Kevin Sorenson

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 20th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, as most Canadians watch these types of debates take place in the House of Commons, they are certainly attracted to the word surplus. A surplus sounds like a good thing and he is right, a surplus is a very good thing.

When we deal with business, and I have a small business, and we see a surplus at the end of the year, that is good. When we build a budget in our family and we live within that budget, and we have a surplus at the end of the year, that is good. I think every Canadian family wishes that they could have a much greater surplus on the kitchen table at the end of the year, but when governments have a surplus, that is not necessarily good. When governments have a surplus and it has done it because it has been able to reduce the size of government or streamline and make things more effective, that is positive, but the government does not do it that way. The government does it on the backs of taxpayers.

The Liberals are saying that they are going to make it more difficult for Canadians and businesses to have surpluses because they are going to make government bigger. Higher taxes equals more government. More government equals more regulations. More regulations equal more red tape. More red tape equals more bureaucracy. More bureaucracy equals more taxes. It is a continuous cycle.

We are encouraging the government to take the fiscally prudent way and recognize that there are certain needs. We need to ensure that we can help those who are poor, those who are sick and disabled, but it is wrong to continually be taking money from one middle class family and giving it to another middle class family and telling them that if they accept these values, they will get extra cash dollars from the government. Picking winners and losers is wrong. Smaller government and allowing the private sector a role in prosperity is the direction that the Conservative Party would take.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 20th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, again it is a pleasure to speak in the House to Bill C-48, the NDP supplementary budget to the government.

I think all Canadians have certain days they want to commemorate, such as birthdays, anniversaries and special occasions. In politics, we remember days of elections and times when budgets or policy documents are brought forward. Those are the days we remember.

This past spring the government brought down a long anticipated budget, Bill C-43. After the budget came down I had the opportunity to host five or six town hall meetings in different areas of my constituency, such as Oyen, Drumheller, Strathmore, Camrose, Stettler and Hanna. I hosted these town hall meetings to explain what the 2005 budget contained. I can say that coming from a rural riding in Alberta, an area that has been devastated by droughts, BSE and other various elements, the budget was a tough sell. Then again I am certainly not much of a salesman when it comes to trying to sell Liberal budgets in Conservative ridings.

However in the town hall meetings I commented on a fairly recent speech that the Alberta minister of health had given. In that speech she noted in the public forum that mental health issues were on the rise as Albertans attempted to balance their work and family commitments and struggle with ensuing financial hardships. In her speech she made reference to the turbulent times, such as drought and BSE, mainly in rural settings. No one knows more about those financial hardships and the stress of dealing with those burdens than our farmers.

At the time I conducted these town hall meetings throughout the constituency, the NDP had not made its deal with the Liberal government, the deal to prop up the corrupt government. That April 26 deal resulted in the legislation that we are discussing today, Bill C-48. Bill C-48 provides the legal framework for the outlandish NDP spending measures that we in this party adamantly oppose, measures that total up to $4.6 billion over two years.

I do not have a copy of Bill C-43 but it was a thick document. Bill C-48, amounting to $4.6 billion, is one double-sided page, half English and half French. Someone has already made reference to the fact that it contains 400 words but just like that spends $4.6 billion. Bill C-43, the first budget, spent $193 billion. Bill C-48 spends an additional $4.6 billion. That is big government. The deal that the NDP made with the Liberals made the spending even bigger.

That goes against what Conservatives believe. Conservatives believe that the people who earn the money, who go out and work for their paycheques, who are putting the crop in and taking the crop out, are the ones who are best able to spend the money. The Liberals say no. They believe they need more money to spend, and the NDP is right there with them. They say they want to build a larger bureaucracy so they can spend the money.

Where does the extra $4.6 billion come from? It comes from all hardworking Canadians who basically trade their time for the paycheque. They go out every week and give up the 40 hours or 50 hours of work and at the end of it they get a paycheque. The government now says that it wants to take that time and the money they received and control how it is spent and where it goes.

We in the Conservative Party believe in smaller government, in lower taxes and we believe the private sector is the main engine of economic productivity, growth and prosperity.

What did we not see in the 2005 budget? What we did not see in that budget and in the companion budget we are discussing today was any type of financial commitment to farmers who are undergoing terrible conditions.

The budget speech delivered on February 23 by the finance minister was very long and detailed but lost in those details was the fact that farm incomes in this country have been in a negative position for a number of years. We all know why. Those living in Crowfoot and throughout Canada, specifically in some parts of rural Canada, understand that there have been successive years of drought and BSE. Now, in much of my constituency and in constituencies in southern Alberta, we see unrelenting rain and flooding.

As I speak here today, in part of my constituency in the area of Drumheller, 2,700 people were told to get out of their houses because the river was swelling and there would be certain flood damage. I could go on and talk about Drumheller because it is a great community. It is a great tourist centre and a great place to visit. I hope everyone here will take the opportunity to go there.

Drumheller, which is a good area for farming and agriculture, if we were to go south of Calgary we would see that many fields are now under water. The member for Macleod told me that 80 acres out of 160 acres, or a quarter section of land, are now under water. A lot of these farmers are looking at flood damage and another year of negative growth.

In 2003, farmers had negative farm incomes for the first time since the great depression. Today grain and oilseeds prices are even worse. They have fallen through the floor. We are still suffering from the mad cow crisis.

To be frank, I was disappointed at the continued lack of respect and attention that agriculture producers and hardworking families received in this 2005 budget. Farmers will get no more cash in their pockets because of this budget. Despite Agriculture Canada's forecast of another year of negative farm income, there was little mention of agriculture. When the NDP decided to prop up this corrupt government and talked about the four areas, there was not one mention of agriculture. It is no wonder that the NDP in Saskatchewan have been basically shut out. It has forgotten about agriculture and about rural Canada.

In a question earlier, the member for Prince George talked about the CAIS program. One day the Liberal government was telling us it could not take away the cash deposit requirement. It said that it was not able to set that aside because farmers could not afford to put it into the CAIS program. A few days later, after it was voted on, it came out in the budget. I will give the government credit because what it said it could not do, it did. We applaud it for that even though it is what the Conservative Party of Canada had stood up for as we were defending farmers. The government accepted that and we applaud it for that.

However, with regard to the total new funding for agriculture, the first budget only had $130 million in it. It is important for Canadians to know that money did not get to the kitchen table of farm producers. It was not for the producers. It was there to build a bigger bureaucracy and to add consultants. It did not put dollars on the kitchen table. It was not designed for producers.

Programs that were brought out by the government in the spring in some cases forgot about a whole sector of agriculture. They forgot about some of the new farmers who have come on, some of the new farmers who have allowed their farms to grow.

Don Drummond, a former deputy minister of finance and now an economist for the TD Bank, said it is time that Canadians have a pay increase. He said Canadians need lower taxes and in effect that will give them a pay increase. We could not agree with him more. Bill C-48 would make people pay more because we are going to spend more, make government bigger, and have larger bureaucracies. Bill C-48 is a bad piece of legislation and we will be voting against it.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for his last 12 years in the House of Commons and also for the speech he gave tonight. I think the example he gave in his speech was remarkable. It was great and it really brought home the point.

As we talk about budgets, I think most Canadians understand that we have to live within a framework of what we earn or make and we have to make sure that the money going out matches the money coming in. We prioritize the basics in life, the food, clothing, shelter and all those things. Canadian families understand that.

However, we have a government that has over many years prioritized things such as the gun registry, has defended scandals such as the HRDC boondoggle, and has defended on a daily basis the sponsorship program and its $250 million. We have a government that is getting bigger all the time. I want to quote the former president of the United States, Ronald Reagan. He said that government, especially big government, “is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other”.

Could the member comment on the huge appetite for taking in tax dollars that this government has and on exactly where the other end is pointing?

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

Mr. Speaker, I can say that this is the new Conservative Party of Canada. I got involved in politics in a party that was called the Reform Party because I wanted to be involved in a party that would change the system. Certainly, we recognized from many different governments that it is systemic change that is needed.

I am not going to stand here tonight and defend a man whom I have not met. I am not going to accuse him. In fact, I would encourage the member to step outside and make some of those allegations. It is awfully easy to make allegations inside this House when he has government immunity, but he should step outside the House and make them.

I do know that the Auditor General, an independent individual, stepped forward, went through the books and found the scandal. She said it was the mother of all scandals in the history of our country. The member stood in the House and said, yes, it was a scandal but was it as bad as that scandal? I think that is a shame. It is a shame that he goes to his notes and pulls out war room talking points. How are the Liberals going to damage control the war room, the fact that they take another $1 million out of public funds and put it into spin doctoring to help bail out a Liberal Party that is in drastic trouble?

Tonight we are dealing with the estimates. We are dealing with budgets and the priorities of the government. He talked about what the Prime Minister did in setting up the Gomery commission. I want to remind the member that in the midst of this biggest scandal in Canadian history dealing with $250 million, the Prime Minister was the finance minister and he said that he had no idea that it was going on. He was the finance minister when there was $100 million going to Liberal ad agencies that were shooting the money back into the Liberal Party of Canada, and he did not know it was going on. He is either completely missing the boat with his job or is negligent at doing the work that he should have been doing, or he was indeed complicit in it. That is what Mr. Gomery is going to decide.

Mr. Gomery is going to decide who was involved, who knew, how much they knew and when they knew. I look forward to waiting for Mr. Gomery to report. I wish that the government would recognize that it should let him report. Perhaps what the government should say is that if it is going to have spin doctoring and damage control, maybe the Liberal Party of Canada should be paying for it.

The taxpayers in the riding of Crowfoot, the taxpayers in Alberta and the taxpayers across the land are sick and tired of paying for damage control to a corrupt government.

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

Mr. Speaker, I can assure the hon. member across the way that the bleeding will stop when the Canadian public vote the Liberals out and bring back responsible government, the Conservative Party of Canada.

It is a pleasure to rise tonight, along with a number of my colleagues, in opposition to the one million taxpayer dollars being spent by the Liberal government in a pathetic attempt at nothing more than Liberal style damage control. Let us start with the $1 million.

In late May the Ottawa Citizen reported that it had discovered the Gomery war room under the direction of the Privy Council Office. This war room, as mentioned in the newspaper, is staffed by four or five workers whose sole responsibility is to monitor the Gomery inquiry and provide advice to the Prime Minister's Office on how to deal with, or basically how to spin, the damaging testimony coming out of the Gomery inquiry.

Talk about adding insult to injury. As if Canadian taxpayers had not already been bilked enough by the government. The Liberals spent $250 million under the auspices of a sponsorship program to boost their profile in Quebec and help fight separatism in Quebec. The $100 million dollars of the $250 million that went out in commissions and fees to Liberal friendly ad agencies are at the centre of what the Gomery inquiry is checking into and the subject of criminal charges, of which there will probably be at least four brought down.

To date, the Gomery budget for the current year is $20.4 million and that figure could double after the next phase, bringing the tally for the inquiry to approximately $40 million. Add that amount to the almost $40 million in expenses for the four federal departments involved, the Department of Public Works, the Treasury Board, the Department of Justice and the Privy Council Office, and the overall tag is $80 million.

The public works minister has tried to contend that the money being spent by these four departments is not linked with Gomery's budget although it is directly related to the inquiry as a whole.

I am sure most of us in the House can think of much better ways to use the $80 million and the other $250 million that was spent on the sponsorship program. Over the last few days we have listened to the Supreme Court and we have realized that the health care system could use many more dollars. The injection of $330 million into a system that, as some would say, is in major trouble and in major need of a fix would certainly be much better used than in a sponsorship program.

The member was talking about Atlantic Canada but I am certain that agriculture throughout the country could have used the $330 million. It is not just that $330 million. Now we have learned that another $1 million is being misspent in the Liberal government's attempt to deflect criticism and mitigate the damage that is being done to its reputation. That is what the $1 million does. It adds spin and deals with damage control to the Liberals' reputation.

The issue of the Gomery war room was first raised in the House by the leader of the official opposition on May 23 when he asked the Prime Minister if he would direct the Liberal Party to repay the money. The Prime Minister refused, denying that public money was in fact being misused. He defended the Gomery war room saying that it was needed to “ensure the commission has the support it requires from the government”.

The kind of support for which the government was using that money was certainly not the type of support that Gomery was looking for. Before we went into the last election what Parliament was looking for was simple compliance by the government so that we could get to the bottom of the worst scandal in Canadian history.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind the House and the Prime Minister that the Gomery inquiry and the ensuing cost of $80 million would never have been necessary if the sponsorship scandal had never been a reality. If the government had not misused the dollars initially, all these millions of dollars would not be in question here tonight.

I would also point out that the Prime Minister has promised to call an election within 30 days of Gomery releasing his report. However there is absolutely no guarantee that the report will be brought down in a timely manner. The release of the report could, for all we know, be withheld until after criminal proceedings are concluded, which could take months. We have seen this before: cannot comment, a criminal investigation is underway, will hold off on the report. This is not out of the realm of possibility with those guys.

Last month when the member for Newmarket--Aurora crossed the floor, the Prime Minister made a big deal out of the fact that he had appointed her to implement the recommendations arising from the Gomery report. The member justified her switch to the scandal ridden party and tried to paint herself as a hero in that she had been tasked with cleaning up the mess. She does not have a broom big enough to clean up this mess. The member may have been empowered on paper to implement the recommendations but those recommendations will be swept under the carpet by the election that is supposedly to occur within 30 days after the release. Her appointment in my opinion is nothing more than more smoke and more mirrors.

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Lumsden--Lake Centre.

The sponsorship scandal is proving to be the worst scandal in our country's history. We have heard sworn testimony that the Liberal Party received cash for sponsorship contracts. These are not just allegations or innuendoes. I remind the House and Canadians that this is actually sworn testimony under oath, which is subject to perjury charges if it is found to be untrue or deliberate.

This testimony clearly shows that the Liberal Party has been firmly entrenched in deception and fraud from the beginning until end. I see the minister shaking his head. As most members on this side of the House are preparing for elections, we are out fundraising and trying to raise money. We tell our constituents that we are funding an election and we ask if they could kick in $10, $100 or whatever. Those guys are using taxpayer dollars to fund election after election.

As stated earlier, to add further insult, the Liberal government is using one million taxpayer dollars to fund and staff a war room that has been established solely for the purpose of damage control. No amount of money in my opinion will help the Liberal government spin its way out of this scandal.

When the Auditor General reports that it is the mother of all scandals, the biggest scandal in Canadian history, the government responds by asking how it can set up a war room and how can it get taxpayers to fund it. Canadians are not that naive and for the government to think they are is perhaps the greatest insult of all to Canadians.

As requested by the Leader of the Opposition, I ask the Prime Minister to dismantle his Gomery war room, to pay back the money that the Liberal Party of Canada has wrongfully used to fight a political battle, a battle that was not of Parliament's own choosing and a battle that was not placed upon him by Parliament, but rather a battle that was placed upon him by the corruption that just happens to be in that party.

[Supply, June 14th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House and support this Conservative motion sponsored by the member for Edmonton--Spruce Grove. The motion calls upon the government to recognize that it is creating a two tier child care system which discriminates against families who choose to stay home or find care outside of a publicly funded system.

I rose in the House just a few short months ago to debate a similar motion put forward by our party. During that debate, I quoted from a report entitled “Canadian Attitudes on the Family”, which I think is worth repeating again today. It stated:

--many Canadian parents feel trapped by economic pressures and are not able to make the sort of choices they would like for their families. Sometimes, of course, this is unavoidable. Economic reality has a way of interfering with our dreams...

Similarly, in February of this year, a Vanier Institute of the Family study on family aspirations found that the vast majority of mothers and fathers with preschool children would prefer to stay home and raise them, but if they cannot, their strong preference would be to have a partner or another family member look after their children rather than placing them in a formal day care centre.

The Vanier study complemented a Statistics Canada analysis, also released in February of this year, which found that in 2001 53% of Canadian children between the ages of six months and five years old were in some form of child care. That is up from 42% in 1995. About one in three children are being looked after by relatives, one in three by non-relatives in someone else's home, and the remaining one in three are being looked after in day care centres.

The Liberal government's $5 billion investment in day care only supports the last one-third of children out of the 53%. It totally ignores the two-thirds of Canadian children who are receiving care from someone other than their parents. As pointed out by many of my colleagues today, the Liberal government is also ignoring those children whose parents work shifts and would be unable to enroll in one of these federally funded day care centres.

The Conservative Party of Canada is totally opposed to the Liberals' two tier child care system. The Conservative Party of Canada's plan is universal and equitable. We will give cash subsidies directly to parents so they can make their own child care choices. We will treat all parents, all families and all children equally. We will allow Canadian families to make the choices that would best serve their needs and the needs of their children.

During our last debate on this issue, in February, I pointed out that we were neglecting in this House and, for that matter, in this country, to recognize and address increasing health costs and decreasing productivity, of which our finance minister spoke in the media this past week. We also fail to recognize the collapsing social relationships due to workplace stress and our failure to achieve work-life balances.

We are failing to deal with the realities of work and life conflicts, which are having a huge impact on our country and our society. In a National Post article of March 10, Deborah Jones, a workplace consultant, said that we are going in a dangerous direction in Canada in terms of work hours and workloads affecting life and balance.

A Conference Board of Canada study found that the percentage of Canadians who reported moderate and high levels of stress as a result of work-family imbalance increased from 26.7% in 1989 to 46.2% in 1999. This work-family imbalance is costing employers billions of dollars in sick leave and lost working time, which again translates into decreased productivity for companies.

In 2003 Health Canada funded a study entitled “Work-Life Conflict in Canada in the New Millennium”. It also found that high job stress has doubled and job satisfaction and employee loyalty have dropped. There is so much stress in the workplace. The government has come up with a plan that will address only a very small percentage.

My time is up, but I would encourage the government to take this plan back to the drawing board, recognizing that out of the 53% of Canadians with children under the age of five, this addresses only one-third of them. It is $5 billion for one-third of 53%. The program is not going to work. It is big government and there are big failures in this program.

[Supply Management, June 7th, 2005]

Mr. Chair, it is a pleasure to rise in the House again to speak to this very important topic this evening.

We have a crisis in agriculture, a crisis in rural Canada. I think all sectors are feeling the crunch of commodity prices and the crunch of a lot of things.

On the issue of supply management, I would like to take the time first of all to thank those in my constituency who approached me before and during the election. They recognized that I am a grain farmer and a beef producer. They took the time to sit down and ask me what my beliefs were and what was the policy in our party on supply management.

I have always appreciated that the supply management folks would not just fall for some of the fear tactics that some of the other parties have used even here tonight, but to question me on this issue. I think of one dairy producer whom we call the senator who milks 400 cows up by Wainwright, Charlie Rajotte and his family. We are always invited to their kitchen table to listen to the frustrations, the concerns, the advantages in supply management and also to voice our own policy and to satisfy him.

The member has served on the agriculture committee for a long time. As a member of the foreign affairs and international trade committee, today at our committee hearings we had the Minister of International Trade. When asked questions in regard to supply management and to article XXVIII, he indicated that the government would not be invoking article XXVIII and would not be supporting the use of article XXVIII. He went on to say that the agriculture minister has a number of options that he will use, that he will let us know about, which would help the supply management.

Many of the people who have been advocating protectionist supply management have talked about article XXVIII. What are these options of the Minister of International Trade? I see the agriculture minister explaining some of the options to the member. Could she relay some of the options that may be used to protect the supply management?

[Petitions, June 6th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me a great deal of pleasure to rise in the House today and present a petition on behalf of my constituents from Hanna, Rumsey, Coronation, Gregg Mount, Delia. The petitioners call upon Parliament to refrain from ending the community access program, commonly know as CAP.

The petitioners believe that the absence of CAP would result in a step backward in the ongoing goal to improve the quality of life for Canadians. In my rural constituency this program is one that does help develop and improve the quality of life for rural Albertans.

[Corrections and Conditional Release Act, May 30th, 2005]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-402, an act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (indictable offence committed while on conditional release).

Mr. Speaker, this is the fourth private member's bill which I would like to reintroduce in this Parliament. If enacted, it would make it an offence to breach a condition of any of the various forms of conditional release, namely, parole, statutory release, or temporary absence. If someone breached those conditions of his or her release, it would be an offence.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Criminal Code, May 30th, 2005]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-401, an act to amend the Criminal Code and the Corrections and Conditional Release Act (sexual assault on child--dangerous offenders).

Mr. Speaker, this is another of my private members' bills from the previous Parliament which I would like to reintroduce in this Parliament. This bill, if enacted, would allow the courts to designate an offender who has been convicted of two or more sexual offences against a child as a dangerous offender.

Furthermore, it would ensure that an offender with such a designation would not be released on parole, unescorted temporary absence, or statutory release unless at least two psychiatrists determined that the offender was not likely to reoffend or pose a threat to persons under the age of 18. It is a pleasure to reintroduce this bill.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)