Randy Kamp

[Crystal Meth, June 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals must have heard by now the urgent cries of Canadians who want the government to take action to combat crystal meth.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities and western ministers met recently to discuss this problem. They have made strong recommendations to the federal government to take action.

Municipalities and provinces are serious about fighting this deadly drug, but the federal government only says that it will look into it in the fall.

The Conservative Party, however, is committed to fighting crystal meth and has formed a crystal meth task force, of which I am the chair. I have submitted a motion calling on the government to develop a nation crystal meth strategy. The member for Palliser and I are working on a bill to move crystal meth from schedule III to schedule I, something we have been calling on the government to do for months. The member for Yellowhead has introduced a private member's bill to restrict access to precursors.

The Conservative Party will continue to pressure the government to take action against this drug. Every day that goes by is another day that crystal meth traps another Canadian in its deadly grip.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to make Certain Payments, June 16th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, what surprises me so much is that the member actually kept a straight face when she asked that question. That is pure nonsense if the Liberals expect Canadians to believe that somehow they just forgot to put this in the bill and that this is just an extension or something. That is nonsense. Frankly, the history lesson was about as useful.

I am proud to be part of a party that has evolved over the years and has struggled to maintain its connection with Canadian values rather than that party that somehow sits over there sanctimoniously believing that it rules by divine right.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to make Certain Payments, June 16th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right. When there is a surplus, as it is called, it is there because the government has collected more money than it needs, more money than it had planned to spend, even though it might have planned to spend a great deal. When there is a surplus, there are only a few things that can be done with it: we can spend it, pay down debts or give it back.

I know that we get criticized over here for having this ludicrous notion that we should give money back to Canadians. What I call that is investing in real Canadians, putting it back in the pockets of real Canadians so that they can figure out how to spend it.

What would that be like? My constituents would love to have another $1,000 in their pockets every year and they would love to figure out how they are going to spend it. Maybe they would spend it on their own priorities. Maybe they would save it. Maybe they would send their kids to school. Maybe they would start a business. At least they would have a choice, and that, I think, is what my constituents would like the government to do.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to make Certain Payments, June 16th, 2005]

Yet when the Liberals were forced to rethink whether they could survive, whether they needed to buy the votes, they came across these things that the NDP told them would make their lives better and they put them in, after all of that good consultation. I do not think they are worried about Canadians' lives being better. It is shameful.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to make Certain Payments, June 16th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, earlier the member said that he serves on the finance committee. If he does, he probably has heard about a number of competing issues in the prebudget hearings. I imagine that he heard about all kinds of competing visions and competing priorities for how this money was going to be spent.

I would bet there were some there who made a strong case for lower taxes. I would bet some came before the committee and made a strong case for reducing the debt, for having an actual intentional plan to pay down the debt instead of an accidental contingency plan. I would bet there were a lot of other priorities.

In fact, the government chose some of them. The Liberals presented that budget to us and they left out what is now in Bill C-48. I assume they did it for a very good reason.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to make Certain Payments, June 16th, 2005]

That might be a good one for some of us to consider. It states that a budget helps us sleep better at night because we do not lie awake worrying about how we are going to make ends meet.

Frankly, I do not know how the Liberals can sleep, and I really do not know how the NDP can sleep, having participated in something like this.

A budget is about two things. A budget is about vision. It is about knowing where we want to go and how we will get there. The Conservative Party, for example, believes that we should be aiming for something.

We should be aiming for a high standard of living, maybe the highest in the world. We should be aiming for every Canadian being able to have a job or for economic growth for every region in Canada. Our children should be able to go to post-secondary education, live the Canadian dream and be well prepared for life. Maybe it is part of the Canadian dream that we should have the freedom to start a business.

If Bill C-48 is the Liberal vision, what is behind it is simply survival. It is a vision for survival. It did not appear until very late in the process to save the Liberals' political skin. It was developed in one day. It was done only to win the support of the NDP. The NDP members are perhaps even a little more honest. They say that they got some of their priorities, which they negotiated. It was not about any Liberal priorities as far as I can tell, except the priority that is uppermost in Liberal minds, and that is to survive, to hang on to power.

Some Liberals and certainly the NDP will ask what we do not like in the bill. We have heard this refrain; it is their mantra. They ask us if we do not like the environment. They ask us if we do not like education. They ask us what is the matter with affordable housing and they ask us if we do not like foreign aid. But this is not the vision.

Those things are the not the vision in this document. If they were, why were they not in that first document, the shiny little book that had the glossy cover, the nice pages and good printing? It had the maple leaf on the front. That is what the Liberals called the budget document. It had many pages. It gave some detail and showed some idea of how the money was going to be spent.

If these things were the vision, why not put them in that document? No, they came out late in the game, when the government's survival was in jeopardy.

When they came out with the shiny book, the Liberals said at the time that it could not be cherry-picked. I remember hearing the finance minister say that. I am sure the members across the way will remember that. That budget was thought through. Did the Liberals not have meeting after meeting of the finance committee and hear witness after witness in trying to balance the priorities of Canadians?

They came up with the plan. There were even some good things in it, things that even the Conservative Party can support, and yet at the drop of a hat one day in a hotel room they decided that they could spend $4.5 billion that was not in any way planned and was without accountability mechanisms. That is shameful, in my opinion.

A budget is about management, setting up a spending plan and having measurable outcomes. It is about knowing what the means of accountability are. The Liberals will say we can trust them because they are responsible, as if they are somehow the guardians of Canadian values and fiscal responsibility.

Let us look at their record. The Liberals say they inherited a difficult situation and they had to cut back. In fact, they did cut back on program spending, but in the last five years there has been a 44% increase in program spending. That is not taking into account the additional spending in this bill.

I think the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance is making this play as to whether it is “may” or “might”. He is right: this is about enabling legislation. The word is “may”. It is not “might”. Those are different words in English grammar. This means that the minister or somebody, the governor in council, frankly, has the power. It is about authorization. It is the cabinet. It is the cabinet, if we read the final clauses of the document, that can develop and implement programs and projects. It can enter into agreements with a province, a municipality or any other organization or any person. It can make a grant or contribution or any other payment.

This is sounding vaguely familiar to me, as if this might be leading us somewhere we do not want to go. We are putting this kind of power in the hands of the governor in council, in the hands of the cabinet, with no plan, with no idea of how this might be spent or even whether it will be spent, and with no way of measuring the outcomes. Cabinet is allowed to give funds to any province, organization or any person and can buy shares in any corporation or acquire membership in a corporation. This is a recipe for disaster.

It does not require the government to make the payments. It does not even require that the spending be incremental. It does not say that the government could not take it from spending it had already planned and say it has met its obligations by spending this money in its place.

I have not been in this place long, but I cannot believe that we are actually having to deal with this. I cannot believe it. It is so obvious to me what this is. It is an attempt at vote buying.

Canadians should say that it is unacceptable for Liberals to buy the votes of the NDP for about $240 million a vote. Canadians should say to the NDP members that it is shameful for them to sell their votes to the Liberals for $240 million a vote. It is shameful. I hope Canadians pronounce judgment on this.

All we have is vague promises and no details. As has been said, this is a blank cheque. Don Drummond, the chief economist with TD Financial, said in the National Post on May 7:

For years government has wanted an instrument that would allow it to allocate spending without having to say what it's for. This act will do it.

It almost makes me wonder if this was the Liberals' plan: make it look like they are in jeopardy, go to the NDP and come across with this bill. Now they have this slush fund. Now they can do this vague spending. Who knows where it will go, when it will go and how we will figure it out and measure it? This is what we have in Bill C-48. This needs to be defeated.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to make Certain Payments, June 16th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, finally we are hearing some common sense. I would have appreciated hearing Liberals defend the bill rather than having them sit cowardly by, asking questions and not having to respond to any.

I am pleased to participate in the debate because it is such a bad bill that we need to draw it to the attention of all Canadians.

I was raised in a good family. We did not have much money. My parents modelled for me what to do when we do not have a lot of money. They called it “budgeting”. It is a pretty simple concept, they said. We figure out what we need to spend and what our income will be and then we carefully plan how we will spend that amount of money. We monitor how fast it is going out and know when to quit and all those good things.

Along the way in my adult life I also served on the boards of a number of non-profit organizations. They never have a lot of money either. There was never any extra money to go around, so we had to do this thing called budgeting. We had to figure out what sort of revenue stream we were going to have and then plan very carefully how we would spend it. Every year we laboured over presenting this thing we called a budget.

It amazes me that this bill is being referred to as a budget of some sort, an add-on budget or additional spending or that kind of thing. If this is a budget, if this is what we are modelling for Canadians, perhaps for young Canadians who are starting a family and want to figure out what a budget is, then they should not look at this because this is not a good idea. The director of a non-profit organization who is considering some sort of model spending plan should not take ideas from this budget, because it is absolutely ridiculous.

If we want to know about budgeting, it would be better to do a Google search because we will come across about 10 million pages to look at and all of them would probably be a better example than this one.

Here is one, for example: a budget is a guide that tells us whether we are going in the direction we want to be headed in financially. We may have goals and dreams, but if we do not set up guidelines for reaching them and we do not measure our progress, we may end up going so far in the wrong direction we can never make it back.

Here is another: a budget lets us control our money instead of our money controlling us. Number three states: a budget will tell us if we are living within our means. Here is another one: a budget can improve our marriage.

[Fisheries Act, June 13th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources. He mentioned in his speech that this is a technical bill designed to solve a problem that was identified by the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations, which I sit on. Although there is a little truth to that, let me read what the committee said when a similar bill was introduced in the 37th Parliament. It stated:

Our acknowledgement that the amendments included in Bill C-43 would resolve the Committee's objections to the legality of the relevant regulatory provisions does not imply an endorsement of those amendments particularly as regards the proposed section 10(1), which impose a legal duty to comply with the terms and conditions of a licence, we can conceive that some parliamentarians might object to subjecting such non-compliance to penal sanctions that include imprisonment. To deprive a citizen of his liberty on the ground that the citizen has failed to abide by requirement imposed by a public official in the exercise of an administrative power, such as a term or condition of licence, could be thought undesirable as a matter of legislative policy.

That seems to be the crux of the issue. It is not just a technical change. Yes, it solves the legality of the problem, but there is still the underlying fundamental policy issue. Is it fair and right for somebody to be subjected to those penalties because of a condition that a bureaucrat has laid down? I would appreciate the member's comments on that.

[Canada Elections Act, June 8th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I know the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Ocean also has a real concern for fisheries. Even though he is from one of the other coasts, he has an interest in the Pacific fisheries as well.

My problem is that we have heard these assurances but we are not really confident. We keep asking what the plan might be. If the plan is similar to last year's plan, then we are not likely going to have a different result.

We are on the verge, as the member mentioned, of the 2005 season. Even though he has talked about creative and innovative solutions, we have not heard any. Is the minister ready to admit that he is waiting until 2006 at the earliest to address the aftermath of the 2004 crisis. If that is not the case, we are still waiting to find out what the enforcement plan looks like for 2005.

[Canada Elections Act, June 8th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, in April I asked the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans whether he would assure the House that he would accept the recommendations of the unanimous report of the fisheries committee and properly enforce the Fisheries Act and regulations.

He answered by saying that he took the conservation of salmon very seriously. He had launched a post-season review and was looking at reports. We are now well into June and I wonder if the minister is done looking at the reports and ready to act on their recommendations.

In his blueprint for change speech from April 14, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans announced that it was his intention to improve the economic performance of our Pacific fisheries and most particular salmon. In that document the minister goes on to say that, “I also care about the salmon fishery. I’ve made it a top priority, and am committed to making the necessary changes”.

Despite the fanfare and the promises, British Columbians are still waiting to hear of any concrete plans the minister may have up his sleeve to implement actual changes. No details have emerged regarding any sort of increase of enforcement on the Fraser River on the eve of this year's sockeye salmon fishery.

Twelve unanimous recommendations were provided for the minister from the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. They include establishing an enforcement branch in DFO Pacific region, headed by a regional enforcement director who would be capable of developing a level of coverage that would ensure the minister's mandate to conserve and protect Canada's Pacific fisheries resources would be fulfilled. Also, it recommended that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans restore the number of fisheries officers in the lower Fraser River area to at least the highest level of the 1994 to 2003 period and that they be given all the necessary resources to carry on their enforcement activities.

The committee's recommendations were intentionally formulated to ensure that the problems that led to the collapse of the Fraser River sockeye salmon fishery would be addressed fully.

The committee asked that the minister respond within 60 days to ensure a different result from the 2004 Fraser River disaster. After well more than 60 days, the minister continues to hide behind vague promises and assurances that he will do something, but British Columbians have no idea what that something will look like or when it will it be announced or implemented. Indeed, it makes us wonder whether it will have anything to do with the recommendations that the minister received.

The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans indicated that he had launched one report and received another. With both in hand, he told Canadians that he was looking forward to looking at them and taking them both into consideration in a move toward reform of the salmon fishery. I wonder what the phrase “look at” really means. Does it mean read or does it essentially mean ignore? The minister appears to be much better at receiving reports than he is on acting on them.

I would also ask of the minister what he has in mind when he uses the word “reform”. Does he suppose that his empty promise to move toward reform will inspire any confidence among the many British Columbians who depend upon this fishery to earn their livelihood?

It has now been well more than 60 days since the minister received the recommendations of the standing committee and we are 60 days plus closer to the 2005 season. The minister continues to hide behind vague promises, generalizations and a misplaced confidence that everyone involved in the process will mind their manners and behave themselves.

Will we need to watch another entire season of non-enforcement come and go so that another million sockeye mysteriously disappear? Or will the minister get specific about plans to increase the number of enforcement officers on the Fraser River and increase the resources they need to properly enforce the Fisheries Act and regulations? By this late date, the minister must have an approved enforcement plan. Could he tell us what it is?