David Anderson

[Agriculture, March 28th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, we know the Americans are going to require country of origin labelling for imported beef and pork products. The cost of compliance will be staggering.

We wanted to work with the Americans to have this law amended or repealed, but not only has the Liberal government done nothing to address the situation, it has made it far worse. U.S. consumers are now beginning to boycott Canadian products, while the reckless and irresponsible comments by cabinet ministers and the Prime Minister are destroying our trade relationship.

Does the Minister of Agriculture understand the negative consequences for agriculture brought about by foolish, asinine comments such as the one by the member who sits beside him, the Minister of Natural Resources?

[The Prime Minister, March 25th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, today we watch a leader humiliating his own people, a leader who will go to any length to maintain iron fisted control.

We watch him threaten his own people, intimidating them until they break and submit.

We watch as he uses those already brainwashed to roust out disloyalty and to hunt down dissidents.

We watch as he forces people to set aside what they know is right and to go against their own consciences.

We watch them acting against their better judgment, contradicting their own words.

We watch as untold millions and indeed billions are spent on a delusion.

Unfortunately, I am not talking about a foreign dictator. I am speaking about the Prime Minister in Canada today.

At 5:30 we will witness once again the spectacle of Liberal backbenchers quietly falling into line to support the ongoing disaster that is the gun registry.

Canadians must resolve now to change the government, to put members of Parliament in place that will stand for freedom, rights and responsibility. The Alliance stands ready to fill that void.

[Assisted Human Reproduction Act, February 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be here to speak to Bill C-13. I have had the opportunity to speak to the bill a couple of times before but today I will speak specifically to the Group No. 2 amendments.

A number of the amendments which we are dealing with today have to do with stem cell research and embryonic stem cell research. I want to explain what stem cells are, where we can find them and some of the roles they can play in medical research.

Stem cells are the master cells that we find in every tissue of our body. These cells continue to reproduce throughout our lives. They can be manipulated in the laboratory to produce different kinds of cells and tissues. Scientists have found that stem cells have some very valuable possibilities for them in terms of medical research.

At the present time stem cells can be obtained from many different places and from different organs and tissues. Blood, bone marrow, skin, brain tissue, muscle and fat all contain stem cells.

Adult stem cells are cells that have reached a certain degree of maturity. They can be specialized stem cells. They can be taken from various tissues and organs including placental tissue and umbilical cord blood. Over the years scientists did not realize the advantages of using those placental cells and the umbilical cord blood. However in the last couple of years they really have moved on research in that area.

Embryonic stem cells are taken from embryos. I will talk a little today about adult stem cells and embryonic stem cells. A consequence of using embryonic stem cells is that, by necessity, the embryos die when the embryonic cells are removed. That is in contrast to the adult stem cells which can be taken from living human beings without hurting or damaging the person.

Adult stem cell research is really exciting and is an essential frontier in medicine, especially for those who are suffering from degenerative diseases such Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis. It also is thought that there is a potential to treat Alzheimer's through adult stem cell research. Another area in which stem cells have some tremendous potential is in the tragic spinal cord injuries. Hopefully a cure will be found for that condition.

We often hear announcements of medical breakthroughs in the use adult stem cells, which include those cells taken from umbilical cords, placental tissues and other tissues. There is a great benefit to adult stem cell research. We see it is has a significant impact in a number of areas.

Bone marrow transplants are an example of stem cell research and has been very successful over the years. Parkinson's disease is another area. Canadian neurosurgeon, Dr. Michael Levesque, is treating a patient with stem cells taken from that patient's own brain. It has had a tremendous positive effect for that patient.

There have been cases dealing with multiple sclerosis, four of them in particular in an Ottawa hospital. Researchers have been able to use stem cells taken from patients' own bone marrow. They have helped with a significant improvement in the condition of multiple sclerosis.

We may not think Crohns disease would be an area where this research would be useful. American patients have been treated successfully with their own stem cells and have received some relief from that terrible condition.

There have also been other blood diseases that over the years people have got some relief from by using adult stem cells.

This new data is being incorporated in the consideration of which avenues to take in stem cell research. There are researchers who would like to focus on embryonic stem cell research. I want to point out some of the scientific risks in embryonic stem cell research.

First, in spite of all the noise and hoopla that we have heard on the TV and read in the newspapers over the last few months, there has never been a successful case using embryonic stem cells. Regardless of those results, we often hear of people pushing for the use of embryonic stem cells. They want them to be used and developed, but there are some real problems with using embryonic stem cells.

One problem is that embryonic stem cells often appear to be subject to completely random and unacceptable growth. In certain situations they have been implanted in people and all of a sudden there has been the growth of a tumour that doctors cannot explain. The embryonic stem cells have mushroomed and ballooned and have caused the condition to get worse rather than better. Adult stem cells seem to be a lot more predictable in responding to growth factors and hormones that function to redirect their development.

Another real problem with embryonic stem cells is that they have been found to often grow into the wrong type of cells. Scientists have not been able to direct them in the way they would like to and in some cases they have found things like hair and teeth cells growing in the brain of patients who have received treatment of embryonic stem cells. This is strange but it is true. I do not think that any one of us would enjoy or like to have that situation happen to us or anyone that we hold near and dear.

However, there is an even bigger problem with embryonic stem cells. There is an issue of rejection. When we introduce foreign materials into our body of course, our bodies reject them. One of the main problems that we have had with embryonic stem cells is that throughout the patient's life he or she will need to take anti-rejection drugs. These stem cells cannot be absorbed from someone else.

It is clear that the focus of research really should be in the adult stem cells. There has been some good success with that and it is an area that we really need to focus on and try to develop.

One other thing the bill does not directly do is address the value of human life and lay out a framework for valuing and cherishing human life. I have talked before about the fact that we all recognize now that human life begins at conception. When the DNA package is put together, we understand that human life has begun. There has been a lot of debate on that over the years but really that debate has subsided and scientists and the general populace believe that when that DNA package is put together, we then have a human being.

The question then becomes what value do we give to that human being? I spoke about that before. We need to engage in the discussion on what value we will give to that DNA when put together. Many of us believe and know it is a human being. We have to decide what we will do with it then. Will we take it apart and allow it to die? Will we treat it as though it is something unique and we want it to develop and grow?

That actually brings me to the Group No. 2 amendments. I do not have time to speak to all of them but I want to speak to one specific motion, Motion No. 17 proposed the member for Calgary Southeast. The member has brought forward a clause that would prohibit embryonic stem cell research. It clearly states that no person shall experiment or harvest on an embryo. I support this motion, and I hope that members in the House will as well.

The current wording in the bill states that embryonic research can be undertaken under licence if the agency is satisfied that such research is “necessary”. I am not comfortable with that. I had a chance to sit in on a couple of health committee meetings with the director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. I am not comfortable with the lack of what I would call accountability.

Scientists felt that they could run with whatever experiments and experimentation they wanted. I felt they were trying to get ahead of this bill so that they could have those experiments in place. By the time the bill would be passed, they would be able to say that they were already doing certain research and that it was not the place of Parliament to interfere with them.

I would like to support the member for Calgary Southeast's motion that we prohibit embryonic stem cell research. This research of course is very controversial. It divides Canadians, as I have said before. There are no benefits to it that we know of as yet. We really need to focus on adult stem cell research.

My main point is that human life begin at conception when the DNA is put together. It is important that the leaders, the people in this House, consider the value that has. It is important that we take a position that we will not take that apart, kill that life and treat it as a commodity. Instead we will treat it with the uniqueness that it deserves.

[The Budget, February 25th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, the member wanted to speak about some of the issues that were not mentioned in the throne speech.

I would like to refer to one and ask him a question about it. That is the issue of agriculture. The government announced on many occasions that it has spent $465 million in new money for farmers. That is entirely incorrect and I will ask the member for his comments on that.

The government has told us that it is giving $220 million for crop insurance. There is a small word in the budget that changes entirely what it is doing and that is the word advance. The government is giving an advance to the crop insurance program, but that has to be made up by producers over the next 15 years. The government is not giving any money in terms of crop insurance but just giving an advance to farmers, and the farmers themselves will have to pay that money back into crop insurance over the next years.

The government also said that it is giving $20 million to Farm Credit Canada which is interesting because this is an institution that is supposed to be an independent financial institution. It has a portfolio of over $1 billion and the government has $20 million to give to it over two years. That is $10 million a year over two years to FCC, which is again money that farmers do not see and do not access.

The government announced with great fanfare $113 million to veterinary colleges. That money was announced months ago. Now the government is announcing it again tricking the farm community into thinking that it is giving them some of that money when, in fact, it is not going to farmers.

The government also announced another $50 million this year and $50 million next year to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency for food safety programs. That is interesting because Canada probably has the safest food system in the entire world and the government is throwing even more money into the bureaucracy.

Does the member not find it hypocritical that the government would announce this money when not one cent is for farmers and all of it is going toward an expanded bureaucracy? Does he not find it hypocritical for the government to pretend to be giving farmers money and pretend to be supporting them when, in fact, it is not doing that?

[Supply, February 24th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the member said at the end of his speech that he wanted to hear about something specific. I would like to ask him a specific question. The Auditor General has called the spending on the gun registry astronomical. This year $113 million is budgeted to go toward the gun registry. The government came back and asked for $73 million more in supplemental funding. Now the minister tells us that was actually part of the $113 million. He said that in his best case scenario costs will go up for the next two years on the gun registry and then begin to come down. It is going to come down to spending, at least in his estimation, which hopefully is not out as much as it was the last time, $600 million more for the gun registry before it is completed. That is also with no review of the program until 2005.

Therefore, specifically, does the member think that this is a good use of taxpayers' money over the next six years?

[Supply, February 24th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is important that the responsibility be shared and that it not just be in the hands of the Prime Minister.

A good example would be the agriculture department these days. That department is in complete chaos because the Prime Minister is the one who appointed the deputy minister. We know that the agriculture minister and the deputy minister have a hard time working together. Because one person was able to appoint someone to a political position, whether he deserved it or not, there is a complete department comprised of employees who do not know what their mission is. They are not sure where they are going and they are struggling with that. Because of that, farmers and Canadians are suffering. The programs are not what they should be because one person has too much power, and that would be the Prime Minister.

[Supply, February 24th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to talk a little more about this important issue. It is important enough that one of the ministers handed it off to another minister. I want to read a quote from one of the newspapers:

--if you walk around with a great ungainly reeking, rotting albatross lashed snugly around your neck. The federal justice minister, grasping this simple truth firmly enough, has dumped the national firearms registry onto someone else's desk and marched briskly away from it.

He has only had it for a few months, but it is already far too hot for him to handle, particularly with his supposed leadership ambitions. I would suggest that if he is going to be a real leader, he will have to handle problems a bit better than he handled this one.

I know there are others who would love to ask questions, but I want to quickly talk about the fact that the registration system has been far too cumbersome. We have heard time and time again of people who have actually tried to participate in the system but have not been able to get through. The minister assures us that he will correct that, but it has been five years now and the system is not fixed yet.

We have heard about his bogus claims of success, that it has turned away some 7,000 claims over the years. What is interesting is that most of those claims would have been turned away under the old FAC system anyway. They would have been rejected, so that claim does not apply.

In moving the firearms registry to another department we hear a surrender, an admission of complete failure in the program by the cabinet and by the cabinet minister. We will see over the next while that this program will begin to wind down because the government has realized how ineffective and inefficient it is.

I would like to suggest a very simple solution on the gun registry problem, which is that we go back to a system as we had before. In the FAC system the owners were registered and there was no worry about registering the weapons. In that way the police know, if they need to, whether someone has a gun if they are going to a person's place and they need to be concerned about it. They do not know how many guns people have now anyway. If someone is breaking the law, it is very unlikely the person has registered the gun.

The old system worked fairly well. People took courses, registered and then were able to use their guns as a tool, as many of us do. If that were done, it would be a big help.

In conclusion, there is a lack of leadership. The Auditor General stated:

Without better direction and clear expectations, these initiatives will flounder. Even the best-intentioned department can't make up for a lack of leadership.

I would say that is what we have faced in so many different areas in so many different departments.

[Supply, February 24th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I will respond to some of the comments that we have just heard. I will also be splitting my time with the member for South Surrey—White Rock—Langley.

We are addressing the Auditor General's reports today. First nations governance, the CCRA, information technology security, criminal justice system, defence, departmental performance reports, health, EI and the gun registry are some of the things that the Auditor General has dealt with in her reports.

Why do we need an Auditor General and these reports at all? It is clear to me that we need the reports because the hearts of Canadians just do not trust the government. They do not believe that the government can be trusted to be left alone and be unsupervised. We see a big difference throughout this country on how people view government. I happen to come from western Canada and in western Canada for the most part we see government as being basically a negative thing. It interferes in people's lives and most of the people I know, the people in my riding, would like to see smaller government with less interference in their lives and less taxation.

People in other parts of this country apparently like the idea of government. They want to see more government and we saw a clash of those two civilizations over the weekend when the Minister for Intergovernmental Affairs took great exception to the premier of Alberta and his throne speech, and decided he was going to step into this issue of Alberta and what is going on there.

One of the things that we realize in western Canada is that people are sick and tired of the government coming in and telling them who they are and what they need to do. They are sick and tired of the government not listening to them. They are sick and tired of the important issues going by and not being heard on these things, and being totally ignored.

The minister happened to mention three of those issues: Kyoto, Canadian Wheat Board, and firearms registry. He said that nowhere in this world is the spectre of secession raised with regard to, and he listed them, an international protocol on the environment, a Wheat Board, or a firearms registry program.

It is not just three issues that have caused the problems and the concerns. We do not just have those three issues, but things that have built up over the years, coming from a government that has refused to listen to people throughout this country. It refused to listen month after month, year after year and decade after decade. Western Canadians are getting sick of the arrogance and the ignorance that is demonstrated by the government.

This same minister has no qualms about pushing his agenda very actively and aggressively when he wants to change this country to fit his image. He is prepared to do that even though he does not understand a big part of this country. He does not mind shoving his agenda down westerner's throats, but cannot hear one word of comment or criticism of the government without sending a condescending letter to western Canadians lecturing them on their role and what he sees as their role.

We feel that we contribute and are part of this country. We are proud of who we are, but we are sick and tired of being treated as second class citizens. I guess no one should be surprised that people at some point begin to look at other options when they are just sick and tired of their government not listening to them.

One of the reasons people in western Canada have a mistrust for government is that they have not been listened to for so long. They do not know whether they are part of this country or not. One of the reasons that we need the Auditor General is because we know that the Liberal government is always going to push the envelope on accountability. We have seen that in our part of the world and people in other parts of this country are starting to catch onto that. We need someone who will regulate that and will look after that.

Why is it important to maintain accountability? We have seen too many times through this century what happens when there is no accountability of government. We have seen it happen in communist regimes where it has been deadly to their citizens. We regularly hear in the House my colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca indicate that there is no accountability in the government of Zimbabwe which is so dangerous to the citizens and the opposition. It is dangerous to any one who dares to oppose the dictatorship of that country. Accountability is needed there and we need it in this country as well. One of the concerns we have is that the government sets the tone for accountability. I think it is a sour tone sending a bad note.

We see these things right from the top. We see the Prime Minister who, in his own legal dealings, raises questions year after year as to how he is doing business. We saw it in his appointment of an ethics counsellor who the Prime Minister set up and then made the position responsible to him so that the counsellor reports to no one else but the person who appointed him. He is not accountable to Parliament.

We have been talking about cabinet guidelines over the last few days. The rules are set up differently for different cabinet ministers. If cabinet ministers have a set of businesses they must set them up one way, but if someone else happens to be the finance minister, he gets to set it up so that he can run his companies and make it look to the public like he does not have any interest in them or has interfered in those companies. We saw that at least one of them had a special deal.

The elections financing bill came in at the last minute where the Prime Minister decided he would make changes to the country's election financing at the end of his career, not during the middle of it or when it could have influenced him, but after he leaves.

His changes would reduce or try to reduce corporate influence, which is good, but, on the other hand, because the Liberal Party is incapable of raising its own money without those corporate contributions he has to turn to someone else. Who does he turn to but the taxpayers, and forces them to fund his party.

The Alliance is the one party that is for the most part dependent on individual donations and we believe that we could survive very well with reduced corporate donations and be able to maintain our party and keep it going. The Liberals just cannot raise their money and so they turn to the taxpayers once again.

The other parties, of course there are a couple of them swimming in debt, as soon as they see an opportunity to get free taxpayers' money are only too happy to jump on board with this proposal.

Every government agency needs auditing because the goal of bureaucracy is to expand itself. That is why it exists, that is why it is there, it wants to get bigger, and it works on that. We saw it again last week in the budget. The government has decided to expand the bureaucracy. Over the last year it has grown, but it will continue to grow over the next couple of years.

The Auditor General has done some tremendous work in examining departments that she was able to review. There are other reports she has submitted over time. I will talk about one of those, but she has done good work in the taxation department. My colleague from St. Albert talked about that earlier today and did a good job of addressing that.

One of the audits with which I am familiar with is the Canadian Wheat Board audit that was brought down last year. It was interesting that she was called in to do an audit on the Canadian Wheat Board but then limited in what she could audit. She came in and basically was allowed to do an office management audit. She found out that there were problems in overall management and no set ways of measuring performance.

She found that there were problems in planning and that there were major problems in how the board handled its information technology. All of that was good and well, and the board had committed itself to improving some of those areas, but the problem was that it did not address the issues that people wanted her to look at in terms of how the board operated in the marketplace, whether it gave farmers a better deal or not. We have no way of knowing that because the board itself limited her in what she could study. That is one of the problems that the Auditor General faces, often being restricted in what she can do and where she can go.

We saw that in the gun registry. It is another good example of where she said she could not find out the true and full costs of the gun registry because she was not allowed to go far enough into not only the justice department but some of the other departments to find out who had actually been funding this and where the money for it had been coming from.

I want to talk a little bit about the gun registry. The Auditor General talked about the fact that the issue was not about gun control. It was not even the astronomical cost overruns although we talked about those, but that the real issue, and what was inexcusable about what was going on with the gun registry was that Parliament was kept in the dark.

The member for Toronto--Danforth had some comments about how important it was for people to access that information. The Auditor General said that what was inexcusable about the program was that not only was she not able to get the information but parliamentarians had been kept completely in the dark about it.

We are all familiar with the fact that $1 billion has been put into the gun registry. Many of us would say that $1 billion has been wasted. That is $1 billion for seven million guns, which, If I have worked it out right, is about $143 per gun. It would probably average out to $300 to purchase a gun and here we are spending $150 just to register it. That has to be a complete disaster in terms of how the program is being run.

I want to talk a bit about what is wrong with the registry.

[Supply, February 24th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I must take exception to a couple of comments that the member made. The opposition, and particularly the Canadian Alliance, has consistently worked hard to bring change to the House. At every point and every time we are stopped and virtually always by government backbenchers who choose not to make a differences. They make the choice that the system will not be different than it has been in the past.

It is fine for members to stand up and give us a lecture while they are on TV, but when it comes time to vote for change, to make a difference, and to make those significant changes that we need here, the government backbenchers consistently back down from doing that. Therefore, the system stays the way that it is and it stays broken, as the member says.

However, he must take responsibility along with his colleague from Uxbridge who asked, as my colleague did, whether the Auditor General was truly an office that was independent or was it a political office because she dared to question what was going on with the government.

I would be willing to listen to the hon. member's comments on this. Backbenchers cannot have it both ways by saying that they stand for reform, but every time that they have an opportunity to do something about it they choose not to.

[Agriculture, February 20th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government has repeatedly demonstrated to Canadians that it has become arrogant, self-serving and dictatorial. Now it is at it again.

We are witnessing the public spectacle of the government ramming agricultural policy down the throats of producers. The minister insists that his new agricultural policy framework must take effect on April 1 even though producer organizations across the country vigorously and unanimously oppose his arbitrary deadline.

If farm policy is for farmers, why is he ramming it through without their consent?