Lynne Yelich

[Post-Secondary Education, October 23rd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, figures released yesterday indicate the Liberals have cut more than $16 billion from health and social transfers to the provinces, funds that support health care, social services and post-secondary education. For college and university students this means escalating tuition fees, increased deb, and particularly for students with low or middle income backgrounds, fewer opportunities to pursue high end educational programs.

A report in the Canadian Medical Association Journal reveals that at Canadian medical schools, there are fewer students from low income families in general. Students in my riding say the increased financial pressure can be the difference between a successful education and having to put aside their studies.

Today's post-secondary students do not expect a free ride. They know they will benefit from their education and they should pay for that privilege, but when tuition and other costs double, triple, or more over a period, the financial burden can be overwhelming for students and their families.

[Supply, October 23rd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed listening to the comments from my colleague. He suggested that the member for LaSalle--Émard should be in the House and should be answering questions.

I have a question for the hon. member. Should the member for LaSalle--Émard be trying to renew some relationships with the United States that have been severed very badly over the last couple of months?

[Petitions, October 23rd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition to the House of Commons and Parliament on the right of Parliament to determine and preserve the definition of marriage.

The citizens of Saskatchewan in my constituency state that in 1999 Parliament voted to preserve the traditional definition of marriage but that a recent court decision has redefined marriage, contrary to the wishes of Parliament; that now the government wants Parliament to vote on new legislation but only after it has been approved by the Supreme Court; that this is a dangerous new precedent for democracy in Canada; and that elected members of Parliament should decide the marriage issue, not appointed judges.

Therefore the petitioners call upon Parliament to immediately hold a renewed debate on the definition of marriage and reaffirm, as it did in 1999, its commitment to take all necessary steps to preserve marriage as the union of one woman and one man to the exclusion of all others.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, October 21st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the member who just spoke is from Manitoba and I would like to know if he is happy with the boundaries for Manitoba.

I missed part of his speech but I did hear him mention the process of appeal. We had some outlandish ridings in Saskatchewan which we appealed and were very fortunate to save our ridings as they were. They were excellently done by the prior commission and we were happy with them. Our process of appeal worked.

I just wondered if Manitoba was pleased with its boundaries.

[Contraventions Act, October 10th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to take part in this debate about Bill C-38, a bill that would change how the judicial system deals with possession and production of marijuana.

My colleagues across the way have told us about the good intent of this bill: that it will decriminalize the actions of millions of Canadians; that it will provide opportunities for young people who might otherwise be burdened by a criminal record; and that it will relieve some of the congestion in our courts.

But I have to ask, at what cost will this be achieved?

I have several concerns about this bill and the government's attempt to fast-track it through the system, concerns ranging from the amount of marijuana that is decriminalized to the penalties and sentences for various offences. There are also numerous logistical issues involving the practical side of enforcing the proposed new law, which I feel must be addressed before legislation is passed.

Finally and most importantly, I am gravely concerned about the message that Bill C-38 will send to Canadians in general, but to our youngest and most vulnerable citizens in particular. I intend to explore each of these concerns in greater detail during the next few minutes in the hope that these issues will be noted and perhaps highlighted in the committee setting.

The bill establishes a new system of guidelines for the decriminalized possession of marijuana. From what I understand, the government has based these numbers on what it considers appropriate or reasonable amounts of marijuana for personal or recreational use.

Let us look at these numbers. Possession of 15 grams or less of marijuana gets one a $150 fine if one is an adult. Possession of between 15 and 30 grams of marijuana could get someone a fine or perhaps a summons for a summary offence. Possession of one gram or less of cannabis resin is good for a fine.

The implication here is that having between 15 and 30 grams of marijuana is considered reasonable for personal use, that the drug would not be meant for trafficking. Grams seem like a tiny unit of measure, and 15 to 30 grams does not sound like a lot to most of us. But depending on how much marijuana is used, that same 15 to 30 grams translates into 30 to 50 joints.

I know there are many parents and grandparents in this chamber. How many of them would think it acceptable or reasonable if they were suddenly to find 50 joints concealed in their son's or daughter's book bag or clothing? Unless that son or daughter were smoking up day and night, I think I would find myself wondering if some of those joints might be for sale or for purposes other than personal use.

Decriminalizing up to 30 grams of marijuana is the government's idea of responsibility. In contrast, my opposition colleagues feel that this number must be reduced to a maximum of 5 grams of marijuana if this bill is to become even remotely tolerable. This would equal between 5 and 12 joints, an amount far less likely to be for the purpose of trafficking. I personally believe that even 5 grams is too much and that Canadians are better served by a government that does not take lightly illegal drug use of any kind.

As I mentioned a few minutes ago, the penalties for possession and production of marijuana as outlined in Bill C-38 merit considerable questioning and review.

The proposed fines for possession are negligible and, as such, I suspect they will not act as an effective deterrent. An adult possessing less than 15 grams of marijuana will face a fine of $150, or $300 for possession of between 15 and 30 grams. That is about the same as one could expect to pay for a traffic infraction such as speeding. One look at the Queensway or any other major thoroughfare will give us a pretty good idea of how unintimidated drivers are by the prospect of such a small fine. Marijuana users will likely be similarly undeterred, making the fines ineffective.

Young people between the ages of 14 and 18 will get an even better deal from the government if they are caught with marijuana. Youth fines, as proposed, are one-third less than the adult version. I question the reasoning behind this decision which takes already nominal fines and reduces them so they are more affordable for drug possessing youth.

The government should take a cue from the world of marketing, where it is known that young people often have access to more disposable income than adults and are less cautious in their spending. They wear expensive designer clothing, shoes and accessories, and they tote the latest in high tech communications devices and gadgetry.

The notion that a discount fine will deter youth from possessing marijuana is an absolutely ridiculous idea.

Still on the subject of sentencing, I have heard rumours that the minister may consider tougher minimum sentences for marijuana growers and for repeat offenders. I sincerely hope that this is more than a rumour because these issues have not been adequately addressed in the bill.

From a logistical standpoint, the government is trying to fast-track the bill through Parliament without ensuring that the provinces, municipalities and authorities have the proper tools in place to implement it. From what I have read, the bill does not provide extra money for policing, fine collection or any of the other inevitable administration costs.

As I mentioned earlier, my greatest concern about the bill is the message it sends to Canadians, particularly our youth. I hope this issue will be studied in great detail by the committee.

Before the bill was introduced there was a lot of talk about decriminalization and legalization: Which would the government choose?

When I talked to people in my riding, both adults and youth, I was disturbed to note that the terms were used interchangeably. I worry that should the bill pass, our young people will not differentiate between two definitions and as a result they will come away with the idea that buying, possessing and smoking marijuana is okay. That is a behaviour actually endorsed by the government.

I suggest to the House that it is irresponsible to even contemplate passing a bill such as Bill C-38 without first establishing a clear and comprehensive education campaign to inform our young people about what the bill is intended to do.

In Saskatoon, the city council is in the process of discussing a ban on public smoking. Similar bans have been adopted here in Ottawa and in other cities and towns across the country. It is a health and safety issue and, as such, the cities are trying to do what they can to discourage smoking. By virtue of making it okay to possess a smokable drug, decriminalizing marijuana is a backward step in this fight for improved health.

The government is sending mixed messages. It is telling Canadians not to smoke because it is bad for them and cigarette companies not to advertise because it can influence our young people, but marijuana, that is not criminal.

Yesterday the minister described Bill C-38 as the launch of a real reform. I suggest that the bill needs some real reform.

[Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, October 8th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, add another well-heeled Liberal to the growing list of ACOA Atlantic innovation fund recipients.

John Bragg, uncle to former Nova Scotia MLA Ross Bragg and well known Liberal Party supporter, recently received an innovation fund grant for his company, Oxford Frozen Foods.

In addition, Mr. Bragg has been listed by Canadian Business Magazine as one of Canada's hundred richest people.

On top of that, Mr. Bragg recently contributed $50,000 to the next Liberal leader's campaign.

Corporate welfare is alive and well in Canada and the Liberals are responsible. Why are taxpayer dollars being exposed to a risk that should be shouldered by one of the wealthier businessmen in Canada?

While the government does play a part in promoting economic growth, that role should not be picking winners and losers through grants.

[Supply, October 2nd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about Saskatchewan roads. As I said earlier, we were voted as having one of the worst roads in Canada, so I really cannot answer that in one minute.

However what I can do is read into the record just to show what it is doing to our tourism. We had an American tourist who was so upset with our roads. He came every year to a tourist point in Saskatchewan. We do have nice places in Saskatchewan to visit and one of them is Elbow. Mr. Robert Ronning from North Dakota said in a letter:

For seven of the past 10 years, I and eight or nine friends have visited Elbow. We have rented condos, swam in the pool, golfed and fished on Lake Diefenbaker. This is truly a remarkable area. A real diamond in the rough.

The one thing I cannot understand is the condition of the area roads. We always take three or four boats with us, but the road conditions chip up both our boats and cars.

Several years ago, Highway 42 by Brownlee had about five miles of bad asphalt returned to gravel.

Now, there is 15-plus miles of gravel. I thought going from gravel to asphalt was progress, not going from asphalt to gravel.

I could read on and on. This letter is a very sad reflection of how our infrastructure is crumbling.

The parliamentary secretary mentioned that the taxes went into consolidated revenues which went into such things as health care. We could not get an ambulance over these roads to get to a health care facility. Therefore, our roads--

[Supply, October 2nd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today and join my colleagues in contributing to the debate on the motion before us, which reads as follows:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government should initiate immediate discussions with the provinces and territories to provide municipalities with a portion of the federal gas tax.

The issue raised by this motion is the extent to which gas taxes collected by the federal government do not find their way back to the provinces and municipalities, at least directly.

For example, in my home province of Saskatchewan, and I am here in its best interests, the federal government collects on average about $248 million per year in fuel taxes. Only about 10% of this or about $25 million is returned to the province each year. In contrast, the Saskatchewan provincial government commits to expenditures on transportation equivalent to between 90% and 100% of the fuel tax it collects. In the United States, 84% of federal fuel tax is earmarked for specific highway improvements.

Based on these figures it is fair to say that there is greater room for further contributions by the federal government. My contribution to today's debate will focus on Saskatchewan's infrastructure issues relating to roads. Such infrastructure is crucial in my province.

Saskatchewan has a small population. Our communities are widely dispersed throughout the province. We are served by 198,000 kilometres of road. Of these, 162,000 kilometres are in rural areas. Excluding those roads that are entirely within municipalities, there are about 100,000 kilometres of road to maintain on an annual basis.

One of the contributing factors to high road maintenance needs is that trucks, cattle-liners and other heavy vehicles are routed to rural municipal roads and provincial highways considered to have particularly thin membranes. As a consequence, numbers of rural municipal roads are in significant states of wear and disrepair. With the closure of smaller rail lines and general compressions in rail transportation, more is being transported from within and from Saskatchewan by truck, making maintenance of the road infrastructure all that more important.

Due to their perilous financial circumstances, Saskatchewan governments cannot easily fund the cost of maintaining provincial road infrastructure. In some years the government has simply said that it has no money to maintain road infrastructure.

For example, in April 1998, the provincial government advised rural municipalities that no further funding for municipal road construction and maintenance was available. In that year, the provincial government was only able to contribute roughly half of the $56 million considered essential to maintain Saskatchewan rural roads. It is circumstances like these that cause municipalities in Saskatchewan to seek some form of financial relief.

From the federal government perspective, the argument is that funds are returned to the provinces indirectly, through either federal-provincial equalization payments or other transfers. The problem with this approach is that infrastructure needs of provinces and municipalities differ depending on their geography and their ability to raise further revenue. In Saskatchewan, there are great infrastructure needs, yet the province is limited by its significant debt position from raising further taxes.

Transportation is vital to the economic health and prosperity of Saskatchewan, yet we see example after example of how the road system in particular is deteriorating. Last month, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation nominated a Saskatchewan highway as the worst highway in Canada. In fact, of the 100 or so highways nominated, 12 were in Saskatchewan.

The Saskatchewan director of the CTF said that some of the highways have deteriorated to a point where they are dangerous, and that the state of our highway system sends the wrong message to families and businesses interested in coming to the province. In fact, the roads are so noticeably bad that a long time American tourist was moved to write a letter to the editor of a major Saskatchewan newspaper saying that he probably would not be coming back to spend his vacations in the province.

Saskatchewan simply cannot afford to lose that kind of business. That is the message I hear from my constituents. They do not understand why Saskatchewan has such bad roads when they pay so much for fuel. I might add that I think Saskatchewan has one of the highest fuel prices in Canada. I will save that argument for another time.

Motorists know that they are being heavily taxed by the federal government each and every time they fill up at the pumps. Why is more of that money not coming back into the highway and road system? Why is the federal government not ensuring federal reinvestment in the transportation system at the provincial and municipal levels?

Those are excellent questions and are ones that could be largely resolved if the government followed the direction of the motion before us today. The federal gas tax plus the GST cost the average Canadian more than $220 last year. In 2001-02 Canadian motorists paid $4.7 billion in federal gas excise tax. They paid an additional $2.2 billion in GST on gasoline during the same period.

I would like to remind the House that there was a time when the Conservative federal government promised that the GST would be revenue neutral and in the unlikely event that there was an increase in tax dollars collected, the surplus would go toward debt reduction.

We all know what happened to that subsequently. The GST became such a major source of government revenue that our Liberal government, having promised to get rid of it, found it could not without significantly increasing taxes in other areas.

My point here is that governments often make empty promises as to how increased tax dollars will be used. We saw this again in the mid-1990s when federal gas taxes were increased as a deficit reduction measure.

The government is so proud of the fact that it has delivered balanced budgets, surpluses in fact for the past several years, yet the deficit fighting tax increases remain in place.

The motion serves to redirect gas tax revenue to where it is needed, at the municipal level, rather than to a purpose it no longer serves. As my colleague from Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam noted earlier this morning, Canada's road system is comprised of 900,000 kilometres of roads, highways and bridges and of those no less than 2% are federally owned.

Despite its nominal responsibility for roads, the federal government keeps nearly half of the revenue generated by gasoline taxation. Very little of that amount is reinvested into highways and infrastructure.

Canadian motorists and taxpayers deserve better than this. They do not want their tax dollars disappearing into federal government coffers never to be seen again. They want and they deserve a fair and accountable taxation system that supports a sustainable infrastructure on which we all depend.

I hope the federal government, in the vote on Tuesday, will consider that the motion is very important for municipalities and for Canadians. Municipalities are looking forward to perhaps the motion being passed. Then they can take care of their own infrastructures.

I would remind the House that motorists paid $4.7 billion in federal gas excise taxes in 2001-02. They paid $2.25 billion in GST on gasoline in that same period. Motorists paid $6.95 billion in gas taxes and GST on gas in 2001-03. The federal gas tax cost the average Canadian $149.21 last year. The federal gas tax plus GST cost the average Canadian $220 last year. Gas taxes vary between 35% and 45% of our total cost at the pump. In other words, the money from every second or third fill-up of gas is going to taxes. U.S. gas taxes in total are roughly 25% of the pump price.

That brings us to the federal spending on roads and transfers to provinces, $118 million. That is 2.51% of the amount the feds collect in gasoline taxes was invested into roads. That is 1.71% of the amount the feds collect in gasoline taxes plus GST on gas. Canada's infrastructure transfers to provinces, roads, conference centres and waterworks equals $800 million.

I am pleased to have joined this debate this afternoon. I sincerely hope we will see a successful, overwhelming support for this motion on Tuesday when we vote on it.

[University of Saskatchewan, September 29th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to call your attention to the upcoming opening of the expanded vaccine and infectious disease organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.

With the new space, equipment and staff, VIDO will be able to capture the opportunities afforded by genomics and other advances in science related to both human and animal health research. This includes a role in the Genome Canada project and collaborative agreements with research institutes and companies around the world.

This major expansion will substantially increase the capacity of Canada and the world to fight not only food safety challenges but animal and human diseases. VIDO will address food safety challenges while building on the University of Saskatchewan's already impressive research infrastructure and the University of Saskatchewan's reputation as a worldclass academic institution.

[Parliament of Canada Act, September 22nd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I do not have any confidence whatsoever, and after I heard a couple of comments from the other side, I have even less confidence than I had when the debate began. I really do not have any confidence, in answer to my colleague's question.

A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.