Dick Harris

[Payment Clearing and Settlement Act, April 19th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I know we have heard from the government speaker and my colleague from the Bloc who spoke in support of Bill S-40. I plan to speak on behalf of the Canadian Alliance in support of this bill as well. Although, members know our feeling about bills that originate in the Senate. Although this is an amendment, so it is a little different. We have always held the opinion that bills should originate in this House but we will make an exception here because this is a good bill.

Bill S-40 would amend the Payment Clearing and Settlement Act. It is important to note that this glitch in the act has existed for some time and the government has known about it. The Minister of Finance and his department officials have known that our clearing houses have been operating at a disadvantage to our counterparts, particularly in the G-7, which have made changes to look after the problem involving bankruptcy and dealing with the collateral and derivative contracts.

The government has known about the problem for some time. Principal groups and companies that are involved in this type of business have been saying that there is a problem. On the grand scale of running government, something like this is a minor change that would eminently be beneficial to the various types of clearing houses, to the buyers and sellers who deal with the trading companies, to our competitiveness with our G-7 counterparts in attracting foreign business to our clearing houses and to the people who buy and trade through the clearing houses.

One would think that someone in the finance department would have said “let's just get this done” and make the change. This will not change the direction of the world but it will make the people in Canada who are involved in this sector of our economy a lot happier. They will be able to attract more business, create more jobs and acquire a higher degree of technology in their operations. However this has been dragging on for some time now.

In February the member for Calgary Southeast, who was our finance critic at that time, wrote the finance minister and asked him to introduce the requested amendments as soon as possible. The way the government marks time, February, March, April, a month and a half is really nothing.

There has been precious little other business on the government agenda. It could have introduced the amendment earlier than this. As well, it could have been done even before our finance critic had to write to finance minister to ask him to get on with it. It is just the typical slow wheels of government turning. I have been here since 1993 and I have never seen government wheels turn as slow as I have with this Liberal government.

There are so many issues that parallel the movement on this amendment. One only needs to look at the softwood lumber issue. When the softwood lumber agreement was signed in 1996, there was a set termination date five years hence. The government knew that. It knew it would have to prepare for the eventual end of that agreement.

One would think it would be good government business to begin looking five years ahead from the date the agreement was signed in preparation for when it would run out in order to avoid a trade crisis. The fact is the government simply did not do that. Anyone who has some sort of gift for planning, and one would hope that there would be some in the government who could look further ahead than 10 days, would see that five years from 1996 we would be in some sort of a trade crisis with the United States unless we did some planning.

There were warnings from the official opposition about the perils that lie in the SLA. There were warnings that when the softwood lumber agreement ended we would be in a trade dispute which perhaps would lead to a crisis situation. There were warnings not to get into the SLA in the first place. Despite all the warnings, the government did not move until about six months before the softwood lumber agreement expired. That foot dragging, the same type of foot dragging it did on the amendment to the Payment Clearing and Settlement Act, got us into a full scale trade crisis with the United States on softwood lumber.

Now the U.S. is playing hardball. We went into the game at the end of the SLA unprepared hoping that the negotiators and the U.S. forest industry and the lobby group that represents it would somehow do us a favour. Well it does not work that way. They do not do anyone any favours. They play for keeps and they play hardball. Those who are not prepared, as Canada was not, are going to get beat up.

In relation to Bill S-40, this is the sort of the thing that was placing our clearing houses at a disadvantage to our competitive partners in the G-7. The other G-7 partners, as the Secretary of State for International Financial Institutions will know, were way ahead of us on this one. Canada was lagging behind.

I am sure the hon. member knows how important this amendment is. Not only should we get it in now but we should have had it in long before now to allow our clearing houses to be more competitive. In particular, the one in Montreal has been really pushing this so it can expand its business. Other similar businesses and clearing houses in Canada could attract foreign business and use the services of the clearing houses with the confidence that the agreements are not going to be held up through some court order due to a bankruptcy from some of their members.

It is important to be on top of things like this and the government simply has not been on top of it. The hon. member, being a former chief economist and a good one at that, has to know how important it was to get this amendment in. However there has been more foot dragging which should not have happened.

We can talk about the slow pace of the Liberal government on a number of other issues and draw parallels to this bill. For example, the part of British Columbia where I live has a huge natural disaster called the pine beetle infestation. The government has known about this situation.

The Pacific forest centre in Victoria that deals with the science of forestry and forest management has known about this and the federal government has known about it for a number of years now. A few short months ago I asked the government if it would come to the assistance of the British Columbia government in fighting the pine beetle infestation.

The answer was that the federal government had not been asked yet. My question had to be, is there anything wrong with being a little proactive on it? Why not call B.C. and ask if the federal government could be of help? There is an obligation on behalf of the federal government to return some of the billions of federal tax dollars that have come out of the British Columbia forest industry.

Just a few short weeks after that day, the British Columbia government did make a formal proposal to the governing Liberals. It presented its five or six year plan to deal with the pine beetle infestation and asked for the federal government's help.

The forest industry is in crisis out there. Tens of thousands of B.C. workers have lost their jobs not only in the forest industry but in related industries. The future of that particular part of the province because of the pine beetle infestation looks dismal.

The fact is the federal government has not responded to the request for help by the Government of British Columbia. That is a shame considering that the B.C. forest industry has sent billions of dollars, perhaps tens of billions of dollars to Ottawa over the last number of decades. The five year plan calls for a total expenditure of about $500 million. That is a very small percentage of what B.C. has sent here. Also it would be a cost sharing plan so perhaps the federal government's share would be down to about $250 million.

The federal government has simply ignored the west once again in the face of a very serious crisis. It has ignored the western forest industry, a prime area of softwood lumber harvest and production in Canada. It has ignored it and allowed the softwood lumber crisis to develop. It has ignored the province of British Columbia, and in particular my riding where literally hundreds of thousands of acres are infested by the pine beetle. It has ignored that.

The government seems to ignore and drag its feet on the real important issues that face various parts of our country, as it has been ignoring this amendment to the Payment Clearing and Settlement Act. Now it is acting on it. It is late but at least the government is acting on it.

While the Liberals tend to delay making decisions on major issues that affect the country, they seem to have no problem when it comes to making a perk-like purchase for the Prime Minister and cabinet, such as a couple of Challenger jets to fly around the country. It took them 10 days to do that. My colleague from Elk Island has been keeping track of the government on this issue.

It appears that one day in the parliamentary restaurant the Prime Minister said to some of his colleagues “Listen folks, I may only be around here for another year or year and a half. It would sure be nice to have some new planes to fly around in because I have a lot of countries to see and a lot of people to meet. I want to ensure that my final year or year and a half is filled with a very high degree of comfort and a lot of travel because that is always fun”. It took them 10 days to spend $101 million on Challenger jets.

This has not come up yet but I am sure it will. Under questioning the Minister of Public Works and Government Services said that the planes were ordered from Bombardier because it was the only one that could supply Challenger jets. The government wanted Challenger jets because it already had four Challenger jets and it wanted to stay with the same type of aircraft and therefore Bombardier got the order.

That is the wrong way for a government to order its goods and services. There is a written process. It appears the order was deliberately put through national defence so that the government could avoid going to public tender to allow other companies that build that type of aircraft to bid on it.

Under the procurement guidelines any contract for goods and services over $37,000 must be publicly listed through the MERX system and is open to bid by suppliers in Canada, the United States and Mexico. That is part of the NAFTA agreement. This is the way the rules were set up under NAFTA so that suppliers in the U.S. and Mexico as well as in Canada could bid on these contracts. This was the reason the government established what is called the MERX system, which is being run by one of the major banks, that posts all the requirements for the government on the service so that suppliers can make bids.

When the government is looking to purchase airplanes, it is very deceiving of it to put the tender out in such a way that it names the manufacturer and the brand of aircraft it wants. Under the procurement rules the government should have stated that it needs a passenger jet which must have a certain number of seats, a flight range of x number of miles, a fuel economy of a certain standard and it must be fitted to special requirements regarding avionics and things like that.

That is the way the government should have put that tender into the MERX system which would allow companies that are capable of supplying an aircraft like that to bid on it. It is a public tender. That is what the procurement system in the government is all about. The MERX system is there so that the government can easily put its requirements in front of anyone who chooses to bid on a contract.

There are companies in the United States, such as Gulfstream, Citation, Beachcraft and Lear that build corporate jets. Had the government put the requirements of a type of plane out, it could have had four or five other tenders including Bombardier's. If all the other tenders were simply not suitable, the government could have held them up and said “These are the tenders we received and here is why we chose Bombardier”. No one would question that, but the government did not do it.

The government may have another problem with the purchase. It may be in direct violation of the NAFTA rules by not allowing American and Mexican companies to bid on the planes. I would advise the Minister of Public Works and Government Services to be prepared for a NAFTA challenge from a company that could have provided that same plane.

Everything the government needs has to go out to public tender unless for example it is required for a state of emergency or if it is an issue of national security. I suspect that the government put the purchase of these aircraft through national defence hoping that people would think it must have been a security issue and would not worry about it. The people watching the procurement system the government is bound to operate under are a lot smarter than that. I suggest that the government be ready for a NAFTA challenge on the purchase of the aircraft.

I could talk about Kyoto. However the House has heard enough about how the government has been mismanaging that issue so I will instead try to sum up Bill S-40. It is important to point out that Bill S-40 would make technical changes to correct a significant problem faced by certain Canadian clearing houses. Under existing solvency laws derivative contracts are not exempt by court ordered stays. If member corporations go into bankruptcy any collateral deposited at clearing houses is frozen along with other assets. Clearing houses have to line up behind all the other creditors. Our counterparts in the G-7 foresaw this problem years ago and took steps to correct it by introducing legislation. However the Liberal government has not. This has put Canada way behind.

Bill S-40 would bring Canadian law into line with our G-7 counterparts by exempting such collateral deposits from the law relating to bankruptcy or insolvency procedures. This would allow clearing houses to realize collateral deposited by its members without the risk of a court imposed stay. Under existing law Canadian clearing houses operate under a competitive disadvantage compared to derivative clearing houses in the United States and Europe. This is exactly what I was talking about.

Our friends in the G-7 have been way ahead of us on the issue. As a result they have been attracting businesses from outside their countries that have confidence in dealing with them because the flaw in our laws governing the issue does not affect them. The passage of Bill S-40 would put us on a level playing field with our friends in the G-7.

I will make an observation for those who are watching. During a trading day a member of a clearing house will be both a buyer and seller of listed stocks. That is the way it works. Instead of each member making separate settlements with other members a designated central clearing system or clearing house handles the daily settlement process between members. The Montreal stock exchange has spearheaded the effort to change the law but the Liberal government has not listened to it.

Bill S-40 must go through. We in the Canadian Alliance Party will support it. It is about time the bill came forward.

Before I close I am sure the House will allow me to say hello to my father who is watching. He is in Sidney and has been very ill. I told him I would try to brighten his day by saying hello to him. We are hoping all the treatment he is getting will bring his strength back, and I will see him in a couple of weeks.

[Species at Risk Act, April 18th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend my colleagues who supported me for their good judgment and wisdom. Those who did not will be dealt with another day.

I am pleased to rise and speak to Bill C-5, which is the species at risk act. I would like to begin my presentation by clearly saying that the Canadian Alliance is committed to protecting and preserving Canada's natural environment and the endangered species.

However the bill borders on unconstitutionality. It proposes to relieve Canadians of the right to enjoy ownership and full control of their property based on a bureaucratic decision and provides no compensation to any Canadian who is deprived of the enjoyment of their property rights.

Sadly, this was one of the things that was taken away from Canadians 20 years ago through the charter of rights. In the bill of rights, which I support very strongly, it was clearly established that Canadians had the right to free ownership and control of their properties and would not be deprived of it without due process. In that explanation there was compensation that would be required.

For the benefit of our audience, our point about Bill C-5 is this. Someone has a piece of property and a little critter of some sort shows up on the property that has been or could be deemed a species at risk, such as a three toed purple frog. If a decision is made that this particular critter is deemed an endangered species, then without notification by the state police, and I mean the Liberal government, a process can be enacted and put underway to take away a piece of that landowner's property. This would be done to provide a habitat of any size, as determined, for this so-called endangered species without any notification to the landowner. That is about as unconstitutional as I can possibly imagine, when the state can implement a process without any notification to the person who will suffer a consequence by it.

Members know that the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development spent approximately nine months dealing with this issue. It called witnesses from all across Canada, many who were experts in this field. The committee provided a sterling report to the government on its findings. It provided a number of recommendations that would have made Bill C-5 somewhat palatable to most Canadians and, of course, palatable to most opposition members.

The committee spent exhaustive amounts of hours, days and weeks dealing with the bill and putting a report together. There was majority approval on it, and I understand on many items there was unanimous approval. After presenting to the government a report which the committee believed was a very successful end to a long exercise and after hearing all the witnesses, the government simply trashed the report from the environment committee was trashed. That is unbelievable.

I will give the House a little humour. Two days ago the Minister of the Environment stood up in the House during question period on a question from either the Bloc or the NDP. The minister started out his answer by saying, first of all, let us be clear, this was a democratic process. He was not even talking about Bill C-5, but about something else. He said that in case his hon. friend across the way did not know, “democracy consists of listening to people”. That is a direct quote from the Minister of the Environment, the same minister who ordered the trashing of the environment committee report. In a surprise for him, the committee members went out and listened to people from all across the country and brought back the comments, involving themselves in a most democratic process.

When I heard the minister's comment, I was just astounded by the hypocrisy of what he said in the House and what he did to the report of the environment committee. I understand that there were over 300 amendments put forward by the committee, good, solid amendments that were all supported by the committee. Nevertheless, the report was trashed by the Minister of the Environment and his people.

What we have here is a formula that will be so detrimental to Canadians across the country, particularly but not exclusively to hard-working rural Canadians who rely on their land as a source of income or food, and I am speaking of the farming families, and to Canadians who have sought to escape the city core and have bought a two acre, three acre or five acre hobby farm in the country in order to provide a clean environment for their kids, both from a social and a nature point of view. This formula places this whole idea of getting back to the land at risk, because who really owns the land now? The people may have ownership of it, but they certainly do not have jurisdiction over it according to the bill.

I want to wind up by saying that the government has really dumped all over the people of Canada with the endangered species bill. No one, it appears in the government's mind, has the right and the security to own and enjoy property. In winding up I want to make a motion. I move:

That the debate be now adjourned.

[Softwood Lumber, March 22nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals may have chosen not to renew the SLA, and that was a good idea, but the fact is they had done nothing through the entire five years of the agreement to come up with some sort of plan when it ran out.

They did not work with the big lobby groups on our side in the states. They did not work with the industry to cobble together a plan to ensure that we would not be in this crisis. As a matter of fact the record will show that they only started discussing the expiry date of the SLA about six months before it ran out. This government did nothing.

[Softwood Lumber, March 22nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, we would not be in this softwood lumber mess if the Liberal government had prepared properly for the expiration of the softwood lumber agreement.

Despite all the warnings from the Alliance Party all through the five years of the agreement the Liberals disregarded the impending crisis. The agreement expired and they had no plan.

Yesterday again they failed to come up with an agreement. Do they have some sort of contingency plan now? How will they protect the workers and the industry from this devastation?

[Norouz, March 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, today muslims around the world are marking Norouz, the Islamic new year. This is a very special day of celebration for Muslims everywhere, and a particularly momentous one for the people of Afghanistan who for the first time in 20 years can freely celebrate this joyous day. With the help of Canadian and alliance forces, the Taliban tyrants are on the run, hopefully banished forever from Afghanistan.

There are a billion Muslims around the world and 350,000 resident in Canada. The Canadian Alliance Party is proud that we have Canada's first and only Muslim member of parliament in our midst, the member for Edmonton--Strathcona and our deputy leader.

From all of us in the Canadian Alliance, I extend a happy new year to everyone in the Muslim community.

[Forest Industry, March 14th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, after years of mine being the pre-eminent voice on softwood lumber issues in the House, after years of me warning the government about the perils that awaited if it signed the softwood lumber agreement, after me warning it about the crisis that would occur once this SLA ran out if it did not act in a much prior way, the government finally got it. I want to congratulate the government for supporting our motion today. It may have been a little slow, but it got there and should be congratulated for that.

Now I would like to ask the government to be just a little bit faster on recognizing the devastation caused by the mountain pine beetle out in British Columbia. Literally tens of thousands of hectares of good softwood lumber are being devastated as we speak because help has not been forthcoming from the government. It has had a formal request for help on this issue from the province of B.C. and it has yet to respond.

[Supply, March 14th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, there has been a lot of activity by the government of late, but the fact is, and apparently the hon. member does not know, that this has been a burning issue since 1996 when the softwood lumber agreement was first signed.

We advised the government about the perils that awaited during the signing of the softwood lumber agreement. We advised it that it would come to an end and it had better be prepared. The hon. member said the government has been involved, but the government has simply allowed the SLA to run out while embracing the misguided notion that despite its history, the U.S. lumber industry would simply roll over and accept free trade on softwood lumber.

The member clearly demonstrated today that she has as little understanding about the softwood lumber issue as she did some time back about when crosses were burning in this country. That was a fiasco as well.

[Supply, March 14th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I have a great answer. The record will show the NDP, otherwise known as friends of Maude Barlow, vigorously opposed the free trade agreement and still do. However it is convenient for them to support both it and our motion today. We thank them for the little deviation from their normal stand on the free trade agreement.

[Supply, March 14th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, we have been giving the Liberal government advice since before 1996. We advised it not to sign the SLA. It did. We pointed out the perils that awaited it if it signed. It signed. The perils began to emerge as disasters throughout the five year period.

We told the Liberals the SLA would expire in 2001 and asked them to prepare for it. We suggested they make friendly and close alliances with large lobby groups in the United States such as the National Association of Home Builders, the American Affordable Housing Institute and whatever lobby group it could find to fight the large and powerful U.S. softwood lumber lobby. The government failed to do that.

Most importantly, we advised the government to form a friendly and close relationship with the new president of the United States. It failed to do that. It should had reacted in a more friendly and eager way when George Bush came to power. If it had formed a partnership to work co-operatively with the president we would not be having this problem.

However the Prime Minister was almost oblivious to the new president. During the U.S. election he had the audacity to say he hoped the Democrats would win. Can members imagine the stupidity of a statement like that? We are paying the price for it now.

[Supply, March 14th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Lethbridge who has a good knowledge of this issue. He has a far better knowledge of this issue than I can say for the Liberal government. I was astounded by the comment by the member from Ancaster--Dundas when he said that the government had free trade when the SLA ran out.

I cannot imagine that the Liberal government was so oblivious to the past record of the United States on softwood lumber that it would think for a moment that there would not be challenges coming very quickly after the SLA ran out. That is the problem. There was no planning for the expiry of the SLA on behalf of the government.

It is an absolute correct statement to say that the members of the Reform Party and now the Alliance have been the pre-eminent speakers on this whole softwood lumber agreement issue. The member for Vancouver Island North has spoken in the House going back to prior to the signing of the SLA. He warned the government of the perils that awaited should the agreement be signed. He probably spoke more than 25 or 30 times in the last five years on the issue as disaster upon disaster resulted from the softwood lumber agreement. He stood in the House, as have I and many of our colleagues, and urged the government to prepare for the expiry of the softwood lumber agreement.

It is clear that the government never really got involved in this softwood lumber agreement crisis until some time in December 2000, some three months before the expiry date. Then all of a sudden it was going to waltz in and try to solve the thing. It would have been nice if it had, but the fact is it did precious little between then and the expiry date of the SLA. Since then it does not appear that the government made very much progress on it as well.

We are now faced with the free trade that we were used to in softwood lumber over the last 25 years where the United States industry through its large and powerful lobby groups would challenge the export of Canadian softwood lumber into the United States. It has quite predictably slapped a tariff and extra duties onto the Canadian softwood lumber going into the United States.

Is anybody really surprised that it has happened? Certainly not all of us in the opposition but obviously the Liberal government is surprised about it. The government did nothing for five years while it was waiting for the SLA to expire and then it hoped by some miracle that the American forest and softwood lumber industry would just let us have unfettered free trade into the United States for our softwood products.

That is the record of mismanagement of the government on the softwood lumber issue. We should not blame it too much because it simply does not understand the issue. Let us give the government some relief of blame for that.

The finance minister was out in Quesnel, B.C. about three or four weeks ago. I am told by the people in Quesnel, which is a big lumber town in north central B.C., that they almost had to smack him with a 2x4 of softwood lumber to get him to recognize that there was a problem. He said some niceties and said he would go back to Ottawa and encourage and almost demand that the Prime Minister get involved personally with President Bush and get this thing done. That was something that was not a rocket science suggestion. We have been suggesting it for a number of years.

I come from north central British Columbia, probably the softwood lumber capital of Canada and perhaps the world. To give the House an idea of the importance of softwood lumber in our region our forest companies produce about 3.9 billion board feet of lumber every single year. We have the most modern and highly technological mills in the world. We produce enough lumber to build about 475,000 single dwelling homes every year. We could produce far more than that because of the efficiency of our mills.

The housing for which we can produce lumber represents about three times the annual new housing starts in Canada. We do it every year. Our mills in northern B.C. produce about 40% of B.C.'s total softwood lumber output. That represents about 21% of Canada's total production of softwood lumber.

Needless to say, the mismanagement of the softwood lumber issue by the Liberal government has had a disastrous effect on the economy of British Columbia as a whole but in particular the area of B.C. I come from because it is so forestry dependent.

We are faced with a government that seems willing to seek a band aid approach to the softwood lumber crisis rather than fight for what we should rightfully have in Canada: free and unfettered trade in softwood lumber with the United States of America. It appears the government, having let the issue get into an absolute crisis mode, is willing to sign an agreement that would give us not free trade in softwood lumber but managed trade.

That is not what the government should do. It is not about free trade with the United States. The government has mismanaged the case. It is looking for a band aid fix. It is the same way it has managed the country for the last nine years. It has never made substantive changes. It has always preferred a band aid approach. That is not the way to run a country and it is certainly not the way to run the softwood lumber issue.

For five years our member for Vancouver Island North has constantly stood in the House and given the Liberal government every amount of assistance he could give to help it manage the softwood lumber issue. He has gone to the United States and made close associations with Americans in the industry and in government. He has talked with representatives of the American Affordable Housing Institute and the National Association of Homebuilders. He has been in touch with the industry in Canada and worked closely with it.

However the government has been so partisan minded that it has discounted every bit of good advice the hon. member for Vancouver Island North has given it. It is fair comment to say my hon. colleague from Vancouver Island has forgotten more about softwood lumber than the Liberals ever knew. The Minister for International Trade has demonstrated that in spades. So has the Prime Minister. So has the parliamentary secretary. I am sure the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development has not given the issue a thought.

We are in a crisis. We need to protect the right of Canada to unfettered free trade with the United States. That is the bottom line.

The government says it is okay to have unfettered free trade in the oil and gas industry and some manufacturing sectors but for some reason it refuses to fight for it in the softwood lumber industry. This is a pure example of the federal government's attitude toward western Canada and some of the eastern provinces in which our party is under-represented from an electoral point of view.

Most disturbing of all is that ministers of the government who live in British Columbia and know the issue and its impact have been telling the government to get it done and it has not. That is typical of the Liberal government.