John Duncan

[Canadian Coast Guard, November 6th, 2002]

Mr. Chairman, I do not quite know where to begin to respond to that. I do agree that we need a lot more than a take note debate on this issue. We need an inquiry into the functioning and effectiveness of the Coast Guard. We have now had this circumstance for a number of years. Basically from all reports it is not working.

We have had simple things. For the Office of Boating Safety, for example, there is new legislation. Legislation was created where everybody who runs a recreational craft under four metres in length is supposed to be licensed as of September 15.

I live in a part of the country where everybody has a boat and many of them are under four metres in length. What are the audits saying? That the Office of Boating Safety endeavour to operate in basically an unfunded state with few to nil resources. That is no surprise.

The local newspaper stated: “Efforts by The Record to obtain information where local boaters can take this test proved futile. The operator of the local office of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was not available so a call was placed to the Campbell River DFO office. In turn, we were referred to the boating safety hotline, who in turn referred us to a media consultant in Vancouver. This person told us we should be calling the Boating Safety Office in Victoria. Upon calling that number we found there was no one available. A call back to the boating safety hotline to ask for further assistance had us referred to the directory for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. There was no one answering that telephone either”.

This is the kind of behaviour we are getting. We are getting new initiatives that are not funded. We are getting priority activities of the department that are basically being underfunded.

The same thing is happening to the Coast Guard that is happening to our armed forces. It is rust out, it is burnout and it is time that the government made a decision that those are priority activities that it must deliver. It has a constitutional priority to deliver those kinds of programs to the public. It is not happening to the degree it should.

The minister is the one who is responsible to try and effect this change. I hope and wish him well in those endeavours.

[Canadian Coast Guard, November 6th, 2002]

Mr. Chairman, first of all, good governance involves setting priorities. I cannot see that there is a much higher priority than the safety of our citizens and people who are travelling to visit our nation.

What is happening with the lack of hovercraft coverage at Vancouver airport is unconscionable. We knew there was a plan to retire the second hovercraft. We knew what the retirement date was and at the same time we knew that the second hovercraft was still not basically secured. It is still not basically secured to this day.

In terms of why the Coast Guard is not doing well under the new regime since it was moved from the Department of Transport to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is simply a function of what happens when there is a merger. Often there is a winner and a loser. I have seen it happen in the corporate world. What has happened with the Coast Guard is it has lost.

We have a situation where the senior Coast Guard personnel are junior in the DFO hierarchy and simply cannot put their stamp on the priority that they deserve within the larger organization. They have lost the power and influence game. It is up to the minister and political masters to effect change which will bring sensibility back and put public priorities in the right order.

[Canadian Coast Guard, November 6th, 2002]

Mr. Chairman, I wish I could approach this take note debate with a light heart but I am afraid I cannot do that.

There needs to be an inquiry into the destruction of the Canadian Coast Guard since it was absorbed by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and it is a sad tale indeed. One cannot live on the British Columbia coast without becoming aware of what is happening to what was a very proud service.

I am a former member of the fisheries committee. I have worked with most of the members who have spoken tonight. I think they are quite in tune that when it comes to marine issues, I am fairly up to speed.

What is happening with our Coast Guard, albeit that it is much smaller than the Department of National Defence, is similar from the standpoint that it is underfunded, suffering from rust out and is somewhat lacking in leadership at some critical positions.

Why is it, I keep asking myself, that our most valued services, the ones that the people believe are central to the goal of their federal government, are always the ones that get the short end of the stick? If we look at budget reductions to the Canadian Coast Guard since 1995, it has lost $100 million. Those are non-inflated dollars, which means a drop from $542 million to $442 million. There is a very significant drop in coast guard figures. Those are from public accounts.

Why is it that every time I make a speech in British Columbia and talk about the Coast Guard and say that it is time to take it out of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and either stand it on its own or put it in with the armed forces, of all outfits, I get an immediate, spontaneous ovation? It is ironic, given the public concerns that are also apparent about the chronic underfunding of the Department of National Defence. Still, with all that baggage, they would prefer to see that rather than what is happening with the Coast Guard before their very eyes.

We know that in order to maintain our asset base we need to reinvest. The Canadian Coast Guard commissioner himself has said that requires about $140 million to $150 million of capital funding each year. In contrast, over the last 10 years the average has been in the order of $30 million or $40 million.

An audit was done by the Auditor General and the December 2000 report was considered by the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. The central conclusion arising from the audit was that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was not managing its fleet in a cost effective way. Almost all the elements that would discourage good management and functional accountability in any organization are to be found in the Canadian Coast Guard.

We have a problem. Here is just a symptom. I like real life examples. We have the Canadian Coast Guard with its director of operational services saying to his commanding officers of coast guard ships, “I have some concerns with regard to keeping the regional fleet on budget on the operating and maintenance fuel allotment side. In light of this I am requesting that you take extra measures to reduce fuel consumption. They are short of dollars. I am aware that commanding officers are already taking steps to conserve fuel, such as reducing speed and operating on fewer engines where possible. However, as of today's date, September 26 of this year, I am directing commanding officers to reduce discretionary steaming to a bare minimum”.

This is the kind of thing that is going on with our once proud services. They have been reduced to beggars and to second tier in DFO ranks. Basically the feeling among Coast Guard personnel is that all DFO wanted was their budget. DFO in the meantime has lost its moral right to manage the fishery. At the same time it has lost its moral right to carry out the search and rescue function.

We had protests from the commercial fishermen this summer who, as a direct consequence, thought that their livelihood was at stake. After years of being treated poorly by DFO they saw that this was the year they had to take a position.

We have the ongoing saga of an aboriginal fishery pilot sales program that has been found wanting for statutory authority which the minister continues to operate to the point where he was turning a blind eye to openings this summer rather than announce them simply because it was another way to circumvent his problem rather than deal with the real issue.

In terms of the search and rescue function being completely turned on its head, we have two prime examples of where this has been completely mismanaged on the west coast. We have the example of the hovercraft which has been well explained. This is unconscionable.

The Vancouver Airport Authority emergency plan requires two hovercraft. We have one hovercraft. We do not know when the other one will be delivered. Every hovercraft has to be taken out of operation for servicing. When that happens there will be no coverage for the Vancouver airport or for the flats. If there is an accident out there, a major loss of life could be involved.

The other example is with the Coast Guard rescue divers. I want to review that from my perspective. The ministerial actions in terms of the lead-up to the Cap Rouge II disaster have led to what I consider an incomprehensible cop-out by the minister in terms of accepting responsibility for a very serious tragedy.

We had loss of life which led the previous minister to cancel the Coast Guard rescue diving program on the west coast and turn it over to the armed forces. In February 2001, I warned the minister in the House of Commons that this was not a good move. I said:

it will not work to drop the coast guard rescue diving in the Vancouver area and substitute the Department of DND from Comox or Esquimalt on Vancouver Island to do the rescue diving.

The Vancouver coast guard rescue diving program record over the last six years demonstrates that the vast majority of calls were responded to within 20 minutes. For example, mobilization and flight time for DND from Comox is one and a half hours and it is worse on nights and weekends. The minister is saying that these are equivalent services when they are so obviously not.

That is the crux of the matter. After the Cap Rouge II the opposition was accused of federal opportunism to be critical of the west coast search and rescue capability. I find that quite unconscionable.

Rather than the minister accepting responsibility for the lack of direction that the divers were under when they had previously been told that they could not do these dives, it has led those divers into a no win situation. What does a diver do when the media and everyone are second guessing the next incident? This is life threatening for them.

I will conclude with that because I am getting the time sign. I certainly would have a lot more to say if I had the time.

[Softwood Lumber Industry, November 5th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, he is the minister that does not deliver despite his promises.

The Canadian Alliance package also includes a softwood tariff management proposal of $1.475 billion. The Liberals continue to refuse to address this issue. In May the trade minister was optimistic this could be done without countervail from the U.S. The senior minister from British Columbia has been promising such a loan guarantee program since last spring.

The Canadian Alliance has a plan. Where is the government's plan?

[Softwood Lumber Industry, November 5th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday in Vancouver the Canadian Alliance announced a softwood package including $278 million for laid-off softwood workers. The Liberal government announced a cynical byelection package that does nothing to specifically help softwood workers. The Canadian Alliance plan addresses real issues. The government plan does not.

When will the government announce a real softwood plan to help workers?

[Petitions, October 22nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I have two petitions signed by over 350 individuals from my riding of Vancouver Island North.

The petitioners are asking Parliament to ensure that all necessary steps are taken to protect our children from any material promoting child pornography, to make it clear that any such exploitation of children will be met with swift punishment and that all necessary steps will be taken to outlaw such material.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, October 11th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from southern Vancouver Island. I am from the northern part.

The actual number of people unemployed is a somewhat difficult number to calculate. The IWA, the Industrial, Wood and Allied Workers union, as of this week estimates that there are 6,033 people unemployed as a consequence of the dispute, 8 sawmills closed and 20 on reduced operations. That is in British Columbia, northern Ontario and part of Quebec where they have certification and jurisdiction. Certainly that number on a national basis, expanded by people from other certifications or by people who are not certified union workers, would mean that we have a very large number of people out of work because of this softwood dispute.

The main difficulty I have with the government announcement on financial assistance is that it deals with none of the nuts and bolts of what was being asked for in common sense support in order to retain people in the industry and keep companies in the game in terms of being able to export. There are two things. One is an expansion of employment insurance. Already there are people whose employment insurance benefits have expired. They have been told that their only option is welfare and social assistance. This government program did not deal with that issue whatsoever. It needs to deal with that.

On the other issue, the main thing that could be done, particularly for small and medium sized companies, is a loan guarantee program so that the tariff liability until such time as it will be reimbursed can be covered with government guarantees. That is something we have been putting out there in conjunction with industry since last spring. That is what has been promised by the Minister of Natural Resources since June. The government still has not delivered on that very specific proposal.

Yes, there are many government actions that are hurting our small communities, the airport tax in particular.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, October 11th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I will respond to the throne speech as the international trade critic for the Alliance Party. I will start by saying that the government just does not get it.

In terms of our international trade relationships under the government, our relations with our major trading partner, the partner for 85% of our trade, and that is our trade with the U.S., has gone backwards.

When we are trading with the United States I think we have to recognize that it is the most self-sufficient and developed nation in the world. It can and does focus very much on what kind of imports it is importing because it can afford to do that. It also has the strongest domestic trade legislation in the developed world.

It is also true that the World Trade Organization and NAFTA rules are strengthening and that has become a more effective way for a nation such as Canada to offset the strong domestic trade legislation of our trading partners. This is largely a consequence of the fact that the U.S. itself has found WTO and NAFTA legal routes a very effective way to go as well.

Canada must remain a reliable partner that pulls above our weight in terms of the international community. Under the present government, we have seen nine years of neglect. Canada pulls below its weight when it comes to our armed forces and that affects our diplomacy, our trade relationships and many other things in a negative way.

I would like to spend some time talking about the softwood lumber dispute which is the major trade dispute between Canada and the U.S. I also want to make reference to the steel dispute. This is an area where the U.S. has made a very good decision in exempting Canada from tariffs on steel. Here we have our very own international trade panel recommending that Canada put tariffs on U.S. steel entering Canada. Our cabinet has to make a decision. I do not understand why this has been so drawn out when it makes so much sense to just reverse that decision.

When we heard the throne speech, the major and most significant trade dispute in Canadian jurisdiction, remembering that Canada is the most dependent on trade of any developed nation, was not given a mention beyond the fact that the government would continue to behave as it has been behaving in terms of the softwood dispute. There was no mention of a financial assistance package in the throne speech in order to maintain Canadian resolve for our workforce in the forest industry, Canadian resolve for the companies and resolve within the broaden communities involved so heavily, the 200 and some forest dependent communities throughout Canada.

Finally, last Tuesday I was able to extract a promise from the trade minister that there would be a financial assistance package forthcoming. That financial assistance package was announced and it fails on all fronts to address the mission statement, which is to ensure Canadian resolve and morale is bolstered and supported so we can maintain a unified position until we resolve the softwood dispute with the U.S., which we will surely win with all our legal challenges because we are on the right side and all legal advice says so.

The current federal government inaction in our softwood lumber dispute with the U.S. is making Canada vulnerable to U.S. divide and conquer tactics. The minister's failure to provide leadership at the national level has led to the situation where we now have B.C., Quebec and other provinces holding direct discussions with the U.S. commerce department. Canada is in jeopardy of losing in two ways. We could lose the legal underpinning of our federally organized WTO and NAFTA challenges if one province makes a deal and we could lose like we did back in 1996 when we agreed to a deal that would turn out to be continually subverted by U.S. lumber coalition special interests and by the U.S. Congress.

All of this might make some sense if Canada were losing on the legal front or if Canada's forest policies and practices were unfair, but of course we are winning at the WTO and we will win at NAFTA. That is exactly why U.S. Department of Commerce Undersecretary Aldonas is currently attempting to lead softwood discussions in a different direction.

For 20 years Canada and the U.S. have fought over softwood. Some U.S. producers have lobbied the U.S. government for trade actions against Canadian producers, alleging that the Canadian product either harms their industry or is heavily subsidized through artificially low stumpage rates on publicly held forest lands.

As a result of all of this, the most recent trade actions by the U.S. lumber coalition have now provided a textbook example of the law of unintended consequences. Though the Canadian lumber industry has suffered greatly since the imposition of countervail and anti-dumping tariffs just this past May, the U.S. industry has not benefited. The price of lumber has actually gone down in the U.S. because of two factors. Some companies have increased production in order to reduce their unit costs to ensure that they beat the anti-dumping tariff formula. In addition, exports to the U.S. from Scandinavian and other sources have increased sharply.

Consequent to these trade actions, Canada launched multiple appeals at WTO and NAFTA . In July the WTO preliminary finding was that the U.S. had misrepresented and miscalculated its finding of Canadian subsidies. This was no surprise to us. I conclude that the U.S. Department of Commerce has concluded that Canada is likely to win subsequent decisions and consequently is trying to undermine these downstream decisions by co-opting the provinces into endorsing another path.

The U.S. commerce department will prepare forest stumpage policy bulletins for the provinces this November, with the understanding that the provinces will be able to somehow show compliance and have their tariff rates reduced. What a recipe for disaster it would be to have a Canadian consensus broken in that way. The U.S. commerce department would then be able to tell NAFTA and WTO panels next spring that there is no need for the U.S. to comply with legal rulings because they have a separate arrangement endorsed by the provinces.

While this U.S. strategy is playing out, guess what, the Canadian trade minister with responsibility for trade issues is missing in inaction and his department is sending only observers to the U.S. commerce department meetings with the provinces. What is the time line for all of this? Most optimistically, the commerce undersecretary's proposals are for a year and a half. This is not significantly different from what it would take us to pursue our legal options or challenges.

To conclude, the federal government should lead all softwood discussions and negotiations. It needs to immediately implement not what was announced this week but an effective forestry assistance program and it needs to relentlessly pursue our legal options to their ultimate conclusion. Canada requires free trade in order to secure the future for our softwood lumber and value added industries, for our workers, for our communities and for our companies.

[Softwood Lumber, October 11th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, despite the minister's rhetoric, the long awaited softwood package announced this week fails on every front. No one is satisfied, not labour, not the companies and not the provincial governments.

Instead of creating common sense programs, the minister has announced spending to try to bolster his fading fortunes in British Columbia.

Workers who have already exhausted their EI benefits as a result of the softwood dispute are being told to go and collect welfare.

Why did the minister's announcement fail to deal with retaining these workers--

[Softwood Lumber, October 1st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, this minister is using a wink and a nod to allow the Canadian position to erode. Yesterday's throne speech failed to offer any direction on trade disputes. The Liberals continue to avoid any commitment to forest workers and companies about federal financial assistance.

The minister is allowing the pursuit of free trade in lumber to be compromised by the lack of a federal financial package. Why was the long-awaited package not in yesterday's throne speech?