David Anderson

[Agriculture, May 13th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, avian flu is not the only disaster. BSE's first birthday is here. Ranchers have been waiting for clear access to the United States markets. On April 19 the United States Department of Agriculture expanded our beef trade with the United States. On April 26, U.S. producer groups moved to restrict Canadian beef. The USDA went along with them and have cut back Canadian beef imports.

There was no science-based reason for this decision. There was no response from the Liberal government. Why has the government failed to defend producers in the latest U.S. trade action?

[Avian Flu, April 20th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, agriculture is extremely important to me as I come from an agricultural area and I farmed for 25 years.

The frustration I have is similar to that of the member for Battlefords—Lloydminster who mentioned earlier that here we are again late at night with one more emergency debate and what is it on? Once again, it is on agriculture.

Therefore I want to talk a bit about some of things he started discussing tonight, and that is some of the compensation plans and how they have worked and what the producers can expect over the next while in terms of compensation from the government.

One of the things that concerned me a lot was the Prime Minister's attitude when he was in eastern Canada where he basically said that what we had was a small problem behind the Rockies, when those of us who understand what is going on with the avian flu realize that this is a huge problem for our entire country, and we need to recognize that.

One concern is the compensation plan and what producers will get in return for giving up their livelihood for a number of months, possibly up to a year. I want to talk a little about the history of some of the other plans over the last few years. I do not think this will comfort producers but perhaps it will galvanize the chicken producers and the other producers who are affected by this problem so that they will be well aware of what they need to do to protect their own interests.

One of the programs with which I was familiar was the AIDA program, which later became CFIP. It was meant to stabilize income for farmers. Unfortunately, it did not work and the government finally acknowledged that it was a failure over the years, but it had been disastrous in many ways for a lot of farmers. It was supposed to help stabilize income when their income dropped. What we had was a situation in many places where people's income would drop, the program would kick in and later the government bureaucrats would go over the figures one more time. Farmers had already been paid their money and the government would tell them they had to pay back a big portion of the money it had given them. I had people in my riding telling me they had received in the neighbourhood of $15,000, $20,000, $25,000 and that the government was demanding the money back from them. That was enough to finish off some people. I have had people call and cry over the phone, not knowing where they would get that money and how to deal with the situation.

That was one program that was poorly set up. One of the reasons it was set up was because of the formulas that were used to determined compensation. Therefore I would urge the producers who are affected by the avian flu to be very careful when they are dealing with the government and they are starting to look at the programs that are being set up for them and make sure they understand the formulas that are being used in that determination.

The end of CFIP turned out to be quite a disaster. The government had budgeted about $2.2 billion toward the program. When the final numbers came out it had only put $1.1 billion into that program. It had some money left over and rather than pay it out in CFIP money it decided to reannounce that money and run it out in what it called transition payments. In one sense the government stripped the program, reannounced the money and then tried to get the positive spin out of putting money out into the community. Unfortunately, the final money, even in that transition payment, has now been paid out.

I just had a constituent call me in the last couple of days who said that he understood the beginning payment for last year was to be paid out in December, that the other payments should have been in March and that the government said it would be in March. The farmers have not received their money and they are wondering what happened to it. The more we look into it the more we realize that some of that money has disappeared as well and will never be paid out to producers. There is a second program that producers need to be aware of that has not worked well for producers.

A further example would be the three beef programs over the last year to try to deal with the BSE problem. Early on the government knew that it needed to try to put some money into the industry so it came out with a program. When it came out with the first program, the prices had stabilized somewhat and people were starting to find a market. The market had found its equilibrium. The government was two to three months too late with the money when it brought it out. What it caused was a drop in market prices. Basically, the entire amount that the government had sent out into the ag community was eaten up in a drop in prices. I would suggest that the packers and processors ended up with the majority of that money.

Therefore the producers who are involved with this avian flu situation need to be very careful that when programs are designed that the money comes to them and that it does not end up being passed on to people further up, what I would call the food chain, to the processors and the people who are doing the handling of the meat products and those kinds of things.

The second part of the beef program over the last year, the cull cow program, which was how the government paid ranchers to keep animals over the winter, worked reasonably well to some extent except that I have been getting calls from folks in Saskatchewan who say that they still have not been paid five months after the program was announced.

A fairly typical pattern that seems to be taking place is that programs are announced, reannounced and money is reallocated but then it is not paid out. We have producers, five months down the road waiting for money to help see them through the winter, who have still not received it. Winter has come and gone and they are sitting without the money they thought was promised to them.

Third, this spring, when the Prime Minister was in Lethbridge for a photo op with the local candidate, as he has done so often over the last few weeks, he made an announcement of an amount that he would be putting into the industry. It was interesting because I was talking with some friends at home before that happened and I told them to just watch what happens with the market price of beef after that announcement is made. The first week the price went down about 5¢ at the marketplace and the next week it dropped an additional 13¢. On an 800 pound cow that 10¢ would have taken all the money out of that program and the ranchers would have been no further ahead.

That program benefited the people who could keep the animals and collect their cash and not have to sell them. However for those ranchers who were squeezed and had to get those cattle onto the market right away, they again lost the government money and ended up having to go somewhere else. In that case it would have gone further down the line again to the people who were buying the cattle and to the processors. Producers need to be very aware of some of the traps and pitfalls in these programs.

A final program I want to mention tonight is the new CAIS program. The government has been selling that now for quite a while. It has been building it out of the APF and it has been presenting it as if it has something that is very good. It has advertised it very well but it is already causing huge problems for some of the producers.

It is interesting that the government was trying to make an interim payment for last year to help out some of the guys who were in real trouble, so it came out with schedules and people were able to fill out their forms and send them in. I have had a couple of people call and say that they actually received their money but that when they came to fill out the actual declaration that they needed to make, they found that the government had changed the price schedules on them.

I know of some people who had received large amounts of money but three-quarters of that will probably have to be returned. Accountants have told me that this is a complete disaster. They told me that when people realize what is going on here there will be blood on the floor. The problem is that the people who are the most desperate, the ones who absolutely need the money, are the ones who have already sent those interim applications in and they are the ones who do not have the money to pay it back. Producers again need to be very careful about what they are doing.

The other compensation programs have been mentioned tonight. What probably puts more fear into me than any other failures is taking a look at the example of the wasting disease with elk and then the mad cow disease. We have heard tonight that the government is prepared to pay market value for the animals that are slaughtered. As far as I know, that has never happened before. For the cattle and the elk, a price was set on them. It certainly was not market value. The elk price was nowhere near market value. For any of the purebred cattle that were slaughtered, producers did not receive market value. It was nowhere close. It was just a set value.

Again, the producers of these birds need to be paying attention to what is going on when the program is being set because the values that are put on their birds will determine, to a large extent, what they will receive under the program. They need to pay attention because that is one area where the government has completely fallen down for producers.

I again want to make it clear that the cattle and the elk producers did not receive market value for their animals.

There will be a lot of costs associated with this problem and with this situation. The government needs to consider what it will do about things like down time. It will be months before these people will be up to speed again. Disposal costs need to be considered as well and it needs to go far beyond the animals. There are many other costs to producers and the planned restocking and rebuilding of operations needs to be done properly.

In conclusion, I want to remind producers that when they are looking at a program there are a few things they need to do. They need to be clear on what it is they want. The producers need to ensure they are all represented because in some places there are special interest groups that will try to take the money. They need to get a clear, clean method of payment and they need to set it up so that the ground level producers get the compensation.

It is very important that the government pay attention to what is going on in British Columbia and that it treats these producers properly.

[Agriculture, April 20th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, spring is here and the land is coming to life. After a long, hard winter, the people of Cypress Hills—Grasslands are going into the fields.

Calving is done for many. Seeding is about to start. And, in spite of the tough times on the farm, people are looking forward, forward to better days for them and their families.

However they need help from the government. They need a government that helps on trade issues rather than is helpless; that allows freedom to do business rather than restricts it; that encourages farmers rather than discourages them; and especially, they need a government that will keep its word and deliver on the programs that it has promised.

Why is it so hard for the government to keep its word? It is not just the contracts, the advertising, the phoney excuses, the ridiculous lines and the lack of good leadership. There is something far more wrong with the government and it needs to be replaced. Until it is, Canadians, including our farmers, will be left without the help they need.

[RCMP Pension Fund, April 2nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, when the RCMP was found to be involved in the Prime Minister's sponsorship mess, it called in an outside police force to investigate.

Billions of dollars are tied up in this pension fund. Most of the management of it is done from inside the RCMP. The problems related to it are internal RCMP issues. The audit is being done by RCMP officers. There is far too much room for a conflict of interest and once again Canadians deserve better.

Will the minister commit to bringing in outside investigators to get to the bottom of this matter?

[RCMP Pension Fund, April 2nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the RCMP is being investigated over the sponsorship scandal. Now we find out that it also has an ongoing internal investigation of its own pension fund. The RCMP has the responsibility to be transparent in these investigations; however, it turns out the pension fund investigation was unknown to anyone but a few senior officers.

Why has this report been kept secret from the 20,000 members of the force and its pensioners?

[Supply, March 22nd, 2004]

Madam Speaker, it is interesting that the Prime Minister tried so hard for so long to take over the government and then, once he got there, he has been so ineffective and has done so little. It is important, as my colleague said, that decisions need to be made on the basis of right and wrong and leadership needs to be shown.

It has been disheartening, I guess is the word we could use, to hear Liberal cabinet ministers when testifying saying “I did not know what was going on in my department. It is not my responsibility. Do not blame me. I do not know who you should blame, but do not blame me”. Interestingly enough, that is a defence that not only Gagliano has used, but the Prime Minister has also used that same defence. That really is disappointing because we know now that his staffers were involved early on in choosing companies that would be given advertising contracts. We know they were his closest staffers. Speaking in terms of “our” and “us” in their correspondence representing the minister, we are talking about the fact that they knew those companies were being chosen.

We know they were also involved in adjusting contracts. We know there was a contract that was moved up by $1 million just so one of the advertising companies could get a $170,000 commission and that the minister's staff was involved in that.

It has been interesting because I thought there would be some serious work done here and instead all we have seen is delay. My colleague asked about some specific things that we could do. I am going to talk about some of the things that have been delayed by the Prime Minister. I think if we would move on those, then we would be able to get something done here.

One of the things was same sex marriage. The government does not want to address that issue, so it has moved it into the Supreme Court. It is going to hold off on the reference to the Supreme Court until sometime in the fall so it does not have to deal with it before the election. Show some leadership and deal with the issue.

The second one is the Arar inquiry. We know the story of the gentleman who was imprisoned, came back to Canada and is trying to get some justice here. What did the government do? It announced one more inquiry and put things off one more time, “Let us get through the election. Hopefully we will not have to answer the questions and maybe we never will”.

The third thing was the question about the CSL contract discrepancies. We came forward and asked what kind of contract CSL had. That is the Prime Minister's former company. We were given one figure and then we found out that it was hundreds and thousands times bigger than that, up to $161 million in grants that his company received. We did not get that information directly.

Today we heard one of my colleagues talk about the fact that documents submitted by the head of the Treasury Board are not accurate. When we go through them we find what groups actually got for sponsorship money and it does not match up with the cheques that were paid out. We want to know where that money went. The government could move quickly on that. We think it knows because it has had a couple of years already. We saw it sit with the former public works minister for a long time and nothing happened on that file. We know that some of these things could be done immediately.

There are other things, too, such as a review of the gun registry. How much more money are we going to waste on the gun registry?

[Supply, March 22nd, 2004]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my 20 minutes with the member for Cumberland—Colchester. I look forward to hearing from him a little later.

I am concerned when I see a distinct lack of enthusiasm on the government side. It seems as though the government is deflated and has no energy. It does not seem to have any enthusiasm for doing its job.

The last speech was a good example of someone who seems to be apologizing for the government rather than coming forward with initiatives. The government is blaming us for the fact that it is paralyzed. I do not think that is fair and I do not think that is the case.

The government has been in power 100 days now but is basically a rehash of the old Chrétien government. It cannot get moving. We saw more of that today in Lethbridge.

It was interesting to watch the photo op in Lethbridge where so many cabinet ministers were trying to prop up the Liberal candidate and trying to get him elected in Lethbridge when he has no chance. The member of the Conservative Party who serves in Lethbridge is extremely well respected and has done an excellent job. After having spent the last year working on the agriculture file, the member knows it inside out. He has spent many hours trying to make BSE an issue that the government would pay attention to and did a tremendous job on that.

It was somewhat embarrassing today to watch the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the agriculture minister and the Liberal candidate trying to convince farmers that the $600 million that was finally being committed to the problem after 300 days will change the fortunes of western Canada.

I know our member on the Conservative side here, who worked hard on this file over the last year, was glad to see the money going out to producers, but earlier today he wanted to know why it took so long. One reason that it took so long has to do with our motion. I want to read the motion in sections and comment a little on each section if I have the time. It begins:

That, given the lack of new legislation introduced by the Liberal government during the Third Session of this Parliament--

I want to talk about that a bit. It is interesting to note that out of the 23 pieces of legislation that the present government introduced, 21 of those were rehashed from the Chrétien government. The vast majority of the bills introduced by the present government are nothing but reintroductions of the Chrétien legacy legislation.

Up until last week the only new legislation was the customs tariff bill and a bill apparently dealing with MP health benefits. We have another one today in which again the government has refused to take the action that is needed to deal with the issues. The government brings in half bills and then, as we heard a little earlier, it complains about the fact that we do not like them. If the government would show some leadership we would be a lot more supportive.

I want to point out that no new legislation is being brought forth by the government. It basically has stopped. Last week we called it paralysis by analysis. The government sits and is not able to bring forward the legislation that the country needs.

The second part of the motion today reads:

...this House recognize that the current government is not new--

It is important to point out that the government is a continuation of what happened before. In fact, not only is the majority of the cabinet old Chrétien ministers, but many of the promises and actions are ones that have been carried out by the present Prime Minister. In fact, many of the actions highlighted by him, where he said that he would change the culture in Ottawa, are rehashed, reheated promises from as far back as 1993. We think that if those folks were serious about dealing with issues they perhaps could have done something about them in the last 11 years.

The government included things from 1993: a greater role for MPs, an independent ethics commissioner, a parliamentary review of appointments. All of those were prominent parts of the 1993 red book but we have yet to see any of those things happen.

After 11 years I would ask why anyone would take the government's promises seriously. Actually, the Prime Minister has voted against some of the things that he claims he stands for. We know he voted against the independent ethics commissioner. He voted against expanding access to information legislation to cover crown corporations. He actually voted against that twice.

That is a disturbing thing. It is particularly disturbing for someone such as myself who is involved with agriculture and would love to see that legislation extended to the Canadian Wheat Board. Many farmers and producers would like to see what has been going on behind the scenes in the Canadian Wheat Board.

The Prime Minister voted against legislation that would have allowed Canadians to find out what goes on in their government. He just keeps reiterating that he will do what he said he will do but the records just do not bear that out. That was the second part of the motion.

The third part of the motion reads:

...that the current government is not new, but rather one that is intricately linked to the past decade of mismanagement, corruption and incompetence--

We have talked about corruption and incompetence in the House before and we are back again. It seems like it never ends. As the leader of the official opposition said today, he asked questions about these issues two years ago when he first came to the House of Commons. He came back today on his first day as the leader of our new party and he is asking many of those same questions again.

I wanted to point out the fact that the government is not only not new but it does not seem to be all that interested. In fact, it is difficult to even get the Prime Minister into the House to answer questions. He is out doing photo ops across the country. He is usually not here but when he is here he is really not here either because on February 25 he sat through question period but never got off his rear end once to answer a question. The opposition sees that as an insult, not only to us but to the Canadian people, that he would not show enough interest to stand and answer the questions that Canadians are asking us to ask the government.

There are so many broken promises and the government has only been in power for 100 days. The Prime Minister spoke about changing things in so many ways but unfortunately none of that has happened. I just want to give a couple of examples. He promised that he would increase the representation of women in the cabinet. Of course we know that he added one more woman to cabinet. I do not know if we can call that an increase in representation.

He promised greater representation for the west but he actually has one less minister from the west than he had before. Today, while we see him taking advantage of the photo opportunities in western Canada, in reality he is listening less to the west than he ever has. The members that he has in his cabinet from the west are seen in western Canada as being ineffective. We know that they come down here and they carry the Liberal members' message back to our people. They do not carry western Canadians' message down here and make it heard. That has been extremely disappointing. One of the reasons that I am involved in political life is that the member who is responsible for our province fails to represent the interests of his province to his party down here.

The Prime Minister promised to address the democratic deficit. That lasted about five days, because on the sixth day his government invoked closure to cut off debate. A little earlier we heard one member suggest that the government should do that again, that it should cut off debate, cut off the opposition so that it cannot continue to debate bills and to make issues that are important to Canadians a priority.

One of the things that disappointed me the most happened last year. We saw such a commitment, supposedly, by the government to share part of the gas tax with the municipalities. For a couple of weeks that was a huge issue. At the time the present Prime Minister was not the prime minister and he was making a big deal about it. Of course, as we saw in the throne speech, the government will not follow through with that at all. It has been a disappointment for many folks and we just wish the government would do a better job.

I want to talk a little about some of the scandals we have had to face with the present government in place. I actually will give some credit to Time Magazine because it has a good chronology of the scandals in its February 23 article. It talks about one of the initial ones which began with Shawinigate. With only one minute left I will have to race through this. I will just go through the list of headings: the job fund boondoggle in January, 2000; Gagliano under fire in March 2000; the fuel rebate disaster in December 2001; the ACOA disaster in December 2001; a missing report that just somehow disappeared in March 2002; accusations of patronage that took place in 2002. That is only halfway to where we are at right now. There was the breaking of the rules that was talked about in May 2002. We had MacAulay's resignation in October 2002, in which my colleague from Crowfoot played a tremendous role bringing that scandal to light. We have the gun registry fiasco that has gone on for years. We have the expense accounts of the privacy commissioner that were of such interest a few months ago where he had spent $380,000 on travel and hospitality in just two years. We had the Air Irving incident and now we have the sponsorship report that came back in 2004.

The list goes on and on but I see I have run out of time. However that is a quick list of why Canadians do not trust the government, why they think that we need a change and why we look forward to forming the next Government of Canada.

[Contraventions Act, March 8th, 2004]

Madam Speaker, I would like to acknowledge my colleague from Langley--Abbotsford and the years of dedication he has put into the whole issue of drugs and prisons. He certainly deserves the applause he is getting.

Once again I will just say that unfortunately we are dealing with a government that is in disarray. It is more interested in looking ahead and trying to campaign than it is in governing the country, and that is to the loss of everyone in the country.

[Contraventions Act, March 8th, 2004]

Madam Speaker, we are not opposed to the use of the judiciary. We are opposed to the abuse by the judiciary of some of the lack of minimums and lack of sentencing commitments.

If the members opposite were as interested in debate as they were on points of order, we would have had a good debate this afternoon. It took a little controversy to stir them up to where they would even get out of their seats. It has been frustrating that we are the only ones who have been debating the issue throughout the day.

I will leave it at that. I know there are other people who want to ask questions.

[Contraventions Act, March 8th, 2004]

Madam Speaker, I am not emotional about this at all. I see those as statements of fact. I am encouraged by the Liberal cabinet minister across the way who actually found himself involved in the sponsorship scandal telling us that he thinks that we are not going to be--