Peter Milliken

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustmentact, 1995, June 20th, 1995]

The hon. member suggests that I am an exhibit. I do not think that is quite fair.

The hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell is well regarded in his constituency. I know; I have been there. In St. Boniface the hon. member is very well regarded. In Bellechasse I have no doubt the hon. member is well regarded.

For the member for Calgary Southwest to speak this way about the profession that he now claims to profess and to refer to his own colleagues in this way is unfair and unjust. Hon. members opposite deserve a better defence and I am prepared to defend them from the ravages of their own leadership.

Having said that, let us turn back to Bill C-69. The bill, after all, represents an honest attempt by the government and by members of the House. The House is dealing with a bill that has been approved by the membership of the House in a committee. As the hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell said in his remarks earlier, this is the first time the House has come up with a bill that has been created or drafted from scratch by a committee of the House. It was agreed to in the committee.

I know the hon. member for Calgary West said in his remarks in the debate on the bill the other day that this was their fourth and fifth choice, that they went along with it only because we rejected choices one to five. All of us had choices we wanted on different things rejected in different ways. We all settled and made compromises. That is the way committees work.

I do not know where the hon. member comes from when he thinks a committee goes the way of only one person. I was only the chair of the committee so I did not even have a vote. I accept the work of the committee as good, solid work. I think it was fair. I think it was reasonable. The hon. member opposite was there. He knows it was reasonable. The hon. member for Bellechasse knows it was reasonable.

When the bill came back to the House, when the government introduced the bill, it had reasonable support. I know hon.

members complained about it. Of course it did not have everything in it that they wanted. They are members of an opposition. They are paid to be here to oppose. So they did what any opposition would do and opposed it. I have been in opposition before. I know how it works.

Let us face the facts. The bill was a reasonable compromise reached by the members of that committee working together. I think we worked extremely well together. We came up with a reasonable proposition.

Now we have this loud criticism going on night and day, especially from the Reform Party, spouting absolute nonsense in respect of the bill. The extraordinary thing is that they have had to do it on the basis of Senate amendments when they know perfectly well the Senate amendments are not ones the committee agreed to. The committee considered almost every one of the Senate amendments in one form or another in the course of its deliberations, rejected those changes in the law, and came up with something different.

The Senate is trying to take us back to the same old law we had before. The Senate amendments proposed in the notice that was sent to the House effectively gut the bill of any significant change over the existing law. Hon. members opposite know that is not what the committee agreed to. They wanted changes in the law. They did not get everything they wanted but they got a good number of changes that were quite reasonable. We all agreed to the changes. For the most part they are good changes and reasonable changes. We should support them and tell the other place that is the case.

Hon. members opposite like to complain about the use of closure in this debate. They have not said a lot about it. Nor should they because we are getting toward the end of a session. An upcoming summer vacation is specified in the rules where members will have a recess from the House and will go to do work in their constituencies. I am looking forward to the opportunity to do some work in my constituency. I am sure hon. members opposite are doing exactly the same.

When we get to the end of the line and are running out of time, the government is trying to get its legislative agenda through and has adopted measures with respect to arranging the time of the House to ensure the legislative agenda is adopted. The government has various tools at its disposal.

Hon. members opposite could get up and quote chapter and verse on the evils of time allocation and probably on the evils of closure. As a member of the opposition I opposed those applications in years past. However I can say to hon. members opposite that they do not know how lucky they are that they have a Liberal government on this side of the House that is so beneficent and so careful in its use of these tools.

I see the hon. member for Beaver River. She was here. None of her colleagues was but she was. She knows that the former government used closure and time allocation right, left and centre with what can only be described as gay abandon. I should also say that it was used by the previous government unilaterally with no co-operation from anybody.

This government used closure today for the first time and with reluctance only because members opposite would not make any arrangement to dispatch this business expeditiously. It is quite reasonable to apply it. Look at the difficulty they are having filling the time with speakers tonight.

With respect to time allocation we have used it in almost every case with full co-operation of the opposition. In other words we have not used it unilaterally. We have done it with co-operation from opposition members. They know organizing the time of the House is important to the orderly conduct of business. They know we have an interest in seeing that bills are passed in a timely way, and that when debate has come to a logical end and it has gone on for too long it is time to bring it to an end and to reach a decision in the House.

I spoke on this issue last week when the time allocation motions were moved and carried in the House with a substantial majority of the members. Only the Reformers and a handful of Independents were voting the time allocation process adopted in the House. The time allocations we allocated on the bills were reasonable. On this one we could not get agreement but closure was a simple, short way to dispatch this item of business.

Hon. members opposite know in their heart of hearts that they want the bill passed. They want the Senate to back off on these amendments and get on with life. They prefer to get the amendments in but they know if we agreed to their amendments tonight they would be standing here screeching at the Senate to pass the bill tomorrow.

The hon. member for Calgary wags his head but he knows perfectly well that is the case. He would not be supporting the amendment otherwise. He wants these amendments if he can get them.

I remind hon. members opposite-and I thank the hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell for this point-that we have even had support from members of the Reform Party on time allocation when there were bills they wanted passed.

We have not used time allocation unilaterally very often. In fact it has been extremely rarely. The hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminster keeps a little list and marks it down every day it is used. It is not a long list but he has it there. I invite him to count how many times it was used unilaterally. In almost

every case it was done with the co-operation of one or the other of the opposition parties.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustmentact, 1995, June 20th, 1995]

I knew hon. members opposite would applaud that one. As my hon. colleague from St. Boniface said, obviously they are intellectuals.

If the hon. member for Calgary Southwest holds politicians in such low esteem, I can understand why he and his colleagues do not think there should be any more in the House. I assure him that my constituents and the constituents of my friends-

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustmentact, 1995, June 20th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I did not think the member would be offended; I was only quoting his leader.

I want to quote the hon. member for Calgary Southwest again. He also said "Every political party has a few bad apples". I think he was right, but I will not throw stones.

The member obviously holds politicians in very low esteem. The hon. members opposite say they do not want to have 301 seats because it would increase the number of politicians, and they say that Canadians do not like politicians. I do not know about the hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, the hon. member for Wellington-Grey-Dufferin-Simcoe, the hon. member for Bruce-Grey, the hon. member for St. Boniface, the hon. member for London West. All of these people are not unpopular in their constituencies. I know when they go home they are greeted warmly. They are not regarded as unwanted politicians. Perhaps the hon. member for Calgary Southwest and some of the members of his party feel they are unpopular and therefore think politicians are unpopular. It does not follow. Some are, but I know many who are not. Many of my colleagues on this side of the House are very popular.

Let me read what the hon. member for Calgary Southwest said about politicians: "What's the difference between a politician and a catfish? One is a slimy, wide-mouthed bottom feeder and the other is a fish."

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustmentact, 1995, June 20th, 1995]

My hon. colleague says they are in difficulty, and he is right on that score.

The second argument they had was that the House was getting too big and they wanted to stop this House from getting any bigger. They said 295 was ample. Some of them wanted to cut it back. There was disagreement on how far it should be cut back, but they wanted to cut it back.

The government and the members of the committee agreed that 301 was not too many and we have agreed to go along with the existing law. So we have proposed no change in the Constitution or in the rules relating to the size of the House and we have left it at 301 members, which is what the number will be after the next election, whether this act passes or not.

Let us see what their leader says about how you fix meetings. He said this is one of the things you have to do to preserve party dignity: "If you think it's going to be that type of meeting, get as many sane, sober people there as possible. Overwhelm the kook element." We are only following his leader's advice. We are going to try to expand this House to overcome the kook element. That is the aim. We are going to try to create another five or six seats, fill them with good Liberals, and overwhelm the kook element in the opposition-and I do not mean the official opposition.

That is just one of the things his leader said. He said more. There is a lot more. This man is productive.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustmentact, 1995, June 20th, 1995]

There is the hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminster, who quoted this very statement in his speech the other night, applauding it. Yet I note on the other hand that he is supporting the Senate amendments to this bill.

We are not just asking him to vote for the one amendment the government supports. He is saying we should support a whole bunch of them and has proposed an amendment to do. We are saying reject it because those amendments are not good amendments to this bill and we are asking the Senate to withdraw them. That is what the motion states. It is a sensible bill.

What is the principal objection the Reform Party has? I suggest there are two. One of them is not dealt with in any of these Senate amendments and it was not dealt with in the bill, but there are two. The first was that Reformers wanted the possibility in a riding of moving away from the provincial quotient to the variation permitted to be 15 per cent above or below instead of 25 per cent above or below.

The result of such a change would be to ensure that the ridings would be closer in size. In other words, there would be one person equal to one vote a little more closely across the country than is the case now. In fact it would only apply within a province, but it would result in a substantial shift.

The hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminster and the others who are hooting and hollering over there tonight know perfectly well that it would result in changes so that large rural ridings such as that occupied by the hon. member for Bellechasse-I could name a whole host of others in this House, but he is here, he was on the committee, he knows the argument-would be enlarged enormously to fill it up with more people to get it closer to the provincial quotient in numbers and other ridings in big cities would be cut up and divided into smaller units. More ridings would move to the cities than there are now and there would be fewer rural ridings in Canada.

I am surprised that hon. members opposite, largely from rural parts of the country themselves, are supporting this kind of amendment. I know their hope lies in winning additional seats in other parts of Canada, but I know perfectly well their hope lies in rural Canada. If they cannot win seats there, they are going to be in difficulty.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustmentact, 1995, June 20th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I was quite surprised to hear the comments made by the hon. member for Mercier.

In his speech earlier tonight, the government whip suggested that Bloc members disagreed on this bill. This is quite obvious tonight as the hon. member for Bellechasse, who sits on the committee, proposed in committee an amendment to the bill that would have given Quebec at least 25 per cent of the seats in this House.

The suggestion to amend the bill actually came from a senator who testified as a witness before the committee. The committee nonetheless decided that amendments to the Constitution of Canada were not needed at this time and that, as everyone agreed, the amendment suggested by the hon. member for Bellechasse would involve amending the constitution. Consequently, the committee rejected this amendment and decided to preserve the constitutional relations now in effect among all Canadian provinces, and especially the constitutional provisions concerning representation in this House. We then heard the hon. member for Berthier-Montcalm deliver a long speech in this House at second or third reading of this bill.

The hon. member for Bellechasse did not have anything to say at that time, while his colleague from Berthier-Montcalm called for major changes to this bill and proposed an amendment. This amendment was rejected by the House. We now hear all kinds of speeches dealing with the amendments proposed by the Senate, which have nothing to do with the constitution, nothing to do with the representation of any province in this House, although all speeches by Bloc members deal with this. This has nothing to do with the motion before the House tonight. Perhaps they would like this to be the case, but it is not.

The motion before the House and the amendment concern only the amendments proposed by the Senate. It is noteworthy that the Senate did not propose the amendments requested by the hon. members for Mercier and Bellechasse. Why? Because such amendments would have also been rejected by the Senate.

I am surprised. During her speech, the hon. member for Mercier rewrote the history of Canada. It is very obvious that our country was built by two partners, English Canadians and French Canadians. That much is obvious to everybody. Canada will continue to prosper because of these two partners. If we are together, if we work together to continue to build this country, there will always be enough wealth for everyone in Canada and no one will be denied their rights. That is what created this great country, Canada, and what will sustain it in the future.

I am certain that when the Bloc Quebecois will have the courage to hold a referendum in the Province of Quebec, Quebecers will tell all of the world that they want to remain in Canada, that they want to remain part of this great country, because they have always worked with all other Canadians to create this country, not without difficulty, but ever hopeful for the future of this great country, one of the world's greatest.

I want to leave that subject and speak instead tonight about the Reform amendment, which is, after all, what we are supposed to be discussing.

I am very surprised to see the Reform Party carrying on the way it has been tonight. Again I have the little green book handy. I was just browsing through it. I know we have heard hon. members of the Reform Party almost speak disrespectfully of the other place. I am shocked, to say the least. I am shocked because here we have a spectacle of the Reform Party on the one hand speaking disrespectfully of the other place and on the other hand supporting the amendments it has made to this bill. I do not think it is any accident that many of the amendments proposed by the Reform Party members in the committee and rejected by the House and the committee are now being supported by their friends in the other place.

The other place has a constitutional right to suggest amendments to this House and send bills back, as it has done in this case, but I am surprised that a party that speaks so disrespectfully of the other place would now support by its amendment the amendments that have been proposed there.

I want to quote from their leader, the hon. member for Calgary Southwest, in the little green book. The book is called "The Gospel According to Preston Manning and the Reform Party". He said the following, although I want to say at the outset that I do not agree with the statement: "The three priorities of the present Senate are, in order, protocol, alcohol and Geritol".

[Questions On The Order Paper, June 19th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the question the hon. member has put is one that requires answers from numerous government departments and agencies and that is part of the reason for the delay.

I understand two departments have not been able to get the material required to the central place where these answers are gathered. Work is continuing with respect to that and as soon as I am in a position to answer the hon. member's question I will be more than happy to furnish the reply.

[Questions On The Order Paper, June 19th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all questions be allowed to stand.

[Petitions, June 19th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I have a petition to present today signed by numerous residents of Ontario, some from the Kingston area and surrounding districts, and some I note from Toronto and other parts of the province of Ontario.

The petitioners are concerned about the possibility of milk in Canada being treated with BST. They call upon Parliament to ban the use of BST in Canada and not accept dairy products from countries where BST is used to treat cattle.

[Government Response To Petitions, June 19th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's response to 16 petitions.