Jim Abbott

[Social Security Program, October 24th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, it has been most fascinating coming to the House of Commons and dealing directly with people who are eminently qualified to speak for the Liberal Party as members of Parliament for the Liberals.

One of the difficult things I have encountered is that I do not seem to be able to get a straight answer to a very simple question and it reflects around the area of universality. Does the member actually believe in universality?

As I listened to the member's very eloquent speech it seemed to me that he, like most Liberals, is trying to have it both ways. The Liberals are saying we are going to have government intervention but we are going to have free market. Some of the things unfortunately are mutually exclusive.

I am not suggesting for a second that I do not believe in the basic concept of equalization and trying to even things out but we have developed this to such a science in Canada that we have reached the point at which we no longer can afford it.

I have a question with respect to universality. I believe this is the fourth time and the fourth member I have put this question to. I know the member is going to give me a straight answer to this question because he is such an upright looking gentleman. I can tell he is going to give me a straight answer.

Where are we going with this thing? Does the member actually believe in the concept of universality in which every single Canadian has equal access to all of the programs available? Or does the member believe, as the Reform Party believes, that we are going to have to target some of our social programs, that we are going to have to be selective and make sure that the people in Canada who are most in need will have those services available to them? In other words, that is the difference. Those two things are mutually exclusive-universality or are we going to be targeting our resources because that is not universality? Which is it?

[Gun Control, October 24th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, on Friday last week some people from the minister's office were in my office. They gave me the same answer the minister just gave the House: There really is no problem.

The problem is that we have people dying on the streets of Canada. The problem is being fed with weapons that will never be registered.

Will the minister at least undertake a review of the processes so that the problem can be uncovered? Thousands of weapons are coming across the border illegally.

[Gun Control, October 24th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, because the Prime Minister clearly does not understand the problem, we have the headline in Toronto's Saturday Star that says: Every gun will be registered''. However we have the real story on page 15:Smugglers swell gun numbers. I can sell everything I can get, underground dealer says''.

My question is for the Minister of National Revenue. When is he going to wake up and start to do something about the real problem, which is illegally smuggled weapons?

[Social Security Programs, October 24th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, it is always interesting to hear speeches by these Liberals who have converted to the Reform point of view that there have to be changes. It is interesting that none of these things came out during the last election.

The member speaks about going to his constituents and also going to the Council of Canadians and asking how many have talked to MPs. If they had spoken to the Liberals during the last election they would not have been hearing the same thing that the member was talking about to his constituents at this meeting he was reporting on.

The Reform Party by contrast has consistently stipulated that there must be protection for the disadvantaged in our society and the only way we can do it is to make sure that the pie is carved up in their favour.

Does the member agree that the outdated concept of universality that was touted consistently by the Liberals in the election is now dead? Or does he believe, as the member sitting behind him seemed to believe in debate the other day, that it is universality if necessary but not necessarily universality?

[The Environment, October 19th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to acknowledge at the commencement of my remarks that when I first started into this process I rose in the House and I said: "If the minister is serious and if we have the opportunity to go through the whole process, I am looking forward to her and her department coming forward and saying yes, this is the collective wisdom of the committee and we are prepared to act on it". I said that if she did that I would congratulate her, so today I congratulate her.

I realize as a Reformer that I have to be careful, but I would like to make special note of the chair of the committee, the hon. member for Davenport. I believe he and I share a mutual respect for each other, for the fact that we have hard opinions, strong opinions and different opinions. In spite of that he did a masterful job of bringing together all of the opinions that were available through this arduous process. He is absolutely to be commended for his work.

In addition, taking some of the responsibility for this, the member for Comox-Alberni and myself absolutely held out, dug in our heels and would not be moved. I am now very pleased to see that the minister has announced that we will fund these initiatives within existing resources. I take some small amount of credit for that on behalf of the Reform Party. There were people on the committee who had a differing point of view to that.

I would like to read from the minister's prepared comments: "The government will include a definition of sustainable development in the Auditor General Act and ensure that environmental considerations are taken into account in all Auditor General reports to Parliament". She will know that extreme environmentalists would see the term sustainable development as being an oxymoron, in other words the two things do not necessarily fit together. The responsible industrialist, the entrepreneur, does not see it that way. I must tell this House that neither does the Reform Party.

The Reform Party sees sustainable development as being an absolutely achievable goal. However, one of the difficulties is what does sustainable development mean. That is a very difficult question. I have some small bit of concern because the minister in her comments today in the unprepared part of her speech said that there will be an onus on the companies to prove their process is safe.

One of the concerns that I have is that I do not know what that means either. In other words, are we going to kill the goose that lays the golden egg by becoming so wrapped up in saying we cannot do anything that we will not be able to have any responsible development of the resources that we have in Canada? It is a concern.

I would like to read into my speech from the Reform Party blue sheet. We have gone from mauve to purple to red to green to grey. The Reform Party has always stayed with blue.

The Reform Party supports ensuring that all Canadians and their descendants dwell in a clean and healthy environment. The party supports sustainable development because-

This is the most important part.

-without economic development and the income generated therefrom, the environment will not be protected or enjoyed.

That is where the hon. member for Davenport and myself differ. From his perspective I believe I would be fair in characterising his point of view to say that we must protect the environment before we get into economic development. I suggest if we take a look at what is happening in the third world where the countries do not have proper economic activity, where they do not have the resources to protect the environment, we end up with absolutely atrocious situations in the third world in terms of pollution. They do not have the resources to protect the environment.

I say again that the Reform Party states that without economic development and the income generated therefrom, the environment will not be protected or enjoyed.

This has been a consistent position of the Reform Party contrary to what has been said. I am sure that the minister would never have said anything disparaging about the Reform Party, but maybe there are some people in the Liberal Party who have said some things that perhaps have not been totally accurate in characterising where the Reform Party is coming from. I would like to read in exactly where we are coming from on the issue of sustainable development. This by the way has been in our blue book since 1991.

The Reform Party supports the view that environmental considerations must carry equal weight with economic, social and technical considerations in the development of a project.

The Reform Party supports the integration of environmental and economic objectives in management philosophy, structure, procedures, planning and all decision-making matters involving economic and environmental issues in which the federal government has constitutional jurisdiction.

The Reform Party supports the initiation of a public education program of environmentally conscious purchasing. The federal government and private sector should cause their purchasing departments to be environmentally conscious in all their purchasing.

The Reform Party supports the federal government in taking leadership in developing a new discipline integrating economics and the environment.

This has been the position of the Reform Party. I cannot possibly imagine that the responsible members of the Reform Party would ever move from those very sustainable and responsible positions.

However, there is a battle for the hearts and minds of people over the issue of responsible resource management and development and probably no place more strongly than in the province of British Columbia.

This battle for the hearts and minds of citizens is waged by people who seem to get on to the extreme. We have to realize that, just as in society, people, human beings, have a finite life. For example, in British Columbia the flashpoint is trees. Trees have a finite life.

What has to be decided is what we are going to do with the fibre. Are we going to let it fall to the ground in decay? Are we going to harvest it? Are we going to be handling it responsibly? There is this battle for the hearts and minds of people.

I will tell a quick story. I was at a meeting attended by people from all over Canada in my constituency a few weeks ago. A prairie farmer came up to me. He was very proud of the fact that he was going out of his way to save all the forests in British Columbia. He was one of the largest contributors to one of the more extreme environmental groups that have single-handedly shut down logging operations, put loggers out of work, and created all sorts of havoc in situations where the companies within the last five years have turned around and managed their affairs and the affairs of the forests very responsibly. I suggested to him that maybe I should start to contribute to a fund that would advocate returning all the prairies to grasslands. How would he feel about that? Of course he became very incensed about it.

One issue in the entire area of the environment is to get good, quality information out. I congratulate the minister and the committee chairman for their effort to this point. I look forward to the Reform Party supporting the initiative.

[Department Of Industry Act, October 17th, 1994]

A drum roll for your speech.

[Department Of Industry Act, October 17th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, my constituency happens to be virtually a mirror reflection of the hon. member's constituency. I understand the whole business of resource base and the business of having to diversify.

I was very encouraged this morning when the finance minister said: "Equally we believe that regional economic assistance should focus on genuine opportunities that have the potential to be self-sustaining. We intend to concentrate, for example, more on tourism and on the creation of a positive environment for small and medium sized businesses, the multinationals of tomorrow. At the individual level, as our social security reform proposals make clear, we also believe there is a need to change unemployment insurance, building on reforms begun in last February's budget".

Using exactly the same context in the very next paragraph that follows he said: "The current system is outdated social policy. While it has worked well for a lot of people, for too many others the UI system does little or nothing for their self-esteem or success. But the current UI system is outdated economic policy too. It encourages chronic use and repeat use of the program by businesses and individuals. It is a barrier that prevents people from adapting to changes that are unavoidable and opportunities that are present. Therefore we intend to take measures that will bring UI back closer to what the term says, insurance".

I would like to ask the hon. member two questions. First, during the course of the last election I am sure the hon. member will have run into a Reform candidate somewhere along the line. I would rather suspect that Reform candidate said exactly what the Minister of Finance said this morning, that unemployment insurance should be returned to its original purpose, insurance.

I would be curious. What did the hon. member say in those particular situations? I would suspect that his constituents might be interested to see if what he is saying today, reflecting on what the minister who is a leader in his party is saying, is actually parallel to what he was saying during the course of the campaign.

Was he like other Liberal members attacking Reform Party people who were saying unemployment insurance should be returned to its original purpose, insurance, or was he agreeing with the minister? Is there a consistency in his position?

[Department Of Industry Act, October 17th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, in response to the member's speech and particularly in response to some of the comments which have been made by the Liberals, I wonder if they are aware that this morning their Minister of Finance made some public statements about the fact that they have a new economic philosophy.

Their new economic philosophy seems to relate a little more to reality than the things we have been hearing in the House since we came here. It somewhat relates to some of the comments which have been coming from this corner of the House.

Perhaps the member might like to comment on the fact that in quoting from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the finance minister this morning said that the OECD agrees. Let me quote from their recent job study: "Subsidies tend to operate in exactly the opposite way from what is needed. They slow rather than stimulate adjustments. They discourage rather than encourage innovation and they tend to become permanent".

Would the member care to comment on this new economic direction his finance minister has finally discovered?

[Financial Administration Act, October 6th, 1994]

I would not doubt it.

[Petitions, October 5th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition has two pages with 57 signatures. The petitioners request that Parliament not amend the human rights code, the Canadian Human Rights Act or the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in any way which would tend to indicate societal approval of same sex relationships or of homosexuality, including amending the human rights code to include in the prohibited grounds of discrimination the undefined phrase sexual orientation.

I present these and I concur with my petitioners.