Scott Reid

[First Nations Governance Act, June 3rd, 2003]

Madam Speaker, last month I rose in the House to ask a very important question on the subject of cross-border trade with the United States. More particularly, I asked about the effects that a possible requirement for 24 hour notice before crossing the border would have on such sectors as the auto sector. The answer that I received from the minister was unsatisfactory and so here I am this evening, in search of a more thoughtful response.

Given recent events in our country's agricultural sector, I would like to shift my focus slightly to another even more troubling new barrier to trade and to examine the effects that the closing of the Canada-U.S. border to Canadian beef as a result of the BSE scare are starting to have on this important industry.

We all understand the ripple effects that occur when unanticipated trade restraints are imposed on important export industries. If the borders with the United States, our most important trading partner, are to be closed to Canadian beef, this will have widespread implications throughout our economy. And contrary to what the urban focused Liberal government might think, this is not a problem that will affect only the rural west.

Although it is true that Canada's one and only confirmed case of BSE took place in Alberta, beef farming is a crucial part of the rural economy right here in eastern Ontario. In the rural parts of the amalgamated city of Ottawa, beef farms are the most numerous type of farm enterprise. In Ottawa, nearly 600 businesses serve these operations, thereby creating over 3,500 jobs. Similarly, in Lanark and Renfrew counties, nearly 9% of all jobs are tied to the agriculture sector and over $240 million is generated every year by businesses that buy from and sell to farms. In the Ottawa Valley, even more than in Ottawa itself, beef farms greatly outnumber any other type of farm. Therefore, the effects of a prolonged closure of the U.S. border to Canadian beef could be particularly devastating to rural eastern Ontario.

It is not just farmers who are being hurt. It is the truck drivers who would have taken cattle to market. It is the people who find their employment at the local sale barn, where sales volumes are down dramatically. It is all the people in the agricultural support industries to whom the government is showing spectacular insensitivity.

Eastern Ontario is a part of the country in which the government has repeatedly failed to provide adequate staffing and services at its employment insurance offices. The result is that it is constantly missing its service targets in terms of waiting periods for temporarily unemployed workers who need access, often for the very first time in their lives, to the employment insurance system to which they have faithfully contributed for years.

Now the government seems intent on refusing to accept reduced waiting periods for workers who have been temporarily deprived of employment due to the closing of the border to beef.

This seems astonishing to me given that we saw the government spring to attention and take rapid action to provide temporary special relief under the employment insurance system to Torontonians who lost their jobs as the result of the SARS outbreak. Yet it has been completely unwilling to show similar concern for the job impact that BSE is starting to have in rural parts of the very same province.

Let me stress again, as strongly as I can, the point that BSE can destroy jobs in rural Ontario every bit as much as SARS has hurt jobs in Toronto. A job which is lost due to the spin-out from BSE is every bit as much a job which is lost due to the spin-out from SARS.

Therefore, my question is: when will the government stop being less generous to rural Canadians than it has been to Torontonians?

[National Children's Memorial Day, May 29th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, on the question of the unreliability of federal funding to provinces, the federal government has a much larger tax base than the provinces and certainly more than the local authorities, such as school boards and municipal governments.

For that reason there is a perpetual problem with what the government in Quebec refers to as fiscal disequilibrium, what the rest of us might think of as a simple incapacity of the provincial governments, without a reliable, stable and growing source of funding as the population grows and ages, to take care of their vital needs. That includes being able to take care of health care.

Uncertain federal funding has created tremendous problems for provinces in this regard. Very little of the excise tax collected on gasoline is passed on to the provincial governments. When it comes to the question of school buses, we find that in its relations with local governments and school boards, the federal government is unwilling to simply allow them to keep the money to which they are legally entitled. This is a serious problem and I do hope the government will take it seriously.

[National Children's Memorial Day, May 29th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, on February 20, I raised a question in question period expressing my concern with the federal government's unwillingness to respect provincial jurisdiction in its budget, which had been delivered a few days earlier. I noted that while there had been nationwide disappointment with the budget expressed by many provincial governments, opposition to the federal budget had been particularly clearly stated in the Quebec legislature.

The then minister of finance for Quebec, the leader of the ADQ and the finance critic for the Quebec Liberal Party, which was still at that point in opposition, all expressed their complete disapproval of the federal government's interference in provincial jurisdiction. At the time I wanted to know why the minister did not trust the provinces to administer programs for health, families, social housing and education.

The minister responsible for intergovernmental affairs gave a most unsatisfactory response to my question. I am here today to further question the federal government's infringement on the rights of the provinces to deliver social programs such as education.

Let me give a clear example of the kind of insensitivity to educational priorities that has been shown in this budget.

In Bill C-28, the budget implementation act, the federal government plans to retroactively amend the provisions of the Excise Tax Act relating to school bus transportation. This takes place after the federal government lost a test case in Quebec and was ordered by the courts to pay back GST paid by the schools for transportation. Astonishingly, the Liberal government's solution is not to simply pay the money that it owes to school boards, but instead the budget is pushing through a retroactive clause to justify a tax on local school funding that the courts have said is unlawful.

Technically speaking, the federal government may have a legal right to impose retroactive taxes on schools, but it goes without saying that there is no moral justification for this. Money that would have been used to educate our kids will now have to be diverted to the bottomless money pit known as the federal consolidated revenue fund.

This is not just a Quebec issue. In Eastern Ontario, the Upper Canada School Board will be particularly hard hit by this retroactive tax. This school board will be deprived of $2.59 million. That is $2.5 million that could have been used for school repairs, the hiring of more teachers, or for the replacement of infrastructure.

My fellow Ontario Alliance MP, the hon. member for Renfrew--Nipissing--Pembroke, has raised this issue in the House of Commons, poignantly stating the problem as well as the effects it will have on school districts in her riding. On May 12 she stated, and I quote:

The decision to grant only a partial GST exemption of 68% to school boards for the supply of transportation services has meant that school boards have had to pay millions of dollars in GST payments to the federal government instead of applying the funds to important educational requirements.

That applies to the Upper Canada School Board as well which is in my riding and it applies to school boards in many other parts of the country, particularly in Quebec where this test case took place.

Therefore I ask the parliamentary secretary this. How can she and her minister claim that the federal government is working, as he said in his response to my question in question period, cooperatively with provincial and local authorities when it refuses to even allow them to keep moneys that it owes to them under the law?

[Agriculture, May 26th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express the concern of farmers across Ontario about the recent BSE outbreak and the effect it will have on this vital industry. Canada is the world's third largest exporter of beef and beef cattle, and the beef industry is an important part of Ontario agriculture.

In eastern Ontario alone, beef added $700 million to the provincial economy last year. That is why we in the Canadian Alliance are committed to ensuring that the confidence of both Canadian and foreign consumers of Canadian beef is restored through effective action from both the federal and provincial governments.

Ontario's farmers and Ontario's minister of agriculture stand ready to do all that is necessary to avoid the potential devastation that could result from a protracted ban on imports to the United States. Although there has been no hint of BSE in Ontario, the provincial government will assist in any way that it can to re-establish Canada's international reputation as the producer of the world's best beef.

[Petitions, May 14th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured today to introduce a petition containing over 10,000 signatures from across eastern Ontario.

The petitioners draw the attention of the House to the wasteful and ineffective long gun registry. They draw specific attention to the following facts: that the gun registry is 500 times over budget; that the Auditor General has been very critical of the registry; and that the registry does nothing to keep illegal firearms off the street and out of the hands of criminals.

I present the petition with pleasure.

[Copyright Act, May 9th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the government imposes a levy on all blank recording media regardless of end use apparently on the assumption that all users are potential copyright thieves and that the guilty and the innocent should be punished equally.

What this does is punish those who use large quantities of recording media for perfectly legal purposes, such as a small business in my riding that distributes computer training manuals for CD-ROMs. The tax currently costs 21¢ for each CD-ROM the company sells, and this could soon rise to 59¢.

When will the government amend this law to eliminate its penalty on small business owners who use large quantities of recording media?

[Zimbabwe, May 9th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, as part of its ongoing crackdown on dissenting voices in Zimbabwe, the regime of Robert Mugabe has unconstitutionally trampled on the rights of Zimbabweans to freedom of assembly, free property ownership and freedom of speech.

To bring attention to the plight of opposition MPs who are frequently in danger of arbitrary arrest or of personal injury at the hands of Mr. Mugabe's thugs, Amnesty International has twinned a number of Canadian and Zimbabwean MPs.

For the past year I have been twinned with David Mpala, who is the member of parliament for the riding of Lupane and a member of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

On March 31 several MPs, including Mr. Mpala, were arrested without legitimate cause. Their condition is uncertain.

Canada cannot stand idly by as Mr. Mugabe transforms Zimbabwe from a multi-racial democracy into a Stalinist terror state. If Canada refuses to take leadership within the Commonwealth to oppose Mr. Mugabe, then courageous men, like David Mpala, will have risked their lives and their liberty for nothing.

[Parliament of Canada Act, May 7th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to the bill. I must say that of all the private members' legislations to come before the House under the new rules, this strikes me as being one of the two or three that is the most likely to make it through the process and find its way toward becoming the law of the land. Therefore I take the bill very seriously.

The title of the bill is “an act to amend the Parliament of Canada Act (oath or solemn affirmation)”. The essence of the bill is summed up in clause 3, which states that no person may sit in the House unless he or she has sworn an oath or solemn affirmation in addition to the one which we now swear.

All members, including myself, swear the following oath, which is stipulated in section 128 of the Constitution Act, 1867 and is laid out in schedule 5 of that act:

I, .... do swear, That I will be faithful and bear true Allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.

The proposed new law would not remove that oath but would add the following:

I, ..., do swear (or solemnly affirm) that I will be loyal to Canada and that I will perform the duties of a member of the House of Commons honestly and justly.

I think it is pretty hard to object in principle to this. Certainly nobody, including members of the Bloc Quebecois, could object to the second part of that statement, “I will perform the duties of a member of the House of Commons honestly and justly”.

Therefore the question then becomes one of the first part of the statement, “I will be loyal to Canada”. This is the reason that earlier I asked the hon. member the question whether a person who is a separatist, who would like to see his or her province removed from Canada, could in good conscience swear this oath.

My inclination is to think that there should not be a problem, that being loyal to Canada means, in part, as the hon. member said in his comments, being loyal to the community, to the spirit of the community.

As well, there is a question of being loyal to the Constitution. While I do not support in any way, at any point in Canada's future, one province leaving the country, there is a constitutional mechanism by which this could occur. One could be loyal to the Constitution and work toward the sovereignty of one province. That was laid out in a Supreme Court reference decision two years ago. I do not think there is a logical reason, even if one were not loyal to the idea of Canada remaining a united country permanently, that one would not swear an oath to this effect.

Being loyal to Canada in the sense that the hon. member, the proposer of this bill, described in his initial remarks, is just another way of saying what is in the second part of the act, “I will perform the duties of a member of the House of Commons honestly and justly”.

The obligation on us to follow our oath, because these oaths are very general, is, in a sense, a moral obligation rather than a legal obligation. I think it would be very difficult to prosecute anybody sitting in the House, or anybody who has sat in the House in recent decades, for failing to fulfil the oath that currently exists, and it would probably be very difficult to prosecute anybody or to deprive them of their seat in the House based upon a failure to perform the proposed oath. Therefore the statement that is being made here is a moral statement.

I thought it was interesting that the hon. member for Ottawa—Orléans referred to the oath that he voluntarily took, in addition to his oath to the Queen, when he was sworn in. It is a version of an oath that a number of us took, myself included, when we were sworn in. We understood when we took the oath that we could not be bound to that oath. It was something that we took on voluntarily because we thought it was a way of showing our commitment to the community, of which we are part, our own constituents and to the country as a whole.

It seems to me that this kind of oath is a reaffirmation of the general reason for which we were sent here. Now there is a specific reason why each of us were sent here. I was sent here because a larger number of people in my riding voted for me than voted for any other candidate. We all have a similar tale to tell. However when we get here it is our obligation to represent, not just the people who voted for us-and many people who come to this place have been voted for by less than half of the potential votes in their constituency--but to represent all of them.

It seems to me that the expression of community and of community interest as stated in the proposed oath reflects that sense of community as a whole. For that reason, I would be supportive of this oath and of including it in the oath that we swear. This would be a real step forward for us. All members could swear in good conscience. Those who feel the necessity to express their reservations could do so separately from the oath itself.

In 1976 when the first Parti Québécois government was sworn in, a number of the members of the party said that they had sworn the oath with their fingers crossed behind their backs. I guess they felt it was important to express a certain sentiment but nonetheless they swore the oath. Bloc Québécois members who sit in the House have sworn an oath to the Queen despite the fact that I suspect very few of them are actually monarchists. It is possible to do that sort of thing without suffering a great crisis of conscience.

I think all Canadians recognize the value of Canada as a whole, as a concept, as an idea, and not merely as a constitutional status quo. That is what the bill proposes to recognize. For that reason, I encourage all members of the House of Commons to vote for it.

[Parliament of Canada Act, May 7th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I have a very brief question for the member.

On the question of Bloc Quebecois members and people who regard themselves as belonging to a separate collectivity, that is of being loyal to what they hope will eventually become an independent Quebec and their ability to swear, in good conscience, an oath like this, does the hon. member think there would be any kind of crisis of conscience or difficulty for them in swearing such an oath?

[Agriculture, May 1st, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, thanks to the heroic efforts of the government, the Pest Management Regulatory Agency is approving minor use regulations at 150th the rate in the United States. In 2000-01, a total of 1,200 minor use registrations were approved in the U.S.A. compared to 22 in Canada.

This forces Canadian farmers to rely upon older, less environmentally friendly farm chemicals. Given that the allowable limit for de-listed farm chemicals in the United States is 0%, this means that failure to harmonize with the United States will result in de facto trade barriers against Canadian farm products.

What will the federal government do to end the regulatory mess that it has created?