Garry Breitkreuz

[House Of Commons, March 16th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened very carefully to the intervention from my Bloc colleague. I must say I disagree with a lot of the interventions from this side of the House, but I agree with what he has said and I will probably support him in the vote. This is not a partisan issue. I believe that we have to look at it as such because the Speaker of the House—

[Human Resources Development, March 16th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the minister refused to answer a serious allegation about a misappropriation of funds in the case of Iris Hosiery of Montreal.

Farmers in my riding are going broke supporting the habits of this minister. Her own department raised the issue of misappropriation in an internal document.

Can the minister tell the House the nature of this alleged misappropriation and has she referred the matter to the RCMP?

[House Of Commons, March 16th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to make a few remarks. They will be more in the form of comments, but I would appreciate feedback.

What is one of the most important roles the Speaker in the House of Commons plays?

I want to say at the outset where I am coming from. If the Speaker were to err in his day to day decisions involving a conflict between the government or the leadership and an individual member, that ruling must always protect the individual member. I am making that assumption at the outset.

The answer to my question “What is one of the most important roles the Speaker plays?” is, to protect the rights of individual members, to protect individual MPs from the power that the crown exercises, the government, the people in authority over us. We must always respect that authority. I respect your authority, Mr. Speaker. As well, we must always ensure that everyone here is accountable.

There are many ways that you, the Speaker, do this. Obviously there are upfront decisions that you make every day in the day to day proceedings of the House, in debate, in question period and in the routine proceedings of the House. But there are also behind the scenes activities that take place in parliament which are very important to individual members. There are the support services that assist members in their ability to represent their constituents.

We deal primarily in this place with the making of law, the rules that all Canadians must play by and, in order to assist us in dealing with legislation, we as individual members need to have good quality, confidential research and legal advice in analyzing and drafting legislation and amendments. The legislative support staff is used mainly by opposition MPs, as the government has its own staff to do its work. MPs in the House lose confidentiality and solicitor-client privilege with their lawyers, but the government does not because it employs its own.

Since 1993, and I think the member may agree with me, I have watched the degeneration of debate in the House. We spend much less time in actual debate than we did when I first arrived in parliament. Why? It is because there has been a decline in the democratic process, in the spirit in which affairs should be conducted in the House. Much of that is due to the heavy-handedness of government. Members of the opposition have been trying to use the standing orders of the House to make their voices known. The standing orders are there to ensure we have democracy. Democracy needs to ensure that minority voices are heard. I use the word “minority” loosely because we in opposition represent 60% of the people of Canada.

I appeal to the Speaker to preserve that atmosphere of democracy which should surround all the debate and support services in the House. I cannot think of one good reason we cannot have client confidentiality in the legislative support services provided by the House of Commons. I have heard all of the excuses, like the parties have negotiated the changes, the support staff work for the House, et cetera, but the office of the Speaker exists to protect us and must not allow any change in this area which erodes the protection and support individual members must have.

I thank the Bloc for introducing this motion. It allows me to bring forth this concern.

I would like to make one more tiny point. The recent change in policy of the House of Commons was really done behind the backs of members—

[Grain Transportation, March 3rd, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I am concerned about recent reports that the government will not implement all the recommendations of its own commissions on grain transportation. Both reports emphasized the need for a more commercial, accountable, contract driven system.

A key recommendation was to remove the Canadian Wheat Board from any involvement in grain transportation. Mr. Kroeger gave this warning to the transportation committee on Tuesday:

I am worried about the proposal from the wheat board that you go to a contractual system but the wheat board would hold all the contracts. If the wheat board holds all the contracts but the parties haven't got contracts with each other then a grain company can't call a railway to account.

I urge the government not to cherry pick pieces of these reports to suit its political purposes but to implement the proposed changes including moving the Canadian Wheat Board to spout. Regulation and government control caused the problems in grain transportation today and so will not solve them.

PROTECTEUR

[Canada Elections Act, February 25th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I have a question on procedure. I do not believe that when an hon. member is requesting an emergency debate he or she needs unanimous consent to outline it, according to my understanding.

[Committees Of The House, February 25th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I can put my response in just a few words. Yes it is a crisis. I agree with my hon. colleague from Quebec. It is a genuine crisis. It has developed very quickly because of the drop in commodity prices. However, the farmers would be able to survive if their input costs were reduced. The government could do much to reduce those input costs but it has done nothing, such as tax reduction. Yes there is a huge crisis out there and something needs to be done in the next month.

[Committees Of The House, February 25th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to reply to this question because I spent quite a bit of time visiting farms in that member's riding. I heard firsthand the concerns of those farmers. Perhaps a point that could be made here is that some of the members of parliament from that area should be representing those people so I would not have to be going there.

In order to develop our policy we spent time on the farms in that area. It is interesting to note that the farmers there have concerns that are very similar to the concerns in the west. One is that the federal government does not have an agricultural policy which deals with concerns right across Canada. It is time we developed a comprehensive agricultural policy.

The member says that some of the problems faced by people in his riding are not the same as those in the west. Of course there are individual characteristics but there are common characteristics. One of the things I am finding that farmers and also small businesses face right across the country is that people bear a huge tax burden which they can do nothing about it.

Built right into the farmers' input cost, be they on the prairies or in Nova Scotia or New Brunswick, is a high level of tax that farmers cannot avoid when the federal government uses employment insurance premiums as a cash cow that is built right into the product. They are pyramided. Whenever the farmer has to buy something he is caught paying that tax and he cannot pass it on. That is just one example.

[Committees Of The House, February 25th, 2000]

Exactly. My colleague from Peace River has just made the point that we have tended to be the Boy Scouts at the bargaining table. It is about time we got tough. Our competitors are tough.

What does that do for prices within Canada? Because farmers are caught in the international marketplace they are actually subsidizing the food being eaten in Toronto. People do not know that farmers are being forced to sell below the cost of production and people within Canada are benefiting from that fact. Whatever happens in the international marketplace happens here. That is why our government has to come to the rescue in the short term and reduce taxes.

The government must immediately reduce the burden it places on farmers. Farmers pay an inordinate amount of tax, everything from an excise tax on fuel to user fees. What are user fees? For people watching in the cities, user fees such as grain inspection fees amount to $138 million annually for prairie farmers. Farmers are compelled to pay the cost of agencies that benefit all sectors of society. A good quality safe food supply helps everybody but the farmer has to pay the whole shot. That is not fair. Those fees should be reduced, and Reform is asking for that to take place.

The government should give grain farmers the freedom to market their own grain independent of the wheat board. One may often hear or be given the impression, especially by the minister responsible for the wheat board, that because the wheat board has a monopoly and farmers are not allowed to sell outside it is somehow great for farmers.

The point is that farmers are not even allowed to process their durum wheat into pasta and put it on the store shelf for sale. The wheat board makes them sell their own grain to the wheat board and buy it back before they can process it. Of course there is a big handling fee and they have to buy it back at a higher price and the profit is diminished.

I hope at some future point I will be able to address this problem even more. We need to debate agriculture a lot more in the House. At this point I would like to move:

That this House now adjourn and consider these things.

[Committees Of The House, February 25th, 2000]

Yes, there were more members, but I acknowledged the member for Broadview—Greenwood because he helped organize it. The point I am trying to make is that the more we can get people from the other side joining together with us to show this is a non-partisan issue and to communicate to the people in the cities the plight of farmers, the better off we will all be.

There are some real issues we have to deal with in this place and it is very difficult sometimes not to be partisan. It is great to see members on the other side helping us because they do not have elected people on the prairies and in rural ridings to help communicate that message to the cities. There is one cabinet minister from Regina who is strangely silent on the issue, but I am glad to see other members trying to do their best.

As I mentioned, I have been travelling with the committee. Yesterday the Prime Minister made quite a big deal of the fact that $1 billion were being made available to farmers in Saskatchewan. I need to clarify the fact that it was not $1 billion in new money. I hope he does not think farmers are not smart enough to know what has been going on.

We have used the words billion dollar boondoggle in referring to the mismanagement of the jobs fund under HRD. I used the words billion dollar boondoggle to describe the gun registry because in a few years a billion dollars will have been wasted going after the good guys rather than dealing with the real problem in Canada in that regard. We could talk about the billion dollar boondoggle in aboriginal affairs, and I suppose there are other areas. Here we have a billion dollar boondoggle. When we look at all the things that are going on, we are going to be talking real money soon. Why do I call it a boondoggle? It is because the money is not getting to farmers.

The programs are announced. When we listen to the media it sounds like some grand thing has been done. I suppose the impression created in Toronto is that farmers are getting this money. If we listen carefully and we read the fine print, it says that we will know by the end of March how the funds will be disbursed. The farmers need the money. As my colleague from Prince George—Peace River said, it has to be on the kitchen table.

Two years ago Reform said something needed to be done about the crisis developing in agriculture. The Prime Minister said “These things take time to develop”. What have the bureaucracy and the government being doing for the last two years? The Prime Minister went on to say “You know me. I have to do my homework first”. What was announced yesterday clearly shows that he has not done his homework.

This is only a small fraction of what farmers pay in tax. Farmers are taxed to the max. Some of their input costs may be as much as 50% tax. People in the cities do not realize that farmers only get back a small fraction of the money they send to Ottawa back.

Yesterday I had with me a box of shirts from the backs of a few farmers. They want me to make the point with the people here and across Canada that the government has literally taken the shirts off their backs. I wanted to present those shirts to the Prime Minister and the finance minister on behalf of farmers in Saskatchewan, and they would not accept them. Then I went to the agricultural minister who said he would not take them to the Prime Minister. I still have the shirts that the government has taken right off the backs of farmers.

Many points need to be made in this regard. Reform has suggested a lot of good things. I want to let people who are watching know that they can access a minority report on the Reform's position on the Internet. We are limited in time in the House so I cannot go into all the details, but I will briefly summarize what Reform is saying. Canada must aggressively attack international subsidies and trade barriers so that farmers do not have to compete with all the grain being dumped on the international marketplace that forces farmers to sell their product below the cost of production.

[Committees Of The House, February 25th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I travelled with the committee as it made its tour of the three prairie provinces, so essentially I will be reporting on that.

I would like to acknowledge the fact that we cannot pin a label on all the people on the other side. Some of them are willing to step out of the mould. I would like to acknowledge especially the fact that the member for Broadview—Greenwood in Toronto has done his share in trying to profile the plight of prairie farmers when he organized that rally. Back in November the Reform had a supply day.