Scott Reid

[Supply, February 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the member made a minor factual error when he cited the number of countries of large geographical size in the world that have the first past the post system. He mentioned two of the top three. Russia and China are both larger than the United States. Therefore, strictly speaking, it is two of the top four.

Leaving that aside, he also made the observation that it is difficult to maintain the unity of a continent sized country, such as Canada or the United States, without a first past the post system. I would dispute that and then invite his comments upon the observation.

Australia, where I lived for several years, does not have a first past the post system. It has a single transferable ballot at the level of the house of representatives, its equivalent to our House of Commons. The Australian system has not created any form of disunity.

At the level of its senate, Australia has a system in which each of its six states has 12 senators. The senators are elected through a form of multiple voting in which each elector gets to choose 12 candidates from a list which can have, depending upon the state, as many as 100 or more candidates for office.

Some problems can be pointed out in the Australian system, which I will return to later in the debate, but it causes no national unity problem.

The first past the post system has had splendid success in other countries. However, we should consider our unity problems, the current ones, as well as the more spectacular conflicts of the late 1970s and the early 1980s when there were only two Liberal members west of the Ontario-Manitoba boundary and only two Conservative members between 1979 and 1980 in Quebec. We see therefore that the first past the post system has served our national unity very poorly indeed.

The United States is one of the most spectacular failures of national unity in the world. Its first past the post system ensured that the democrats would dominate the south prior to the civil war and that a variety of parties, first the whigs and then the republicans, would dominate the north. That was one of the primary reasons for the tremendous split in the U.S. congress, and particularly in its senate, which was one of the fundamental reasons for its civil war.

In looking at the spectacular record of failure, would the member be willing to consider the possibility that there are alternatives that perhaps create a superior sense of national unity in large, ethnically diverse and geographically dispersed countries such as Canada, Australia or the United States?

[Intergovernmental Affairs, February 19th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. Deputy Prime Minister for that spectacularly irrelevant response.

During the election Alice Farness, a Liberal candidate, threatened Saskatchewan farmers that they would get no help from Ottawa if they did not vote Liberal. So far, the government has done a spectacularly good job at following through on this election promise.

For example, last week the intergovernmental affairs minister went all the way west to the University of Toronto Law School to remind western Canadians that the policy of tough love is still in effect.

The minister has not even hinted at repudiating Mrs. Farness' comments. Will he do so now or does he think they are legitimate? Are they policy?

[Intergovernmental Affairs, February 19th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, last week the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs stated that the leader of my party and the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party were promoting blackmail by western separatists.

I have to assume that the minister's words mean that he feels that it is never acceptable for any Canadian from any region to suggest that their region could get a better deal from Ottawa by negotiating with a knife at the throat. I applaud that sentiment. That is why our leader has said “any discussion of separatism is absolutely untenable”.

Now we learn from the minister that he will not be going to Alberta during his upcoming tour. How will this exclusion of Albertans make them feel more included?

[Water Contamination, February 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, this answer will bring little comfort to families in Shannon.

The Liberal government is quick to criticize others, but slow to recognize its own mistakes.

Could the minister at least tell us what are the possible dangers for the population of Shannon and what measures the minister intends to put in place proactively in order to ensure the health and security of the people of that town?

[Water Contamination, February 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, for some time now, families in Shannon, near Quebec City, have been having serious water contamination problems.

This morning, on the front page of the daily Le Soleil , these families could read that the Department of National Defence has had a report since 1998 detailing water problems in this area. And since 1998, nothing was done by the department.

Why has the department kept this report secret?

[Ethics Counsellor, February 14th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians want to make sure that government appointments and government programs are equally available to all Canadians in all provinces.

Does the industry minister consider it fair or ethical that the Prime Minister could interfere with the Business Development Bank, with the immigrant investor fund or with any other organization to direct funds for his personal benefit?

[Ethics Counsellor, February 14th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, several days ago the ethics counsellor stated that the Prime Minister's shares in the Shawinigan golf course were not in a blind trust.

Why then did the industry minister publicly state that those shares were in a blind trust?

[Ethics Counsellor, February 9th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the weakness of the ethics counsellor highlights the ethical weakness of the government.

First the ethics counsellor is forced to exonerate the Prime Minister's inappropriate behaviour, and only when the Prime Minister is ready is the ethics counsellor now allowed to discuss changing the rules.

When will the government create an independent ethics commissioner, like the provinces already have, who can demand a higher standard of behaviour from the Prime Minister and the government?

[Ethics Counsellor, February 9th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, let us go over the facts again. The Prime Minister pressured the president of the Business Development Bank, a man directly dependent upon him for his job, to give a loan to a hotel next to a golf course in which the Prime Minister held an interest.

This is clearly inappropriate. The Prime Minister insists he did nothing wrong, even though the ethics counsellor now says the rules must be changed. Why did the Prime Minister still not recognize that what he was doing was in fact wrong?

[Speech From The Throne, February 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member, whose riding adjoins my own, for his questions and his comments.

When it comes to the question of federal transfers and the use of tax points and tax rooms, it is not a new innovation of my party, nor is it something on which we stand alone. This approach has been suggested by the Quebec Liberal Party in its recent report. The so-called six wise men in Alberta have also suggested it in their recent proposal. It is in fact a long standing proposal of various parties within Quebec. The Ontario government has expressed an interest as well.

When we look at Premier Hamm of Nova Scotia and his comments on the need to change the equalization formula, certainly the idea of using tax points is compatible with that.

A broad based consensus is evolving and emerging in opposition to the Liberal Party and the government which basically holds that there is an effective way within our own system of dealing with the fact that there is a fiscal imbalance between the revenue raising abilities of the federal government and the spending needs of the provinces.

He raised questions with regard to the manner in which the Fathers of Confederation saw our country and the question of disallowance and reservation. I am surprised, in all honesty, that anybody at this time would want to defend the powers of disallowance or reservation. The power of disallowance was most recently used in the 1930s and conventionally speaking is no longer regarded to be acceptable.

The power of reservation, if I am not mistaken, was used most recently in 1961 by the lieutenant-governor of Saskatchewan. He was either dismissed or at least reprimanded for attempting to use it. Both of these are constitutional provisions which have fallen into disuse.

With regard to the original intention of those constitutional provisions, we may recall that when Canada was founded it was not an independent country at all. Nor did the Fathers of Confederation want it to be an independent country. The debates that took place in the predecessor to this Chamber over the provisions of Confederation are full of strong emphases on just how we do not want to be an independent country. We want to be part of the British empire. We want to be in the position of a protectorate of what was regarded at that time as the freest and greatest assemblage of people in the world.