Mr. Speaker, you will bear with me if my first words will be to thank the people of Calgary Southwest, to whom I owe once again the honour of standing in this House today in reply to the Speech from the Throne. As you can imagine, I have been frequently absent from the constituency of Calgary Southwest and therefore I am extremely honoured to have received such a strong mandate, not just for the work I do in the constituency but obviously for the work I am required to do on behalf of my party across the country.
On June 28, electors of Calgary Southwest joined almost four million other Canadians to entrust the new Conservative Party of Canada with the responsibility of forming the official opposition in this Parliament. I am humbled, and I know we are all humbled, by this high mark of confidence and we are fortified by it in our determination to ensure that this Parliament will listen to all those who are demanding better from their national government.
There should be no doubt in anybody's mind that our ultimate objective is to replace this government and give Canadians a government they can finally trust and be proud of.
At the same time, I will reassure the Prime Minister, all members of the House and Canadians and pledge that my party and I, as the official opposition, will always seek in the meantime to respect the results of the election, to uphold the honour and sovereignty of our country, to defend the interests and the ideals of its people, and to respect the rules and traditions of this special place.
Without hesitation or reservation, I would like also to congratulate all members of all parties who earned the confidence of their fellow citizens in the recent election. We are all--and we should never forget it--very honoured and privileged to be here, to have earned this confidence, and to have earned the responsibilities that we have. We have the responsibility individually of living up to the expectations of our constituents and collectively to the history of our country.
Those men and women who unsuccessfully defended the ideals and ideas of their respective parties and their vision of a better Canada also deserve our respect. I would like particularly to say this to our own Conservative candidates who are not with us today, to remind them that in politics, as in war, the heroes are not only those who triumph. On the dawn of a great battle, nobody knows who will prevail at the end of the day. I am reminded that in much graver circumstances, for instance on the morning of August 19, 1942, the sailors who charged the cliffs below Dieppe were every bit as heroic as their comrades who would storm Normandy two years later, and those who fell at Dieppe have the same eternal respect today as those who triumphed on D-Day.
I also offer special wishes, and my collaboration, up to a point, to the Prime Minister, who must discharge the responsibilities of the country's highest elected office under some challenging circumstances. This will be a minority Parliament, but an overwhelming majority of Canadians want Parliament to work better, no matter what the partisan composition of the House.
The party I am so proud to lead, the new Conservative Party of Canada, will demand better in this Parliament, not by being blindly obstructionist, not by toppling the government at the first opportunity and not by paralyzing Parliament. We will continue to demand the changes the country needs by being responsible and responsive to Canadians.
It is not my intention, as Leader of the Opposition, to represent in this House only the position of my party or the interests of those who supported us.
We will be the voice of minorities oppressed by abusive majorities, a bulwark protecting the weak from the strong. We will protect the democratic prerogatives of this House as well as Canadian values against the excesses of executive powers and encroachments by judicial powers.
We will represent and work with all the Canadians who want change and a better way of doing things, who expect integrity and accountability from the government.
I will always bear in mind that the people express their wishes as much through the opposition as through the government.
Our fundamental constitutional role as official opposition is to offer an alternative government to Her Majesty and to the Canadian population.
I have already told members of my party that our goal is not to become a perennial opposition party. Our objective from this day on in this Parliament will be to show Canadians that we are a government in waiting, ready and capable of expressing their values and hopes, and of fulfilling their needs and aspirations.
Our fundamental disagreement with the ruling party on many fundamental issues that affect the lives of Canadians has not been erased or diminished in any way by the results of the last election.
Like the government, we will continue. We have an obligation to defend our core beliefs. We will continue to ask that personal and business taxes be reduced across the board to create jobs and attract more investment to this country.
We will continue to demand that integrity and accountability be restored to the management of public moneys and public finance. We will continue to demand that our health care system be improved through long term innovative solutions, not only by giving money to the provinces.
We will continue to advocate that we defend and protect our men and women in the military who defend and protect us. As the events of the last two days have shown, we must do a much better job.
We will continue to ask that decisive action, not empty rhetoric, guide us in the protection of our environment. We will continue to ask that meaningful democratic reform be applied to our institutions.
We will ask that our criminal justice system be realigned by maintaining tighter supervision of our parole system, by completely eliminating all legal excuses for child pornography, and by scrapping the wasteful gun registry.
We will ask and demand that our relations with the United States be improved, not further jeopardized, in the interests of our workers and our companies.
We will continue our battle to get the government to restore fiscal balance between the federal government and the provinces. We do not believe that the Canadian federation can function efficiently with a central government that is rich while the provinces are poor.
The Prime Minister will soon be discussing adjustments to the equalization formula with his provincial counterparts. Such adjustments are necessary, but they will not be enough. The government must have the courage and the vision to look at the whole issue of tax inequities fostering the federal government's control over the social and economic development of our provinces.
We believe in cooperative federalism where the central government and the provinces work together, sharing common resources equitably and respecting each other's jurisdictions.
Mr. Speaker, as you know, in our parliamentary tradition the Speech from the Throne has always been a solemn and serious occasion. Over the last decade, however, I see that the Speech from the Throne has lost much of its lustre and even some of its credibility.
This is the eighth Speech from the Throne since 1993 and the second one this year alone. Under successful Liberal governments that have been obsessed by their political prospects and their leadership issues, the official opening of a new Parliament has become little more than an attempt to slap a new coat of paint on a shaky building rather than fixing its foundation.
Too often the Speech from the Throne has largely turned the Senate chamber into an echo chamber for Liberal electoral ambitions and spin lines. Too often we have seen partisan posturing replace national purpose and political expediency overshadow the quest for excellence.
Canadians are not interested in the government's plan to garner favour for a few months or maybe just a few days. They want a blueprint for the next few years.
The speech delivered by Her Excellency yesterday is unfortunately not very different than the one I commented on back on October 1, 2002, when I made my first major address in the House as leader of the opposition.
I remember saying then that the Liberal government strategy as laid out in successive, almost identical, throne speeches could be boiled down to five tactics: first, identify a cause that trumps everything else; second, demonize anyone who questions the truth of this instant moral insight; third, proclaim a scheme that would produce the great leap forward; fourth, call upon Canadians to spend heaps of money as a sign of concern; and fifth, forget about looking at any results and move on to other ventures, bigger plans and greater expectations.
Regretfully, under a new general, the Liberal strategy has not changed nor have the old tactics. The victory of the Liberal Party still triumphs the greater good of the country.
I will start with an example from this throne speech. The government has once again indicated that it intends to make health care its priority. Of course, most Canadians, we ourselves, share this view and as a party we support this direction. We support the five principles of the Canada Health Act and we want them to be respected not only in practise but in spirit as well.
The Prime Minister is touting the recent health accord the provinces concluded with him as a major breakthrough. The accord in reality represents only a partial reparation for the damage inflicted by the Liberals on our health care system since 1993.
During more than a decade of Liberal government, our health care system has struggled from crisis to crisis. In 1995 it was the Prime Minister, who was then minister of finance, who inflicted the most grievous cuts to health care funding by ripping some $25 billion out of the system; something that has never been done before or since by any politician in the history of this country.
As a consequence, over the last decade Canadians have seen hospitals closed, services reduced and waiting lists grow longer. Much remains to be fixed. Many critical areas were also left out during last month's negotiations. Some of these became apparent when we compare the contents of the latest accord with the 2003 accord on health renewal, also agreed to by the Prime Minister and all the first ministers.
This was an accord, by the way, which we supported in the official opposition but which the Prime Minister never saw fit to implement. The 2003 accord, for example, already included a commitment to reasonable access to catastrophic drug coverage, but the new health accord now only commits to yet another study. We will never accept that people should be forced into debt or poverty in order to afford necessary medications for unforeseen or serious medical conditions.
Given the role of the federal government in testing and regulating drugs, we have always thought it made perfect sense for the federal power to play a lead role in this area. During the recent election campaign we advocated that the federal government assume all costs for catastrophic drug coverage over $5,000 per person per year and that the federal government, in consultation with the provinces, develop a national formula of eligible drugs.
Different reports written by Senator Kirby and another by Roy Romanow, in both cases hardly well known conservatives, recommended some form of federal participation in a national catastrophic drug program.
Here is what the 1997 record said. Its author, I believe, is present with us today. He promised “a timetable and fiscal framework for the implementation of universal public coverage for medically necessary prescription drugs”. That was seven years ago.
Canadians in dire straits, Canadians who need help, their families and their loved ones who want help are still waiting, as they are still waiting on so many things that have been in the throne speech on health care and so many other subjects in edition after edition.
Many other Canadians also continue to face unacceptable delays in getting access to life-saving drugs because of federal red tape. Last year average drug approval time in Canada was 704 days compared to 393 days in the United States, which, by the way, is seeking to actually reduce its own timeframes. Longer review times mean that Canadians wait longer for the benefits of new and improved drugs, and they make the Canadian pharmaceutical industry less competitive internationally.
Furthermore, while Canadians are being denied timely access to new major pharmaceuticals, they are also having difficulty getting access to natural and complementary health products. We hope and strongly recommend that the government will abandon its boastful fix for a generation attitude.
Nobody in this country believes that the government and the agreement signed with the provinces is going to fix health care for a generation in the course of a three day conference. There is still a lot of work to do in the critical area of health care and not all of it can be done simply by cutting a cheque to the provinces to get out of a conference.
In the last election, the Liberals again promised a national day care program. They promised 150,000 spaces. This is a promise they have been making regularly since 1993. Yesterday, the government promised once again to act. At this speed, by the time the government actually does something about child care, the generation of children who hoped to be included in it in 1993 will be raising children of their own.
We believe the government has a role to play in supporting families, helping parents balance work and home life, and that child care is an important component of the challenge that many of us face everyday, but we would go about it differently. We do not think this government or any government should be in charge of raising our children. We see what happens over there when government is in charge of raising children.
We believe that parents generally know what is best for their children. We believe that a deduction or credit given to all parents of young children would best empower them to make their own decisions about how to care for their own children. We also urge the government to respect the fact that social services, such as child care, are an area of provincial jurisdiction. To their credit, during the health talks, members of the government recognized that Canadian federalism need not be a one size fits all framework, particularly when it comes to provincial jurisdictions.
However, the principle of asymmetrical federalism, as it has been called, is not new. Our successive constitutions and our history include several examples of formulas that take into consideration the different realities of the various regions of our country.
Quebec in particular, through its elected representatives, has chosen to help create the Canadian federation, precisely because its distinctiveness would be respected and protected there.
The new Conservative Party which I have the honour of leading is a young party: it will turn one later this month. However, we are very proud to be the heirs of John A. Macdonald and George Étienne Cartier, two Conservatives who managed to unite English and French Canadians in a federal system that became one of the major achievements of the 21st century.
I therefore urge the Prime Minister and all his ministers to respect the will of the provinces that want to sign specific agreements with the federal government when they decide to cooperate with it in jurisdictions granted to them under the Constitution.
The Liberals like to say that they want to conclude a new deal with municipalities. However, the final document does not really deliver the promise in the slogan. For the past few months, the government has desperately been trying to come to termswith the expectations of municipalities, but still does not have a specific plan for sharing revenues generated by gasoline taxes.
The government is also committed to recognizing that municipal governments are partners regarding numerous items on the national agenda. That is fine, but one of the government's primary responsibilities to its partners is to tell the truth. In other words, the government must give them specific dates and data on the funding promised.
We in this party have long and realistically advocated a transfer of at least 3¢ of the federal fuel excise tax to municipalities through a national infrastructure agreement that would have to be concluded with the provinces.
While we are on the subject of gas taxes I should add, since Canadian consumers still face record high gas prices, that it is time the federal government did something about the GST on top of the excise tax on gasoline. It is time we axed the tax on tax. We would also eliminate the GST portion on gas prices that go above 85¢ per litre to prevent the government from reaping windfall profits on top of high gas prices.
I have to mention that it is a little ironic that it was not too long ago the Liberals claimed that they would eliminate the GST completely. Now they will not even cap it to help control runaway gasoline prices.
One area where the government does deserve a lot of credit for being faithful to its promises is in the area of environmental policy. We have to recognize that the government, in doing its throne speeches, has been faithful to the principle of recycling; recycling the same old promises for a decade.
We all agree that clean air, clean water and clean land are important parts of the legacy we must leave to future generations of Canadians. Currently the federal government and nine provinces have agreed on voluntary Canada-wide standards for particulate matter and ozone which are the most urgent threats facing our air quality. We believe that these standards are a good benchmark but we are concerned that present ozone and particulate matter targets may prove to be yet more empty rhetoric, just like the Liberals' Kyoto greenhouse gas reductions which they have no realistic plan to achieve in spite of spending hundreds of millions of dollars to publicize.
Now it is time for the federal government to ensure that the targets for smog causing pollutants are reached by the 2010 deadline. We suggested that this could be achieved by enacting Canada's first clean air act. We do not need more environmental talks. We do not need more hot air on global warming. We do not need more grandiose schemes. We simply need some action. We need practical measures to improve our air, land and water, and the way we should start is by dealing head on with the problem of smog in this country.
I have also been reading 10 years of throne speeches on aboriginal affairs. In fact, over the past 10 years the Liberals have done very little to improve the lives of aboriginal Canadians. All they have done really is raised expectations while doing little to meet those expectations.
Yesterday's Speech from the Throne actually went backwards. We are now down to devoting just six paragraphs to aboriginal issues. There is nothing to indicate that federal money designated for aboriginal programs will actually get to the people who need it most, rather than being consumed by federal bureaucracy or inefficient governance.
As Conservatives we believe in the importance of self-government, in devolving taxing authority, land ownership and economic decision making to aboriginal communities. We also believe that the government should pursue other matters to enhance individual freedom and opportunity for all aboriginal Canadians on and off reserve.
Our critic for aboriginal affairs, the new member for Calgary Centre-North, will be making suggestions for improving living conditions and prospects for aboriginal Canadians over the course of the throne speech today.
In yesterday's speech the government almost completely ignored Canada's farmers and rural Canada generally. The BSE crisis is one of the greatest crises ever faced by our agricultural sector but BSE is not the only problem faced by our agricultural sector. We have an avian flu crisis that is devastating much of the poultry industry. Our grain and oilseed farmers are being crippled by foreign subsidies. Federal income support and relief programs do not seem to be working.
The government has not designed farm support programs that actually stabilize farm incomes under stress from international subsidization, unfair trade practices, drought and all the other factors that are beyond the control of producers.
We believe, for example, that we can do some things. We believe the Canadian Wheat Board's monopoly on grain marketing should be abolished. Farmers should have options. They should be able to market their own grain when they decide and take advantage of market conditions to maximize profits not image.
The Conservative Party of Canada believes strongly that it is in the best interests of Canada and Canadian agriculture that industries under the protection of supply management remain viable but we still have no indication that the government will fight at the WTO to preserve our supply management system and to ensure it continues to provide a reasonable rate of return for producers who supply high quality food at a fair price to consumers.
When it comes to agriculture it would be remiss if I did not discuss trade. Again and again, election after election, throne speech after throne speech the Liberals have promised to defend and expand Canadian trade. They have promised but they have not produced. In fact they have seriously jeopardized our commercial relations with our most important trading partner, the United States. Nowhere is this more cruelly evident than in the ongoing border closure which is severely punishing our beef producers and many related sectors.
The government put off helping this vital industry until the crisis reached the tipping point. It assured producers and all Canadians this summer that the border would be open by the end of the summer. It turns out that the only strategy it had was to hope that it might just come true. Now it is October, the border remains closed and there are no signs of it opening again. We have no idea when it will reopen.
Producers are getting more desperate every day. The crisis in the livestock industry is ongoing and it is worsening across the country. This is a huge industry. Members know that cattle farmers are not the only ones affected. The dairy farmers and producers of other ruminants, such as sheep, elk and bison, are also affected. This is strictly a political problem. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the quality or safety of Canadian beef.
While the government has not been up to this task in this national emergency, we will continue, led by our new agricultural critic, to press for action in the House and across the country and make sure producers' voices are heard. However, to be fair to the actions or inactions of Canadian government officials, I should add that they are not the only ones to blame for this situation.
The United States government and Congress are far from blameless. Once again Canada has been caught in the crossfire of American elections where protectionist posturing is often at a premium for both candidates and commentators. However we cannot sit idly by and hope the Americans will come around. We must press our case with greater vigour and greater tact, not with an ongoing string of anti-American outbursts.
Those outbursts have just compounded the situation just as they have with the critical problems we face in the softwood lumber dispute. A NAFTA panel ruled at the end of August that Canadian lumber was not a threat to American producers and that the 27% duties levied since May 2002 could not be justified. The panel said that it would be an exercise in futility to pursue further review of this case but the US is still not accepting this ruling and it is likely to file yet another extraordinary challenge.
We have not heard from the government a clear strategy on how to deal with these ongoing trade disputes with the United States. However I will say that if the United States continues to ignore the spirit of our trade arrangement and, by doing so, continues to undermine it, it will ultimately affect all our trading relations and be to the detriment of the United States as well as this country.
For the sake of Canada's farmers, lumber producers and countless other industries, I do hope that the Prime Minister will develop some much needed backbone and, frankly, that some of his members will better control their jawbones on this issue. We have to understand that good relations with our best friend and most important customer is not a sign of weakness and bad relations with the United States is not a badge of honour.
The Prime Minister might remind some of his members that it is possible to disagree without being disagreeable. We may not have the same priorities as policies as the United States or even the same view of the world, but we do share a continent and we need to be able to work effectively together to achieve common goals and common prosperity.
I would like to speak on national defence for a second. Other than vague commitments on peacekeeping, we did not really hear much about national defence in the Speech from the Throne. As a matter of fact we have not heard much about national defence from the government since 1993.
Over the past 10 years the Liberals have in fact cut $20 billion in purchasing power from the Department of National Defence. As a percentage of our economy, our defence spending is lower than every other NATO country except for Luxembourg. As a result, we have fewer personnel, older equipment and are excessively dependent on our allies, principally the United States. The government is still not even capable of actually going out and finding a replacement for a helicopter that should be in an aviation museum, and I understand there are yet more delays. Defence is simply not a priority for the Liberal Party. Canadians must understand this. It has not been a priority for 30 years.
As in health care, the Liberal government should have the foresight and the fortitude of repairing what it has undone. It should have gradually increased the strength of the regular force over the long term to 80,000, the strength it was at when the Liberals took office in 1993, and targeted the strengthening of existing units, not go out and create a costly new peacekeeping brigade.
The Liberal government should also focus on equipment priorities that strengthen the protection of our sovereignty, global transport capabilities and the safety of overseas missions. The events of 9/11 showed us how threats can migrate to North America with devastating effect. It would be naive and irresponsible in the extreme to assume that Canada is somehow immune from the threats that other free nations face.
Like all Canadians we are extremely proud of Canada's peacekeeping tradition. We believe it should be continued whenever and wherever it is possible and advisable. However, armies do not exist only to intervene before or after a conflict.
We also would do well to remember that the name of the government department charged with our security is national defence, not international peacekeeping. Its mission is three-fold: protecting Canada; defending North American cooperation with the United States; and contributing to peace and international security. All three are equally important. Let us never forget that we cannot keep the peace with terrorists and rogue states. They already consider themselves to be at war with our very civilization.
However, there is no need to be unduly pessimistic. It was reassuring to me to find out that our colleague from Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord recently took part in a deployment to Bosnia-Herzegovina for six days with the 12e Régiment blindé du Canada. If members of the Bloc Quebecois are prepared to serve in the Canadian Forces overseas, then anything is possible.
In the next few days the Prime Minister will embark on the first of a wide-ranging series of international trips. I said yesterday that the Prime Minister was so excited about his government's agenda that his first act was to leave the country. In all seriousness, I do not have any problem with the Prime Minister travelling abroad. In fact I would encourage him to take about 35 Liberal members with him whenever he leaves the country. They would make a tremendous delegation.
As I told the Prime Minister in other circumstances, we cannot confuse movement with momentum. Important decisions do need to be taken here at home and a clear vision of our role in the world needs to be expressed if we are to regain the influence we have lost on the international stage during what has been a decade of drift.
What we have seen so far is hardly encouraging. Even the Toronto Star has taken a dim view of the Prime Minister's debut on the world stage. Let me quote a Toronto Star columnist who wrote:
[The Prime Minister's] maiden speech to the United Nations last week was a triumph of political recycling. It essentially amounted to a repeat of Chretien's final address to the same body pronounced at this time last year
In terms of international cooperation, the Liberals are responsible for the greatest decrease in international aid in the history of Canada. Cut to half of what it was under the Mulroney government, Canada's aid is now well below the OECD average.
The Liberals the party of Wilfrid Laurier, Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Elliott Trudeau no longer perceive Canada as a leader among nations. The Prime Minister was recently advised by members of the United Nations General Assembly on how to handle global crises. When the crisis erupted in Haiti, instead of sending the disaster assistance response team, which was created specifically for this type of emergency situation, the government only sent Denis Coderre.
We would strengthen the government's commitment to national defence, to foreign aid--
