Joy Smith

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 16th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I attended the fiscal imbalance subcommittee meetings in Winnipeg. We had representatives from the mayor's office and from many municipalities from across our province indicating the kind of moneys needed for infrastructure and the kind of moneys needed to run the province in a way to improve the quality of life in the province for Manitobans.

There was great disappointment in the fact that the gas tax did not roll over into the provinces immediately. There was much delay from the present government. When it was spoken about, suddenly the rules were changed and that gas tax funding could not be used for infrastructure. It had to be used for green projects only.

Could the hon. member comment on the infrastructure money and how this budget has impacted in a very negative way on the provinces?

[Main Estimates, 2005-06, June 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a question of the hon. member. I was listening very intently to the speech. It was very interesting to hear about the Privy Council Office and the functions that happen within that office. I was quite taken with three things the hon. member said. The Privy Council Office sets up, according to members opposite, a government that they can trust, a government that has transparency and a government that will have fiscal responsibility.

In the description of all the departments and the description of the intent of the Privy Council Office, it was good to hear that those were the kinds of things that were supposed to be set up.

Here is my question for the member opposite. With all these grand descriptions of the Privy Council Office, how can the hon. member square that with the fact that our nation has seen one of the largest scandals in the history of our nation, with the government taking money from taxpayers and now paying $32 million for the Gomery commission to get to the bottom of this scandal, which was and is a Liberal scandal? As well, now we discover that a war room was set up with a $1 million price tag.

We hear about the Privy Council Office and all the people who are giving advice to the Prime Minister and how the Prime Minister wants to set up the sort of government that has transparency and fiscal responsibility. Can the hon. member please answer the question of how this can happen when clearly there is no accountability or transparency in the Privy Council Office?

[Main Estimates, 2005-06, June 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, all afternoon I have sat in my seat in the House of Commons and listened to the speeches from members opposite.

We heard about budgets, about money and about what is good for Canadians. We heard that the two tier Liberal day care system will be set up with very little money and resources and will be targeted only at people who live in cities, not at people in the rural areas and people on shiftwork. There is a real gap there.

I have heard about the gun registry over this past year and the billions and billions of dollars that have been wasted on that. I have heard about the lack of police officers on our streets and the lack of resources for our police forces to combat crime. There is little to nothing in the budget for that.

However in every one of the speeches I never heard members opposite talk about the waste in the Gomery inquiry and the scandal going on in our country right now of millions and millions of dollars being given away and lost.

Quite categorically, when members opposite are talking about the budget, they should talk about how they will pay back taxpayers for this terrible waste of money.

How can the member opposite talk about budgets when in actual fact a war room was set up to combat the scandal centred around the Gomery commission? Why do members opposite not talk about how they will pay back that money to taxpayers? I think people across this nation might then give some credibility to the budget if those issues were addressed.

[Natural Resources, June 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, today as we speak, the state of North Dakota is moving forward to divert water from Devils Lake into the Red River, Lake Manitoba, Lake Winnipeg and beyond to Hudson Bay. It will jeopardize the health of Lake Winnipeg and the Manitoba ecosystems.

Once the outlet is opened, there will be a great risk of ecological and economic damage to Manitoba by polluting our waters, not to mention violating international law.

Devils Lake contains high levels of salt, phosphorous and other contaminants and is home to fish parasites which will affect our freshwater resources by introducing foreign marine species and bacteria.

The House is urging the federal government to take immediate action to resolve this issue by referring it to the International Joint Commission and to convince the U.S. administration and the U.S. Senate to make an IJC referral immediately.

These water issues in Manitoba are heating up and the Canadian government is not living up to its responsibilities.

[Outstanding Service Award, June 9th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, on April 20 of this year, I had the honour of attending the medals and awards ceremony at the RCMP D Division headquarters in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

There, the Commissioner's Commendation Unit Ensign for Outstanding Service was presented to the ICE Unit, the Manitoba Integrated Child Exploitation Unit. This joint forces unit was comprised of police officers from the RCMP and the Winnipeg and Brandon police forces. This highest award was given for outstanding work at the national level, stopping child exploitation all across our nation.

Child exploitation and child pornography are heinous crimes that must be stopped. These police officers have sacrificed much to catch and convict these criminals. It was with much gratitude that I shook each individual police officer's hand. They stood proudly while honoured for a difficult job well done. It was a special honour for me as my own son was one of those officers honoured that day.

As a member of Parliament and as a mom, I am proud to stand here today to commend those officers.

[Textile and Clothing Industries, June 1st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour tonight to put some remarks on the record. As I listened to the speeches and the rhetoric about the announcements as far back as 2002 in the textile industry, I was wondering what members opposite were thinking when they eliminated the tariffs on fibre and yarn imports. That amounted to $15 million a year. They also eliminated the tariffs on imports of textile inputs used by the apparel industy, which was worth up to $75 million a year effective January 1, 2005.

I remember back to January 2005. There were a lot of families that did not have Christmas because their industries were shut down or cut back in Manitoba. I remember mature workers not knowing where their next jobs would be coming from. I remember families under duress because of the uncertainty of their futures. This was a move by the present Liberal government that caused a great deal of harm to the textile industry throughout our nation.

The textile industry is a very formidable industry. There are 47,000 Canadians employed in textile jobs across Canada and 97,000 employed in the apparel industry. That is a lot of people. The announcement on January 1, 2005 effectively put people out of work. This hurt new immigrants in our country. A lot of these people were in the textile industry looking to obtain job experience and work their way up in that field in Canada. They wanted to present themselves with work experience so they could obtain other jobs.

What is happening now is like a band-aid on a bad situation. The present government must be very careful. More care and diligence should be put into trade agreements and negotiations. Unfortunately, many of the economic problems in this country now are caused by the problems Canadians are facing due to poor trade negotiations. BSE and softwood lumber are examples in addition to the textile and apparel industries.

I will read Motion No. 164 into the record again and then speak to some points surrounding it. It states:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should establish, in compliance with international agreements, a policy of assistance to the textile and clothing industries in order to enable the industries to compete throughout the world, particularly by broadening the Technology Partnerships Canada program to include these two sectors.

We on this side of the House in particular have some questions about adding the two sectors to the technology partnerships Canada program. We always support domestic industries.

It is a shame when opposition parties must ask the government to come up with policies that will support industry. Obviously, the kind of reckless decisions that were made to placate political agendas have really fallen hard on the textile and apparel industries in our nation.

By maintaining the tariffs on imported clothing and the types of textiles produced in Canada, we agree that there should be a two year maintenance and a slow phase-out of that. This would allow clothing made with Canadian textiles but manufactured abroad to be imported without custom duties. For example, if blue jeans are made by a foreign country, they can be free of any tariffs, but if those blue jeans are made by Canadian cloth, that is a different story. For instance, if something were made in Bangladesh and the company was developed by an entrepreneur in China who bought the company in Bangladesh and then imported it into Canada, it would be free from all the tariffs, according to the January 1 initiative by the Liberal government.

There needs to be a more careful assessment of the kinds of companies that are developed. Where are they developed? Why are they developed? Are they avoiding the tariffs to go through a lesser developed country? This is happening today here.

In fact, we suspect, through some evidence that has been gathered, that there are not enough checks and balances put in to find out exactly what is happening. If it is made in Bangladesh, it can come to Canada tariff free. But who has developed that company? Who has bought that company in Bangladesh? What country are they from to import things back into Canada? Those are the questions.

We should impose stricter rules of origin on less developed countries. Even though something comes from a less developed country, that does not necessarily mean that the owner of that company originated in the less developed country. There are not enough checks and balances in there to ensure that we know what is going on there. Canada must adhere to the agreements concluded with the United States, Central America and Caribbean nations. In other words, we must live up to our commitments.

In this day and age, there must be a more professional type of policy in the business world. We should be thinking about Canada first. We should be thinking about our Canadian companies first. The Liberal Party does not work with international organizations to reduce protectionist policies and to secure free trade agreements.

When I hear from members opposite about all these lists of different announcements that are supposed to impact in a very positive way, it behooves me to say that the big gap that really put a blow on the textile industry was made on January 1 when the government eliminated the tariffs on fibre and yarn imports and textile imports used by the apparel industry.

We are all for increasing occupational training transfers to Quebec and for giving training and training programs to workers. In the textile industry and the apparel industry, there are many mature workers. When I listen to the kind of band-aid approach that the present government has for dealing with the mature workforce in the industry, I just have to shake my head.

We need to create an adjustment program that is worthwhile for older workers. Older workers, or what I call mature workers, in the industry are people who are caught. They are caught because they have committed themselves to working in the textile and apparel industry as a career and then when they get up to be 40, 45, 50, all of a sudden, with their jobs being negated, they do not have a future.

The Liberals should ensure that Canadian industries are secure and Canadian workers are taken care of. With the kind of approach that is happening at this time, it behooves us to take a look at the amendment and work quickly to uphold this industry.

[Infrastructure, May 30th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, there is a big problem here because in February 2005 the government guaranteed that money could be put into roads and bridges.

Now the Liberal agenda seems to be more of a priority than the needs of the cities and municipalities. When will this change?

[Infrastructure, May 30th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the government has claimed millions of dollars in gas taxes will be redirected to the infrastructure needs of big cities like Winnipeg. However Winnipeg is not able to spend a single dime of this money on roads or bridges. The government has put massive restrictions on this money.

Why does the government believe it knows better than the cities and municipalities where this money should go?

[Infrastructure, May 19th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the government's gas tax agreement with the nation's cities has been very carefully camouflaged.

Winnipeg had planned to direct gas tax money to its crumbling roads and bridges, but now the government says that it cannot use gas tax revenues for roads and bridges, another Ottawa knows best plan.

Will the minister for infrastructure remove the restrictions on gas tax transfers and let Canada's cities address the priorities of its residents?

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, May 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the hon. member here on our side of the House.

The headline in the Toronto Star reads, “PM's spending spree smacks of desperation”. The member made some very good points in terms of the kind of spending that has gone on. I would like the member to elaborate on a quote from today's Toronto Star which reads:

--the image is of a federal government creating new problems as it tries to buy its way out of trouble. And that, too, is reality.

That is a very serious statement. I would like the member to elaborate on that because it is causing new problems here in Canada.