Gary Lunn

[Petitions, November 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present two petitions on behalf of the residents of Saanich—Gulf Islands.

The first one is signed by 83 constituents from the surrounding area. It is on Bill C-225, an act to amend the Marriage Act, which as we all know would support that a marriage should only happen between a man and a woman.

[Space Shuttle, October 29th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, this morning I spoke with Dr. Kevin Forkheim from Mission Control in Cape Canaveral who was anxiously awaiting the launch of the space shuttle Discovery .

Dr. Forkheim, a resident of Saanich—Gulf Islands, is a 27 year old graduate student at UBC who has had his research project chosen by NASA to be part of the shuttle mission. Dr. Forkheim's research will prove invaluable in the fight against osteoporosis, a degenerative bone disease common in the aging population.

The occasion also marks the first ever joint space project between Canada and Israel. Dr. Forkheim is very excited about his rare and prestigious honour. Canada can be proud of Dr. Forkheim's achievements and his continuing goal to counteract the negative effects of aging.

It is my pleasure to salute Dr. Forkheim and to wish him well in this and future achievements, whether they be deep in the vastness of space or at home in British Columbia.

Canada can stand proud today.

[Canada Customs And Revenue Agency Act, October 27th, 1998]

This is what the government House leader stated with respect to closure:

—I am shocked—. This is just terrible. This time we are talking about a major piece of legislation—. Shame on those Tories across the way.

This was on November 16, 1992 in the House.

The member for Kingston and the Islands, the Deputy Speaker, stated “What we have here is an absolute scandal in terms of the government's unwillingness to listen to the representatives of the people in this House. Never before have we had a government so reluctant to engage in public discussion on the bills brought before this House”. That was a government member.

Since the government has come into power we have had 40 time allocation motions and 3 closure motions. This is a disgrace. We are all elected to the House. All 301 including the Speaker represent Canadians from coast to coast. We all have a right to have our voices heard in the House.

Once again we see the government shutting down the process the minute those members get a bit squeamish or uncomfortable about anything, whether firing the minister of fisheries, trying to close the lid on government documents, not releasing them to committees, or bringing forward closure. It goes on and on and on.

That is the point I wanted to make with respect to closure and I want to leave some time for other members. We have very limited time in this debate. It is an absolute disgrace that the tactic the government uses is to shut down the debate every opportunity it can, the minute those members are a bit uncomfortable. I think they should be ashamed of themselves.

[Canada Customs And Revenue Agency Act, October 27th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, we are debating Bill C-43, an act to establish a Canada customs and revenue agency. There is no question that we in the Reform Party believe in streamlining government and making sure there are efficiencies in any way we can save taxpayers' money. We have an obligation to do that for all people across Canada.

However there are problems with the legislation we are debating. There needs to be time for it to go through a process where it can be amended and debated so that it runs its course to ensure that taxpayers are getting the best possible result and the most efficient piece of legislation that will work in their interest.

Once again the Liberal government has brought in closure on debate against the will of all opposition parties. They all voted against closure. I will read some quotes. This is what one government members said in this regard: “It displays the utter disdain with which this government treats the Canadian people”. This is with respect to closure, shutting down debate, and was said by Lloyd Axworthy on April 1, 1993.

[Committees Of The House, October 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The hon. government deputy whip stood when you resumed debate, gave a wonderful speech and talked about the member from Nova Scotia. I believe we should get 10 minutes of questions and comments following that.

[Committees Of The House, October 27th, 1998]

We were offered them in a secret meeting. The member is yelling at me from the other side of the House, saying that we were offered the reports. Yes, we were, in camera, which means in secret. We were not supposed to let anybody else know what was in them because the government was embarrassed and did not want them in the public domain. That is appalling.

[Committees Of The House, October 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member from Nova Scotia for reminding me to talk about the observer reports to which the junior minister of fisheries and oceans has referred. He said saying that we had all these wonderful observer reports with which to write this report.

The fact is that we were denied access to them. We put a motion to the committee asking for observer reports. We made numerous requests through the chair who was fired for demanding the observer reports. The government offered the reports to us in camera. It said it would give the reports to us in secret but we could not let the Canadian people see them because there was a lot of stuff it did not want Canadians to see.

We were not given the observer reports. The Government of Canada kept them secret. Why? It was because they are ineffective. We later learned that the observers on foreign vessels were coming from the nations where the vessels came from. They report when they get back to the port of their flag country. They are meaningless and the government would not release those reports.

The ones we obtained where we actually had some input contained numerous violations by foreign states in Canadian waters of which the Government of Canada was aware. What did we learn? We learned there was no way the government would prosecute them or pursue them.

We never saw the observer reports to which the junior minister of fisheries and oceans refers. That is all on the record.

[Committees Of The House, October 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the junior minister of fisheries and oceans said they went through a consultative process and made great recommendations of which he was a part. If he is so proud of that report and I am wrong in what I am saying in the House, why will he not stand to vote for it in the House? Why will he not stand up for the people of Prince Edward Island, the people of Atlantic Canada, and vote for them in the House today? He will not because he has been ordered not to do so.

He said that I had written a minority report. Yes, I did, on one recommendation, recommendation 10F on the TAGS program after the government spent $2 billion to pay fishermen to sit at home and wait for the fish to come back. I said that was not working and that we should invest some money in the fishery. I have no problem spending money to invest in the fishery to ensure that it comes back. Not everybody agreed with it, but I felt strongly enough that I had to put it on the record with one recommendation, that we would not spend $2 billion of taxpayers' money to pay fishermen to sit at home and wait for the fish to come back.

Let us fix the problem. For five years the government's solution was that the fish were gone. It threw in a couple of billion dollars and hoped the problem would fix itself. The Liberals do not realize that they are the problem. Their own department is the problem. Their minister is the problem. They made no substantive changes to the fishery. The same people who destroyed the Atlantic fishery over the last 20 years are the people who are in charge today. They are the people who are in the process of destroying the west coast fishery.

If the member is so proud of this report, he should stand today to vote for concurrence in the report. He should stand up for the people of Prince Edward Island and all other Atlantic Canadians and show them that you are sincere in your comments.

[Committees Of The House, October 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I too would like to comment on this issue. I thank the member for moving concurrence. He is really asking for the government members who participated in the writing of this report to stand up for their constituents and to vote for the report. This matter goes a lot deeper than that.

In effect what we are talking about is that the committee performed a consultation process as committees do. It spent a lot of taxpayers' money, and rightly so, going around listening to Canadians, coming back and writing a report with recommendations. The problem that has arisen out of all this is that we have ended up with a report that is deeply critical of the government, its policies and its department. The government had a very, very significant problem with this.

The government had to make extremely radical changes. The government had to remove the chairman of the committee. The government had to make changes on the committee because it did not like what was reported.

The government has made the committee ineffective. It has completely stripped the committee. This was the government's solution. It saw no other way around this. The government could not stop the committee from writing this report.

In fact a majority of the members of the committee who signed off on this report were Liberal members, members from the government. They had an opportunity in committee to vote against this report. Not only did they vote in favour of it, in many cases it was those members who wrote the recommendations.

The issue goes even further than that. This demonstrates how ineffective this House is. It is not just the committee. The government silenced the opposition members. We need to change how this whole system operates.

We spoke earlier of the systemic problems within DFO. Every member on the committee talked about that. They recognize what needs to be changed. They recognize that we have to move control from Ottawa out to the regions. That was talked about over and over and over again, that it did not work in a country such as ours with people in Ottawa making decisions on how to manage this fishery. Again the record speaks for itself.

It goes on to this House. It makes this House ineffective. The Senate is ineffective. This is recognized by all Canadians. We hear over and over again that there needs to be change.

It is the same thing in this House. The Government of Canada, a very few people on the other side have control. The majority of the people on that side of the House have to sit back and do as they are told. They have to take their marching orders. We have a handful of people running this country at a great expense to the taxpayers. It is appalling.

This is just one small example of what goes on in this House. The east coast report is written. The committee, 16 members of parliament, travelled through some 15 communities, five provinces in Atlantic Canada, wrote a very comprehensive report and made numerous recommendations to the government. What was the minister's response? The minister scoffed at it. He looked at this report and tossed it in the trash. The minister was not going to listen to this.

The minister's problem was that nine of his government's own members, his own parliamentary secretary, the junior Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, signed off on the report. The government said “We have to make some changes. We have lost control of this committee. First of all we had better fire the chairman. The chairman would appear to be part of the problem”. The chairman has had a lot of experience, 24 years in this House. The government removed the chairman and started to make changes.

We have not had an adequate response from the government on this report. There are a lot of good recommendations. Again I emphasize that this is an example of how we have to reform this federation. It clearly is not working. We have to look at that. Canadians are demanding that change, and it goes from the committees to this House.

One of my most positive experiences in my first year as a member of parliament was the fisheries committee. I said that over and over when I travelled through British Columbia and in my riding. One of the more positive experiences was working on a committee with 16 MPs from five political parties. We left the political biases outside the door, focused on solutions, on what was best for Canada and how we could best put forward some alternative solutions.

Imagine trying to get 16 members of parliament from one party to agree, never mind from five. We had the NDP, the Bloc, the Reform, the Progressive Conservatives and the Liberals. Sixteen members of parliament agreed on some possible solutions which could improve the situation in Atlantic Canada and which could improve the disparity that is out there.

What did the minister do? He tossed it in the trash. He did not want to look at it; it might have made some sense. Actually it might give the committee some credit. It was not his ideas so there was no way he could listen to it. He threw it away.

I want to go back to how ineffective the government is. It sees an opportunity to do something positive, but it has that tight group that surrounds the Prime Minister. He is the one who has control. He is the one who fired the chairman of the fisheries committee. That was stated by the member in the media.

I have no doubt the Prime Minister is the one who is saying that we have to rein in this committee. People across the country are listening to the committee. The media is listening to it. The media is reporting it. I think we wrote three reports last year and are about to complete two more from one year's business. It made numerous recommendations, but the government absolutely refused to pay attention.

We need change. Canadians want change. I had people call me last week about this committee of which I am still a member. My first thought was that if the government's response after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers' money—and this is what it cost for us to travel here and there and do this work—is to literally toss it in the trash can, why would it spend that kind of money?

I recognize the government is in power and is the ultimate decision maker. However it tossed aside a report with which the majority of committee members agreed. Nine of the government's own backbenchers including the junior minister of fisheries and oceans signed off on this report. They participated in its writing. They participated in going through the report line by line, word for word, and when it came to the House it was tossed in the trash can because the guy at the top of the triangle said “Sorry, boys, we cannot do that”. This is inexcusable.

It is a clear demonstration of how this federation has to be reformed. From the committees to the House of Commons to the Senate the system is not working. This is only one example, a minuscule part of the Government of Canada.

I look at the amount of money that has been spent and I have to honestly say to all taxpayers that they are not getting the bang for their buck. They are not getting the value for the dollars spent.

I do not expect the Government of Canada to adopt every principle or to adopt everything we say, but it should have listened to us. Its own members wrote this report and walked into the House, but the guy at the top of the pyramid said no. They all followed behind like a bunch of sheep. Why did they go to the committee in the first place? Why were they even there?

What the government is doing is inexcusable. It has been the most frustrating part of my experience in Ottawa, after spending a year in a good working relationship with members from all parties, for it to come to the House and be tossed aside and ignored.

The problem lies at the top of this pyramid with the minister and the senior cabinet ministers. The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans had absolutely no interest in following any of the recommendations.

I conclude by saying that this leads to a much bigger issue. The issue is that we have to reform this federation. We have to reform how the government works. We have to be accountable to the people to ensure that they are getting the best value for their dollars. There has to be change. This is a clear example of that.

[Committees Of The House, October 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I too have travelled with the hon. member who just spoke and I have three questions I would like to ask him as he has again moved for concurrence in the report that was unanimous in having members rise in this House to stand up for their constituents.

As the member knows, the former chairman of the fisheries committee was removed by the Government of Canada. He has stated that publicly on the record. He stated that before the media, along with other members of the committee. I would like his comments on that. Does he believe that the chairman was removed from the committee for speaking the truth and that other members of the committee were dealt with by the government in the same way and forced to vote against their report?

I would also ask the member if one of the major components of the report is that not only the minister but the current structure of DFO in every community is not working.

I ask the hon. member for his comments on whether he believes the current structure of DFO can work or his comments on what he feels needs to be done.