Larry Bagnell

[Petitions, April 7th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to present a petition for over 150 Yukoners who feel that because of the casualties of war, the humanitarian disaster it would create after and the destabilization of the region, that Canada should refuse to send any troops to Iraq and should pursue instead a policy of diplomacy, peacekeeping, human rights monitoring and disarmament.

[Yukon, April 1st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, today, April 1, is a history making day in Canada's nation building. Today most of the residual provincial type powers have been transferred from the federal government to Yukon. Another great part of our Confederation has come of age. Now Yukoners, like all other Canadians, can manage our own natural resources, our own minerals, our own forests, our own lands and our own waters.

With great authority comes great responsibility but Yukoners are no strangers to great challenges, and we will prevail and thrive as we have for centuries.

It is therefore with great joy and gratitude that we accept the key to our own destiny and the fulfillment of our dreams.

Massi cho.

[Yukon, April 1st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, this is a great day for all Yukoners. I would like to thank all my colleagues in all parties for their support.

Today the budget regarding natural resource management has been transferred over to the Yukon government, and now our future, our destiny, is in our own hands. Yukoners are truly grateful to the Parliament of Canada for allowing us to take this big step in a new partnership in Confederation.

[Yukon, April 1st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I ask for unanimous consent of the House for just one minute to thank my colleagues for this great day.

[Financial Institutions, March 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister just said that the government will soon be responding to the report on bank mergers. In the meantime, could the Secretary of State for International Financial Institutions let the House know if he expects some proposals from banks in the near future regarding mergers?

[The Environment, March 20th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister, the Minister of the Environment, myself, the Caribou Commons Project and the Gwich'in people have lobbied hard for years about not drilling in the 1002 lands of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

There was an important vote in the United States senate yesterday. Could the Minister of the Environment please report to us on this very important vote in the United States senate?

[Situation in Iraq, March 17th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the nations of the world are on the brink of choosing one of two sad roads. As I said in previous speeches, if the world goes to war, innocent people will die; if the world does not go to war, innocent people will die. The difficulty for each of us as politicians, and indeed for every citizen of the world in their own conscience, is which of these two sad roads we should take.

As chair of the foreign affairs caucus and member of Parliament responsible to express the views of my constituents in Yukon, it is important that I rise again for the fourth time, I believe, to talk about this very serious situation.

I will start by commending my constituents who made their decisions of conscience one way or another. I commend the hundreds of them who wrote to me to express their desire for peace, their fear of war and the ramifications it would have. I commend those who led the peace march which I participated in and gave a speech at several months ago. I commend Will Petricko and the minister of the United Church in Whitehorse who organized an event at the church, upstairs and downstairs, both for prayer and to talk about ways to achieve peace.

Finally, I want to thank Will Petricko and other Yukoners who yesterday organized hundreds of Yukoners to light peace candles across the Yukon, in two locations in Whitehorse, in Dawson and in Haines Junction. I would like to say thank you to 10 year old Vicki at the vigil who said, “I would like to say peace to everyone here and peace to the world,” and to 11 year old Jannel who said, “Peace is nothing but a dream waiting to come true”.

Some of those who are so passionately worried may have said, God bless the Prime Minister, or at least they were very relieved when he said in his speech to the House of Commons today, to a standing ovation, that if military action proceeds without a new resolution of the Security Council, Canada will not participate.

This position by the Prime Minister, and those who applauded it, is one of significant courage. In some ways it takes at least as much courage to fight for peace as it does to go to war. It is certainly no easy event for any of us, to make a decision that may not be the most pleasing to our closest friend and ally, especially one that can have a great effect on the well-being of Canadian families, but a decision of courage it was.

It was also an expression of our sovereignty. The Prime Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, many of my colleagues in the House and I have always made it clear that Canada will always make its own decisions. We always have and we always will.

Good friends have the ability to respect each other's different decisions and are still friends. In the Winnipeg Free Press on March 14 Ambassador Paul Cellucci described our relationship in the following terms:

The relationship that the United States has with Canada is our most important relationship in the world.

If you think about the impact in the day-to-day lives with U.S. citizens, no other relationship even comes close.

The relationship is in good shape. We're getting things done.

I respect the right of the few people who contacted me and felt that we should stand again by our friend and neighbour in renouncing the dictator who has murdered millions. Make no mistake about Saddam Hussein. He gassed 60,000 of his own people. He used weapons of mass destruction and murdered thousands of his own people in prisons and torture chambers. He caused a million Iranians to be killed or injured in war. The world will be a better place when Saddam Hussein is gone.

To put some context on the situation where often violence, murder and upset in the Middle East occurs, we remember that the Arab Muslim world in recent decades and centuries has had much pressure and upheaval.

Other religions have invaded from the west. Other religions different from theirs have taken some control over their lives, their regions or their neighbourhoods. At the same time some of their governments that have been created are dictatorial and do not espouse the common themes of peace and justice in their own religion.

It makes it even easier for some of the dictators to survive when their regimes are funded by western civilizations through the purchase of their oil. They do not need to go to their people through democratic elections to get the views of the people. They can hold this dictatorial power and perform acts that no citizen of any nation would be proud of.

Over the last few centuries one of the solutions that has arisen is a philosophy that they should return to the traditional, very extreme religious values to the exclusion of all others. Unfortunately some of the solutions to make that return would be through violence and terrorism. Those efforts have not been that successful to overthrow the secular, dictatorial regimes. Therefore perhaps some of them, such as al-Qaeda, have turned to another solution which is to make the western countries so angry that they would intrude into the area even more than they are now, causing the people, who are now peaceful or are now middle of the road and not our enemies, to rise up with the fundamental terrorists and become strong enough to overthrow those countries.

In this context I want to outline the reasons for my own decision and personal views in this particular situation. In politics, perception is reality. These events, the invading of Iraq, have to be perceived with the proper evidence. They have to be perceived by the hundreds of millions of Muslim people around the world and in the Arab world, many of whom do not understand that there is a clear and present danger that would require military force at this time.

If someone asked me to go to war, to invade because of specific dangers, for example weapons of mass destruction, I would need the existing evidence clearly outlined to me. It would need to be sufficient enough to convince me that a state is powerful enough to be a danger to us, that it has the means to endanger us and that it is not presently contained. I have not yet been convinced. I do not believe the inspectors are convinced and certainly the United Nations has not been convinced as a result of the resolution that the members of the Security Council have not yet passed.

I would like to speak for a moment in defence of the United Nations. There are some who are suggesting that this is not the United Nations' finest hour and in fact that it is becoming weak and irrelevant. I have to totally disagree with that.

As Winston Churchill said, democracy is a terrible form of government, but it is the best we have. In the same sense the United Nations is not perfect. It has made some dramatic mistakes in the past, but it has also done a tremendous amount of good. We should never stop trying to improve the United Nations. For example, people specifically refer to the Security Council with the veto of five members, which is why I am happy that Canada left its options open to the very last moment.

Had any of those five nations that have a veto exercised that veto in an unreasonable way, that would have dictated Canada's foreign policy. As I said earlier, Canada is always going to make its own decisions. We are not going to leave it up to other nations.

During this whole debate the United Nations has been at the forefront. The issue has been discussed day in and day out. The United States has been going to the United Nations. All the nations have been looking to it. The media over the last months and years have been focused around the United Nations. It has been the centre of activity to try to find a solution to a very difficult problem. If some nations act before the United Nations does, it does not mean the United Nations has failed. It means that those nations have made other decisions than what the United Nations has made.

The United Nations is made up of the member nations of the world. Those member nations in the United Nations have not been convinced that there is enough evidence and enough reason to embark on military force at this time.

Another reason for my own personal decision is related to innocent civilians in Iraq and innocent civilians and soldiers in neighbouring countries. I do not think anyone would argue the fact that Iraq would be a better place without Saddam Hussein, but exactly how does one do that? What does one do when the troops are surrounding Baghdad, a city full of millions of innocent people? How does one cause a change of a few people who are holding that horrendous dictatorial regime in place without the murder of many more innocent people?

Some of the other reasons upon which I based my decision relate to the ramifications of this, because it is not simply an attack on one palace, one country, or even one region. There are ramifications for the hundreds of millions of Muslims in the many Arab nations. The very complex interaction of religions and politics will have a much wider effect on the world and we have to view that effect. Simply, the fact is that going to war has a tremendous economic impact on all those nations. How many poor people will die in all the countries involved in a war, including the United States, because of lack of funds to feed the poor or fund health care systems?

A war will also, in my opinion, weaken the war on terrorism. The war on terrorism, that the Minister of Foreign Affairs so eloquently outlined today in which we are hand in hand fighting with the United States, is far from won. The terrorists we are fighting are not armies in specific regions; they are people who live in the apartment next door. They are very hard to detect. The goodwill and efforts of many nations around the world are needed to defeat them because they proliferate in virtually every nation on earth.

Some of the nations that are on our side, that are our allies right now, are helping us root out the terrorists. However, they are in very tenuous situations and on the verge of threat from fundamentalists. As I said earlier when talking about the history of the Arab Muslim world, they could be easily aroused by more incursions of the west.

If there is not sufficient rationale this could simply antagonize those people and give enough force to the fundamentalists trying to destabilize those governments. It could cause an overthrow in many nations that we depend on in the fight against terrorism. That would leave those nations as protectorates of the cells of terrorism where they could brainwash, train, arm and equip those small groups of people who live in that apartment next door to set off bombs and commit other terrorist activities in areas where peaceful families live, such as in North America.

Other reasons for my personal decision are the discussions I had with ambassadors or people knowing their positions in all the countries around Iraq.

Some countries, as members know, such as Iran and Kuwait, have been attacked by Iraq. These countries, out of them all, should be the most fearful of Iraq and its potential for weapons of mass destruction, especially since Iraq's missiles at the moment are very short range and can go no farther than the adjacent countries.

Not one of the ambassadors with whom I discussed this felt that military action was an appropriate solution to the situation at this time. If the people who are most threatened and who are the closest do not feel this is the way to solve the problem of Saddam Hussein, then Canada, a large ocean away, cannot see this as a clear and present danger.

When we upset a regime it is not simple to replace it with a perfect, or democratic, or better regime. One person does not stay in power in a country on his or her own. There must be support for the person. It is very complex to rebuild a nation, especially one with so many forces.

Iraq was never a unified country in the first place. What happens with a destabilization of the system and the collaboration of the Shi'ites in southern Iraq and in Iran? What happens with the tensions of the Kurds in northern Iraq and Turkey? What happens in the very scary situation of Israel and Palestine which many people believe have caused much of the dissent in the Middle East and many of the terror attacks that have resulted in the murder of people?

In the veil of a war against Iraq, what could happen in the Palestine-Israeli conflict? More individuals could be killed under the veil of this other threat and people would not even notice it. It could also accelerate to an extent that Israel gets involved in the complex inter-relationship. All sorts of nations are involved now in a horrendous conflict. It has spread far beyond the borders of removing one dictator.

This should be a happy day. We have made a sovereign decision that will make many Canadians happy. Without another United Nations resolution we will not participate in this particular war. However, innocent people will continue to die in Iraq while this regime is still in place and innocent people will die when this regime is removed. It is not a happy day in that respect.

What we need to do now is to look for solutions to remove all the causes of violence in the Middle East so that things like this will not occur in the future and that terrorism, which we are also fighting at this time, will not occur in the future.

We need to intensify our efforts to support education in the area. We need to intensify our humanitarian support. We need to work on the belief that we have, both at home and abroad in those nations, for religious tolerance and understanding, an understanding of the history that the people in those nations have been through.

We need to help build a world where the people in those countries can regain the pride they have lost, the pride in their citizenship that will allow them to stand up and create governments for which they can be proud.

If we do all of that, we will improve the lives of people in those areas and the world will be a better place for all of us, especially a world that is so connected that if something happens it happens to all of us.

As John Donne, a famous British parliamentarian and poet, said, which describes any deaths, any unrest or any unhappiness that occurs in the area, in referring to each of us:

Ask not for whom the bell tolls,It tolls for thee.

[The Budget, March 17th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I will comment on two items that the member raised. First, on palliative care, I think we were all pretty excited when the finance bill was introduced. I will look at the items the member has talked about and the rationale, arguments and the details in that debate. Anything that can improve that situation would be good.

In relation to the clawback, the member has raised a very good point. In the past we have had some good and bad experiences with the provinces. On some occasions, as the member has said, the provinces have taken the money and we did not attain the objective that we all agreed to fulfill, whereas there are other provinces that responsibly fulfilled the objective that we wanted. The money was for early childhood education and early childhood development although they may have clawed back to provide for other programs that do the same thing.

I am very sensitive to that issue as well. I would be very angry, as perhaps the member was, when those funds are designated for early childhood development and are used for something else. We will certainly fight to do anything we can to make sure that does not occur in this situation.

[The Budget, March 17th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, when the Liberal government came in, it started the infrastructure programs. There was no such program in the recent past. In Yukon it was very successful. There was a one-third sharing arrangement so that the municipalities, the territorial government and the federal government each put in a third.

As far as I remember, every single municipality in Yukon had access to those programs, whether they were for hockey arenas, sewer and water, or fixing roads damaged by permafrost. To indicate how bad it was, one of our communities replaced sewer pipes that were made out of wood staves. That illustrates how old the infrastructure was. The problem in the previous rounds of infrastructure funding was that it was done on a per capita basis. That of course does not go very far in the north.

As I said earlier, we have permafrost. We have very few taxpayers and they are very far apart. A couple of years ago the finance committee, and thanks to members of all parties who were on the finance committee, realized that type of formula did not work for infrastructure in the north. An increase in infrastructure funding has been fought for since I was at the Association of Yukon Communities and subsequently by president Glen Everitt, executive director Jim Slater and all the municipalities and the FCM. In the most recent round for strategic infrastructure, they were successful in receiving a base amount for the northern communities for infrastructure.

I am hoping the strategic infrastructure fund will not specifically be used for our Canada winter games contribution. There are all sorts of lists. Each territory has brought forward lists of millions of dollars for areas where infrastructure funding would be very helpful. It will improve the quality of life so that we can recruit and maintain workers, including health care professionals, for the projects that we need in Yukon.

[The Budget, March 17th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise today to talk further about the budget. To reiterate, I am quite happy that there are a number of references to the north in the budget and now perhaps I will go on to talk about the future to some extent, now that we have had feedback, and where we can go in the future to increase and improve the economy, especially as related to my constituency.

As I mentioned, I was delighted that in the budget there is increased money for Coast Guard and national defence. It is very important from my perspective that some of these funds go toward protecting northern sovereignty. It has been proven that the Northwest Passage is melting at an accelerating rate. Foreign ships are now intruding in that area, sometimes without being questioned at all. This can have ramifications on our environment, on defence, on immigration and on tenure of sovereignty in the area. I encourage those responsible to ensure that some of those Coast Guard and national defence expenditures are made in the north, especially as related to northern sovereignty and the Northwest Passage.

I was of course very happy to see that the national child benefit is up 100% since 1996. Some say it is the most important social program in the last decade. It goes a long way to helping to fight child poverty. We need to continually work in that area.

For aboriginal people, there are a number of programs and there is funding in the budget. In my riding, which is approximately 24% aboriginal, there will be a larger uptake than there will in most of Canada. It is very important for my riding that there are new post-secondary scholarships, money for water and waste water treatment and money for aboriginal skills and training. Specifically there is once again reference to the north, because the budget mentions training for large projects such as northern gas pipelines. I think there was $25 million in that area.

There is also money for an urban aboriginal strategy, which is very important for Canada because a very significant portion of aboriginal people do not live on reserves and sometimes fall between the cracks related to programs and funding, et cetera, in urban areas. I am delighted that an urban aboriginal strategy is referred to in the budget. Of course, increasing the money for Aboriginal Business Canada is very positive. The aboriginal people have a very dynamic business community with a number of excellent businesses and we have been able to help them over the years. Increasing that support is very positive.

I was also very happy to see the national immunization strategy in the budget. Before the budget, a number of constituents spoke to me specifically about smallpox, but I am glad this $45 million has been allocated to deal with immunization.

Of course I think we were all happy to see the child disability benefit so that families can better care for children with disabilities.

I was also happy to see the $10 million related to historic site preservation. We have a great history in Yukon since the Klondike gold rush in 1898 and with centuries of first nations history before that. Preserving our historic places is a very important part of our tourism industry, which is the biggest private sector employer in our economy at the moment.

Also, the Business Development Bank of Canada is an important player in financing in Yukon so I was delighted to see $190 million added to the venture capital for business development.

I was also glad to see money for climate change. When we had prebudget discussions with the finance minister, I brought in a youth who said that she was very supportive of measures to deal with climate change. I am delighted that there is $1.7 billion and, in particular, $50 million to increase climate and atmospheric research activities, including research related to northern Canada.

I was delighted to see the reference to the north because climate change has a far more dramatic effect on the north. In some areas of the Arctic some of our first nations administration buildings are sinking because permafrost is melting. We depend on ice bridges for our economy and those are not forming early enough for the trucks to get across. It affects the migration patterns of the wildlife on which aboriginal people depend for their sustenance. It has all sorts of effects in the north.

We were delighted to see that study and a lot of the other money going toward renewable energy, wind energy and energy efficient alternative fuels. We have some wind energy in the north. Energy costs more in the north so we are happy to see anything that will lower the costs and lower our CO

2

emissions.

We were also very happy, and it was one of the first things mentioned by the finance minister, that it will be a balanced budget. We will continue not to spend more than we take in and continue to reduce the national debt. As a very rich country, both in resources and people, we do not want to needlessly spend on interest payments when we could be spending on health care and education.

One of the very important things in my riding, which people asked me about before the budget and for which I lobbied hard, is funding support for the communities partnership initiative. The committee work in Yukon was exemplary. People wanted it to continue and they were delighted that it will be extended for three years.

Tourism is very important. It is probably the largest private industry in our economy at the moment as far as employment goes, although a lot of it is seasonal. People lobbied for it and were delighted with the decrease in the air security tax from $12 to $7 per flight. That 40% decrease helps this major industry. In the future, any money we can give to the Canadian Tourism Commission to help market Canada around the world will be well received. It is a very competitive environment and we want to continue being competitive with other countries to bring in tourists and maintain tourism in Canada.

Along the line of tourism, of course, our national parks are very important. We were delighted with the announcement earlier of 10 new national parks and 5 new marine areas, and the $74 million that will go toward creating those and to protecting the biological integrity of existing parks. I think that may be over five years but it could even be accelerated to two years because obviously we will need more money in the future to deal with those two issues. I know the Yukon branch of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society would definitely like to see that.

Some tourists come to see how placer mining works in Yukon. Placer mining is our second largest industry and it contributes importantly to the infrastructure. A vast majority of the tourists only come for certain months of the year and yet tourist operators have to make their payments over the entire year. In the shorter seasons the placer industry provides income for the tourist infrastructure and allows the tourism industry to exist.

We have a lot of support for the placer industry in Yukon. We had Black Wednesday last week where 100% of the businesses in Dawson City in particular showed their support for the placer industry in one way or another. I would like to congratulate Jorn Meier, the president of the Dawson City Chamber of Commerce; Lindsay Jordan, the executive director of the Dawson City Chamber of Commerce; Don Cox of the Yukon Chamber of Commerce; and Sandy Babcock, the executive director of Yukon Chamber of Commerce, for all their work in putting these events together that showed support for the placer industry. This included a luncheon banquet in Whitehorse that had to turn people away because there were so many people lined up to support this great industry in our history.

The placer industry provides taxes to the four orders of government: the federal, the territorial, the first nations and the municipal, which is very important for the City of Dawson of course, but also for the City of Mayo and other communities. Sometimes people leave out the first nations government which has selected lands for the revenues that it will generate from the placer industry, so it is important to the first nations as well.

With the unique funding formula that we have in Yukon, if we were to lose revenue from an industry, whether it is the placer industry or others, then the formula financing would kick in to replenish that. Therefore there are costs in other ways to the federal government if we cannot make sure that we support our industries.

As most people are aware, Yukon has one of the highest rates of unemployment, behind a couple of the maritime provinces at this point. We need all the support we can get to help the economy.

I have also met with the child care people since budget day. They are happy that there is more money for child care; $935 million over five years. They are hoping the provinces, the territories and the federal government will hurry up and get the agreement in place so they can start delivering. The present schedule for the first year will not make very much difference or create a lot of spaces. We would like to get that implemented as quickly as possible and with sufficient resources.

The $35 million extra for aboriginal early learning and child care is very important for my riding as well. The head start program, as an example, has been a resounding success. For years I have been trying to and have successfully achieved getting more money for that program. We have different groups in first nations communities around Yukon that would like one of these head start programs because of its success. In fact, just a few days ago I met with the Gwitchin people in the farthest community from Ottawa, Old Crow in the far north. They would like to start up a head start program.

I also want to acknowledge and support the comments of my colleague from Peterborough when he talked about all the educational items and the post-secondary education money in this budget. I was delighted to see the 2,000 extra scholarships for MAs and the additional 2,000 for PhDs.

The reason I raise this is that unfortunately we have just had the passing of the dean of Yukon College, Aron Senkpiel. His whole career was aimed at providing research in and for the north, for Yukon College as a northern academic institution. I am sure he would have been happy to see that the granting councils will also be asked to enhance their support for northern research as part of the increased funding they will receive in this budget. I remember meeting with him not long ago. He spent a lot of his life developing the University of the Arctic, which is a university of the circumpolar world done over the computer. That is a great institution. I hope that young people listening today will consider attending either Yukon College or the circumpolar University of the Arctic through the computer. It is a great legacy to Mr. Senkpiel.

As I said earlier, because of the state of our economy we always need to promote economic development in the north. This is partly done through infrastructure and it would be great if more funds could be attached to economic development in the three northern territories and in the northern parts of the provinces, but specifically in my riding of Yukon because of its low employment levels at the moment.

Something that is not related to the budget but which always causes us a hiccup, and which many of my constituents have mentioned to me, is to keep pursuing our work on the internal trade agreement. In British Columbia quite often there are regulations and licensing, especially for things related to trucking, which make it very difficult for our people to work in British Columbia.

Another item for which I lobbied and which I was delighted to see, and one that is very important for the north from my perspective, is the $175 million toward federal abandoned contaminated sites. Once again, it mentions specifically the north. It talks about the abandoned hard rock mines in the north. As members know, the hard rock mines leave tailings full of minerals like zinc which can be poisonous to fish. Now that these companies have gone bankrupt and left, a lot of work needs to be done to clean this up. It is of specific danger to our fishery. I was delighted to see work start in that area in a large way.

I was also happy to see the excise exemption for biodiesel fuel to clean up our atmosphere. I am sure most people were happy that we were able to preserve the largest tax cut in history, the $100 billion, and that will continue on as it was scheduled in previous budgets.

The resource industry in Canada, but specifically in the north, is very important. We were delighted to see the reduction in the resource tax from 28% to 21% and a deduction for mining royalties. Mining of course was the biggest economic generator in Yukon over the last century toward the gross territorial product. We were also delighted to see the new tax credit for qualifying mineral exploration. All these things will help the type of businesses that have existed and could exist in my riding.

The infrastructure, as I mentioned earlier, is always important in the north. We have difficult climatic conditions, with permafrost. We have long distances to build roads and sewers in this permafrost and we must compensate when it melts or freezes and try to stop it from melting and freezing. There are very few taxpayers in that distance so assistance for infrastructure is exceptionally important to us. We were delighted to see the increases in infrastructure: $2 billion extra for the strategic infrastructure program over the next 10 years and another $1 billion for municipal infrastructure. The Association of Yukon Communities and all the municipalities in the Yukon have been very effective in using the infrastructure program in the past and have great needs that they need to continue on with.

I was delighted to see that $32 million will go toward the environmental and regulatory assessment of a natural gas pipeline. This project, the Alaska highway natural gas pipeline, will be the largest project of its type in the history of the world. It will have a huge economic benefit for everyone and will create jobs in not only my riding but in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and most of Canada.

There was also an initiative to bring skilled immigrants to rural areas. In the past, as we know, immigrants have gone primarily to Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver in large numbers. The small areas have a harder time accessing this talent.

Health care in my riding, as it is in others, is a very important consideration. We were delighted to see an increase in spending. We have some special challenges related to recruitment in the far north, related to human resources strategy, related to having access to specialists and hospitals in other provinces because we do not have major surgery hospitals in the north. As well, my constituents want waiting lists to be reduced. All that was done in the health care accord in those areas was good. I hope we will continue to look at the core costs of health care.

I have talked to my medical association since and the challenges are still in the core costs as we go on. Although there was a recruitment and human resources strategy for the future, the crux of the situation right now is that there is quite a shortage. Anything that can be done to alleviate that shortage in the immediate term would be very helpful. It goes without saying that the first nations health care increase of $1.3 billion is very important for my riding.

I was delighted to see the increase in the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' green fund. I lobbied for that in every budget. It has been increased because we have done such an excellent job in protecting the environment and reducing greenhouse gases with that program.

I mentioned the support for business. I mentioned a number of the tax provisions already. I mentioned the reduction in the national debt and the fact it is a balanced budget. Most of the businesses in our area are small businesses so they were quite happy to see the increase in the exemptions for small businesses so that when their tax rate is 12%, it goes from $200,000 to $300,000 a year, and that the capital tax was eliminated over five years, which many of them asked for.

I was very happy to see that many of the provisions, which touched many of the aspects of what people in my riding were concerned about and what people came to me about before the budget, were addressed.

Today I have spoken about some areas where things can be improved even more in the future for the people in my riding.