Scott Reid

[Supply, May 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, not only is there a problem of neglect but the Prime Minister on a number of occasions has made remarks that could not conceivably have gone over well with the White House. In particular he expressed his preferences as to who would win the presidential election last year. When we think of something that would exclude one from the inner circle that does get access to the United States president, probably suggesting that he should have lost the election at the time when there was a national constitutional crisis would have been just about the worst possible item to choose.

[Supply, May 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is speaking to the government's overall neglect of its primary duties, particularly in dealing with international trade wars.

If the Prime Minister is in Rome today rubbing shoulders with the president of France I hope he will not neglect to raise the issue of European Union crop subsidies. France is a key player. However I am not aware that it is part of his agenda.

The issue of international trade subsidies and barriers against Canadian products has not only been neglected by the Prime Minister. It is more widespread. The American political system is focused on overt and aggressive lobbying.

I will return to the issue of red cedar. While there is a strong lobby from certain lumber producing states, mainly western states and some states in the south, there is an equally strong lobby in favour of free trade which Canada could tap into. The United States has a powerful construction industry. Some people are concerned for health reasons about using pressure treated lumber for decks and other things. It is an issue close to my heart because pressure treated lumber contains arsenic and could have health effects. Cedar is a perfect replacement. There was a strong movement in the United States to exclude cedar from its overall softwood lumber tariffs and import restrictions.

I am quite confident that by working with our friends in the United States we could have found a way to do something beneficial for urban and suburban Americans, people building houses, and people looking for more reasonable housing costs to cause the adjustment to occur. Instead our producers face a tariff of over 20% on their cedar exports. It is doing damage to a number of producers in this part of Ontario and across the country. It is costing Canadians jobs.

[Supply, May 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the motion today deals with two issues over which we are embroiled in a trade dispute with the United States. First, it addresses the issue of softwood lumber. Second, it addresses agricultural subsidies.

I will address primarily the second issue because there is little softwood production in my riding of Lanark--Carleton. We have some hardwood production. A bit of softwood is produced coincidentally to that, particularly pine as the hardwood is collected. Two local producers, Umpherson's in Polland and Lanark Cedar, produce some softwood. However softwood is not a large industry in my neck of the woods whereas agriculture is a substantial product in Lanark--Carleton and all of eastern Ontario. It is one of the pillars of the local economy.

People may not realize it, but the House of Commons is at the centre of the most agricultural city in the entire country, a city I am proud to in part represent in parliament. More than 10,000 jobs in Ottawa alone are tied to the agricultural sector. Total production in rural parts of the city is worth $402 million according to an agricultural impact study produced in December, 2000. That is $402 million from one city alone.

Ottawa is only a fraction of Ontario. Ontario is only a fraction of Canada. This is a major Canadian industry. It is absolutely critical to the success of not merely part of the economy and those directly employed in agriculture. It is critical to the success of all of us. My riding extends into Lanark county. In Lanark and Renfrew counties outside the boundaries of the city of Ottawa there are over 7,000 jobs in the agricultural sector. That represents over 9% of all jobs and $240 million.

Agriculture in Canada faces three problems today. First, there is a long term trend toward mechanization, increased efficiency, increased productiveness and hence agricultural consolidation. There has therefore been a decrease in the number of farms and people employed directly in the agricultural industry. However there has been no decrease in production or productivity which continues to go up.

The decrease in the number of farms is due to increased efficiency. It has had an impact. By far the majority of low efficiency, low productivity farms and farmers have been forced out. Some were forced out decades ago. The people left in the agricultural sector tend to be highly efficient, highly organized and entrepreneurial.

Second, periodic agricultural crises have been caused by weather. Like skiing, entertainment, summer festivals and a number of other industries, agriculture is an industry for which weather is crucial. Sometimes people complain when I raise the legitimate concerns farmers have regarding weather. They say farmers whine a lot. If urban people listened to people in industries and businesses a bit closer to their homes they would realize they complain as much as farmers. However for farmers several years of bad weather in a row or a year of drought followed by a year of very wet weather can be a life or death matter. Something like that has happened in eastern Ontario over the last couple of years.

Third, the artificial crisis caused by the trade war between the European Union and the United States, an enormous international drama in which we are a mere bit player, is driving agricultural prices far below production prices. The devastation this is causing our agriculture industry will get worse. The worldwide crisis existed prior to the latest U.S. farm bill thanks to the unwise agricultural subsidy practices of these two great powers of the agricultural world. However the results of the farm bill will increase the impact dramatically.

Small players like Canada, Australia, New Zealand or Uruguay depend on agricultural industries but are small in comparison to the enormous production of the United States and Europe. They are facing tough times. I will try to give members an idea of how huge the production is. Although we do not think of France as an agricultural country and particularly not as a wheat growing country it nonetheless produces roughly as much wheat as Canada although admittedly not of the same quality. Our farmers have attempted as much as possible to differentiate ourselves from the bulk product produced in France. Nonetheless the huge productivity in France, subsidized by local governments, is having a tremendous impact.

The state of Kansas alone roughly equals and may exceed total Canadian production of wheat. One could find similar results in different sectors. It makes it difficult for our farmers to compete when the two enormous players start greasing up their subsidies.

Notwithstanding these factors Canada has the most efficient farming industry in the world. Although it has been a struggle we have been able to compete despite enormous subsidies elsewhere. I am sure the number has been quoted earlier in the debate but Canadian wheat producers get approximately 17% of their income in the form of government subsidies and protection. For American farmers it is 49%. For wheat farmers in the European Union it is 43%. This goes a long way toward explaining why the French produce so much wheat instead of some other product which is more naturally suited to their high intensity land.

In the face of this kind of competition and subsidy our farmers have tried to be innovative. Many Canadian farmers have changed to pulse crops, abandoning traditional and highly subsidized products in which it was becoming impossible for even the most efficient to compete. This has occurred in wide swaths of the country but particularly in eastern Ontario. To make the point I will quote the agricultural impact study I cited earlier. It states:

Growth associated with the field crop sector [in Ottawa] has been centred around increases in farms producing soybeans. Production in soybeans increased from 3,500 acres in 1986 to 20,000 acres in 1996.

The change does not occur cost free. To make the switch farmers must acquire the appropriate knowledge and supplies and sell to the appropriate persons. Sometimes equipment changes are necessary. Under the new U.S. farm bill they then get hit by an expansion of American subsidies to cover the products they had moved into to sidestep the subsidy war.

I have a background in the retail sector. It is a bit like being the local corner store when Wal-Mart gets into a battle with Loblaws over the price of toothpaste. When the local store tries to move into something else they focus on that. They are not concerned with whether they make a profit in the area. It is about predatory pricing. They are concerned with putting the local store out of the market.

Our farmers do the best they can to move out of the market and become the world's leaders in pulse crops. What happens? They get hit by American subsidies and are devastated. They get hit at a time when it is not possible to change their plans for the upcoming year. Having done everything right and become the world's leading exporters in crops like peas and lentils, some of our most efficient producers find themselves being driven out of business. Our government has been engaging in inadequate efforts to exclude from American subsidies certain Canadian crops and products that are peripheral to the ongoing trade wars. Pulse crops are a key example.

Moving back to softwood, an area I mentioned earlier is red cedar. With more effective lobbying of the United States we could have excluded red cedar from the trade bill. There was discussion of excluding it. A lobby in the United States was allied with us. With more effective efforts on our part we could have worked with our allies in the United States and excluded red cedar. It was not done. It is symptomatic of the failure of the government to be more effective in protecting our lumber producers.

[Government Contracts, May 24th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I guess we are going to be really well served now because the government's latest bid to foster national unity through advertising involved spending $2.1 million to run the names of 15 federal agencies in the credits for a TV mini-series. Even the intergovernmental affairs minister admits that this kind of advertising does nothing to promote Canada in Quebec.

Here is a thought. On the theory that Quebecers might find it more enticing to belong to a federation in which government is open and transparent than one in which it rewards its friends and hides the evidence, why would the government not cease all sponsorship spending pending the outcome of the auditor general's investigation?

[Government Contracts, May 24th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Prime Minister tried to wrap his government's advertising contracts in the mantle of national unity. He presented a list of seven initiatives his government has taken since the referendum of 1995 to promote national unity. The final item on this list was his government's unity advertising campaign, in which Liberal Party donors were given untendered contracts.

I think we can all recognize that this item has nothing to do with national unity and everything to do with rewards for Liberal contributors, but I would love to hear the Prime Minister set me straight.

What exactly is it about cronyism, favouritism and overspending that promotes national unity?

[Question No. 129, May 1st, 2002]

What is the budget of the support fund allocated to the two national human resources development committees, and what is the mandate of both the support fund and the committees in question?

[Question No. 124—, April 24th, 2002]

What were the translation costs associated with the production of the report entitled “Canadian Environmental Asssessment Act, CEAA, Screening Report for the OMYA (Canada) Inc.--Tay River Water Intake Project”, dated March 2002 and disseminated by habitat chief, Ontario-Great Lakes area, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Edwin R. DeBruyn?

[National Horse of Canada Act, April 22nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I too am speaking in support of Bill S-22, recognizing the Canadien horse as the national horse of Canada.

I will divide my brief remarks into four sections: first, Senate bills and how they ought to be treated in the House; second, the value of symbols; third, the question of whether the Canadien horse is the appropriate breed, considering the claims of rival breeds to be the national horse of Canada; and finally, some of the reasons why the Canadien horse deserves to be our national breed and to be recognized as such.

I will begin with the first question. Some have been arguing, and this was discussed in the Hill Times a few issues back, whether Senate bills ought to be debated in the House and passed through this House when we face a situation in which private members' business and private members' bills are increasingly being shut down in the House.

There is a serious problem with private members' bills originating in the House being unable to go forward for a variety of reasons. It originates with the unwillingness of the government to allow backbenchers of all parties to put forward bills on various subjects that are of importance to their constituents. Unfortunately, one of the few ways that such bills can go forward is by originating in the Senate, which does not have the same degree of control from the government. For that reason the bill should not be rejected or considered on anything other than its merits as a bill in the House. That is really all that has to be said on that subject.

Really, a bill is a bill. The founders of our country were concerned about the nature of bills that could originate in the Senate. That is why they put restrictions in our constitution. Money bills, for example, cannot originate in the Senate. We ought to be respectful of their wishes and say that when a bill is not a money bill, it is just as legitimate when it originates in the Senate as it is when it originates here. We ought to seek to correct the problem of too much restriction of private members' business by dealing with the rules of this House and the behaviour of the committees of this House rather than through any other approach.

I turn to the question of the value of symbols. Some would argue that we ought not to be worrying about whether or not we have a national horse. I disagree with this.

Members should consider the symbols that we do have. We have a national animal, the beaver. There was a time when that might have seemed silly, but that is a unifying symbol. It relates to our history. The beaver has a prominent role in our history, both in New France and then through the Hudson's Bay Company, the Northwest Company and the settlement of the west.

Similarly we have a national leaf, the maple leaf. The maple tree is not endemic to Canada, but Canadians travelling overseas who see other persons with a maple leaf on their backpack know that they are fellow Canadians and feel an immediate sense of commonality and comradery with other Canadians. I do not think any Canadian did not feel proud watching our athletes marching into the stadium at Salt Lake City, wearing the maple leaf on their jackets. That is a unifying symbol even though it is not endemic to the entire country.

Third, we have a national song. O Canada originated specifically as a song that was relative purely to Quebec. Times have changed and it is now a unifying symbol for all of Canada. All of us again felt our hearts swell when we saw the Canadian flag, the maple leaf, raised in Salt Lake City and O Canada being played.

Finally, we have a national holiday so I do not see why a national horse would necessarily not fit into that pattern very nicely. I suggest this adds to the richness of our symbols. The greater the breadth of the symbols that unify us, the greater is our national unity.

I wish to deal with the question of rival breeds, other horses that could potentially be considered national horses for Canada. There are only two other breeds that originated in Canada: the Newfoundland pony and the Sable Island pony. Both have their origins here. Of course, neither of them could be considered to be geographically widely spread, particularly the Sable Island pony, notwithstanding its widespread fame. The Sable Island pony is not a formally registered breed whereas the Canadien horse is a formally registered breed. It is the only formally registered breed that has its origin in Canada. This is a good argument in favour of considering it our national horse.

It has been suggested that the mustang should be Canada's national horse. The mustang's formal name is the American mustang, and its endemic range after it was released from its ancestors, the Spaniards in the 1500s, was primarily in Mexico and the American southwest. Canada, especially the Canadian prairies, is simply too cold for the mustang to survive outside of having human care. It would be a poor choice as Canada's national horse.

Interestingly enough the mustang is partly derived from the Canadien horse. In the 1860s many Canadien horses used by both sides in the American Civil War escaped and the gene stock of the American mustang now contains the blood of the Canadien horse among its other components.

This is true of a number of American breeds including the Morgan, the Tennessee Walker, the American Saddlebred, the Missouri Fox Trotter and the standard breed. All of them have some ancestry from the Canadien horse. That is an argument not in favour of including any of them as our national horse. However the Canadien horse has had a tremendous influence and therefore does us proud as a nation.

I would like to say a few words in praise of the Canadien horse and its merits. The Canadien horse was introduced in New France in 1665 during the reign of Louis XIV. In contrast to the many other popular breeds in Canada such as the American Saddlebred, the standard breed, the Morgan, the American quarter horse and the Appaloosa that originated in the United States, the Canadien horse originated solely within Canada. By its physiology it is a horse well suited to Canada. It is physically a strong horse. It is not a large horse, but its compact size helps it to survive in cold weather. It is resilient and strong, thus the nickname, the little iron horse.

To give a sense of the natural hardiness of this horse I would like to read from a letter that was received by my constituency office. It is from an individual who owns some Canadien horses. It states:

Besides my two Canadien horses, I also have two American quarter horses. My two quarter horses have had numerous health and lameness troubles in the past year. They are kept in the same pasture as my Canadiens, who have not had so much as a scratch or a runny nose. My two Canadiens are fat and sassy on a minimum of feed. My quarter horses require a great deal of grain to keep their weight at a decent level.

I am not a horse owner myself but I do appreciate the good nature of the Canadien horse because my parents are involved with horses. They run a therapeutic riding stable south of Ottawa, and a good natured horse is absolutely essential to therapeutic riding for persons, particularly children, suffering from either physical or mental disabilities who gain benefits from the interaction with the horse and from knowing that horse will be well-behaved, gentle and considerate toward them. The relationship they form with the horse is every bit as important as the physical therapy they get from riding the horse.

I have breeders in my own constituency. I had the great pleasure last December of riding in a carriage pulled by two beautiful Canadien horses around the town of Pakenham, the centre for the breeding of the Canadien horse.

I would like to conclude with another passage from a letter I received in my constituency office explaining why one Canadian feels we ought to honour the horse. It states:

We should honour the Canadien Horse, who has earned the right to be called Canada's National Horse. The Canadien Horse truly represents what the residents of Canada should strive to be--strong, intelligent, noble, honest, hard working, and true to its roots. The Canadien is resistant to disease and cold, and lameness is practically unheard of. After all, none of us are native to North America, but rather, we all descend from immigrants of other countries, who came here, adapted, multiplied, and produced the many great residents of our nation. What breed to better represent our history, than one who has done the same?

[Ernie Eves, April 15th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the new premier of Ontario, the hon. Ernie Eves. Mr. Eves is today being sworn in as Ontario's 23rd premier.

Mr. Eves was first elected to the provincial legislature in 1981. His first victory was a cliffhanger. It was decided by a six vote margin. Nonetheless, his reputation for competence and dedication spread and he served his Parry Sound constituents with distinction and with ever growing pluralities at the polls for the next 20 years.

In 1995 Ernie Eves became finance minister of a province which had been left by 10 years of Liberal and NDP mismanagement with an annual deficit in excess of $10 billion. Combining the bulldog determination and the deft touch that are his trademark, he balanced the province's books while delivering on the Common Sense Revolution pledge of a 30% tax cut.

Ontarians look to their new premier full of confidence in his leadership skills. Under his leadership our province will be an example to all of Canada.

[Pest Control Products Act, April 15th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the hon. member about the comments he made with regard to children suffering from asthma who may or may not have been affected by pesticides, causing them to have a higher incidence of asthma. He made reference to children lining up to use their puffers at local hockey games and so on. I am an asthma sufferer myself and have been since a very early age.

While he is quite right to note that the incidence of asthma has been growing over time in Canada and in a number of other countries, there is no confirmation that the source of this problem is necessarily pesticides. For example, I have heard the argument presented that the widespread use of childhood inoculations may in fact be the thing that causes that recessive tendency toward asthma to be triggered. There may be other pollutants in the atmosphere. I note in particular that one of the curious things that has gone on over time is that as the amount of pollution in the atmosphere has gone down we have seen the incidence of asthma go up.

I am wondering in particular if he is aware of any science which would indicate that in areas of the world or in this country where there is a greater exposure to pesticides it is resulting in a greater local incidence of asthma among children than in other areas of the country. That would seem to be the best way of testing this hypothesis.