Pat Martin

[Speech From The Throne, October 18th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member for Brandon—Souris is very knowledgeable about these issues. To answer his question simply, all it would have taken is one or two lines in the Speech from the Throne to recognize that we have a problem in western Canada, that we have an emergency that needs to be addressed. The government did not have to write pages and pages. There should have been a couples of lines to sympathize and say that there is an ongoing emergency in western Canada. It would have give some comfort and some solace to those people who find their livelihood at risk.

To answer the member's question, it is a missed opportunity on the part of Liberals to give some comfort to those of us in western Canada who feel more alienated than ever.

[Speech From The Throne, October 18th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for pointing out those pressing issues regarding the EI program.

We all know that when unemployment insurance reform took place it made it more difficult to qualify. People could collect for a shorter period of time and receive less money per week. It was a recipe for a surplus. The government is using the EI system as a cash cow to harvest money from employers and employees to use for whatever it wants.

As the member pointed out, there is no such thing as the EI fund. All that money goes into general revenues and the government can spend it on whatever it wants.

I have always argued that to deduct something from a person's paycheque for a specific reason and then use it for something entirely different is fraud. At the very least it is a breach of trust. The government told us it would use if for one purpose and used it for another. It is completely misleading.

Never mind what it does to workers, which is bad enough. As labour critic I am sympathetic to that and what the changes in the EI fund are doing to my community.

The Canadian Labour Congress hired Statistics Canada to do some research on the impact on a riding per riding basis. In my riding alone the changes in the EI fund take out $20.8 million a year. Can we imagine losing that amount of income, wages or salaries out of one intercity riding per year? In one area of Newfoundland it is $70 million per year.

[Speech From The Throne, October 18th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, there can be no doubt that the Speech from the Throne is a very carefully crafted document. One thing I have come to realize in the short time I have been here is that there is probably no other piece of work that is done on the Hill that is so scrutinized and carefully put together. One can almost see dozens of bureaucrats burning the midnight oil in the catacombs of this building agonizing over every word that goes into it to make sure it is exactly, perfectly put together.

The reason I point this out is that there are no accidents in the Speech from the Throne. If there is something missing from it, it is not by omission, it is missing for a good reason. It has been thought through very carefully for the message that it sends.

We all know there are two ways to send a message. One way is by putting the message in the document and one is by leaving it out. As a westerner from the prairie region, the most glaring omission in the Speech from the Throne has to be the complete absence of any reference to the agricultural crisis that we face in the prairie region.

I did not come to Ottawa to get on the hobby horse about western alienation. Frankly, I did not even think I would ever be standing up in the House speaking about western alienation, but the longer I am here the more I realize how important and grating this issue really is for a person from the west.

We are all very sympathetic to the issue of the lobster crisis on the east coast. We realize it is a real problem. However, we have an emergency in western Canada in the prairie region.

It is not just an isolated incident. It is not just a part of our industry that is suffering. The whole shebang is at risk of losing what developed western Canada, which is our agribusiness. Forty per cent of all prairie farmers run the risk of being out of business by the end of this selling cycle if something does not happen. If some intervention does not take place, 40% of all people who work on family farms today will be gone, kaput, and that does not even begin to talk about all the many industries that rely on a vibrant agricultural industry.

With all due respect to our colleagues from eastern Canada, we do not see the minister hopping on the plane to get to western Canada immediately to deal with the crisis, as we do with the lobster fishery. The minister was on the plane the next morning, meeting with all the stakeholders down there and trying to carve out some way of dealing with that crisis. We do not see that in western Canada.

What are we supposed to think? Is it that our crisis is not as important as their crisis? Are we to weigh whose crisis is most severe? I put it to the House quite frankly that the other issue pales in comparison to what is going on in western Canada.

One might wonder why I would use my 10 minutes to talk about agriculture. I represent an inner city riding. I do not have a single farmer in my riding. There is hardly even a garden plot in my riding, frankly. It is the core area of Winnipeg.

However I do have the United Grain Growers. I have Cargill. I have the Winnipeg Grain Exchange. All the evidence of what built the prairies is located within the riding of Winnipeg Centre. That whole exchange area was built up because of a vibrant farm economy that we now stand to lose.

I raise this as the first point or as the most noticeable point about the Speech from the Throne for me as a westerner. There is not even a word, not a single line in there. I realize that the Speech from the Throne does not deal with specifics. That is for the budget. However, if there was a single line which said the Government of Canada recognized that it has to intervene in some way to protect the agricultural industry in western Canada, that would be some comfort. It would be some solace and people in that industry might say that at least the government appreciates that they have a problem.

It not just a matter of throwing money at it. I am not saying that everybody who lives on a farm, whether they are good farmers or bad farmers, should get a bailout from the Canadian government. Nobody is advocating that. It is a host of problems that have compounded and conspired to defeat the family farmer, whether it is world commodity prices or the corporate domination of the whole industry in terms of access to seeds.

One thing that scared the heck out of me recently was told to me by a group of farmers. It almost seems like this is part of some master plan: drive the small farmer off the farm so that the corporate sector can come in and make farming a corporate industry instead of a family enterprise.

One graphic illustration of why that is not just paranoia is the way that canola seed is dealt with. One has to buy canola seed from one corporate institution. I will not mention the name. One also has to sign a contract that one will sell the yield to that same institution. It controls the supply and purchasing of the product. At the same time it genetically alters the seed so that it cannot reproduce itself. It dead ends after one season. Unlike normal plants it cannot reproduce itself. It has been neutralized that way and the next year one has to go back to the same company to buy seed again.

It is a serfdom. It is a return to serfdom. Agro-serfs is what they really are. They are not farmers any more. They are agro-serfs, multimillion dollar agro-serfs.

These are the kinds of things that Canadians are trying to awaken the Canadian public to and nobody is listening. There used to be champions in the House of Commons for the prairie farmer. At one time we had a western protest party that actually spoke out on behalf of prairie farmers instead of just the corporate agricultural industry. Unfortunately we do not hear a great deal of that today and, try as we might, we cannot get that issue in the forefront. The Liberal government has missed an opportunity to buy some support in western Canada by at least being sensitive to that issue.

That is really how one could summarize the Speech from the Throne. It was a missed opportunity, in fact a series of missed opportunities, and that is only the first and most glaring one that I can identify.

Another missed opportunity that is self-evident for me because it is in my critic area is immigration. All summer long, for the past six months, we have been seeing an hysteria about immigration whipped up by my colleagues in the Reform Party and their right wing counterparts in western Canada. They are trying to convince us that we have an emergency on our hands because 400 or 500 Chinese migrants have drifted to our shore. I have heard terms like this is the biggest breach to national security since the FLQ crisis. That is one of the points they have made. I do not know how to say balderdash or poppycock in terms that are parliamentary, but I have never heard such nonsense in my life. I guess I just did.

Somehow we have to put the hysteria back into perspective and ease the public's mind that we are not facing a breach to our national security because a couple of hundred desperate people have foundered on our shore in British Columbia. It is a manageable issue and it is not the end of the world. However, again it is a missed opportunity where the Liberal government could have put one line into the Speech from the Throne to calm people down on that issue.

My colleague for Winnipeg North Centre raised the issue of child poverty. I was just reading the comments of the member for Winnipeg—Transcona in his speech. He reminded the House of Commons that we are up to the 10th anniversary of a unanimous motion in the House of Commons which said we would eradicate child poverty by the year 2000. That was moved by the leader of the NDP at that time in 1989 and it passed unanimously. Not a single person voted against such a laudable concept that by the year 2000 we would somehow eradicate child poverty within our borders.

I remind members of the House that we live in the richest and most powerful civilization in the history of the world. I ask members to defend in any way they can why there should be anybody living in poverty within our borders.

As I said, I represent an inner city riding and so does the member for Winnipeg North Centre. We have three of the five poorest postal zones in the country. Poverty is an issue that we are seized with every day. There is not a day when we go to work that we are not dealing with somebody's urgent social emergency in terms of poverty issues. Yet in the Speech from the Throne we heard very little. We heard nothing about the important resolution that was passed in 1989, and only passing remarks about the issue of the fair redistribution of wealth building equity into our society.

The government mentioned that in the EI program it would lengthen maternity benefits. That is a laudable idea, a wonderful idea. I would like to see some costing of it. I cannot wait for the budget to come out to see what it will cost the Government of Canada. I would suggest that it will cost very little. First of all, fewer and fewer women qualify for any EI. They have to get on to EI before they can have their benefits lengthened.

The EI surplus is $600 million a month and not per year. What the government will spend in lengthening the EI benefits for mothers on maternity leave might cost $50 million a year. I have sort of done some costing on my own. Some $50 million a year versus $500 million or $600 million a month. Where is the rest of that money going? The Canadian public is still being cheated and the EI reform is not nearly far enough. It is another missed opportunity. The government could have addressed that glaring oversight.

[Speech From The Throne, October 15th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for raising an issue that we have not heard enough about in the debate. We certainly did not hear any reference to it during the throne speech and we did not hear much reference to it in the subsequent follow up debate. The issue I am talking about is the national scandal that exists in our EI system. The hon. member pointed out some of its many, many flaws. I would like to comment on this briefly and then ask him how he feels about a recommendation I would like to make.

In my riding of Winnipeg Centre I have problems similar to what the hon. member pointed out. The changes to the EI system have taken $20 million a year out of my riding alone, out of one inner city riding in Winnipeg.

Can we imagine the impact when $20 million a year that used to be transferred from the federal government to my riding is no longer there? Let us look at the other side of the coin. Can we imagine trying to get a new business to come to a riding with a $20 million payroll? We would have to pave the streets with gold to try to get the business to come to our riding. The inverse is also true. We should be very alarmed when we lose a $20 million payroll just from changes to the program.

The hon. member pointed out the surplus that exists in the fund. There is a $600 million a month surplus. We are paying in $600 million a month more than we are getting out in benefits. This is a national scandal. I do not know why working people are not taking to the streets. They should be furious about the issue. They certainly are where I come from.

The Speech from the Throne talked about finally dealing with labour market training in terms of national sectoral initiatives. That is something we have been advocating for decades within the building trades and the labour movement. Finally we are getting reference to that.

The province of Quebec has a very good system for labour market training through a 1% training levy. In my industry that money is then managed through the CCQ, the Commission de la construction du Québec. It manages that money and the training in that sector.

My question and recommendation would be: Can we not use some of the enormous surplus in the EI fund for these sectoral councils and make the correct model the national model for the whole country in terms of labour market training?

[Family Trusts, June 8th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, it is usually the rich and famous who get the Order of Canada but Winnipegger George Harris is a true Canadian hero who deserves it as much as anybody ever has.

In a classic David and Goliath story, Winnipegger George Harris is taking on two giants: the mighty Bronfman family empire and Revenue Canada. In 1991 the Bronfmans moved $2.2 billion in family trusts to the United States. They should have paid $700 million in capital gains tax on that money but incredibly the finance department and Revenue Canada did not go after it. Mr. Speaker, if you or I owed $100 to Revenue Canada, it would hound us into our graves.

George Harris has taken the matter to court. He wants to know why the government is slashing budgets for social programs and will not even try to collect $700 million from its corporate buddies. I think George Harris is a hero for defending our interests. I think George Harris should get the Order of Canada for exposing this obscene loophole and demanding that it—

[Supply, June 8th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, in making some of his points, the hon. whip for the opposition used a very moving story about a soldier who went off to Bosnia but was married just prior to leaving. I understand the point of the story to be that it made it easier for the widow to collect benefits by virtue of the fact that they had gone through the actual marriage ceremony.

I would like to ask him in the most serious of ways, what if that soldier who went away and was killed was part of a long term homosexual relationship, a long, stable, loving relationship? Maybe they co-owned a home and had joint assets. Then the soldier went away and had the terrible accident with the mine. Does the hon. member think that the grieving spouse in that relationship should have access to the same benefits as the spouse in the member's story?

[Natural Gas, June 4th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I am very happy to get involved in this debate. I compliment the member for Churchill River for raising this issue for two good reasons. It touches on two things people think about a great deal: one, saving operating costs for homeowners, businesses or property owners; and two, saving our environment.

We obviously have to do something about the urgent issue of greenhouse gas emissions. As much as the Reform Party denies it is an issue, we know it is an issue. We know that the hole in the ozone layer is growing. We know that Canada has an obligation to do something, to do all it can to bring down harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

I used to work on the oil rigs. I used to work in the oil patch on oil rigs, on those big triple rigs we see. There is something I am kind of ashamed of. I was always mystified frankly, but for the industry's sake I am ashamed of it, that every time we hit gas everybody would curse “Oh no, more gas”. We would cap off the well, tear down the rig and move to another hole.

Sometimes that gas had such force, there was so much of it. It had such force it was actually dangerous to cap it off. It was very difficult to contain what we had tapped into. There were these huge massive reserves of natural gas, a precious energy commodity like that and nobody could have been more disappointed. The driller would be dejected and the engineer would probably be fired for putting us into an area where we would hit gas again. I just wanted to share that story.

That has been the attitude about something the rest of the world considers absolutely precious and we in this country do not take full advantage of it. It is our most abundant energy resource, yet we choose to heat our homes, businesses and factories et cetera with other more expensive means of energy.

Unbelievably, in much of Atlantic Canada homes are heated with coal thermal generated electricity, the most wasteful, expensive and polluting way to generate electricity. Some of these people have heating bills of $900 a month I am told. I have never lived there but apparently $800 or $900 a month is not unrealistic. Imagine a working class family living in a harsh climate and the best system their government can think of to provide energy to heat their homes is thermal powered electricity. It is unbelievable.

It raises the question, should the government be involved in the distribution of natural gas? Should it ever be involved in it or should it be left up to the private sector? I would remind members that one of the most famous debates that ever took place in this House of Commons was the great pipeline debate in the late 1950s. It is legendary. I still hear stories about it from the veteran parliamentarians who relish telling the story about that great debate.

Fortunately, saner heads prevailed and we did build the trans-Canada pipeline. We did build a national infrastructure. Frankly the plan then was how to sell our resources. It was not so much as how to distribute them in Canada. I am suggesting we need a whole new national pipeline debate.

Again, I am very proud that the member for Churchill River has brought this up today. Now we have to talk about something even more pressing, which is the distribution. How do we as Canadians benefit from our precious natural resources instead of finding ways to fire them out of the country?

Another thing that was raised was that with the FTA and everything else there are more and more opportunities to get our products on to distribution networks south of the border. I would caution hon. members that when they read NAFTA and the FTA carefully, whatever rate of export we have we are bound to. Even if we run short of that resource in our country and even if we do not have enough fuel to heat our own homes, we are committed to maintain the same level of export that we started. It is a tap we cannot turn off. It is one of the things we have always criticized about the free trade agreement.

The public should be involved in natural gas. It is a special thing and we have the luxury of having an abundance of this resource.

In the province I come from, which has a Tory government, Manitoba Hydro is publicly owned. It is a crown corporation. Centra Gas is a private gas distribution company owned by Westcoast Energy, I believe, or some massive conglomerate out in western Canada that owns all of the natural gas companies.

Just recently Manitoba Hydro, a publicly owned company, bought Centra Gas. It saw the sense in having gas distribution publicly owned because it is too important a thing to leave to the free market. Apart from that we were being jerked by Centra Gas. Being a privately owned company it was making bad real estate investments and then passing on its losses to gas customers. Homeowners were getting jacked up rate increases because Centra Gas made some bad flip on the real estate market.

That is an example and it is a Tory government. It sounds like a socialist idea that maybe we should nationalize the natural gas industry. I am not saying we should go that far, but in Manitoba we just did. In 1999 with a Tory government Manitoba saw the sense in having a government role in the distribution of natural gas. I wish we could convince the members on the government side that there is nothing wrong with that idea.

We seem so afraid to start national projects. Somebody even mentioned that we should not be diving into megaprojects.

In my province we have what we call Duff's ditch. Somebody in the 1960s had the sense to dig a diversion around our town so the town would not flood every spring. They called Duff Roblin a madman for digging Duff's ditch. It was the largest engineering project ever undertaken in the country at the time and it has saved our bacon every year thereafter. It was the best couple of million dollars ever spent. Yes, it was a megaproject and yes everybody dumps on megaprojects these days but it was a necessary megaproject.

We are arguing that government get involved in a natural gas distribution project of this kind. Yes, it could be called a megaproject but it would be spread out evenly throughout the whole country. Every rural area that needs that break and an abundant supply of cheap clean energy would benefit. The megaproject would not be concentrated in any one area where all the jobs would be, it would be all over the place.

The hon. member for Churchill River mentioned the unbelievable job creation opportunities. We could put a generation of kids back to work in the new burgeoning field of rural gasification, if we did it in a big way and not in little minor flare-ups where it was financially profitable.

I really like the idea of one of the Tory members who said we should use the old rail lines. We are ripping up railroads all across the prairies. In every small town that used to have a rail spur they are ripping them up. We could turn something bad into something positive by using them as the road beds for natural gas pipelines.

Imagine the difference it would make if we could reduce the operating costs of our homes and businesses. Every dollar not spent on energy could be spent elsewhere in the economy. We would achieve the multiplier effect where every dollar is spent four times before it finds its natural state of repose. It usually winds up in the pocket of somebody like Conrad Black but it does circulate into the economy many, many times first. That is a benefit. Then there are the jobs.

We are talking about energy retrofitting. We are talking about job creation through energy conservation. The natural gas heating system is only one aspect of a comprehensive energy retrofit.

Let us start with all our publicly owned buildings. There is a good reason right there to bring a natural gas spur line into a smaller community where there might be a federal government building. We could bring down our own operating costs and provide ourselves an energy cost break.

We did a lot of research on this. When I was the head of the carpenter's union we did abundant research on the job creation opportunities in energy retrofitting as opposed to new construction. There is seven times the person years in employment per dollar invested in energy retrofit construction as opposed to new construction. There are the benefits of reducing operating costs by 30% and 40% and creating seven times the number of jobs. It is an absolute win-win situation.

Of course that involves the building envelope and the HVAC system. The heating system is where the natural gas aspect of it comes in.

One of the things industries look for most when they are looking for a place to locate is an abundant supply of cheap clean fuel. The clean is not usually that much of a consideration; cheap energy is what they really want. There is almost the feeling of build it and they will come. If we are trying to expand the economic development in rural and underdeveloped areas, one of the most important things that can be done is to provide a constant supply of cheap clean energy.

I want to thank the hon. member again for raising the issue. I hope we can convince more people in the second and third hours of debate.

[Petitions, June 4th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I have another petition regarding Canada Post. These people believe that rural route mail couriers should have the right to form a union. They are the only group of workers in Canada who do not have the right to bargain collectively. Therefore, they would like the government to delete section 13(5) of the Canada Post Corporation Act.

[Petitions, June 4th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I also have a petition from residents of Winnipeg who believe that the Senate should be abolished and not reformed.

[Petitions, June 4th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I would like to present a petition that was brought to me on the subject of undocumented convention refugees in Canada. The people who have signed this petition believe that the waiting period should be two years rather than the current five.