Larry Maguire

[Taxation, September 20th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, Kirby Baumung, who owns Lyons Transmission Centre, employs seven people in Brandon, Manitoba and is being forced to pay a massive tax increase because of the finance minister's punitive tax increase package. Why is the finance minister forcing Kirby to have to pay these huge, massive taxes that not even his millionaire owners of Morneau Shepell have to pay? How is this fair?

[Credit Unions, September 19th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, over the summer, the federal government quietly issued new regulations which decreed that credit unions are no longer allowed to use the words “bank”, “banker”, or “banking”. These terms have been part of the common vernacular for over a century. I have spoken to long-time credit union members who are irritated that the federal government can unilaterally make this change and waste millions of dollars. The administrative costs to the 300-plus credit unions across Canada to change and popularize other unknown terms and order new signs are estimated to be over $80 million.

In constituencies such as mine, the credit union is the only financial institution left in many rural communities. They are pillars in our communities and are one of the most philanthropic industries in the country. Instead of making business harder for these important institutions, we should be looking for ways to help ensure that credit unions can thrive and prosper.

I am calling upon all members of this House to work together to fix this calamity and restore some common sense.

[Transportation Modernization Act, June 16th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, it is very important that we are able to export the grain we grow on the Prairies. A greater proportion of what we grow is exported than in any other country, virtually.

I am concerned that there are not even going to be committee meetings on Bill C-49 until September, as pointed out by my colleague. The bill would not come into action before July 31, when Bill C-30 dies. Bill C-30 had many sound management tools that could be used to make sure grain could move in a predicable manner. There will be no predictability in the movement of grain as of August 1, and of course, August 1 is the very beginning of the new crop year, when grain will start to be harvested for this year and moved.

I was urging the government to do everything it could to at least get Bill C-49 through. Maybe it could split some amendments by the end of July. However, we are rising shortly, and that is not going to happen. They have indicated that it will not even go to committee until next fall. We do not know when it will pass or how big a priority it will be for the government at that point.

We are very concerned that there will be a gap in the management of the movement of grain off the Prairies in a predictable and safeguarded manner.

[Transportation Modernization Act, June 16th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his interest in the Brandon airport, which is now complete. It has expanded. It is three times the size it was. It was my pleasure while a member of the government to be able to put some of those funds forward, and I appreciate the fact that it was carried out. I was there with another member from Winnipeg to make sure that they had spades in the ground and got it going a year and a half ago.

It is very important that we have rights for passengers in the airline industry, but I have a great concern in regard to the compensation levels, because the bill would give the Minister of Transport and the Canadian Transportation Agency an open cheque to set monetary compensation for passengers who are affected in this way, rather than having a set fee or set compensation for certain areas. That would be my main concern in that area.

[Agriculture and Agri-Food, June 16th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, every day, the Liberals continue to drag their feet on the reintroduction of vital security measures that would help eliminate the PED outbreak in hogs in Manitoba. By doing so, it continues to put the livelihoods of farm families at risk. Manitoba farmers cannot wait any longer. The time to sit around and talk is long gone. The Liberals need to listen to industry experts and take immediate action.

Will the Minister of Agriculture stop ignoring the very people he is meant to help and reintroduce the much-needed biosecurity measures immediately?

[Transportation Modernization Act, June 16th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to rise today to speak to Bill C-49, the so-called transportation modernization act.

Before I go any further, I would like to say that I will be sharing my time with the member for Saskatoon—University. I look forward to his presentation on this as well. He comes from a neighbouring province to the west, and he also has a great knowledge of what is required in this field.

It is a privilege to put on the record again, as I had the opportunity to do with our opposition day motion on Monday this week, how important the movement of grain is to western Canadian farmers, as my colleague just said. However, it is not just important to the farmers but to the whole industry and economy of western Canada, which affects us all. We are one of the largest exporters of grain in the world with regard to the percentage that we grow.

I think the changes that have come forward in the bill would be somewhat detrimental, although there are a few that will work very well on the grain side.

Bill C-30 was brought in by my colleagues when we were in government due to the conditions that took place in the Prairies in the winter-fall of 2013 and the spring of 2014. I will never forget that because that is when I was elected as a member. Having farmed in western Canada all my life prior to getting into politics, I certainly know the importance of making sure that we have a reliable system of moving grain and exporting it, not just for the farm community but for the logistics of the rail companies and the port authorities and facilities on the west coast, east coast, and in Thunder Bay. At that time, there was also some grain movement through the Port of Churchill.

Before I get into too much of that, I would like to say that what we need to do in the Prairies with regard to the evolution of the transportation system, as we move forward, is to make sure that we look at processing more of these grains on the Prairies than we have in the past. I was in the room with the minister from Regina—Wascana, which I believe was his constituency at the time, in 1995, when the Crow benefit changed and was taken away. I lobbied to make sure that happened. I did that because my farm was located halfway between Vancouver and Montreal at the time, and we would have been faced with the highest freight rates on the Prairies, right in my kitchen.

We did that so that our future family members, our children, in western Canada would have a job locally by processing more of that grain. That is one of the key reasons for a lot of the lobbying that went on in those days to make changes not just to the rail system but to the way grain was marketed. My colleagues in the House have also brought forward the opportunity to allow farmers to sell their own grain and do their own marketing, which is key to the future development of more processing plants and those types of facilities in the Prairies.

The processing of grain is an example of how important this can be. We have rail lines that begin in Winnipeg and pretty well run parallel out to Portage la Prairie, and then branch off to Calgary and Edmonton through the west. That is why the interswitching that my colleague has brought in, and extending it from 30 kilometres to 160 kilometres, was a great advantage for farmers and competitive rates in the Prairies. It did not only work for them but also for the grain companies. It gave them the ability to have a bit more competition.

The types of things that we gained from the 160-kilometre range of interswitching would be taken away in this new bill, Bill C-49, which I think is a detriment to the longevity of the competitiveness we could have. One example is that we can only do it at a point where that interswitching is available. If one's grain is in northern Alberta or the Peace River areas of northern B.C., the first point of interswitching is Kamloops.

Of course, then one cannot really have much competition for all of that grain in northern Alberta and the Peace River area, if one cannot get access to a competitive rate until it gets to Kamloops. I worked there in the early seventies. I know the city well. It is a great place. I know my colleague from Kamloops agrees with me. This would not allow the type of rate competitiveness that we could have seen in the Prairies.

Bill C-30 also mandated the rail companies to carry half a million tonnes each of grain per week to catch up on some of the backlog that was there at that time. This bill just allows them to continue to talk. It does not mandate a level of grain shipments. That was for a period of time until that backlog got taken care of, which happened later on that summer. We hope we do not see those kinds of conditions, but we do have cold weather on a regular basis in western Canada in wintertime and there was a lot more at stake than just the cold weather in forcing that grain back on to the Prairie farms at that time.

There may be some opportunities here. We cannot haul all of the grain in the Prairies by truck. It has to get onto a rail system at some point. Now that there are more opportunities for farmers to move their own grain, I have young farmers coming to me every day talking about the movement of their grain north-south by truck. Some of that is entering into the United States.

We also purchase a lot of grain in feed form, and that sort of thing, from the U.S., and we need to look at continuing to expand our processing. We need to make sure we continue to have that mechanism to move the grain and also to import from the United States.

We also need to make sure that we are continuing to process even more of the product we have on the Prairies. That is being done in many places in Saskatchewan and Alberta. Some of it is being done with the expansion of our livestock industries, because they consume an awful lot of feed grains in western Canada, which then gets moved in another form. Most of it ends up being slaughtered in some of the largest processing plants in the world in Alberta, in Brooks and High River. We know there is an opportunity there to continue to move that product.

It is being done in Manitoba with the largest pea processing plant in the world, coming to Portage la Prairie. It is a $400-million investment by a French company. The Manitoba government is putting very little infrastructure money into this, other than connecting the hydro lines and natural gas.

These are the kinds of investments we need. I know Bill C-49 will not be as good as Bill C-30 was, as far as that goes. It also speaks to other areas though, such as the air industry and marine industry as well. We need to make sure that while there are changes taking place, they are not detrimental to the future of those industries as well, because we do rely quite heavily on our export ports, particularly on the marine side, to be able to export and move this grain.

Bill C-49 eliminates some of the things that were good parts of Bill C-30, particularly in regard to ordering the railways to compensate any person for expenses caused by the railway's failure to fulfill service obligations.

I will end there and see if anyone has questions before my colleague, the member for Saskatoon—University, takes over.

[Agriculture, June 15th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, today another two cases of the deadly PED virus have been reported in Manitoba hog barns, yet the Minister of Agriculture has offered nothing more than bafflegab, and more talk. This morning we heard from industry pork experts that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, at the very least, needs to immediately bring back the biosecurity measures the Liberals eliminated, particularly the trusted truck wash protocol.

Will the minister finally listen to these industry experts, and stop needlessly putting these Canadian farm families at risk?

[Rick Plaisier, June 15th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in the House of Commons to recognize the life of Rick Plaisier. Rick was a husband, a father, a friend, and a teacher. My heart goes out to his wife, Marie, their three sons, Kent, Todd, and Shawn, and their families.

Through his career, he inspired generations of students as a teacher and then later as principal of Virden Junior High School. After retirement, Rick began evaluating educational programs on first nation reserves in an effort to improve learning outcomes in these areas.

Rick defined what it means to be an advocate for his community through his work as mayor of Rossburn, as mayor of Virden, as reeve of the Rural Municipality of Sifton, and finally, as western Manitoba's representative on the Association of Manitoba Municipalities. He was concerned about regional flooding and the very existence of Oak Lake as a water sport and fishing mecca. As a Lions Club member, he rose to district governor.

I am proud to have known this man and to have called him a friend. I thank Rick for his tireless work. Westman is undoubtedly a better place because of him.

[Business of Supply, June 12th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, the member should have directed his question to a member of the government on the solutions it may have for some of these areas.

Conservatives were able to extend the softwood lumber agreement that was in place previously until 2016 and the Liberal government has let it lapse. We have now seen the results of tariffs on products coming from the United States due to the new government in the U.S. putting the tariffs on. As I said in my speech earlier, the stopgap measures that have been put in place by the Liberal government, while helpful to the individuals working in those plants, are not long-term solutions.

[Business of Supply, June 12th, 2017]

Mr. Speaker, obviously, the member has never sold a bushel of grain or a tonne of grain on the Prairies in his life. Otherwise, he would realize that in terms of the marketing system today, as my colleague from Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman indicated earlier, we get no calls wanting to reinstate that particular old style of marketing.

Young farmers today are marketing all of their grain on their own. He is incorrect in his analogy. If he had done some scouting he would have seen that the Canadian Wheat Board did not do the allocation of cars all the time. The whole process of marketing grain on the Prairies has been modernized by the act that was done by my colleague here in the House, by opening up the opportunities for more processing, more expansion of grain, and particularly cleaning. Just like getting rid of the Crow rate benefit years ago, we are seeing the benefits of much more productivity and jobs in the Prairies due to the opening up of these marketing opportunities.