Scott Brison

[Government Spending, November 1st, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals have done it by swallowing themselves whole on the GST, as we learned here earlier today.

The fact is that Canadians have paid the price to balance the books, not this government. Before the government takes a walk down memory lane to the high spending 1970s, before the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance fuddle duddle with the surplus, why do we not give Canadians the tax break they need right now, reward them for the sacrifices they have made and give them some money back to put into their pockets?

[Government Spending, November 1st, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, when the current Prime Minister was the finance minister back in 1976 he said that 16% increases in spending reflected great restraint on new expenditures. The Prime Minister must be absolutely thrilled to see $47 billion being planned by the Department of Finance and other departments in new Liberal spending.

Are the tax and cut Liberals of the 1990s going back to the tax and spending Liberals of the 1970s?

[Banking, October 29th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the industry was a leader in Canada. Not only are Canadians losing their bank branches, they are also losing their investments.

Since the minister's bad decision on the bank mergers, Canadian bank shareholders have seen $7.2 billion less in shareholder value because of that decision. During that same period of time, U.S. bank shares have increased by 8%. Americans are getting richer and Canadians are getting poorer.

The fact is that 7.5 million Canadians own bank shares. Why has the Minister of Finance failed his first test of leadership in not defending the interests of 7.5 million Canadians?

[Banking, October 29th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, during the bank merger process, the Bank of Montreal and the Royal Bank made firm commitments on increasing the number of branches from 2,500 to 3,000 staffed branches. This week, the Bank of Montreal has announced that it will be closing 100 branches directly responding to the merger decision by the finance minister.

Having failed to use his power to defend the interests of Canadians, what will he do now to defend the interests of Canadians who are going to be losing their bank branches because of his bad decision?

[Supply, October 28th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, on the first question relative to the bank merger issue, our party was not in favour of bank mergers. We were in favour at that time of the Minister of Finance negotiating the best deal on behalf of Canadians. He had the opportunity to do that because the banks were willing to commit to 10% reductions in services charges, services to rural communities and branch openings and maintaining jobs with Canadian banks. Unfortunately the Minister of Finance blew that opportunity. He was so focused on the short term politics of the issue that he forgot about the long term interests of Canadians. That is the crux of that issue.

Relative to the crisis the government found itself in this summer on the airline industry and Canadian Airlines, I would suggest to the minister a more forward thinking and visionary approach over the past several years in restructuring the Canadian airlines industry in advance of this kind of crisis would have prevented this evolution of events.

[Supply, October 28th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, in 1982 I was not old enough to have a driver's licence. I do not remember the specific legislation. However, I have a great deal of respect for my hon. colleague, and I can say that the types of policies that governments implemented in 1982 and in fact in the 1970s were very different. I believe that even the Liberals realize that part of the reason is that we are operating in a global environment. We are dealing with many global realities which are quite different from those which existed in the 1970s and early 1980s.

It is very difficult for me to compare those two issues because I believe we are dealing with profoundly different global competitiveness issues today. What may have been appropriate then would probably not be appropriate now in a policy sense. It is also important to realize that Caisse de dépôt now owns 10% of Air Canada.

I hope at least in some form that is an answer for the hon. member.

[Supply, October 28th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak today on this very important issue. The future of the Canadian airlines industry is at stake and it is very important that we take this issue very seriously in the debate tonight.

The debate is about the 10% rule and that being the maximum that any one group can own of Air Canada. I am not defending the 10% rule. The issue before us should not be debated in the last stages of a negotiation period or in the last stages of a period during which the Competition Bureau has been suspended for at least one of the proposed mergers.

The 10% rule has inherently some flaws. It can help protect mediocre or even bad management. It can reduce shareholders equity and the competitiveness of a company. Potentially, there are even issues whereby the 10% rule could be seen as in violation of NAFTA seeing as the 10% rule was utilized in 1988 and apparently, if one reads the fine print, because of the fact that the privatization occurred before 1994 when NAFTA came into effect, this 10% rule may not be actually tenable under NAFTA. There are some real issues about the 10% rule.

The question is why are we not discussing the 10% rule and some of these other issues, including the cabotage issue, as part of the discussion of a general restructuring of the Canadian airline structure when we are not in the middle of a crisis? The difficulty here is that we always seem to get to a crisis position before we actually deal with some of the structural issues facing Canadians and the Canadian economy.

It is inappropriate to be trial ballooning significant changes in the nature or the structure of the Canadian airlines at such a difficult and heated time. We should have done this long before. I would argue that the suspension of the Competition Bureau's activities on the Onyx proposal should be considered an admission of failure by the government to lead and to actually provide some visionary restructuring to the Canadian airlines industry a lot sooner.

The fact that the Canadian airlines industry is having difficulty is nothing new. We have known this for a long time. In fact this government, which has been in power since 1993, has been aware of the challenges facing the Canadian airlines industry.

The consumers should not be asked to pay the price for the government's dilly-dallying, dithering and failure to address the major issues in a holistic, forward-thinking and visionary manner.

The minister stated in one of the papers I read this morning that he may be amenable to allowing foreigners to set up shop in Canada to provide Canadian based airline units with foreign-owned routes and servicing within Canada. Again, that is another issue that should be discussed when we are not in the heat of an airline crisis and in the heart of negotiations on at least two fronts now with two proposals.

We should have been discussing the 10% rule, the notion of cabotage and all these types of issues during a period of time when we were less rushed and when we were in less of a crisis environment.

Instead of this crisis management, knee-jerk reaction that the government is taking now, we could have actually provided a framework to the airline industry to allow restructuring to occur as opposed to having the airline industry and entities within the airlines industry, in this case Canadian and Air Canada, actually having to come up with proposals. The government is effectively cutting the suit to fit the cloth on this one. It is not really providing the structural framework that one expects from governments for the private sector to respond in a more long term and meaningful way.

The government's approach to the airlines is very similar to the government's approach on the bank merger issue. Members will remember that about a year ago we were very heavily ensconced in the debate on the bank mergers issue? The government had ignored, from 1993 forward, some of the structural reforms necessary in the financial services sector until, at one point or another, there were private sector proposals that forced the government to make a decision on those specific proposals. In this case and currently, we are focused in Canada not on the holistic nature of reforming and restructuring the Canadian airlines, we are focused on two specific mergers.

In the bank merger situation, the whole focus of Canadians, which should have been on restructuring the Canadian financial services sector to provide an industry that was more capable of competing globally and at the same time meeting the needs of Canadians, was suddenly focused on two specific merger proposals. Unfortunately, this is not, in my opinion, the right approach to develop public policy in the long term interests of the competitiveness of Canadian industry and in the long term interests of protecting Canadian consumers.

Since the government's merger decision in the financial services sector, we have seen some of the ramifications or repercussions of that decision. We have heard the Bank of Montreal announce layoffs of 1,400 workers in direct response to the merger decision. We have heard the Bank of Montreal announce that 100 branches will close. Members should keep in mind that one of the conditions that the banks had agreed to if the mergers were allowed was to maintain branch operations, to service all the rural communities currently being serviced and to maintain current levels of employment.

The finance minister, dealing with a crisis within his own leadership aspirations and trying to shore up support among the backbenchers, allowed for a Liberal caucus revolt. The Liberal caucus witch hunt on banks occurred. What we saw was an uprising within the Liberal backbenchers that effectively prevented a focus on public policy that would have been in the long term interests of the Canadian industry or in the long term interests of Canadian customers.

It is also important to realize that there has been a $7.2 billion loss in bank shareholder capital in Canada since that decision. During the same period in the U.S. there has been a 7.4% increase in shareholder value with U.S. banks. This is very important given that 7.5 million Canadians are bank shareholders, directly or indirectly.

We have seen 1,400 jobs lost just with one of the banks involved since then because of the merger decision. The Dominion Bond Rating Service has downgraded Canadian banks, directly attributing its decision to do that to the Minister of Finance's decision. There has been a loss of market capital and a compromising of the ability of Canadians to save and invest for their future, in many cases for their retirement, all because of that decision.

My concern is here we are again focused on specific merger proposals and not dealing with the issues in a long term revisionary way. It is in stark contrast to the previous Conservative government's vision and courage to tackle the real issues not just facing Canadians today or tomorrow, but facing Canadians in the next century.

This government would not have had the courage to pursue a free trade agreement. This government would not have had the courage or vision to implement a significant tax reform and some tax policies that were not popular but proved to be the right policies in the long term. I do not believe this government would have had the foresight and vision and courage to implement some of the deregulation policies in financial services, transportation and energy.

Instead, here we are again in the heat of merger discussions coming up with policies to try to deal with specific mergers proposed by the private sector, having failed to provide a long term approach before a crisis situation. The government's approach to this issue and most issues it faces is one of crisis management. It is a knee-jerk reaction. It is analogous to someone installing a sprinkler system while the house is on fire. It is simply no way to run a railway as one saying goes. It is no way to run an airline either, but it is also no way to run a government.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, October 21st, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member's questions. The difficulty in the limitation of this piece of legislation is that it is justice legislation which has to deal with the problem. Once it has gone too far preventive measures cannot be met.

In terms of lowering the age of accountability there are some reasons this is possibly a positive measure. The idea is not to punish or to incarcerate 10-year-olds. The fact is that in many urban settings organized crime is preying on young people and utilizing some as young as the age of 10 years to pursue crime because it realizes there is a loophole in the law by utilizing young people.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, October 21st, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question. He has been very articulate and vigilant in speaking passionately about the young people in poverty in Canada and the fact that typically in the House we do not really deal with some of the deeper issues which deal with that reality, as opposed to the perception.

In fairness to the government, this legislation deals with justice. It is very limited in terms of the scope it can take to address some of those issues. We need to spend more time pursuing some of the social and economic policies that can help reduce the poverty and dependence that can lead to it.

It was interesting that he mentioned the issue of natives and the penal system in Canada. The situation exists as well in the U.S. where there is a disproportionate percentage of visible minorities in the penal system. Part of what happens in both countries is a systemic racism that reduces opportunities for minorities. Then there are opportunities through archaic drug laws that create a loophole for people to make money.

If we look at the history of organized crime, or go back to prohibition, typically those who participated in organized crime were of an ethnic background that denied them opportunities in the mainstream. They sought opportunities where they could find them. In some cases those opportunities came to them because the government had laws that did not make sense, whether it was prohibition or the drug law.

Many people feel our current laws on recreational drugs may be particularly tough and do not reduce the usage of those drugs among young people. Instead they increase the number of young people who ultimately end up running afoul of the law. They may be decent people who get caught doing something that is a crime of mischief more than a crime of misanthropy and ultimately are penalized as hardened criminals.

There are a lot of issues to be discussed and I appreciate the hon. member's question.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, October 21st, 1999]

Madam Speaker, there will be no violence in the Progressive Conservative caucus. The New Democratic Party, in distancing itself from its previous policies of pacifism today in the House of Commons has surprised and shocked all of us. It is a sad day for democracy in Canada.

I am pleased to speak to Bill C-3, the youth criminal justice act. Canadians have been waiting for this very important piece of legislation for a long time. I hear regularly from people in my riding who are affected by and concerned about the current or previous act.

It is important for us when developing public policy to focus on reality and not simply perception. It is sometimes said that perception is reality, but sometimes reality is reality. Far too often in the House and in politics we focus public policy on the perceptions of a situation as opposed to the reality of the situation.

There is an increasing trend for governments and political parties to focus action, public policy and legislation on what the pollsters are telling them to do. Of course polls are based completely on public perception as opposed to reality. I am concerned that in doing so, sometimes we overlook the more significant and root causes of some of the problems we try to fix with very simple solutions.

American humorist H.L. Mencken once said that for every complex problem there is a simple, clean, precise solution that is wrong. Sometimes we in this House come up with some solutions that simply do not address the holistic and root causes of the problems we are trying to deal with.

I was pleased to hear the member from Kamloops speak of some of the root causes of youth crime. He linked youth crime to issues such as poverty. Crime is often very much linked to opportunity or lack thereof, and particularly lack thereof is linked very closely to poverty.

If we are going to deal with the issue of youth crime in a significant and long term way, we need to deal with some very important economic issues in Canada. In Canada there has been an 8% drop in personal disposable income since 1990. On the other hand, in the U.S. there has been a 10% increase in personal disposable income.

In Canada homes, the pressures being faced by both parents where there are two parents are significant. The pressures are even more significant in single parent situations. That parent is faced with trying to provide for the household, trying to provide an adequate level of income for the household, and at the same time is trying to be an effective parent by devoting not just quality time but the quantity of time necessary in raising children.

The difficulty I have with some of the band-aid approaches taken by this government is that far too often we are ignoring some of the real solutions. There are examples both in the U.S. and Canada of very successful headstart programs which have achieved a great deal.

The Fraser Mustard studies have demonstrated that $1 invested in a child in a high risk situation before the age of three can provide a return to society of $7 by the time the child is 30. That return is based on the savings to society on the police system, the judiciary, and in the worst case incarceration, social welfare expense, the expense of dealing with somebody who has fallen between the cracks.

The first three years are the most important years in a child's cognitive development. Ninety per cent of a child's cognitive adaptive skills actually close off after the age of three. It is ironic in dealing with perceptions as opposed to reality that those who develop public policy on the education front, particularly on the provincial side, tend to focus on higher education and on secondary and primary education and they tend to ignore an important area, the preschool area.

Quite possibly it is a step in the right direction for the government to indicate in the throne speech that there will be more generous EI benefits for new parents. That is a step in the right direction but again, it only addresses part of the problem.

Certain types of youth activities are important in providing a way for young people to meaningfully spend their time. Recreational activities such as hockey, softball, 4-H or scouts are all wonderful activities that come with a price. Any parent who has outfitted children in hockey in recent years will attest to this. For Canadians who have outfitted their children in sports gear, it is a very expensive pursuit. Whether it is registration in the leagues or buying equipment, there are barriers. Parents in many cases lack opportunity and adequate income levels and therefore children lack opportunities to pursue the types of self-actualization and important activities that can prevent them from pursuing crime.

I represent primarily a rural riding. Many of the studies on early intervention and headstart are focused on urban centres. The fact is that for rural poverty and urban poverty the demographics are strikingly similar. In many cases substance abuse, spousal abuse, child abuse, all these issues are linked very closely to poverty. I am not saying that is always the case, but living in a household with inadequate income certainly increases the pressures on parents and makes things awfully difficult.

If the government wanted to move in the right direction, it would increase the basic personal exemption for taxation to at least $10,000. Ideally it should be higher than that. It is ludicrous that we are taxing individuals making $7,500 per year which makes it even more difficult.

My colleague, the member of parliament for Shefford, has co-chaired the PC task force on poverty and has travelled throughout the country. I have travelled with her on some of those trips to speak with and learn from those most directly affected by poverty. The growth and pervasiveness of poverty in Canada has never been greater.

The member from Kamloops quite rightly identified the motion from 1989 to eradicate child poverty by the year 2000. Parliament's lackluster performance in meeting that motion indicates a focus on perception and not on reality.

We should be delivering on some of these things. The best way is to create more economic opportunities to provide Canadians with opportunities to succeed and prosper and thus provide Canadian children with an opportunity to actually break out of the poverty cycle.

The poverty cycle is important. There is a fine line between programs that benefit families and children and programs that create a cycle of dependency. It is important that we become more innovative in the types of social policy solutions we are seeking in preventing that cycle of dependency which can be so pervasive and deleterious in the long term.

Some elements of the legislation are very positive, such as those which deal with parental accountability. The notion of bringing parents into the courtrooms to deal directly with the questions of where they were at a particular time or why they had not taken a greater level of responsibility over the action of the child is very important. There has to be parental responsibility and that has been sadly lacking the past. It can help significantly if parents and family members play a role within a judicial framework in this regard. The bill addresses that to a certain extent. I think that is very positive.

I am concerned relative to the cost of implementation of the bill. It will be largely borne by the provinces. There has been a decline in the federal government's commitment to assist provinces to meet an increased burden on the judicial system. I am concerned about that. Since the 1993 election the burden on the provinces has been increasing for instance by reducing the CHST. The provinces have been offloading on municipalities. Ultimately there is one taxpayer. Ultimately provinces that are enjoying less economic growth at this time will be put in a very difficult situation to try to pay for some of the costs of compliance with some of the provisions of the legislation.

It is important that parents become more accountable. We are not suggesting that jailing parents would improve the situation, but we should recognize the importance of parents playing a role not just within the realm of a courtroom but on an ongoing basis.

I enjoyed the member from Kamloop's comments. One thing he mentioned was that in his study of the issue in his riding, many of the young people who were incarcerated or who were in various stages of rehabilitation had mentioned that the only thing that differentiated them from someone else or one of their peers was that they happened to get caught. I think there is a fair bit of truth to that.

I think there are a lot of young people who do end up running afoul of the law but are not of a criminal bent. These young people will do what young people sometimes do because of the intrinsic sense of mischief that exists. It is very important that we find ways to identify those people and find ways to deal with them relative to the crimes they have committed as opposed to those who actually demonstrate sociopathic tendencies and are capable of far greater crimes.

The opportunity to rehabilitate someone who has committed a crime of mischief or an aberrational offence will be far greater than it will be for someone who has more of a psychological profile of a criminal.

It is also important that we work with parents in a preventative sense and in a more holistic sense. We need to identify and assist parents in developing the types of parenting skills that are necessary.

I happen to believe that provinces are, in many cases, better at some of the preventative remedies than the federal government. Part of that involves constitutional and jurisdictional boundaries, but the provinces would be far closer to the actual situations, particularly in terms of strategic social investment, than the federal government would be.

One example of a program that I think has great potential is one that the provincial government in Ontario has been working on. Dr. Fraser Mustard co-chaired a study on early childhood intervention and headstart. I believe we will see the province of Ontario pursue a policy of headstart and early intervention. I hope that as part of that policy we will seek to identify some of the situational commonalities between those that ultimately end up falling afoul of the law. I think we will find significant overlap.

That links very closely to economic factors and opportunities. It is difficult enough for parents who have a relatively good income to raise children. It is an increasingly complicated, difficult and challenging world. For parents who do not have adequate income and do not have economic opportunities, it is evermore difficult.

We must be extremely careful to balance social policy and economic policy. We must recognize that while all of us probably agree on the end, some of us differ on the means to get there. We use the justice system to deal with our young people as a way to deal with those people who have fallen through the cracks, but ultimately, this place and all the provincial legislatures in the country should actually be preventing and reducing the number of young people who do end up falling through the cracks. We would all be better served by that. It would involve dealing with the realities of the situation and the root of the problem.

One of the best headstart programs in a Canadian context operates out of Moncton, New Brunswick. The Minister of Labour spent a great deal of her life working on building that headstart program and deserves credit for her contribution to Moncton and to Canada. I am certain that program has resulted in significant change to the lives of those children who have gone through that headstart program. Goodness knows how many young people have had their lives and directions changed based on participation in that program. How many parents are now proud of their children and the young people they have raised partially because of the assistance of that program?

It is very important that we take a look at not just examples of headstart and early intervention programs in Canada but also examples that exist around the world, particularly in inner city communities in the U.S. that have pursued some of these things.

It is also important to create a culture of responsibility through the education systems in Canada. This can be difficult because the justice system is largely federal and youth criminal justice is a piece of federal legislation. However, we are dealing with a problem that emanates, to a certain extent, from education and could potentially be ameliorated, diverted or improved by a better educational focus on areas of responsibility. There is a requirement for better provincial and federal co-operation in some of these areas to ensure that, across the country, provinces are pursuing education systems that teach a little bit about responsibility.

How about citizenship? I continually hear from constituents that there is very little today to teach young people about citizenship. They talk about the importance of not just responsibility to one's family and one's friends but of responsibility to the country and of trying to devote some of our young people's incredible amount of energy to build a better community and a better country?

These are all things that can be achieved if there is a co-operative effort to deal with the realities and the root causes of the problem and not always with the big stick approach at the end.

While we are pleased that the government has gone a ways toward improving the youth criminal justice with this legislation, we are not satisfied that it has gone far enough in certain areas. On the real root causes of the problem, we do not think that the government has really done an adequate job of approaching those issues. There are members opposite who will point to specific programs designed to benefit children, but Canadians need the types of programs that provide for a culture of opportunity that would benefit all Canadian families, including children.