John Cummins

[Aboriginal Affairs, March 25th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the government tells us the Nisga'a treaty is a done deal. Yet the minister of fisheries refuses to allow his bureaucrats to brief the fisheries committee on the impact the treaty will have on the fishery. What does the minister have to hide?

[Division No. 363, March 25th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Previously the member for Sydney—Victoria suggested this debate would replace a critical fish debate. The debate it is replacing is not worthy of support and he should know that.

[Canadian Publications, March 24th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, in an attempt to protect Canadian magazines, introduced legislation to limit foreign split-run publications.

Now, in a bizarre turn of events, the minister is creating a split-run policy for Canadian publications, taking away the favourable postal classification from a group of Canadian religious publications. The Catholic Register and regional catholic publications, the New Freeman of New Brunswick, the Prairie Messenger , and the B.C. Catholic all lost their favourable postal classifications because they use material from Canadian Catholic News, a news service they jointly finance. For the past 10 years, these publications have pooled their resources in order to report on national issues, something they could not afford to cover individually.

These catholic magazines are Canadian at their heart and soul. The Minister of Canadian Heritage should be a supporter of such publications rather than trying to kill them with friendly fire.

Canadian magazines are not protected by singling out catholic publications for destruction. I would ask the minister to reinstate these catholic publications under the publications assistance program.

[Division No. 360, March 23rd, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I do not know a whole lot about that issue, but I know about another issue where the same happened. It had to do with fishing regulations put in place by the government on the west coast. It took fishermen to court because they defied the minister's regulation which the joint House of Commons and Senate Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations declared to be invalid. Yet the government has continued to arrest people and to take them to court over regulations that are invalid, regulations which a provincial court judge and the Supreme Court of British Columbia have declared invalid. The government continues to harass fishermen, to take them to court and to put them in jail over an issue when it is the minister who is breaking the law.

I do not know as much about the issue as my friend, but I know the government is perfectly capable of putting farmers in jail for standing up for their rights.

[Division No. 360, March 23rd, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I think it is an outrage. Either we have a collective bargaining process and allow it to work, or we do not. It is as simple as that.

Everybody who has worked for a large corporation or in the government service understands and appreciates the fact that they have a union protecting them. They have union protection and unions bargaining for them. It is part of their democratic right and should be allowed to go through its natural course. That is what it is all about. To order people back to work when they have not gone on strike is an absolute outrage.

[Division No. 360, March 23rd, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I agree with the concerns my friend has raised.

These freighters may look pretty sitting out there in English Bay riding high at anchor, but they are costing prairie farmers a lot of money when they are not moving. That is the problem. The government just does not get it.

A couple of years ago during the winter we had huge problems with the shipment of grain. The rail lines were not operating properly. The money was not there although taxes were high. The government is simply ignoring the very critical transportation problem on the west coast.

Sooner or later we will wake up one day and the grain will be going south of the border, in which case we will be short a huge number of jobs in western Canada and a lot of money. A lot of people will be out of work. We simply do not need that. We need action from the government on this very critical issue.

[Division No. 360, March 23rd, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I would like to spend a short while discussing this back to work legislation. I do not want to get into how inappropriate and ineffective it is or the necessity of it. I want to talk about the impact the government's inaction can have on the community and the area I come from. In particular, I want to talk about the government's inability to come to an agreement with the grain handlers.

Quite often when we discuss this issue the first issue of concern is the prairie farmer which is only right. Whether they be primary producers of grain, the forest workers, or in the fishing community, the primary producers always seem to get the short end of the stick. I certainly have a great deal of sympathy for the impact any delay in the transfer station system can have on the prairie farmer.

I understand something like 70 grain handlers are affected. We are not talking about a large group, but they do have the ability to shut the system down. The question is why did the government not take action long before it got to this critical point? That is the key issue.

Somewhere along the line somebody is missing the boat. Somebody does not understand how the transportation system works. Somebody does not understand that since the Crow rate was removed, the ports of Vancouver and Prince Rupert, and the Fraser port to a lesser extent, on the west coast are not so much in competition with one another as they could be in competition with American ports. This is simply because of the ease with which farmers could transport their grain south of the border and ship it through the port of Portland or even the port at Sacramento, California.

The possibility exists that the competition for British Columbia ports is not among themselves but it very well could be with ports south of the border. If a trickle of grain starts being shifted south of the border even down to the Mississippi, in short order there is going to be a flood. That is the key issue in my view. How do we protect the transportation route and keep that grain going out through the port of Vancouver? I think the government has completely ignored this issue.

The matter of the grain handlers is only one small issue. The other is the transportation issue. The government has sorely neglected that aspect of it as well. The taxation regime and so on which our railways have to cope with is far in excess of that which the American lines have to cope with. Sooner or later that grain is going to be shifted south of the border and with it will go a great deal of prosperity. The dollars that accrue to Vancouver through the shipment of prairie grain are huge and we should not ignore that.

This action taken by the government was unnecessary. Had it bargained honestly and openly in the beginning, an agreement could have been reached with the workers. That was demonstrated last night when an hour before he made the announcement in the House, the President of the Treasury Board was aware that an agreement had been reached, an agreement which should probably allow the continued shipment of grain through the port of Vancouver. If that agreement could be reached last night, it certainly could have been reached a week ago. The money was obviously there to satisfy those people.

Another aspect of this bill which concerns me has to do with the prison guards who are also part of this negotiating table. I do not think anybody in my community would resent those guards being given a substantial raise. The work they do is dangerous. They operate under tremendous pressure. The support they have had from the government is almost non-existent. It is a job I sure as heck would not want and I do not think too many people in this chamber would want. I do not think those people have received the respect they deserve from the government. It is sad that it has come to that.

When we look at the wages these people are paid in comparison to police officers, it is simply an outrage. Why money could not be found to pay these people the kind of dollars they are worth is simply beyond me.

Why back to work legislation has been used when nobody is off the job is a mystery to me. If these people are essential workers, then treat them as essential workers. Bring in essential legislation that would define them as such and let us get on with life. But do not impose back to work legislation on them when it is inappropriate, as it is today.

I reiterate the despair I feel in the fact that the government has simply neglected the country's transportation system. The Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Fraser ports face a peril if more care is not taken to ensure that the transportation system in Canada remains viable and competitive with that of our American neighbours. As I said earlier, it only would take a trickle of grain to find its way over the border, down through the rail system to the ports along the west coast or down to the Mississippi and there will be a flood. The cost and loss to Canadian taxpayers, and the job losses in Canada, will be huge.

I urge the government to wake up. It has been a long night but it is time to wake up and address this issue in the way it should.

[Nuclear Waste, March 9th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, let us cut to the chase on this issue. This minister took a plan to cabinet on how to avoid public consultation on the disposal of nuclear waste. He took a plan to cabinet on how to avoid liability for nuclear waste storage if something should go wrong. He took a plan to cabinet and then he forgot about it. Did this minister really think he could get away with it?

[Nuclear Waste, March 9th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the resources minister was in denial about his plan to fast track the burial of 30,000 tonnes of nuclear waste without public consultation. It gets worse. The secret cabinet memo provides government with a plan to avoid liability for the cost of cleanup should something go wrong.

Why did the minister think he could just walk away from his responsibility?

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, March 8th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, earlier in the debate the government deputy whip suggested that further debate on the bill was pointless. She noted that about a dozen Reformers had spoken and the debate was repetitive.

I would like to take a look for a minute at time allocation statistics. For example, on Bill C-36 at report stage and third reading Reform only had 50 minutes of debate on that bill before time allocation was moved. There was a total of two hours and 15 minutes of debate before time allocation was moved. The total time of debate before and after time allocation on Bill C-36 was only three hours of debate by the official opposition, for a total of nine hours and 12 minutes of debate.

On Bill C-36 at second reading Reform only spoke for one hour and six minutes before time allocation was moved.

On Bill C-43 Reform spoke for an hour and 56 minutes before time allocation was moved, and the total debate time on that bill was 3 hours and 19 minutes out of a total of 11 hours and 25 minutes.

These bills are important bill. Bill C-36 was the budget implementation bill. Bill C-43 was the custom and revenue agency bill. Not small potatoes but important bills which the Canadian public expected to be debated in the House.

At second reading on Bill C-2, the Canada pension plan, the official opposition only spoke for an hour and 41 minutes. When time allocation was called Reform had only spoken for an hour and 51 minutes out of a total of 11 hours and 15 minutes of debate time. That is not much time.

On Bill C-2 at report stage and third reading the official opposition again only spoke for an hour and 20 minutes before time allocation was moved. The total debate time was two hours and 45 minutes.

There are a lot of people concerned about the Canada pension plan. We saw earlier where the Minister of Finance removed the individual who was responsible for doing the numbers on the Canada pension plan. He did not want the real straight goods on it and he did not want debate to go on in the House on that very important bill.

Bill C-4 respecting the wheat board is important to Canadians on the prairies. Reform had a total of eight hours debate on that bill before time allocation was moved. There was much to be said about that bill. There were many problems with it. It was of great interest to Canadians on the prairies.

On Bill C-3, the DNA bill, Reform had two hours and 15 minutes of debate time before time allocation was moved.

These kinds of numbers are simply unacceptable in a democratic society. This place is supposed to be about debate. It is supposed to be about discussion of ideas. We are supposed to debate the principles behind these bills and what they mean to Canadian people. We are not supposed to get into derogatory personal comments and we do not. We debate the issues. That is what it is supposed to be about. That is what we are talking about in these bills, the issues at hand. Yet if the government continually moves time allocation, what is the point of being here?

The other day when time allocation was moved on a justice bill my colleague from Wild Rose said “We might as well turn this over to the judges. There is no point in even being in this place to try to express the interests and the concerns of the Canadian public”.

On the equalization bill, Bill C-65, there were three hours and 35 minutes of debate at second reading before time allocation was moved. It is an important bill, a bill that is especially important to the province of British Columbia which suffers under a socialist government. Its economy is in a nose dive and I do not think we have seen bottom. Yet we are required under the equalization bill to continue paying the piper.

The bill before us today is an important one. It is a bill that has a lot to do with the health of Canadian industry. It is a bill which fails to recognize that about $1 billion a day of trade is done between Canada and the United States. That does not mean to say that we have to capitulate to every American complaint and everything that Americans do not find satisfactory. Far from it. What it does say is that we have to be reasonable.

Not only is this bill not reasonable, but it fails to recognize that Canadians can fend for themselves, that there is a place in the market for Canadian performers, and that there is a place in the market in Canada for Canadian magazines. They will be supported by Canadians. Canadians want to hear what other Canadians have to say about events in the world. They want to hear about what Canadians have to say about events taking place in this country. They are not prepared to simply go to U.S. sources and publications for news and items of interest to Canadians.