Ed Komarnicki

[Budget Implementation Act, 2005, May 18th, 2005]

Why didn't the Prime Minister apologize to Parliament?

[Petitions, May 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I have another petition relating to autism. The petitioners are asking Parliament to amend the Canada Health Act and corresponding regulations to include therapy for children with autism as a medically necessary treatment and require all provinces to provide or fund this essential treatment for autism.

[Petitions, May 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I have a series of petitions that I would like to table with respect to the closure of rural post offices. The petitioners call upon Parliament to keep the Grenfell post office open and retain the moratorium on rural post office closures. It is signed by 120 residents of that community.

There is another petition similar in type and vein relating to the Fleming post office signed by 59 residents of that community, as well as the community of Minton, Saskatchewan.

I have 108 residents of Torquay, Saskatchewan asking that the Torquay post office remain open and that the moratorium on rural post offices be maintained.

Additionally, I have 248 residents from the community of Stoughton, Saskatchewan asking that the petition be filed as well.

[Employment Insurance, May 6th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, is it genuine concern or another example of the tail wagging the dog?

Shortly after the announcement of the Conservative Party subcommittee plan for a comprehensive wage earner protection fund to operate through the EI program, the Minister of Labour, with all the bluster he could muster, announced that he had an immediate announcement. What was the announcement and how immediate? It was the government's intention to move quickly on its intention to introduce a package for a worker protection fund. I would not bet on it.

It was a knee-jerk reaction no doubt, but more like the tail wagging the dog. What was the real reason for the minister's sudden burst of social consciousness? The NDP-Liberal budget amendment which was agreed to by a minority government. The government, under the duress of a non-confidence motion, added a clause saying that $100 million would be invested for the protection of workers in the event of a bankruptcy.

All of a sudden the minister's focus has sharpened. The problem has been here for years, just as the minister has been since 1988, as parliamentary secretary to the minister of industry on small business in 2003 and now as labour minister. During these years over $45 billion collected from employers and employees have gone to general revenue and now the minister wants to give back less than a quarter of 1%, a mere pittance. How--

[Petitions, May 4th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour and privilege to rise in the House and present a petition from four different areas of the constituency of Souris—Moose Mountain.

The petitioners ask that Parliament define marriage in federal law as being a lifelong union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. They point out that it is the best foundation for families and for the raising of children.

[Government Contracts, April 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the transport minister. The question he was asked was not whether he attended a dinner as a paid lobbyist. The question was, did the Minister of Transport arrange a meeting with a cabinet minister or former cabinet minister and François Duffar or not? Yes or no?

[Workplace Safety, April 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Weyburn and District Labour Council in my constituency has invited me to attend their annual ceremony for the April 28 National Day of Mourning. It is a day of mourning to recognize workers who have been injured or killed on the job.

Each year in Canada an average of 1,000 workers are killed and hundreds or thousands of others are injured or suffer illnesses as a result of workplace related diseases. It is a time to mourn, to reflect, and to the extent we can, to share the horror, the trauma and the emotion that workers and those close to them have had to face.

We must, because we are in a position to do so, commit ourselves to fight for healthy and safe workplaces. Our human resources are the most important fundamental cog in our expanding and ever-changing economy that defines us as who we are. We must fully understand that human life in all of its aspects is precious and is our most precious commodity that must be treated with respect. We must do everything we can to ensure a safe and healthy workplace.

[Committees of the House, April 21st, 2005]

Madam Speaker, that was a point well made and it makes a lot of sense. Saskatchewan certainly has the infrastructure to handle that. It is something the government and the minister should consider. From a scientific point of view, obviously if the industry were spread apart, there would not be the same difficulty that the report talked about. Perhaps that should have been done.

It is interesting to note that the government has had two years with respect to the BSE crisis and the poultry industry as well to establish some plants in Saskatchewan. Although it has talked about this to some extent in the budget and it has talked about it on paper, the government has yet to produce some evidence that some money has actually been put into a food processing or slaughterhouse capacity, or even any kind of marketing plan or industry initiative in my home province.

Outside of saying there is a problem, the government has done very little. If we are looking for some concrete evidence of the government's having put its money where its mouth is, we will not find it. Our primary producers in Saskatchewan are ready, willing and able to take the challenge. If the government would put some energy, some initiative and some dollars into the province, we would welcome that.

[Committees of the House, April 21st, 2005]

Madam Speaker, it was interesting to hear the parliamentary secretary say that we do not want to go back into history. He does not want us to talk about all the problems the government has faced.

This crisis that happened in British Columbia was not something new. Is the parliamentary secretary suggesting the government did not have the study before, that it did not understand? Is he suggesting that this issue just arose, that it was a first time event, and now that we have experienced it we do not have to look at it again because we know how to handle it? Where was the minister and his department prior to this outbreak? Was there not a study done? Was there not some emphasis placed on how we should put things together?

I for one agree that we do not need more studies just for the sake of studies, except to say that the stakeholders involved in this crisis, those who were damaged and put off the farm, those who lost millions of dollars in the industry and may not be able to recover, want to speak further on this issue. Perhaps the government might learn something. Perhaps it might learn where it should improve things.

There is nothing wrong with that recommendation in principle. The government should take the stakeholders' views into account. I agree that it has taken some measures and made some steps forward. I agree that we need to have somebody in charge who will ensure this does not happen again. However, it would not hurt the government to learn a little more. If the stakeholders want it, they should have that opportunity.

[Committees of the House, April 21st, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I heard the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture indicate that he was not part of the hearings, mainly because he was going from place to place in the country dealing with the farm income crisis, which was more related to the BSE. Part of the problem we have in the whole picture is that. We are working on a knee-jerk reaction from time to time instead of having a policy and plan in place in advance, with rules of engagement so everybody knows what they need to do.

What we have is a sort of an on the spot plan put together that is ad hoc or knee-jerk which tries to deal with a crisis that is more than just a producer crisis. It is a national crisis. It is something in which the country needs to be involved and interested. It is not just a question of asking for an independent commission of inquiry. It is pure politics.

I agree to some measure with the parliamentary secretary that perhaps we do not need more commissions, studies or reviews. That seems to be the way things are done. In this case stakeholders want to be heard. Because it was a thing with such impact, they need to be heard and we need to accommodate them.

We can say that the stakeholders had a serious outbreak and that they did not have the kind of management required to meet the crisis. We need to have something in place that would be rapid, responsive and that would take care of situations like this. It may be Asian influenza this time or an outbreak of something else next time. It may be a political action that crosses the borders or it may be something like BSE. We can understand and know that we will be facing these kinds of things on an emergency crisis basis at any point of time. It is not a time to get ready when the crisis develops and it is not just the producers who are involved. We must have a national policy that involves all people of our country. It must involve us as a nation.

When we have these kinds of incidents and crises, there is a cost component to them. There is a secondary impact. It is not just dealing with the disease or the crisis. What is the economic impact not only to the producers but to our country? Billions of dollars are lost if we do not take appropriate action in containing or dealing with the crisis.

When we look at the producers, it has always been my view that producers should be responsible for sound management on the farm. Producers should be able to look after their businesses and should operate them efficiently. However, when producers are faced with a crisis that is more than just a local one or provincial one but deals with something on an international basis, or across province basis or North American basis, then our government must have some type of scheme to not only address the problem but to deal with the secondary fallout and with the preservation of the industry.

We see that in our farming community. Where I am from in Saskatchewan, farmers are shutting down. They are not farmers who are unable to farm. They are farmers who have farmed economically and who have been able to produce better than perhaps anyone else in the world. They have used the best technology and equipment and they have worked hard. However, they still are unable to make it because commodity prices have fallen, or production costs are too high or there is an international influence that is beyond their control.

The government must stand behind our primary producers, whatever primary producer with whom we may be dealing, to ensure that they will continue as an industry, as a sector in our country. We cannot allow them to dissipate and disappear, and that is what is happening in Saskatchewan.

My constituency is large, with two cities of 10,000 and many small communities spread throughout the riding, When I drive through by constituency, I see farms starting to shut down. If one tries to find a farmer's wife, or one of the family members, they are probably in town working. They need a second job to support the family operation. That is not the way we should operate business. We need to have something in place to deal with these crises that are larger and bigger than the producer himself or herself.

The parliamentary secretary has said that to some extent, politics are being played and blame is being put on people when blame should not be put on them. However, let us look at some of the people who have spoken on this issue.

I am reading from the report itself, which says:

Proper management of AI is a public good as human and animal health authorities world-wide recognize...funds set aside to compensate for loss of birds and business interruption so nothing stands in the way of a quick, surgical pre-emptive cull.

They are asking for that kind of a policy. More important, one of the comments was as follows:

It is ludicrous that the disease was not contained in the...flat area. Again it is because of procrastination and lack of common sense. We spent a huge amount of time waiting for decisions to come from Ottawa, and most of the time local CFIA staff didn’t know how to interpret those decisions

In itself that has nothing to do with politics or with us politicizing the incident. It is just saying that communications were not good. There was not a quick, rapid ability to have a response in a logical, common sense way to contain the problem when the problem was identified. It was like the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing and there was nobody to ask what to do.

We need to have someone in place who is in charge, someone in place who knows in advance what the rules of engagement are so he or she can say, when a crisis develops, “Here is how we are going to tackle it. Here is what we are going to do”. We need to have somebody in charge, not the Ottawa bureaucratic way of doing things by referring it to one department, then to another department, then having some contradictory opinions, then discussing it for a week or a month while this crisis is ongoing, particularly a disease that is airborne and spreads.

We look at the actions that are being taken. When a thing is airborne, we take measures to deal with the birds that cause yet more of a problem and cause the disease to be airborne to the next community and then the next farm. That is the inappropriate thing to do.

Why is that happening in a society in a day when we have the scientific basis, the knowledge, the communication means and everything at our disposal to deal with it rapidly? It is happening because we have not put a plan in place and we do not have a commander in chief or someone in charge who says that this is s what we will do, here is how we will do it, we will do it effectively and we will do it quickly. What we are asking is for something to happen in a reasoned, logical, common sense way.

One report from the Primary Poultry Processors Association of B.C. in the hearings said, “If there is another outbreak? There should be a total lock-down–no movement of birds or manure”. It is saying that here is just a simple thing we need to understand and do. It is something of which we need to be aware. It is not just an issue of playing politics when we look at the past. We look at the past with the view of identifying the problems so we can deal with them in the future in a responsible and appropriate manner.

It is a picture that is not just isolated to the community we are talking about here. The same principles and basics apply to every crisis situation. What a crisis situation demands is an understanding of the facts and the incidents around the crisis. Then it requires decisive, rapid action and a rapid response.

I notice that recommendation one flowed into recommendation two, which was that the Auditor General of Canada be asked to audit the effectiveness of various emergency preparedness strategies. I suppose I can support that, except that we probably do not need an audit to indicate it was not appropriate and as effective as it should have been. We know the results and consequences. It is more like, what kind of a system and process do we need in place so it does not happen again and that indeed the action is far more appropriate in the future.

Recommendation three requested a special animal disease response team, comprising various experts. There is no doubt in my mind that there needs to be a rapid, specific, strategic response team not only for a crisis like we experienced, but in every type of crisis that we may have to face. It does not take a lot of stretching of the imagination to know that in the world we live in today, with globalization and everything that has happened, we will have to deal with issues that are far bigger than we are individually.

We can expect there will be a crisis in the food industry. We can expect there will be a crisis in the health industry. We can expect there will be a crisis in the economic fallout from that. We can plan for it now, in advance, and have a fund ready to deal with the issues when they need to be dealt with.

It does not take a lot of genius to understand that these things will happen and that we need to be prepared and have specific strategic teams in place to deal with those issues as they come into place.

As always, there is no question that systems are very important. When we deal with health and with food, we must be able not only to identify a particular item of food in the food chain from beginning to end, but we must be able to do it with precision and deal with it quickly.

I appreciate there is a cost component to that, but it is a cost component that we must bear. It is something we must talk about as a nation. When something develops and unfolds, we must be prepared to stop its tracks with accuracy so we can put some confidence into the market and the world community that we in Canada not only have the best system in the world for raising and preserving food, but also we have the best system in place for checking it, identifying it and keeping it safe throughout. It does not require much more than good management, good management practices and some initiative.

Look at the dollars we have spent on some things in and around this capital. Look at some of the waste that we have seen, billions of dollars. Those dollars would be better spent to put in an integrated, safe, well-connected food supply system that would ensure our food supply into the generations.

My sense is if we do not take the time and the money and do it now, if it does not cost us as a nation now, it will some day, some place, when there are no farmers on the ground or when there are no producers in a particular sector or industry because they have been unable to survive or handle the cost and the economy of it themselves.

When there has been a crisis situation, what we have done is to said to them that they be responsible for our ineffectiveness and that they be responsible for our negligence. We have said that they should use their equity which they have built up over the years to solve the problem. In other words, they should mortgage their farms and buildings and use up all the equities they have gained over the years of operation to get us through the crisis because they are obligated to do it. The fact is this is a national interest and it is something in which we all should share.

Many primary producers have faced crises that are beyond their control. They are national, interprovincial and are bigger than their own industry. They have utilized their own equities to keep us going as a nation. Some are throwing in the towel. Some are saying that it is enough.

In my constituency 49 auction sales for farmland have been held this spring. In the province 170 auction sales have been held. People are going out of business. A farm implement dealer who has combines, tractors and seeders is selling all of that in an auction sale because he cannot afford to go on.

Why is that happening? Because the government has not placed primary producers in agriculture at the national level where they ought to be. It has not stood behind them so they can continue the industry. When those farmers are gone and those primary producers have left, someone will have to fill the vacuum and produce that which we require, and it will cost us a lot more than it is now.

The report speaks about a compensation package and the need to be flexible and adaptable to the situation. I agree with that report. When we deal with the particular industry, it is not just the animal or the particular bird that is in question, there are some secondary economic consequences at which we need to look. The report in fact speaks about that. It says that there is an interface between animal and human health, enhanced emergency management and industry and community economic recovery.

Everything is intertwined. There is no such thing as saying that we can have a crisis in the poultry industry or the cattle industry and it will just affect a particular farm or community. It goes far beyond that. Those dollars travel through our economy. Those dollars travel into the grocery store and to the shoe store and to the car repair shop. It is those kinds of things that keep the basic society going.

When we do not look after the primary producer, when we do not look after those who are instrumental to the economy, it slowly but surely shuts down the community. It shuts down the implement dealers. It shuts down the businesses. Many communities are regressing on the Prairies. The problem is far larger than just an isolated disease. The government and the minister need to look at the broader picture.

One of the lessons that was clearly learned is that effective preparation and response to foreign animal disease outbreaks in Canada must be seen as a shared responsibility. I will accept that as well. It is something that must be dealt with at the national level, at the provincial level, at the municipal level. It must include not only the food inspection agencies but also the local experts, veterinarians and others who are familiar with the industry. There must be a coordinated effort by all parties.

The report states:

The Standing Committee hopes that the lessons learned will help avert similar mistakes in the future, because it is almost certain that there could be other outbreaks of animal diseases in the future.

It is nothing new under the sun, so to speak. We can expect things like this to happen from time to time and we need to be ready.

The main lesson learned by the people of the Fraser Valley is that proper management of avian influenza or other diseases is a matter of public health and safety and it requires the proper reaction of public authorities. What are they saying? They are saying they are not playing politics, that public authorities have a responsibility.

Public authorities have a due diligence requirement. They must not just talk about issues. They must understand them. They must take the time and put in the energy to understand the problem, to have a plan, to ensure it is carried out and to communicate it effectively. They must ensure that there are no foul ups along the way, that it is properly administered. There is a due diligence requirement. They are expecting that from those in public authority. That certainly would mean the government of this country.

The report cites some examples of how the disease was handled and it was somewhat shocking. It said that one of the cull requirements released vast quantities of virus into the environment associated with the depopulation procedures employed and there was a delay in the depopulation process”.

What do we need? We need an emergency response team. We need a cohesive plan of attack. We need to have an organization that has the personnel in charge who are prepared to be direct, who are prepared to be effective, who can make decisions quickly, who can make the right decisions, and who in advance of the problem take into account the stakeholders' interests. They must have done their logistics planning in advance. They must have foreseen the problem and gone forward.

In fact the report states that there needs to be a vision. There needs to be direction. We have to look at the big picture and settle in our minds what it is that we want to accomplish and make it simple. It cannot be complicated. It cannot be 20 pages. The problem has to be synthesized into two or three principles as the principles we are going to adhere to, and the principles we are going to proceed with. If there is a good foundation and understanding of those principles, then we can go forward and be effective in doing what ought to be done.