Gerald Keddy

[Right Of Landing Fee, March 2nd, 2001]

I agree with the member who just said “It is common sense”. A little common sense goes a long way. I would like to do an overview of the PC stance on immigration. We recognize that immigration in Canada will continue. We certainly support it. We also recognize further that it is an economic necessity. We need to have more confidence in and respect for human diversity so that we do not get sucked into the debate.

I will quote the words of our immigration critic, the member for Fundy Royal, “so that we do not get sucked into the debate of always having to add the word criminal in a statement related to immigration. That is a very slippery slope”.

In conclusion, the PC Party supports the bill. We support the abolition of the $975 head tax and the $500 tax that is added on top of that. In other words, we support the abolition of the $1,475 tax that immigrants are forced to pay when they come into Canada.

We would like to see the bill made votable. Perhaps in the future it will become votable. In the meantime, it is through the continuation of efforts like this that hopefully some day we will see the abolition of the tax.

In summary, I would ask for the unanimous consent of the House to make the motion votable.

[Right Of Landing Fee, March 2nd, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Motion No. 231, which suggests that the government should remove the right of landing fee for all classes of immigrants. I am more than happy to support the motion brought forward by the member for Winnipeg Centre and to speak on behalf of our member for Fundy—Royal, our immigration critic, who also supports the motion.

A number of issues have been discussed today, but a couple of more statements need to be made. It would behoove us all to realize that we are all immigrants to this land. Some of us have been here for a few hundred years and some of us have been here for a few days, but all of us came from another place at one time or another to make our home and to try to raise our families in Canada. Whether one is first generation, fifteenth generation or one thousandth generation, it really does not make any difference. We are all equal before the law. We all stand to benefit from good government and to continue to live here and enjoy the freedoms Canada offers.

There is a bit of background to the head tax that should be mentioned. The previous speaker started to go into that background, but she did not get into the details. The head tax and the Chinese Exclusion Act remain two of the worst examples of legalized racism in Canadian history. I do not think we can move forward unless we are willing to look at our history, understand the mistakes that were made in the past, and hopefully try not to make the same mistakes again.

The original head tax was introduced in 1885 and finally repealed in 1923. It was only levied on Chinese immigrants. When it was repealed in 1923 it was replaced by the Chinese Exclusion Act which remained in place until 1947. That act prohibited Chinese from immigrating to Canada.

Can we imagine today picking one race or one group of people and saying they cannot immigrate to this country? It is quite unheard of. The original head tax was also an entrance fee. It was set at $50 per person in 1885. It rose to $100 in 1900 and was raised to $500 in 1905. The Chinese community continues today to seek redress for these acts.

While not to be confused with the original head tax of 1885, many immigrant communities refer to Canada's $975 entrance fee as a head tax, and rightfully so. It was introduced in the 1995 budget of the Minister of Finance and remains in place today. Additional to this fee, which was mentioned by the Canadian Alliance member who spoke previously, is a $500 per person processing fee. The $975 is not for processing the paperwork or looking after the fees associated with immigration. The $500 supposedly looks after that and the $975 is a tax on immigrants who quite often can least afford to pay it. We are looking at $1,500.

As the Alliance member mentioned earlier, it starts to add up for a family of four, five, or six. It is a considerable amount of money that could be well spent to allow new Canadians to become accustomed to the country, perhaps to learn the language or to give them a bit of a cushion as they integrate into the community.

It is important to look at some of the statements made on the government side of the House in the past. The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration made a clear commitment to a fair, affordable and well enforced immigration policy. Therefore, a form of financial guarantee would ensure that sponsors of immigrants met their obligations. In addition, a $975 fee would be charged all adults immigrating to Canada to offset the costs of immigrant services, said the Minister of Finance, as reported in Hansard of February 27, 1995. It could not be any further from reality. As reported in Hansard of March 13, 1995, Mary Clancy said that the cost of programs was $271 million a year.

Even though the statements by the immigration department would imply otherwise, that the $975 would offset fees, that is not the case. The $975 goes directly into general revenue. The general revenue is kind of nefarious: the money goes in there but we are not quite certain what happens to it after. Even the auditor general has a very difficult job to trace the money through all the loops and the rabbit warren of general revenue. It is like Alice in Wonderland.

To help handle criticism of the fee the same government provided for loans to be made available to help pay the costs. The fee is set out in typical Liberal fashion as a so-called caring and compassionate government to ensure that no one is turned away as a result. Loan programs and other ways of assisting are also included in the process, according to the hon. member for Etobicoke—Lakeshore on March 2, 1995.

Now comes the kicker. On April 3, 1995, Anna Terrana indicated that the loan option was said to be based on one's ability to repay the loan within a certain time period. She asked how these individuals could, without the necessary tools to acquire meaningful employment, be realistically expected to repay the loans within a three year period. They contradicted one another.

Everyone in the House is aware that the government has since abolished the head tax on convention refugees. It has kind of come part way. What we need is a commitment from the government to come the rest of the way. It needs to take a look at what it has done in the past and say that it does not work, that it interferes with immigration, and that it is really a penalty against future Canadians and immigrants to the country. The government should say that enough is enough and simply get rid of it. What a novel idea.

Perhaps the day has come when as parliamentarians we should look at the things that work and applaud them. We should look at the things that do not work and ask how they could be changed. Let us get rid of them and put them on the chopping block.

[Finance, March 2nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance stated in the House that he is willing to consider revisiting the equalization formula.

The Minister of Industry used a new deal on equalization as a major promise during the past election and that influenced many Atlantic Canadian votes.

Will the Minister of Finance now revisit the equalization formula?

[Fisheries, March 2nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, Chief Lawrence Paul and others in Nova Scotia have stated that federal negotiators are considering dividing bays in Atlantic Canada between aboriginal and non-aboriginal fishermen. This is clearly a wrongheaded policy and goes against the spirit of sharing the fishery under one set of rules.

Will the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans state clearly that no such plan is being considered?

[Nova Scotia, March 2nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate two special Nova Scotians on their recent accomplishments: Eric Mackie on his recent assignment with the Canadian Executive Service Organization in Peru, and Colleen Jones on her third consecutive win at the Canadian Women's Curling Championships.

While in Peru, Mr. Mackie helped establish a network security process for the central bank. Mr. Mackie is one of 4,000 volunteers who work with this non-governmental agency as volunteer advisers helping developing nations by sharing technical, professional and managerial expertise.

Colleen Jones recently led the Nova Scotia women's curling team to her third women's title at the Scott Tournament of Hearts. It was Ms. Jones' 15th time competing at the Canadian national final, the first time being in 1980. Ms. Jones and her team are now looking ahead to the world championship in Lausanne, Switzerland and we wish them all the best.

Congratulations to these two very deserving Nova Scotians on their recent accomplishments.

[Supply, March 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I will be cautious in how I say this, but the relevant point is very simple. We need helicopters for search and rescue. I understand as much as anyone in the House that the helicopters are on order. We need helicopters for our military personnel. We need first class equipment because we have first class pilots, men and women who operate the machines and who service them.

To suggest that on the high seas, on the east or west coast of Canada or in the high arctic, human lives are not important is a scandalous admission by the government, but it does not surprise me at all. It is typical of what we have been hearing during the debate and what we have seen from the opposition.

I quoted a lot of numbers previously and, quite frankly, we get lost in the numbers. I will make a comment to the intervention here again. We are not talking about numbers here, we are talking about human lives. We are talking about how we can carry out an offshore rescue, how we can find hunters who are lost, how we can get people out of the high arctic and how we can medivac people in dangerous circumstances.

Only a few minutes ago a member spoke about the fact that we just had a major tremor on the west coast of Canada.

The government is lucky, that is all, that the tremor was 46 miles underground instead of 16 or 17 miles underground. We would not only have highways shut down in B.C., we would have buildings collapse and we would have major fiascos. In order to respond to that, we absolutely have to have the military up to strength and we have to have rescue vehicles. Helicopters are the only rescue vehicle that can be used in those circumstances.

[Supply, March 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, your direction is noted. Certainly I meant to address my remarks through the Chair and got carried away with the subject matter.

The governments own numbers show that the cost of helicopter procurement will be $8.2 billion. The total cost for the 43 EH-101s, based again on the government's own numbers from the 1993 election, was $5.8 billion. We can be assured that it did not miss anything, that it added in every penny, dime and dollar it could. There is a contradiction of $2.4 billion. Somehow or another the government must come up with the numbers. It cannot stand there and say its program is cheaper.

I have a personal interest in the helicopter bid and in search and rescue helicopters. It was not many years ago, on February 15, 1982, that the Ocean Ranger sank off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland losing 84 personnel on board. There were 90 knot winds and 37 foot seas, average seas. I was working on a rig off Sable Island at the same time with a 70 foot air gap and the waves were hitting the bottom of the rig.

That is why we need search and rescue helicopters. That is why we need defence helicopters that are fit to fly. People who are put in the air in dangerous circumstances must be able to depend on the machinery to deliver them to their target in a rescue mission, a military mission, a humanitarian mission or whatever it may be.

The government has forgotten that early in the morning of February 15, 1982, when 84 Ocean Ranger personnel were lost, many of them jumped overboard and were in the water when the choppers got there. Anyone reading the write-up on that disaster would be well aware that the men were dead when the choppers arrived because it was at the extreme limit of the helicopters' range. They a hold of some of the bodies but could not pull them out of the water.

When we talk about helicopters on the east coast, we are not talking about some type of expense. What is human life worth to the government? What is human life worth to the friends, families and loved ones of people who have been lost offshore in the past or unfortunately may be lost in the future? It is not worth debate in the House or discussions over dollars. I do not care if they are millions of dollars. We need helicopters. We do not need them in 2008. We needed them yesterday.

It is absolutely scandalous to debate the issue in this place at this time with a government that cancelled a perfectly good contract for 43 helicopters because the Prime Minister found himself in a position where he had stated publicly that he would take his pen and write zero helicopters.

Because the Prime Minister made a mistake and was not able to admit to it, and because his government and colleagues of the day would not force him to change his opinion, we are in a situation today where we cannot carry out search and rescue activities at any time on the east coast, west coast or in the high arctic.

Thank goodness we have helicopter crews and mechanics who are absolute geniuses at keeping old helicopters airborne. Otherwise we would be the laughingstock not only of NATO, not only of our own country but of the entire planet.

I will relate an incident that happened in one of our NATO exercises. If it were not such a sad thing it would be funny. We had a chopper sitting on the deck of an American frigate, as was typical. Our pilots were standing on the deck when an American pilot came along. One of the American pilots came over and asked, in a typical southern accent, “You-all belong to that helicopter?” The Canadian pilot said “Yeah, that is our chopper”. The American pilot looked at him and said “Well, you know, it's smokin”. He was appalled. There was smoke coming off the helicopter. There was smoke coming from the engine housing. They could not believe it.

That would not happen in the United States. The Americans fly better hardware and have better gear because they have at least some respect for their military forces. They put them in danger but they put them in danger with first class equipment, proper backup and some consideration that they might be dependent upon those soldiers, those men and women, at some future time in the history of the country.

I worked offshore on the east coast from 1980 and 1988. I went through two rig abandonments during that period. We ended up staying on the rig. We were safe. There was a good chopper sitting on the deck and we could have abandoned the rig at any time.

I saw the abandonment of the Euro Princess, a Yugoslavian freighter which had run aground off Sable Island. Sixteen Yugoslav sailors were taken off the Euro Princess in 50 knot winds and 30 foot seas. It was a very daring rescue mission carried out under very difficult circumstances. There was a very narrow window of time to get to the freighter because it had lost power, no lights were working, it was in total darkness and it was the middle of the night.

Our search and rescue people were able to rescue the sailors and take them to Sable Island. The boat was 650 feet long and was stuck on the bar around Sable Island. The worry was that it would be swept free by a big wave and take the legs out from underneath the Rowan Juneau, the rig I was working on at the time.

The rig was abandoned except for 12 of us who kept the pump circulating to prevent being stuck in the hole. The point is that we would not be able to carry out that rescue mission today.

[Supply, March 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I have been following the debate throughout the day very closely. A number of speakers have risen and most people recognize that we need new helicopters for the Canadian military. That has been stated over and over again even from the government side.

My difficulty with what I have been hearing from the government benches is the total cost. There has been a serious contradiction in the total cost of the helicopter procurement. There has been a contradiction in the Liberal numbers. Every time they put a speaker up I hear different numbers. I quoted them once before when I asked a question, but for the record and in my speech I will quote the numbers again.

These are government numbers. They are not my numbers or fictitious numbers that we pulled out of a hat or out of the air. They are the government's numbers. The EH-101 cancellation fees are based on the numbers constantly cited by the government and in the press.

We have stated them at $478 million. The government's own numbers are $500 million. It has been reported in the press at $786 million. It is probably closer to $1 billion. That is what it actually cost the government to cancel a helicopter contract for the EH-101s.

We can take the government's more modest figure of $500 million, which is a little more than what we have been tracking them at. Then we can put the Sea King maintenance and upgrade to the year 2008 at $600 million, and those are government numbers again. Then we can add in the Canada search helicopter program, which has already purchased 15 helicopters for $790 million. We also can add in the Canada search helicopter's long term service support for 25 years, which again is part of the real numbers. The real numbers add up to $1.7 billion.

If we add the maritime helicopter project for an additional 28 helicopters at $2.9 billion, and the maritime helicopter project long term service support for 25 years at $1.7 billion, the total cost for the Liberal program, without inflation, is $8.2 billion.

Where is it getting the $4 billion figure? It is smoke and mirrors. This is the real world. Those are your numbers. Stand in the House and defend them, or contradict them again, but go down the list. Everything that—

[Supply, March 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the parliamentary secretary to the minister of public works to perhaps enlighten us a bit more on the procurement strategy. All along we have been told by the government that the procurement strategy would be based on the cheapest cost, whereas the treasury board guidelines for procurement under article 9.1.1 are as follows:

As stated in the policy, the objective of government procurement contracting is to acquire goods and services and to carry out construction in a manner that enhances access, competition and fairness and results in the best value or, if appropriate, the optimal balance of overall benefits to the Crown and the Canadian people. Inherent in procuring best value is the consideration of all relevant costs over the useful life of the acquisition, not solely the initial or basic contractual cost.

As I already said to the previous Liberal member who spoke, there is a difference of $3.2 billion from the Liberals' own 1994 numbers. Their numbers state it will cost $3.2 billion to procure new helicopters, whereas if they had kept the original EH-101 plan it would have cost $5.3 billion or $5.1 billion.

I would like to hear the member's comments on procurement, on the fact that the government changed the rules for this contract, on the fact that it is not listening to the military advice its own defence department is giving, and on the fact that it has stepped out so that the Prime Minister could take his pen and write “no helicopters” across the paper. It has adapted, bent itself backwards and swallowed itself whole in order to do that.

[Supply, March 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the hon. member's speech. There is not really a polite way to comment on it, so I will be very careful how I do so.

Once in the mid-eighties I was up north flying in a twin otter. It had been a scout plane in Vietnam and was full of bullet holes that had been patched up. I suggest that airplane would be more dependable than half the airplanes and all the choppers that the Canadian army, the Canadian navy, and our search and rescue people fly now. It is absolutely scandalous that the hon. member and the government would try to defend the position they have taken on military helicopter procurement and search and rescue vehicles.

I have said before in the House and will say it again that obviously there is no one on that side of the House who has ever waited for a helicopter in a dangerous life and death situation or who is related to anyone who has waited for a helicopter in a life and death situation. If they had and if they had even one bit of credibility or conscience, we would have a much better fleet of helicopters to pick up people offshore, to take people off oil rigs when necessary, and to pick up fishermen when they are standing on the roof of a sinking boat and there is not another boat in sight. We would not be debating the issue. We would not be talking about what helicopters will be procured. We would already have them.

I want to correct the mathematics. These are not the opposition's numbers. These are the government's numbers: EH-101 cancellation fees, $500 million; Sea King maintenance and upgrade to the year 2008, $600 million; Canada search and rescue program, procurement of 15 helicopters, $790 million; maritime helicopter project, 28 helicopters, $2.9 billion; MHP long term service support for 25 years, $1.7 billion.

The total cost of the Liberal's programs, without inflation, is $8.2 billion. The total cost of procurement of the EH-101s, if they had been bought to begin with, was $5.8 billion. Those are the government's numbers. I would like to hear the member's comments.