House of Commons photoLost his last election, in 2015, with 28% of the vote.
Transportation Amendment Act March 18th, 2003
Madam Speaker, my question for the member for Gander—Grand Falls is very simple. How would the member see being able to achieve the goal of eliminating the bias against rural Canada that currently exists as a consequence of the way our taxation regime and infrastructure support work in the current framework? They discriminate against rural Canada in a way that I know the member for Gander—Grand Falls would understand as well as I, being from northern Vancouver Island, do.
Question No. 107 March 17th, 2003
How many federal government departments have access to the firearms registry and what level of personnel within the departments are allowed this direct access or are allowed to request specific information as to whether or not individuals have ownership of firearms listed on the registry?
Softwood Lumber March 17th, 2003
Mr. Speaker, I was not talking to the minister. I was referring to somebody in an analogy in a baseball game.
Why is the minister so resistant to completing a cost analysis to provide strong Canadian leadership on negotiations?
Softwood Lumber March 17th, 2003
Mr. Speaker, there has been no progress at all. The American lumber lobby is in the same place today that it was 12 months ago.
How does the minister expect to get to second base when he refuses to tag first? You are not displaying leadership by sitting in the dugout or cheering from the sidelines--
Softwood Lumber March 17th, 2003
Mr. Speaker, negotiations to settle the softwood lumber dispute have ground to a halt. Fourteen months ago I asked the minister to initiate a cost analysis of the dispute to provide Canadian stakeholders with a framework for negotiations. The government has not done this. Why?
The Budget February 26th, 2003
Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I understand that today in the foyer the member for Mississauga Centre made the comment, “Damned Americans, I hate those bastards”. I have Americans as family. I demand a retraction and an apology in the House right now.
Softwood Lumber February 26th, 2003
Mr. Speaker, the Minister for International Trade has not answered my question. By refusing to answer my question he is sending the opposite message.
The only reason the Americans entered the negotiations was that they lost at the World Trade Organization last year. Important softwood rulings from WTO and NAFTA are expected in three months.
In pursuit of free trade in lumber I ask again, will the minister pledge not to withdraw Canada's legal challenges?
Softwood Lumber February 26th, 2003
Mr. Speaker, the softwood negotiations in Washington broke down because the U.S. lumber lobby has not reduced its demands for 11 months. In addition, it is calling for a border tax and U.S. retention of the billion dollars in Canadian cash deposits. It is insisting that the WTO and NAFTA legal challenges be dropped by Canada.
In pursuit of free trade in lumber, I again ask the minister, will he pledge not to withdraw Canada's legal challenges?
The Budget February 25th, 2003
Madam Speaker, it is very apparent that countries are like people. If we want to do business with somebody it is important that we know who they are, that we understand them and that we have things in common. Australia and Britain for example, at the current time, are part of the coalition of the willing in the Iraqi question which is dominating the American political scene and also having a huge depressing impact on the level of economic activity in the U.S. Naturally the Americans are looking for a clear message from their friends, allies and trading partners. Canada's message has not been clear, therefore it confuses our trading relationship. To think otherwise would not be realistic.
I have become aware recently that the special military procurement arrangements that we have with the United States, which dates back to post-World War II, will now be shared with others. Those others happen to be Australia and the U.K. There is a direct correlation and it is not difficult to comprehend why that would occur.
All of what we do politically has consequences with our long term relationship in terms of trade. That is the point I was trying to make and I think everybody knows that some of these implications are upon us now.
The Budget February 25th, 2003
Mr. Speaker, it gives me pleasure to speak to the budget debate today. When the budget speech was delivered here recently, I was overwhelmed by the misdirected government priorities. I say that from the standpoint of a loyal and patriotic Canadian and a lifelong British Columbian.
I am also speaking as the international trade critic for the Canadian Alliance. Eighty-seven per cent of our trade is with the U.S. Canadian jobs and prosperity are highly dependent on exports, more so than almost any other country in the world. One job in four in Canada is reliant upon our trade. We export 45% of our GDP and import 40% of our GDP. I think the average for the G-7 in both of those categories is well less than half that number, in the teens. We often think of trade dependency as being with major trading countries. There is a surprise there too. Mainland China, for example, is about 10% dependent on exports. The U.S. is at somewhere around 15%. We are way out there in terms of our exposure to the necessity of trade to support our prosperity.
Given this kind of reliance, given the $2 billion a day in two way trade across the Canada-U.S. border, and given our need to diversify our export destinations while at the same time addressing concerns of our southern neighbours who have expressed security concerns about border issues and ports of entry, I would have assumed that this budget would have spent a lot of time addressing these issues. Really, it did not.
For example, the budget commits $11 million over the next two years, $5.5 million per year, to additional regional offices and increased consular presence in the U.S. These are insignificant moneys. This is such a minor budget item given the small amount of money. It is much less than what was given to the Forest Products Association of Canada, for example, to run a public relations campaign directed at the opinion makers in the softwood dispute.
So many of these initiatives by the government are public relations oriented rather than substantive, security oriented or other measures. I have a real concern that the government is more interested in public relations than in actually managing domestic and international security and military issues in partnership with our colleagues in the U.S., our major trading partner.
The Canadian border and transportation infrastructure have long been neglected and this is coming home to roost. There are currently more trucks transiting from Toronto to Calgary through the U.S. than there are through Canada because the U.S. highways are better. I was on the Trans-Canada Highway immediately after September 11, 2001, driving from west to east. We all know what happened: The border crossings became impossible in that timeframe. I saw the impact on the Trans-Canada Highway of having all that diverted truck traffic, the Canadian through traffic, staying on the Trans-Canada Highway. I know that highway is not built for that kind of contingency. So here we are, even with our far from perfect border infrastructure, with our truckers accepting that penalty rather than using our Trans-Canada facility. Canada is losing huge economic opportunities and prosperity because of all of this.
Canadian municipal governments recognize this problem and see it with clarity, because they see what is happening with their neighbouring cities across the border, which are building up distribution centres and infrastructure and modernizing all of their facilities while ours are crumbling and falling apart.
This certainly speaks to taxation issues. I think what it really speaks to is who is collecting the taxes and who is delivering the programs, and the government is not sympathetic to changing the way that is done in Canada. It is obvious that municipal and provincial governments are much more capable of delivering what is really needed in much of that infrastructure. The federal government is occupying the taxation that those governments need in order to accomplish that task. It is not prepared to change that and is not at all sympathetic on that issue. This is creating what I call a transportation deficit, which this budget fails to address in its entirety.
A transportation deficit is no more or no less than an export deficit. It is cumulative. The longer we allow this situation to persist, the more difficult we make it to get back into the game. I liken the cumulative effect to what has happened to my province of British Columbia, in a sense, after 10 years of governance by a socialist government with a misdirected sense of priorities. That government took a very prosperous province and turned it into a have not province under our own federal equalization formula, creating a deficit and debt situation. It is taking the collective will of a lot of people to make sacrifices. In the meantime, we have lost a huge number of our young people to competing jurisdictions in the U.S., Alberta or other provinces. We may never get them back. This has long term consequences.
What governments do is important. The actions they take have long term ramifications and consequences. There was a chance to do some very significant and important things with all of the surplus capacity in this budget, and the government chose not to do that.
The border infrastructure question relies entirely on the $600 million border infrastructure program which was announced in 2002. It is a good start but is certainly not comprehensive. The message Canada is sending to the U.S. on domestic security, international security, border issues and military issues does tend to imperil our long term trading relationship.
I can give the House a very concrete example. Today the Bush administration is pushing us to the wall on the softwood lumber dispute, the largest trade dispute between any two countries in the world, in terms of our sovereignty over forest policy, undercutting the WTO and NAFTA processes, and in terms of basically selling out the consumer interest, all related to one specific set of circumstances for lumber. At the same time that this is happening, the U.S. and Australia have announced that their free trade talks have been going so well that the free trade agreement they expected to conclude at the end of 2004 is now anticipated to be concluded early in 2004. Are these issues related? Of course they are. One could ask why these relations are going so swimmingly with Australia and so poorly with Canada.
I am not able to get through my comprehensive speech so I will conclude by saying once again how disappointed I am in the huge lost opportunity that this budget presented.