Jim Abbott

[Goods And Services Tax, April 22nd, 1996]

No, you do not; not one free vote.

[The Budget, April 16th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I was very interested in the member's comments about his constituency in the area of the eastern townships. I had the pleasure of having him visit my constituency of Kootenay East about a year and a half ago when we were doing some work on the European Union meeting. He will be familiar with my constituency which is probably not too dissimilar to his.

I would like to advise him that it is not just a case of British Columbia, Quebec, Prince Edward Island or Manitoba. There is no selection on the part of the central government to bring in hostile action or activity toward Quebec.

I would suggest that he consider what he learned while he was in my constituency about the kinds of primary activities many businesses in my riding are in, which he has indicated are common to his constituency. Many practices of the central government that are construed as being aimed at or against Quebec are not aimed at or against Quebec. They come from an ignorance based on the central myopic, closed mindedness which exists in Ottawa and is exhibited by the Liberal government time and time again.

It is not a question of picking on Quebec. We only need to take a look at the way the Liberal government of another time brought forward the national energy plan which created a full depression in the province of Alberta. It is just ignorance on the part of people at the centre. It is not aimed at the people of Quebec.

While I recognize the hon. member is here as a member of Bloc Quebecois with the objective that Quebec should become a sovereign nation, he nonetheless should open his mind to this fact: more often than not the problem has absolutely nothing to do with the central government trying to persecute his province or any other area. The persecution is just out of straight ignorance on the government's part.

[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, April 16th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the latest paperweight on the heritage minister's bookshelf is the Juneau report. She will recall that this report, which was originally due in September, then November and then January, had a cost that went from $900,000 to $1.6 million to $2.57 million.

The real obscenity is the fact that the commissioners received $300,000 split two ways. Who was it in her department who approved this obscene payment of $150,000 to those commissioners for eight months of part time work?

[Senator Selection Act, April 16th, 1996]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-264, an act to allow the electors of a province to express an opinion on who should be summoned to the Senate to represent the province.

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to introduce my private member's bill, an act to allow the electors of a province to express an opinion on who should be summoned to the Senate to represent the province.

The Reform Party's ultimate objective has always been true Senate reform: a triple-E Senate elected, effective and equal. We can change the method of appointing senators, that is, they be elected, without constitutional revision.

This bill will change the method of appointing senators through an election process without constitutional revision. It will require that the Prime Minister wait to receive the expression of opinion from any province with a senatorial selection act similar to the Alberta senatorial selection act which resulted in Senator Stan Waters being appointed to the Senate.

The current Senate has not been able to perform its role effectively because the selection process has undermined its legitimacy.

There is considerable urgency for the introduction of this bill now because the Government of Canada is cramming through legislation that is not widely accepted.

I am introducing this bill today as a result of the forced vote held last fall on Bill C-110. The long range interest of Canadian federalism will truly be served by Senate reform.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)

[The Budget, April 15th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, it is rather silly to say let us hear the Reform Party plan. In 30 seconds we are supposed to have a plan.

Every time we end up talking about the heritage minister and the fact that she does run willy-nilly on these things, suddenly I am attacking her commitment to Canada. I would suggest that kind of rhetoric is really unfortunate. To question the commitment to Canada of anyone in this House, save 53 members, is beyond the pale.

We should be able to point out that the minister does run around indiscriminately making all sorts of announcements which her officials then have to run around picking up after her, without my being questioned as to whether I question her credibility to Canadians. Of course she is proud to be Canadian and is committed to Canada, as are the majority of people in this House and I.

The minister is lacking in credibility on the promises she made on the issue of the GST. She is also lacking in credibility by continuing to come forward saying let us do this with the collection fee for the CBC, or let us do that with respect to the CRTC. There is no plan which is exactly the point.

The Department of Canadian Heritage has the ability to be a tremendous fixer of Canada, a cement builder for Canada. It can glue things and permanently pull things together in Canada. As long as this minister continues to fly off in all directions at once we will never see the full value of the Department of Canadian Heritage, and this is a shame.

[The Budget, April 15th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the member unwittingly makes my point. My point is that there is no connection between what is contained in the throne speech and the budget and the activities of the minister. For example on the issue of the fly flag program of the Minister of Canadian Heritage, the Reform Party would say "buy flag, fly flag". In other words, let us have some responsibility. Let us spend $2 on a little flag and let us fly the flag. Let us spend $30 on a larger flag let us fly the flag. Let us take some responsibility for that.

The minister wants to go back to 1967 and as a consequence she has come forward with a plan. Her fly flag program was running before the civil servants in her ministry had any idea where the flags were going to come from. Calls were coming in and they had absolutely no idea what they were doing or how they were going to do it. Is it going to cost $2 million, $4 million, $6 million? I do not know and neither do her officials. She came up with $150,000 out of thin air for a lacrosse project. It goes on and on and is absolutely astounding.

The Liberal member has underscored my point. Yes we have a throne speech and yes we have a budget, both which have nothing whatsoever to do with what the minister is doing on a day to day basis.

[The Budget, April 15th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Okanagan Centre.

It seems that when people put together a budget, and certainly it should be no different for a government, a budget should be reflective of a plan. As we take a look at the affairs of the government day after day we see they are disorganized, in disarray. Most of all we have a strong sense of disappointment that the Liberals are effectively betraying the trust given to them by Canadians in the 1993 election.

None is anymore true than in the case of the heritage minister. The heritage minister has been going around Canada making verbal droppings of different ideas that she has. She has no organization, no plan and no idea of what will be happening next. Let me give some examples.

Before she came on board, this has been a problem within the department of heritage right from the word go. Probably the most classic example would be the so-called Juneau commission that was examining the affairs of the CBC, Telefilm Canada and the National Film Board.

It started off in May of last year with the idea of having its report complete by September. It did not complete the report by September. It said it would be completing it by November. We were rather curious to see how many dollars it had already consumed to the end of its original report period. It had consumed over $900,000 in that period of time.

The committee went past its November deadline and said it would deliver its report in January. Again we went to access to information and we discovered that the $900,000 had ballooned to $1.6 million. Within that $1.6 million was an entry for $60,000 for the three commissioners. I think it was instructive that in the original set of numbers of $900,000 there was no money for the commissioners, no money at least reported at that point, and suddenly out of the $1.6 million there is $60,000.

Then the committee came forward with its report in January, and what a report it was. It was absolutely brilliant, saying that Canadian who chose not to watch the CBC and who get cable would really enjoy paying an extra cable fee, an extra cable tax to cover the costs of the CBC which they did not want to watch in the first place. Or if they did not want to get cable, maybe it would be a good idea if we were to charge them some kind of a levy or tax on their video rentals. Apart from the fact that it really did not accomplish anything we know the report is going to end up on the shelf and nothing is ever going to happen to it, and what did we pay? We paid $2.75 million for that report.

What was particularly instructive was how the heritage minister's friends made out, the cultural elite who were doing the report. In the first instance in September there was no mention of any fee for the commissioners. In November there was mention of $60,000. In January when this wonderful tome finally came forward, it cost the Canadian taxpayers $300,000 for the part time work of these commissioners.

We dug a little further and of course we were making noises about the fact that it did not seem right that these people should be getting $100,000 for about seven or eight months of part time work. One of the commissioners suddenly piped up and said: "Oh, I did not take anything", which makes it even worse. Now there are two commissioners digging into the pockets of Canadian taxpayers for $150,000 each for seven months work. Not bad work if one can get it I guess. That is typical of this government. It takes care of its friends and keeps on going through these reports but it does not have any plan.

When the heritage minister took over the portfolio what happened with respect to Radio Canada International? Radio Canada International performs a valuable function for Canada. It has approximately 125 employees and its budget is approximately $16 million. It is of interest to note that in order to get the short wave

out, almost $1 million of the $16 million is consumed in hydro power alone. It is really quite an enterprise. However, it has 125 loyal employees who were told in November last year that their services would no longer be required as of April 1.

The heritage minister loves to do these little droppings all over the place. She said that we were going to save Radio Canada International, which was good news. Except she got her portfolio in the latter part of January and then she had to figure out where the money was going to come from.

She went to the CBC. We are going to be talking about the CBC in just a second. She ended up taking $8 million from the CBC. Then she scavenged around with a tin cup and came up with another $8 million for a total of the $16 million.

There is no plan. Radio Canada International is still in the state it was previously. Radio Canada International has a reprieve of one more year with absolutely no idea of how it is going to be kept on the air or how it is going to keep this valuable service going.

It has been my position as Reform Party heritage critic that we have to look at privatizing and look at other ways of funding valuable functions like Radio Canada International other than from the pockets of taxpayers, other than going into debt. However there is no plan.

I should note that members of the staff and management of Radio Canada International are to be highly commended for staying on the job doing their work and keeping the faith while the minister kept them waiting for a full five and a half months from the time they were told they were no longer needed. Only two weeks before they did not know where their next mortgage payment would come from, she said she had scrounged around and had come up with some dollars.

What about the CBC? The minister is particularly noted for what I call her Canadiana. She loves to say that she is going to give us a much more wonderful Canada. I must admit that along with a lot of Canadians I am becoming increasingly sceptical of whether the government will be able to do what it says it will be able to do. What the government says and what it does very frequently do not match up.

An example is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation which the Reform Party has said should be privatized. The Liberals have said out of one side of their mouth they are going to keep the CBC as a public broadcaster funded with public funds, but they have already cut $227 million. They now have to find $150 million more by 1998. It is no wonder that without any kind of direction or a mandate the unions today are in a position of being able to take a strike vote the week of April 22, next week.

A report from Canadian Press today states that if no deal is reached between the CBC's three unions and management a strike or lockout involving 7,000 employees could happen as early as May. They are presently fighting over the issue, as it were, of contracting out, in other words, how much information or programming will be done in house by these unions for the CBC.

This question cannot be resolved because of the lack of direction of the heritage minister and the lack of direction of the government. This is the reason I and many Canadians are so sceptical that the government will be able to do what it says it is going to do.

Last Friday the minister announced a $10 million program. I should explain that this comes out of a $120 million slush fund set up by the finance minister. This $10 million program is called Young Canada Works. It theoretically is going to put 1,900 people in the age bracket of 16 to 30 to work. It is going to involve high school and college students. Of those 1,900 it would be fair to speculate that this summer about one million people are going to be looking for work. That means one person in five hundred is going to be able to take advantage of the program, but how much of a program is it?

Let us make it clear. The Canadian Museums Association in a news release it also put out over the weekend expressed some happiness that this was in place. However, the association should know that the Deputy Prime Minister, Canada's heritage minister, has no idea where the funds are coming from for any of its projects either. What she has basically done is she has slipped her hand into this $120 million slush fund and has come out with $10 million.

This is going to be shared with other institutions. It is going to be shared with Young Canada Works in both official languages, Young Canada Works in national parks and historic sites, Young Canada Works for urban and aboriginal youth, and Young Canada Works in heritage institutions.

The point of my submission is that this government has no plan. The minister is out of control. She has no idea of what she is doing. This budget and the way the minister is administering her heritage department is disgraceful.

[Points Of Order, March 28th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. In answering the question I posed to the Deputy Prime Minister today, she accused me of sexism. I think it is highly unfortunate that on a day like today when the Canadian Association of Broadcasters is coming forward with their violence program that she would do that. She clearly does not understand that shopaholics can also be men.

[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, March 28th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately the Deputy Prime Minister does not know that the position of the Reform Party is to privatize the CBC, not to get rid of it. We want to maintain a viable commercial operation.

The minister seems to be acting a little like a shopaholic in her overall portfolio. She has found $6 million for a fly a flag program her deputies do not know where from, $150,000 for lacrosse, but the most instructive one is what she did with respect to Radio-Canada International. Of the $16 million she found for Radio-Canada International, she picked the pocket of the CBC by $8 million. She removed $8 million from the CBC.

She has no plan. Will she admit she has no plan to save the CBC?

[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, March 28th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the heritage minister just loves to stand in the House and tell us that if we do not save the CBC somehow Canada will blow apart.

She does her Canadiana routine all the time, but the difficulty is that it is this minister and this government doing all the cutting to the CBC. She cannot have it both ways. As a matter of fact, when she was talking about some special funding for it, we now find out, as a result of her comments on "Morningside" yesterday, that she has no new ideas.

Will she admit that in spite of the fact she keeps on talking about this Canadian institution and how she will save it, she has absolutely no financial plan?