Ted Menzies

[Canada Grain Act, April 18th, 2005]

Yes, it has cost farmers an awful lot of money. In fact, it has not only cost farmers money.

Some people in the House might be surprised to hear that it has actually cost people time in jail. I have friends who have spent time in jail. It is hard to believe that we have farmers that want to do nothing more than market their own grain and end up spending time in jail because they have done that across the border. It is an archaic law. It is about as archaic as the Canadian Grain Commission.

[Canada Grain Act, April 18th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, that is the million dollar question. I have been asking that question for a long time.

[Canada Grain Act, April 18th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, there is a great deal of frustration with the farmers that I represent. I should comment that I am a farmer myself and I do understand some of these issues. I have been very involved in the transportation debates that have gone on.

I have forgotten now how many different times we have analyzed the transportation system in western Canada. My farmers are very frustrated when they have bins full of grain, in fact, bins full of tough and damp grain from last year that have not moved.

Is that a fault of the producer? Is it the producer's fault that we did not sell last year's crop? That is the backup that we have. We have an archaic system that is trying to hold commodities from one year to the next. The system is trying to speculate on whether or not this is a good time to sell, when in fact, the Canadian Wheat Board's mandate is to market grain, not speculate on grain.

Many of my producers have asked me why we need a Grain Commission? I commented on this earlier. We have an arbitrary grading system that would probably fit in the 1930s. It does not fit the mode today.

We have about 40 or 50 different grades of grain that mean absolutely nothing to the consumer in another part of the world. Perhaps it is time that we looked at a system that actually asks the consumers or the customers in the country where we are going to market the grain, what do they want? What traits in that grain does the customer want in milling qualities, malting qualities, or oil content for the oilseeds? Perhaps it is time we had a serious look at this whole system.

We can change our research and development to provide varieties that will provide exactly what the consumer wants, instead of being tied to an old system that classifies it as a number one, a number two or a number three. That means nothing when it is turned into a loaf of bread. It means nothing when it is turned into a malt barley that is made into beer.

[Canada Grain Act, April 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to speak to Bill C-40. I would like to acknowledge the tremendous work that my hon. colleague from Haldimand—Norfolk has done in providing support for this piece of legislation.

I am having a great deal of difficulty supporting the bill. However, I will support it. Once again the Liberal government has dragged its feet for so long on something that should have been fixed a long time ago, but it will not be the Liberal government that suffers if we do not pass this legislation. It will once again be the taxpayers, and in this case it will be farmers. It is with some disgust that I have to support Bill C-40 in its present condition.

I am glad that the hon. member for Haldimand—Norfolk is recommending an amendment to the bill. It is very critical that we address the fundamental workings of the archaic Canadian Grain Commission which is in place for all of Canada but which certainly plays a leading role in western Canadian grains and oilseeds.

This bill to amend the Canada Grain Act and the Canada Transportation Act would never have come into play if we had taken the recommendations of a study that was done back in the mid-1990s. Justice Willard Estey travelled across the country and consulted with farmers and people in the transportation industry to find out what was wrong with the system.

The Canadian Wheat Board monopoly, not necessarily the Canadian Wheat Board itself but the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly, the single buyer of wheat and barley for human consumption in western Canada, and I emphasize in western Canada alone, was found to be very flawed when Justice Estey put forward his recommendations. These recommendations were backed up by a follow-up process by a very well-respected former deputy minister in many portfolios in the government, Arthur Kroeger. He agreed with all of Justice Estey's findings.

Justice Estey would like to have seen the monopoly gone completely, but his recommendation was that we go to a commercial transportation system where the Canadian Wheat Board took ownership of the grain at port. What a wonderful, novel idea, but would the Liberal government adopt that? No. It chose to maintain the monopoly that provides no benefit to western farmers. The emphasis needs to be placed on the fact that it is western farmers alone who are under the control of the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly.

There have been similar systems around the world. The Australians had a wheat board. They chose to privatize it. Those who want to participate in it buy shares. It is run like a publicly traded company. It works wonderfully. Can we do that in Canada? No. The Liberal government said that farmers should not have control of their own destiny.

There are a lot of things the Liberal government could have changed so we would not be scrambling at the last minute to change a piece of legislation which, if we do not change it, will once again impact western Canadian farmers. Indeed, it probably will impact farmers all across the country if we do not make these changes.

A lot of what the WTO panel ruled on was impacted by the Canadian Wheat Board's monopoly. It was not the first time it had challenged the Wheat Board and it will not be the last time. It will simply tweak the system to make it fit for the present time and I am sure we will be dealing with this again in the future.

I represent the riding of Macleod in Alberta. The majority of farmers in my riding and in fact the majority of grains and oilseeds producers in western Canada are way beyond requiring a monopoly market their own grain. Wheat and barley are only a minor part of production in western Canada. Every other commodity we grow on our farms we market ourselves.

We have heard in the House today about what a wonderful job the Canadian Wheat Board has done by providing excess returns to Canadian farmers. That is not a fact. Our returns have actually been reduced.

We are also faced with the issue of the rail revenue cap. Justice Estey recommended that we move to a commercial system. The reason we have a rail revenue cap is because the Liberal government did not want to adopt the recommendations Justice Estey put in place. Once again we are paying for the ineptness of the government.

As was mentioned previously by the hon. member for Haldimand--Norfolk, the Canadian Grain Commission is an outdated system. I had an opportunity to question the chief commissioner who was before the standing committee a week or two ago, and I asked her why we do not have a Canadian french fry commission if the Canadian Grain Commission is so wonderful? Canada has a huge industry that turns potatoes into french fries, but we do not have a commission to market those french fries. We do not have a commission that grades french fries.

We do have however a grain commission that puts an arbitrary grade on grains. That is part of the reason why we are going to have issues with grain mixing. This piece of legislation attempts to address that problem through our elevator systems.

I need to raise one other concern along these lines. The northern tier states in the United States are captive shippers. There is one railway company that provides delivery for them to the west coast. Their freight rates are not quite double what ours are in Canada, but they are certainly in excess of ours. If we were to include the import of grains, then the way this legislation reads, we would see a huge influx of American grain coming through Canada because it would be cheaper to truck it into Canada, load it on rail cars, and send it to the west coast. What is going to happen to car availability for our western grains?

Farmers in my riding are concerned because their bins are still full from last year. It is a question of whether or not the Wheat Board will actually sell the grain or whether or not we will be able to move it to the coast. Farmers are putting in new crops for this year and yet their bins are still full from last year. We can ill afford to take on a larger capacity of grain to be moved to the west coast.

I wish I had been able to address Bill C-40 as well as the hon. member for Haldimand--Norfolk did. I did want to raise the concerns that farmers in my riding have raised with me. As I have said, we will be supporting this bill, but only with amendments and only with the provision that we take a serious look at the Canadian Grain Commission.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2005, April 15th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the hon. member's comments in relation to the EI shortfall.

Kyoto is very near and dear to my heart and I am glad the hon. member raised it. In its present form, even though we do not actually seem to have a plan in place and although there was something announced the other day on whether or not it is actually a plan, it is definitely going to hurt the people in the riding that I represent.

The agricultural industry is going to be put at a tremendous disadvantage with this planned Kyoto implementation. The farmers in my riding have improved their farming practices. They have reduced emissions and increased carbon sequestration. They have put a lot of effort and expense into improving the environment. The Liberals do not seem to want to recognize that.

As producers, and I am a farmer myself, we are good stewards of the land and of the environment. We have done a lot to improve them and that is not being recognized. We have a system that is going to be top down driven if we are going to be buying hot air credits from other countries. We are going to be giving them the advantage that we have gained by voluntary measures.

I look at Australia and the improvements it has made in its environmental practices. It did not sign on to Kyoto. Kyoto is a flawed science that does not do anything to help the environment. It provides an environment to trade carbon credits and that is not beneficial to Canada.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2005, April 15th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, on February 1 I rose in the House to speak to hon. members about the policies and priorities that I believe should have been reflected in this budget. My comments today may reflect the disappointment that I feel in the lack of acknowledgement of what I felt were very obvious and valid suggestions. Much like the first few months of the government, there has been so little action on the real issues that affect Canadians.

The Liberal minority government across the floor is sinking deeper into crisis with nothing to fall back on. There is no defence review. There is no international policy statement. There are no solutions to something that is very important in my riding, and that is the issue of BSE. We are nearing the 24 month stage of this crisis. We have seen no results.

Canadians have rightly lost faith in their elected representatives. At a time when real leadership should shine like a beacon in the fog, so many ministers are making announcements with no real plans, giving speeches with no real substance, and spending money with no real strategic vision.

In February I directly addressed the issues in the international cooperation portfolio. In February the world was just coming out from underneath the shock of the tsunami aftermath in southeast Asia. In the cool light of hindsight, there were so many lessons to be learned from Canada's response to this disaster. The government did not have a coordinated plan to react. It did not have a grasp on the seriousness of the devastation.

On the eve of unveiling the international policy review, there is an opportunity to decide who we are and what we do in the world. I believe we have been on the eve of this policy review for several months now.

What is clear is that we will not be able to meet the expectations of the world or of Canadians under this budget. Do not be fooled by the well-intentioned words of the Minister of International Cooperation. The department is not growing under the minister or under the Prime Minister. In fact, Canada's official development assistance spending has systematically been gutted under the Liberal government.

There are some damning facts from the OECD. It monitors the world's commitments to development assistance. A peer review of Canada looked back on a decade of Liberal rule, and the OECD pointed out that the ratio of its official development assistance, ODA, to gross national income has been halved. Rather than going up, it has been halved, down to .22% of gross national income in 2001 from .45% in the early 1990s. I might mention that it was the former Conservative government that got it up to the .45% level.

Canada ranks 19th out of 22 development assistance committee members in terms of ODA. Those are not stellar records. This is all based in terms of official development assistance as recorded against gross national income.

Put very simply, the government has reduced our foreign aid budgets by half since it has come to power. This is not good enough. In fact, it is unacceptable. The 8% annual increases that it has suggested are just not good enough. This will not even return Canada to our former levels of generosity in the next decade.

Finally, I want to bring to the attention of the House to the shocking news released by CIDA itself only a few weeks ago. Despite the damning rebuke of falling aid levels by the OECD and commitments to raise spending levels by the Liberal government, CIDA's most recent statistical report stated that Canada's ODA spending for 2003-04 amounted to some $2.7 billion, which represented only .23% of gross national income.

We have not moved anywhere in three years. We have fallen behind in the 11 years of Liberal government and we have fallen off the radar screen in the world.

Clearly international aid suffers under Liberals, but it has flourished under Conservatives, so rather than try to help the government find its way out of this mess, I want to address the budget bill as it stands before us.

As my colleagues have said, the Liberals should have brought at least three separate bills forward instead of trying to bully members of Parliament into passing a mish-mash of legislation all in one bill. By dividing the bill into three parts, the House would have had the opportunity to consider Kyoto measures on their own merit, the provisions to implement the Atlantic accord, and traditional budget bill measures with appropriate seriousness.

This bill just shows how arrogant the Liberal Party has become after a decade in government. It is time the Prime Minister stopped governing like he has a majority and starts governing in the best interests of Canadians.

The Liberals knew that the majority of the House would not approve their Kyoto measures if they were presented in stand-alone legislation, which is why they attached them to Bill C-43. This move has, at the very least, delayed legitimate budget measures from implementation and may have even put their implementation at risk.

The Liberals have also shown their true national unity colours in the bill. The Liberals have become toxic on this topic. They are extending their ability to alienate Canadians on our eastern shores by linking the Atlantic accord provision, that most members in the House of Commons support, with the bill to pass Kyoto. Essentially, they are holding the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia hostage with their devious ways. The Atlantic accord provisions in Bill C-43 could have been passed in one day if the Liberals had placed it in stand-alone legislation.

The Conservative Party does not play games with the well-being of Canadians. It is high time the Liberals stopped playing politics and followed the lead of the Conservative Party by acting in the best interests of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia.

In the last election, the Conservative Party committed to $58 billion in new spending and tax reductions over five years. Instead of following the leadership shown by the Conservatives, the Liberals have lined the pockets of their friends with taxpayers' money, hidden massive surpluses, and failed to address the real problems facing Canadians.

Many of the steps taken by the Liberals in the budget, as reflected in the budget, do not go far enough or occur fast enough to have a substantial impact on the well-being of Canadians. The personal tax relief measures in the bill are insufficient and are back end loaded. They amount to a reduction of no more than $16 next year. We will not have trouble spending that tax reduction. It is all of $192 when fully implemented by 2009.

The inadequate productivity enhancing measures in budget 2005 illustrate that the government is not taking warning signs that Canada's high priority programs could be put in jeopardy if comprehensive steps are not taken to grow the economy before the demographic crunch.

Some of the measures in this bill are not reflective of how they were presented in the budget document. The Liberals have once again been caught behind their false numbers. The budget document was not telling Canadians the truth about how much surplus money is available in funds for priorities.

Last week, Parliament's four experts on budgetary estimates reported to the finance committee that on average their surplus projections, parliamentary numbers, showed a surplus of $6.1 billion. That is already double what the Liberals claimed in budget 2005. This is the same pattern we saw last year with the 2004 budget, where it started out at $1.9 billion and in fact, the reciprocal was $9.1 billion when all of the smoke cleared.

The Conservative Party will work in committee to strengthen the bill, so that it is more reflective of what hardworking Canadians want and deserve.

The Conservative Party will continue to hold the Liberals to account when spending is unfocused and wasteful. Over a decade of Liberal waste, mismanagement and scandal has shown that billions of dollars sent to Ottawa would have been much better managed if they were left in Canadians' pockets.

[Alberta Scene, April 15th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, from April 28 to May 10 the nation's capital and Canada's National Arts Centre will come alive for Alberta Scene, a celebration of the best Alberta's arts community has to offer. Over 600 artists will perform in more than 95 events at 19 venues across the city.

As the member of Parliament for Macleod, I am particularly proud to invite all Canadians to attend the Thursday, April 28 or the Saturday, April 30 performance of Filumena , a truly Canadian opera based upon the romantic life and the tragic death of a young Italian immigrant to the Crowsnest Pass region.

In celebration of Filumena and all the great Alberta Scene performances, I invite hon. members from this chamber and the other place, Albertans and all Canadians who will be in Ottawa April 28 to May 10, to join me for a reception to be held in Room 200 West Block on Friday, April 29 at 5 p.m.

[Foreign Affairs, March 9th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, that concerns me greatly that missiles play into international aid policy.

The government also argues that China should not take responsibility for its own poor. Even the UN says China is eliminating poverty on its own. China is a nation that can and should take responsibility for its own development efforts.

Will the minister take the hint and promise to remove China from CIDA's list of targeted countries today?

[Foreign Affairs, March 9th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, next Monday, China will pass a law authorizing the use of its massive military, including 700 missiles pointed at Taiwan, to enforce its one-China policy.

In the past decade the Liberal government has spent a billion dollars in foreign aid to China, despite its violent human rights record and authoritarian regime. This does not reflect Canadian values of good governance or respect for human rights.

Will the minister promise to remove China from CIDA's list of targeted countries today?

[International Aid, March 8th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, if this is a model program, I have great concerns.

The minister stands in the House and brags that the Liberal government has delivered bags of cash for tsunami relief, but the reality is that her sums do not add up. Individual Canadians gave and NGOs are ready to go to work, but CIDA is hoarding the matching donations in its bank account.

If NGOs qualified for matching funds, why is the money not available to them today?