Rob Anders

[Species at Risk Act, February 20th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know why it is but when I speak the Liberals all seem to want to leave the Chamber. I give them these wonderful renditions of their party's history. I tell them about how they need to go back to their roots and where they have lost their way along the path. They are leaving as I speak. It is a shame. If they sat and listened perhaps we would actually improve the bill. However, I will go on as I hear those doors flipping and flopping in the background.

I would like to talk about the whole idea of mens rea , the mental intent, the idea that farmers can be held responsible for something they did not do of their own intention. In other words, if a farmer's tractor happens to harm either a habitat or a given animal and it was not the farmer's intent to do so but it simply happened in the course of his or her daily activities in order to put bread on the table, pay for the business and continue the family farm, the government over there, the Liberals, would say that the farmer should be held for criminal intent in doing that. It is a perverse form of law that the government would do something like that to farmers.

I cannot think of anyone who does more good for the rest of us than the small percentage of the population that grows our food. These people surely are stewards and lovers of the land. They deal with it on a daily basis more than you or I do, Mr. Speaker. The idea that the Liberals across the way think they know better than the farmers toiling away on their land, that they can tell them what to do and hold them criminally intent because of the way they deal with their land is ridiculous.

I will boil this down very simply. With regard to the bill the Canadian Alliance believes we should be protecting property, particularly private property. We should be protecting jobs. We should be protecting personal freedoms and liberty.

The government on this matter believes in theft, in expropriation, in intrusion, in messing around in the backyards even though they do not want legislators in the bedrooms. The Liberals are totally out of touch with this. It is elitist. It is top down. It is arrogant. It is mentally stunted because they will not even listen to the environmental groups or the businesses that will be affected or the farmers that will be held to account. They refuse to listen to their own backbenchers who sit on the committee. It is a shame.

[Species at Risk Act, February 20th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I will recap in simple terms the nature of Bill C-5 for my constituents who might be listening back home.

The government has decided it will pander but the question is, pander to whom? It is not listening to the environmentalists. It is not listening to the farmers and corporations that will be affected by this bill. It is not listening to any of the people who will be losing jobs. I do not know exactly to whom it is paying attention. I think the Liberals are doing a bit of navel gazing with regard to the bill. I cannot find the group they are supposedly paying attention to with regard to the bill.

The gist of the bill is to impute criminal intent on people who may harm a species on their private land and to not fairly compensate them in terms of the protection of those species.

I would like to rename the bill. I do not think it actually has anything to do with species at risk. I think it has everything to do with property at risk. It should be called the property at risk act.

Think of the fundamental things this legislature does. We are supposed to protect property. We are supposed to protect people's individual freedoms and their liberties. That is what I understand part of our job to be. This bill is directly opposed to that.

I will mention somebody south of the border because the Liberals are borrowing on American experiences in the American endangered species act, the ESA, as they put forward this bill.

My favourite president of the United States is Thomas Jefferson. He was the third president of the United States. Instead of having the words life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the American constitution, he wanted to have protection not only for property, but what was absolutely crucial was that he wanted protection for private property. He recognized that there was a substantial difference between what some would construe to be public property and what would be properly termed as private property. Jefferson believed that respecting people's private property rights was absolutely fundamental in having a just society.

The stamp act to levy taxes upon American colonists was one of the reasons they had a revolutionary war. The government did not respect people's private property rights. It did not take into account that it had taxation without representation.

The bill before us goes against all the fundamental ideas. It goes against very Canadian ideas. One of the rationales for even having the other place, the Senate, in the first place was that it would serve as a protection for property. This House would serve the commoners and the Senate in a sense would be for the property owners. The Senate's job was to make sure those people were not overrun by mob rule. That was a basic understanding of the protection of private property rights.

Bill C-5 goes against that because it does not guarantee fair and reasonable compensation for property owners and resource users who suffer losses. That is absurd. The government will be able to shut people out of livelihoods and jobs without any type of fair compensation. People should not be forced to do so at the expense of their livelihoods.

This reminds me of another issue that is famously tied to the government. It has to do with the Canadian Wheat Board. Andy McMechan, a farmer who grew his own grain, wanted to sell it outside the monopoly of the Canadian Wheat Board. He was jailed for that. This farmer was put in shackles over that very issue. He was not allowed to dispose of his private property as he saw fit due to the regulation and the meddling.

What a perverse turnover of the whole idea of liberal democracy and the very term liberal when we think of where the Liberal Party started off at the turn of the century. The Liberals in Laurier's day stood for free trade. They did not stand for protectionism. They stood for the freedom of individuals. Yet 100 years later, almost Orwellian, Nineteen Eighty-Four in terms of the doublespeak, the Liberals are actually adamantly opposed to those things now. They are coming out against personal liberties and personal freedoms and are going after grabbing private property and not giving it due respect. It is such a perverse topsy-turvy relationship they have had with this issue.

There is a criminal liability aspect to this. Criminal liability requires that there actually be some form of intent. As I understand it, and this goes back to the Romans and Latin terms, there has to be an actus reus, being the action that is performed, and in this case for example it would be harming a species, but there also has to be mens rea. That is the difference between manslaughter and murder. There has to be mens rea, the mental intent, to have intended to do that harm.

In this case the government has totally ignored these traditions that have been established for 1,000 years.

[Golden Jubilee, February 6th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, today Canada and the entire Commonwealth will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the ascent to the throne of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

As only the second Canadian monarch to celebrate 50 years on the throne our congratulations must go out to her. Queen Elizabeth II has reigned as our monarch for half a century, a half century of tremendous change in the world and tremendous change in her dominions.

Throughout her reign Her Majesty has demonstrated the dignity and grace that the monarchy represents for Canadians. She stands for the peace, order and good government that many cherish as a strength of our nation. The stability which the monarchy brings to our nation is an effective safeguard and a welcome tradition.

We pay tribute to our great sovereign. May her reign continue for many years to come. God save the Queen.

[Editor's Note: Members rose and sang God Save the Queen]

[National Defence, February 1st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it reminds me of the Sea Kings.

The minister has let our veterans down again and again. From the merchant navy to the gulf war syndrome, the government has been doing everything it can to sweep our proud veterans under the rug.

The families of our soldiers are watching their loved ones go off to war. Will the government stand today and commit to veteran status for these troops?

[National Defence, February 1st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, men and women from across this great country are leaving today to help fight the war on terrorism. I would like to send my best wishes to them, but I also want to make sure that the government will not abandon these troops and their families when they get home.

Afghanistan is not classified as a war and we are not part of a UN peacekeeping mission. I ask the veterans affairs minister, will our troops receive the benefits and rights of veteran status after risking their lives in Kandahar?

[The Economy, December 10th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the Canadian dollar sunk to an all time low no less than five times in the last month. The burning question on the minds of Canadians is: How low can the Liberal loonie go?

Will the dollar have to drop all the way to 50 cents before the Liberals finally admit that their limping loonie needs a bit of a boost? If we believe our Prime Minister, the loonie cannot go low enough. For over three decades our Prime Minister has been spouting the same simplistic dime store wisdom that a low dollar is good for exports. Yes, exporting Canadians.

Canadian businesses do not need a low dollar to compete. They need a Prime Minister who understands the obvious. A strong dollar actually is good for Canadians. I would like to pass on a simple message to the driver of the loonie bus: “You are going the wrong way”.

[Canada Elections Act, December 4th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, what we are talking about here tonight is the idea of making our democracy more participatory. The member across the way has proposed a novel idea, that is, not only should people have the option of voting for any of a number of political parties or particular individuals on a ballot, but as well, as I understand his bill, they also would be allowed to have other options, for example, on a referendum question. Maybe that is indeed what he is aiming at more particularly with his bill. I applaud him on any of those initiatives.

What happens right now is that if I, or anyone else for that matter, vote in a federal election, I am allowed to choose among, let us say, five political parties. Maybe if I am lucky, in a given area I might have an independent or two on the ballot to allow me a half a dozen or so choices to decide from on election day.

However, right now in Canada I am not given the option to vote for none of the above. In other words, if I feel that all the political parties happen to have a particular world view or side a particular way on a given question or I am frankly frustrated by the electoral process in terms of how they go about their electoral business, I do not have any other options aside from political parties already participating in the system.

The idea of the bill is to allow people to go to the polls and check off none of the above, those people who right now feel disenfranchised, who do not feel comfortable going to the polls because they do not think they have a real choice on the ballot. The Liberal member across the way talked about spoiled ballots. That is not nearly as positive or as affirmative a statement as actually voting for none of the above.

As a result of that, I would argue that there have been parties in our political past like the Rhinoceros Party, for example, for which a lot of the people who voted would have enjoyed having an option on the ballot to say none of the above. I think a lot of the individuals who voted for, if you will, the underdog, or what some would call fringe parties, did so because they did not like the other established parties on the ballot. They did not like the status quo very much. They could have spoiled their ballots, but that is not nearly as positive or as indicative a statement as to vote for none of the above.

In other words, there is a clear distinction between voting for none of the above and spoiling a ballot. People who spoil a ballot are considered to be in the same category as those who do not understand voting instructions or maybe somehow cheat on the ballot and mark two options rather than one. As a result, I think that a lot of the time spoiled ballots are not even considered by politicians and political parties.

For example, if I am asked how many spoiled ballots there were in Calgary West in the last election I would be hard pressed to say exactly how many there were, because often we do not look at that as an indicator of how many people are frustrated with the system. Often we look at it as a number of people who, for any number of reasons, most likely filled out a ballot incorrectly, or we look at it as scrutineers for given political parties determining ballots to be invalid. That is what the number of spoiled ballots actually represents, not the people who took the time to go out to vote and intentionally spoil their ballots to indicate that they do not approve of the process.

I would say that there is a real marked difference between a spoiled ballot, which could be a ballot that someone just did not know how to fill out, filled out incorrectly or illegally filled out, and someone actually voting in a very constructive and demonstrative way to say that he or she is voting for none of the above. There is a marked difference.

There are other countries in the world that do experiment with their electoral system in a positive way.

I understand that Switzerland has a category for none of the above on its ballot. That allows people to go to the polls and cast their ballot. Switzerland has a lot of referendum questions that it poses to its citizens every election cycle. As a result, if the people do not agree with the wording of the question, they do not have to vote against the question, in other words vote to oppose the particular initiative. They can actually vote for none of the above on a given question. That would signify that they may have some interest in the issue, that they may not be definitely opposed to whatever the question is, or the issue that has been raised by the question, but that they are opposed to the wording of the question.

I would argue that in a Canadian context that could be incredibly important. We decided a constitutional package not that many years ago, the Charlottetown accord, by a national referendum. It had the highest amount of voter participation that I have seen in Canadian federal politics in quite some time. As I remember, it had over 80% turnout. I am hard pressed to think of other elections that had that high a turnout.

If people do not like the wording of a question for example with regard to secession or with regard to the constitution and the provinces and jurisdiction and powers, which are very sensitive and important questions, they should be able to demonstrate whether or not they think the question is a fair one. The populous should be able to demonstrate whether questions such as those are fair ones.

Merely asking a yes or no on a framed question will not allow the same degree of scrutiny and demonstration of opinion about the question that actually having three options would. In other words, if there is a question and people feel it has been framed, when they have an option to say none of the above, they can vote for it, they can vote against it or they can say neither of those two. They can say they did not like the wording of the question, that they are opposed to the framing of the question. That alone is a valuable reason for supporting this initiative.

It is a shame that we as members will not be voting on this bill. I am sure the member for Davenport shares my frustration. I am sure he put a lot of thought and hours into crafting this piece of legislation. It is a shame that it is not getting the will of the assembly here.

There could be five or six choices on the ballot and a choice for none of the above. If a plurality of the people decide that they do not like any of the options and they actually win, in other words if none of the above gets more votes than any of the other options for given parties, individuals, or a referendum question on the ballot, that is a very strong indication of the public's distaste for the question, for the political process or any number of things.

If the only thing that is exercised is yes, no and spoiled ballots, the will of the people to cast aside the wording of the question, the framing of the question, is not taken into account. Those spoiled ballots, for example, will never determine the final outcome of whether or not it passes or fails and meets the judgment of the people.

As a result, I would argue that the none of the above option, certainly if it wins, is a very strong and powerful indication that people are either not buying into the political process or they are not buying into the framing of the question. That is a crucial piece of information we should not be overlooking. We should not group those votes into spoiled ballots and say those people just did not know how to fill out a ballot.

Madam Speaker, as you are indicating that I am short on time, I will run through the rest of the reasons that I think this is a good bill.

The bill will encourage more people to participate. It is a better reflection of the electorate's mood. It is a way to build a better mousetrap, and frankly that is what this is all about. That is why I ran for election. That is why I was elected to this place. I thought we could build a better Canada. This is a way toward doing that. It is an improvement over the current system. I applaud the member for coming up with a new idea.

[Employment Equity Act, December 3rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I will start my speech today by saying that employment equity ought to be reviewed and it ought to be scrapped. Basically the Employment Equity Act was passed by the Mulroney government in 1986 and then strengthened by the Liberals in 1995.

It now has a process of its own. It has monetary penalties or taxes for non-compliance. It basically mandates preferential hiring in the federal public service and in federally regulated industries of people from four target groups: women, other aboriginals, visible minorities and the disabled.

For my party this happens to violate something we believe in which is equality of opportunity, not the idea of equality of result. Basically the government should hire on the basis of merit. Anything else actually hurts workplace morale. Making merit a secondary requirement reduces the overall excellence of the public service.

A Canadian Alliance government would repeal the Employment Equity Act, preserve programs ensuring equality of opportunity and competition on a level playing field but not the idea of equality of result.

The Employment Equity Act assumes that Canadians are unfair. It makes that assumption right off the bat. From there it goes on to say that people should discriminate in favour of someone which therefore requires that someone else has to be discriminated against. We cannot have discrimination in favour without also having discrimination against.

It is a travesty that this law was brought into effect in 1986. Then to create enforcement goons to police the law, levy taxes and penalize businesses that are regulated by the federal government because they are not meeting some sort of quota or target is draconian. It is one of the more top down things the government does.

The Public Service Employment Act governs all federal hiring. Section 44 of the act's regulations exempt employment equity programs from the merit requirement. Section 44 is kind of like a Catch-22 except it is twice as bad as it exempts the act from any type of merit requirement.

It would be one thing to say that this law is unfair, does not make much sense, is draconian, top down, bureaucratic and elitist, and I could go on, but it is absolutely unnecessary. According to the government's reports, in 1998 and 1999 both women and aboriginals were actually overrepresented in the public service. I will repeat that again because I want it to resonate for people. The act was implemented in 1986 and 12 years later government reports indicate that its target groups, women and aboriginals, were actually overrepresented in the public service.

The idea that we are to continue with an act, with the enforcement people and with taxing businesses that are regulated by the federal government in this regard is ludicrous. It makes no sense whatsoever. It is creating a government department for the purpose of creating jobs and getting revenue out of private sector regulated businesses. It is ridiculous.

Affirmative action is being challenged in many U.S. states. California abandoned it in 1996. I tip my hat to the Mike Harris government in Ontario which scrapped employment equity in December 1995.

The Liberal government across the way has a large chunk of its seats from Ontario. Yet the people of Ontario in 1995 voted overwhelmingly not for Lyn McLeod and her Liberal Party that supported this provision but for Mike Harris who boldly flew a banner of gold colours and said he would repeal the quota system that was set up by Bob Rae. The people of Ontario rejected the quota system.

The 1995 campaign was a referendum on this very issue. The people of Ontario, whom many of the Liberals across the way claim to represent, turfed this law. They got rid of it at the provincial level. The idea that the government would continue to promote a law that, according to surveys and election results its own electorate does not support when it is raised as a fundamental election issue, demonstrates how out of touch the government is on the whole aspect of employment equity.

I will go into specific examples of why the act is crazy and wrong-headed. I have a friend who wanted to become a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. This young fellow approached the RCMP and was told frankly there was no point of even applying because he did not fit the quota. He was not one of the target groups and might as well not even bother filling out the form.

Another example is of someone I knew personally who was determined and persistent. He went ahead, filled out the forms and went through the process. He was told that if he got 120 points or better on the examination he would make it to the next step in the process and would continue on the path toward becoming an RCMP officer.

Lo and behold, he wrote the test and got better than 120. He was told that if he got better than 120 that was good enough and he would move on in the process. Disturbingly he found out that was not the case. He was informed that his score was not high enough. He asked why that was since he was told that if he got more than 120 he would pass with flying colours. It was explained that it was a little more difficult than that. The officials did not want to shoot straight with him because they were embarrassed to admit the failure of their testing system and program.

He was persistent however and he followed up. He talked to four or five different individuals in the RCMP who transferred him back and forth on the phone. Finally he got to someone who was a straight shooter. This person told him that because of his demographics he required more than 130 to move on in the process of becoming an RCMP officer.

My friend asked if he had to get more than 130 to continue on in the process, what would someone else have to get to continue to move on in the process? Some of these target groups I mentioned only had to get 80. They could get less than two-thirds of what he got on the test. They were 65% less qualified than he was according to an objective test and they could continue to move on and be part of the process and eventually become RCMP officers.

However he was told that he had no chance of becoming an RCMP officer because of who he was, the way he looked, where he was born and who his parents were. This gentleman would have made a fine RCMP officer. He had good bearing, good judgment and the ability to go into tough situations and be able to perform the functions of an RCMP officer. I have known people who have served in the police force and I believe he would have been a fine choice.

It does not end with the police. The situation with employment equity, affirmative action or whatever the government chooses to call this form of discrimination goes on.

I happen to be involved with the military through the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs. I expect to see a fighting force when I look at what Canadians want and expect of the military. I expect it to be up to measure and up to snuff. Sometimes I expect it to be an elite fighting force as the airborne used to be before it was disbanded.

The Liberals got rid of the airborne citing politically incorrect reasons. Actually it was a funding issue over some of the things it did to the airborne. There was a health and cost issue in terms of the government paying for some of the things it put these soldiers through. Canadians want our armed forces to be the fittest, the strongest, the best they can be. There is nothing wrong with saying that people want the best, that they want the best person qualified for the job.

If I were wounded and hoping someone would come and take me to a position of safety away from enemy fire, I would want that person to be the fittest, the strongest, the best qualified, and the one who measured up on the merit tests to get to do that job. That is whom I would want saving my life.

Unfortunately that is not what happens with this act. It is all about what is politically expedient and what buys votes for the party in power. It is all about elitist notions of what it thinks is best. It is about a top down view of the world rather than a common sense guy on the front line with a bottom-up approach. Employment equity is about applying a bureaucratic, silly, wrong-headed measuring system to the real world.

I looked into the subject after I was elected in 1997. An enforcer, one of these goons or thugs who enforce the law, came around to my office. My office was known as one of the more politically correct ones in this place. The enforcer came to my office and said that she was on the hunt, that she was looking for more cases. Why is that? I cited how in 1998 and 1999 according to the government's own reports the job was done because it had overrepresentation in the public service of its target groups. These enforcers have not had a lot to do for the last few years.

This enforcer came to my office, sat down with me and my staff and asked whether we had any cases where people might have phoned in over the last little while, told us about anything that might be construed or considered in some way that she could open a case file. Can members believe that? She came to my office because the well was empty and she came up dry. Her to-do jar was done. She came to my office expecting that we would help her in finding either federally regulated industries or public service complaints where employment equity, despite the fact that the government had surpassed its own goals, had not gone far enough.

It was ludicrous that I had this individual, whom we were paying with our tax dollars, come to my office and say that she did not have enough work to do. She asked whether I happened to have referrals that I could give her. She requested to know if there was anybody who seemed to have their nose bent out of joint with regard to an employment equity case that had not gone far enough.

While she was there I thought there was no point in arguing with bureaucrats. They were only enforcing the law that the government passed, however wrong-headed it may have been. Nonetheless these people were only doing their job and I understood that. They were getting a salary and trying to figure out how they were going to make their retirement, pay their bills and put food on the table.

The nasty ones were the government members across the way. These members were the ones who issued these evil orders. They were the ones who sent these people out into workplaces saying that they had to find a monster out there. That was what they were being paid to do. We expect bureaucrats to top-down thumbscrew and implement this law. That is what these people across the way do.

This bureaucrat was in my office and I asked her to pretend I was in a federally regulated industry. I pretended to be in the transportation industry and running a private company that received a complaint from somewhere. The government thought I was not living up to the Employment Equity Act and had a misrepresentation by a few percentage points here or there of what it thought my workforce should look like.

It did not care about the qualifications or the merit based arguments. The bureaucrats looked at my workforce, analyzed it and determined that they did not like its make-up. There was 1% or 2% more here or there than what the government thought there should be.

I understand that government is allowed to mess up government as much as it wants, and that is a shame. Nonetheless I asked her what the government would do to me in that case, if I were that private business person. She flat out told me that it would be demanded. I said that it was my company and that I would not live up to the government's demand. I was the one who cut the cheques and paid the bills. She said that a tribunal would be held. I asked what would happen if I did not attend. She replied that it would be held in any event.

Then I asked what would happen with the tribunal. She said that it would go ahead and assess a fine. I asked what would happen if I did not pay that fine. She said appropriate forces would be used to seize my books and accounts to do what was necessary to extract the government's funds.

There are many other things the government could do. I would love to see the government recruiting more soldiers because we desperately need them, getting more magnetic resonance imagers or CAT scanners in Canadian hospitals because we are so far behind the Americans, and doing all sorts of useful and productive things.

Relatively speaking, all this would make intuitive sense even if the government were to expand our highway system and make sure that the $4 billion to $5 billion it took in per year in fuel taxes was going toward making sure we had good highway infrastructure, wider and safer roads, and a more lit Trans-Canada Highway. That is what I expect of government and is what works. That is what I want the government to deliver. If average Canadians were asked they would say so too.

Instead we have this perverse system that was set up in 1986 because a certain prime minister thought he would inoculate himself from attacks and look more like a caring, sharing, politically correct and sensitive kind of guy. Then the Liberals got in and made it even worse. They took it from the absurd to the truly absurd and far out ridiculous. There are bureaucrats marching around with orders to tamper with federally regulated businesses, the military or the RCMP. Their job is done. They have achieved and surpassed their targets.

For the last three years I have had bureaucrats come into my office asking if I could give them referrals for work out there. It is absolutely ridiculous that it has gone to this. The civil service hiring policy, whether it be for the RCMP, the military, Industry Canada or any number of the bureaucracies represented by too many ministers across the way, should be based on some common sense principles, on fiscal responsibility, on merit and on who is best qualified for the job. That is what we stand for.

The Liberals across the way love to come up with and push elitist notions. They hire bureaucrats who go into private sector businesses with their top down solutions. We are not just talking about the civil service. We are also talking about federally regulated businesses. These bureaucrats sit down with someone in a company, probably the human resources person, and they come up with some silly, absolutely whacked out federal government formula of an idea where they may tell the company that it has too many females as secretaries or that it has too many males as window washers. This is an example off the top of my head because I talked about it with the bureaucrat who came to my office.

They then go ahead with their political interference and meddle around in a private corporation, or even in the effectiveness of the bureaucracy of a given crown corporation or some other civil service job, and implement totally undemocratic ideas that the public itself would not support nor vote for in a referendum. It goes to show how out of touch the Liberals actually are. It makes no sense.

I will cap off my debate by reiterating some things for perhaps the people in the gallery or the people listening at home. The Employment Equity Act should be reviewed and, for my Liberal friend across the way, employment equity should be scrapped. In his own riding, I am sure a Tory was elected who thought that was a good idea.

It does not make any sense to ruin workplace morale by hiring people under these types of formulas when, according to the government's own figures, they were overrepresented according to the quotas and targets in the workplace. Why would the government persist with something that pits one person against another in earning a living and putting bread on the table? It does not make any sense whatsoever.

I would ask the Liberal heckler across the way to please review employment equity and see fit to scrap it. I am sure many people in his own riding may at some time like a job or at least the opportunity to apply for a job with the RCMP, the civil service or a federally regulated industry. I do not think they would want to be told that because of who their parents are they cannot have the job. It is not right and deep down the member knows that. I served with him on the citizenship and immigration committee and I think he knows this issue all too well.

I hope the Liberals will review employment equity and scrap it.

[Ed Whalen, December 3rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I want to express on behalf of this caucus and all members of the House our best wishes to Ed Whalen.

Yesterday in Florida, Ed suffered a massive coronary and is on life support in a hospital. His beloved wife Nomi is by his side and I know that Ed will derive great strength from her presence.

Ed Whalen has been a fixture on the sports and charity scene in Calgary for nearly a half century. It can be said that Ed gave more back to the community than he could have ever got in return. All community causes have gained something from his support. No matter how busy or how rushed he was, if somebody stopped to talk, he always found a bit of extra time to say hello.

Our thoughts, prayers and best wishes go out from this place at this time to Ed Whalen, to Nomi and his family and all their friends. To use one of Ed's favourite expressions, we hope Ed overcomes this “malfunction at the junction” and comes back home from Florida soon to continue his good deeds and good life as an outstanding Calgarian.

[Competition Act, December 3rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk about the amendments being proposed to the Competition Act. Section 96 of the act would be amended by adding the following after subsection (3):

(4) For the purpose of subsection (1), gains in efficiency cannot offset the effects of a lessening or prevention of competition unless the majority of the benefits derived or to be derived from such gains in efficiency are being or are likely to be passed on to customers within a reasonable time in the form of lower prices.

It goes on to talk about mergers and strengthening of dominant marketing positions. I would like to establish that as the basis upon which we will talk about this issue. It is funny that people within government are bringing forward ideas about competition and the Competition Act. I would like to mention some areas in which the government needs a little more competition. It directly pertains to gains in efficiency, prevention of competition, doing the right thing for the customers within a reasonable timeframe, lowering prices, and the whole idea of dominant market position. All these things factor into some of the stories I will tell.

We have the Canadian Wheat Board in western Canada. The government does not like competition with the wheat board and as a result it puts farmers like Andy McMechan in shackles. Rather than allowing farmers to sell their wheat of their own volition to whom they see fit, to operate outside the Canadian Wheat Board and thereby gain greater profits and seek higher prices for the grain they produce by the sweat of their brows, the government puts them in jail. That is ludicrous.

When the Canadian Wheat Board was initially set up it was ostensibly supposed to help farmer. Many farmers in western Canada are now asking to be cut free from this top down, bureaucratic and authoritarian institution. They want to be allowed to sell their grain as they see fit. They feel they can make more money and put more food on the table for their families. There are a lot of farmers in western Canada who might have been able to hang on to their farms despite the fact that wheat prices are not significantly higher today than they were during the great depression.

Many of these people would have been out of business a long time ago if it were not for economies of scale. They are losing their farms despite the fact that they produce wheat with modern farming machinery and wonderful tools at one of the more cost effective rates in the world. It is partly due to the Canadian Wheat Board.

Many farmers would be happy to grow wheat but they do not because they want to operate outside the totalitarian, top down institution that would jail them if they choose to grow wheat and sell it outside the wheat board. We should allow for some competition with regard to the wheat board.

The government across the way does not seem to be paying much attention but that is okay. I will go on to discuss Canada Post and maybe members will perk up.

In my home city of Calgary we used to have a service called T2P Overnight. T2P is the prefix of the postal code for downtown Calgary. T2P Overnight which was sometimes outside the public system for mail delivery used to deliver a standard letter overnight for 19 cents. That is quite a cost savings over what Canada Post charges. If it did not deliver the letter overnight it was free of charge. Can you imagine that, Mr. Speaker? I notice even you are nodding your head. You are quite impressed with that.

Businesses in downtown Calgary thought that was a great idea. They were saving money and they were guaranteed overnight delivery. If T2P Overnight did not get the mail there the next day, it was delivered free. No one could ask for much better than that. Maybe if we had allowed more competition to T2P Overnight we would have had less charges and better service.

However Canada Post and the government saw fit to enforce its monopoly on mail delivery. As a result, T2P Overnight was interfered with by the federal government. This local Calgary, Alberta, business, which was providing something more cheaply and more effectively than the federal government, was basically told that it had to shut its doors, that it was not allowed to do that.

It is not only the fact that the federal government goes ahead and tramples on the competition that is provided by the private sector, it even tramples on the competition that is provided by other levels of government.

Rather than pay Canada Post to deliver all its utility bills, the city of Calgary thought that if it were innovative and entrepreneurial it could save money for the taxpayers by hiring people to walk around eight hours a day as a flyer force of sorts to deliver the bills to the residents of the city of Calgary. It made some pretty good sense for the city to have its own delivery force. It would not have to be regulated or controlled by the federal government or, for that matter, by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. It probably would not have the same level of strike problems, which happen every two years, as we are all familiar with in this place. It would have saved the taxpayers a lot of money. It made sense on so many levels.

However the city of Calgary was challenged by the federal government, by the people across the way who read their newspapers today and try to ignore these things. As a result the city of Calgary had to pay out probably triple the amount of money to have the bills delivered through Canada Post when the other method would have been more effective.

It is interesting that the city of Calgary found that it actually had less problems with non-delivery of the mail by having it done by people for the city of Calgary. Nonetheless, the government did not see fit to allow for competition in Calgary.

It is not just that the federal government tramples on other levels of government. It is not just that it disallows private sector businesses to start up. The government goes even further than that. It will take something that already exists, for example, Federal Express or United Parcel Service, which provides perfectly fine private sector service to deliver courier packages across the country. The government saw fit, in what I will not even call its wisdom because it was frankly evil, to have Purolator Courier, an arm of Canada Post, compete with these private sector alternatives. Can anyone believe that?

Federal Express and United Parcel Service, and I could list all sorts of private sector couriers, do not have to compete with just the other private sector couriers, they have to compete with the federal government. The federal government uses Purolator Courier to compete against the other, already existing, private sector couriers in this country. It is crazy when we think about what the government does and yet the people across the way talk about competition.

I have even heard that the government uses the profits from Canada Post in terms of regular mail delivery to subsidize Purolator Courier to rob from Peter to pay Paul. It takes money out of taxes that UPS, FedEx, et cetera, pay to subsidize their competitor, Purolator Courier. It is crazy.

Air Canada is another example of where the government tinkered with the foreign ownership rules only after Canadian Airlines was basically allowed to collapse.

The final example is that of Petro-Canada. The government is so embarrassed about its size of market share in Alberta that it actually has Bronco Gas sell its gasoline in outlets that are other than Petro-Canada. It has 20% of taxpayer money propping up its crown corporation.

If the government really believes in competition, let it talk about the wheat board, Canada Post, Air Canada, Petro-Canada, and the list goes on.

Let freedom reign.