to it. There is no accountability. The point has been raised over and over again that when we read the substance of the bill, it is very sketchy. There is nothing there.

I remind my hon. friends in the NDP that if they really believe in the deal they got, perhaps they should take a look at past history. Whenever the Liberals have promised something, it has taken anywhere from five to 15 years to deliver that promise.

I remember the great campaign when the Liberals promised to take apart the GST. They promised over and over again to do it. A former member from Hamilton ended up having to resign her seat. In the end the promise that was said over and over again was not delivered.

There must be accountability. It is the primary purpose of Parliament. We look at past follies, and it has been said that a member from Saskatchewan will bring this up every time, but it affects so many people in our province. Firearms, rifles and shotguns are the tools that we use on our farms. They are used by hunters and for recreation; they are part of our culture.

The gun registry is perhaps the largest fiasco and the most ill thought out, ill conceived, unaccountable policy ever presented in the history of this country. It has cost $2 billion to register duck hunters. They are not the people who use handguns. Handguns have been taken care of since 1935. The gun registry was another one of those Liberal plans with no accountability. The Liberals just went out there and did what they wanted to do without thinking about it.

I want to briefly touch on some of the macroeconomic effects of reckless spending. This was demonstrated in the previous coalition between the NDP and the Liberals in the 1970s. I know the criticism will come that there were other reasons for the wild and reckless spending and the way interest rates got out of control. Fiscal prudence and accountability are important in all that we do.

One of the major concerns I have about reckless out of control spending is higher interest rates. It is fairly well known that when there are unproductive, irresponsible fiscal pressures on the demand side, the pressures then lead to higher rates of inflation.

The Bank of Canada has wisely followed a strict monetary policy. This is something which was not done and was part of the problem in previous eras, the lack of a conservative monetary policy. The Bank of Canada responds by hiking interest rates to crack down on inflation.

I want to ask everyone who reads these words or who is watching on television or any member listening in the House to think what higher interest rates will do for small businessmen and for home owners with mortgages. For example, if a carpenter is watching, he or she should think of how it will impact on his or her job in the future. Continued reckless spending by the NDP-Liberal coalition will help to kill that job.

Most people who own a home in Saskatoon, in my riding, in Burlington or anywhere have a mortgage. Young families have mortgages. I myself recently took out a mortgage when I purchased my first home. I am not looking forward to the macroeconomic disaster that the government's reckless spending is going to create.

I want to give some positive suggestions to the government so that the Liberals in the future have some positive ideas. I listed my priorities earlier, but let me state one of them again. I mentioned a cut to EI. This is a cut to what is essentially a payroll tax. I have particular personal empathy with this one because I worked in a bakery at minimum wage for a year prior to going to university.

I worked at the bakery with people who had been there for 10 or 12 years and who were ineligible, because of the vagaries of the system, to collect employment insurance. Yet year after year they were paying higher premiums than they deserved to pay. This is a job killer. Nothing stops small business from hiring more employees than pressures on the payroll and higher costs.

I know the government thinks our unemployment rate of 6.8% is wonderful. Any politician south of the border with such a rate would be defeated. Our unemployment rate needs to go down. There needs to be continuous pressure. This is only one item. There are many other things the government could do to have productivity and an agenda that actually creates growth for the country, instead of merely looking around to redistribute the wealth with no plan, no thought and no wisdom.

The priorities the government has brought forward are not the priorities of the constituents of Saskatoon--Humboldt. They are not the things I stand for. That is why I will be voting against Bill C-48.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 21st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated my hon. friend's comments, particularly with respect to the fishery. One of the things I enjoy about the House of Commons is the fact that we gather here from all parts of Canada to learn and to study together.

I am trying to think which province is farther away from the ocean, but I believe my province of Saskatchewan is the most removed. It was an education for me to listen to the member, especially when he talked about predatory fish in Cultus Lake. I did not totally understand where this fish came from or all the details about it.

I hope the hon. member can enlighten a prairie boy, someone who is more used to beef than to fish, on the predator fish. From where does it come? Is it naturally occurring or is it part of some government transfer program? Perhaps all members could listen and learn something from his expertise.

[Petitions, June 21st, 2005]

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to present a petition on behalf of my constituents, in particular from the town of Quill Lake. They are very concerned that the government may go back on its word and begin rural post office closures.

The petition states that the undersigned citizens of Canada draw the attention of the House to post office closures. They call upon Parliament to keep the Quill Lake post office open and retain the moratorium on post office closures. It is my pleasure to present this petition signed by the majority of the great people of Quill Lake.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 20th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it appears this will be the last session of questions and comments for tonight.

I was very interested to listen to my hon. friend as he discussed the growth and massive influx of people in and around the Toronto area, particularly the outer suburbs. I am not always sure where they come from. He described how money was allocated not for needs but for political opportunities. I know the hon. member's riding is in an area that is growing very quickly. Perhaps he could enlighten me about some of the particular needs of the surrounding areas, in particular how they have been shortchanged in respect to the infrastructure funding, the gas tax funding?

This is a general point throughout all the legislation. It is important that money be accountably spent, that we just not spend it here, there and everywhere. There must be forethought and careful prudent spending. There must be a plan that everything be spent and spent not just in one area for purely partisan perspectives but in other areas where the need is perhaps greatest.

Would he elaborate on what the particular needs of his area are and how it has been shortchanged in this budget?