Debates of April 2nd, 2003

Budget Implementation Act, 2003

[Howard Hilstrom, Canadian Alliance, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

The gun bill.

[Val Meredith, Canadian Alliance, South Surrey—White Rock—Langley, BC]

The Minister of Health is asking if health care is one of those pet projects. No, health care is recognized by Canadians as a serious spending project.

The point I am trying to make is that money could be garnered from other sources. I have a list here, and it is quite an interesting list. The gun registry is certainly one of them. The long gun registration program was supposed to cost $2 million. In the year 2005, the Auditor General expects the cost to be almost $1 billion. By the way, she could not finish her audit because of the bad paper trail of the government. It is that kind of spending I am talking about.

There is the HRDC boondoggle, in which another $1 billion was handed out without proper management by the government. We could also talk about the EH-101 helicopter debacle or the Prime Minister buying two Challenger jets. We could talk about the GST tax fraud and the advertising and sponsorship fraud, which most of us know as the Groupaction case. There are many examples that show the government has not managed the spending of our dollars well and has wasted money. Quite frankly, Canadians did not support these programs in the first place.

One thing that Canadians have asked for, and which we hear about every day in our offices, is some tax relief. We heard my colleague talk about the airport security tax. We hear the marine industry talking about the taxes that it is now facing. There are transportation taxes and taxes on gasoline. They just go on and on, these taxes that the government has put on Canadians to pay for, I would suggest, programs that are not supported by the majority of Canadians.

Not only is the government putting this burden of taxation on Canadians, but it is not managing the money well. I have spent the last year sitting on the public accounts committee and let me say that every day is a new adventure in how the Liberal government is mismanaging our money. It is quite clear to me that the government is wasting literally billions of dollars through programs over which it does not have control. One example is the Groupaction case, which showed quite clearly and quite blatantly that not only did senior management in the government departments break all the rules in the book, which try to control how they spend taxpayers' money, but they had no control over where it was going.

When the government asks for another $14 billion to continue that kind of mismanagement, one really has to be concerned. Again it comes down to the priorities. We have the gun registry, which sounded like not a bad idea to some people, although it did not work for handguns. It was supposed to cost $2 million and now is going to be at $1 billion by 2005. Over the last seven years, the total number of deaths from firearms averaged about 500 a year, and most were suicides, but over the same period of time, 5,000 women died each year due to breast cancer. Rather than $1 billion, the government's commitment to breast cancer research was $6 million. When talking about the numbers, the seriousness of the concern about deaths and tragedies--

[An hon. member]

Priority spending.

[Val Meredith, Canadian Alliance, South Surrey—White Rock—Langley, BC]

Yes, priority spending. What is the priority of the government?

There obviously is no direct link between the problem and the money the government is willing to spend and to throw at it. I listened to my colleague from the Bloc talk about the distribution of tax dollars: that the provinces are not getting their fair share and are given the burden of providing health care and education, but the federal government takes all the tax dollars. I call it photo op politics.

It is quite clear to me that the governments that are closest to the people in delivering services are the provincial and municipal governments. The federal government is sort of on the far reaches, with foreign affairs, defence and whatnot, and does not get much exposure, so in order to get the credit for handing out money, with photo op politics and all their MPs handing out cheques, the government has to get into jurisdictions where it probably should not be and get into programs where it probably should not be so that it can be seen day to day as being active and participating. I would even say that it is close to buying votes.

These photo op politics have to stop. The government has to realize that there is a role for the federal government, that it is a limited role and that it should stick to that role. It should transfer the ability for provinces to raise more funds to pay for those things that are of provincial jurisdiction.

Other than spending more money without better management programs, the government has failed to give the Canadian taxpayer a break and to recognize that tax relief is what is going to stimulate an economy and will let us afford our health care and education systems that are so important to Canadians generally.

[The Deputy Speaker]

Before moving on to debate, it is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Matapédia—Matane, Mont-Louis Wharf; hon. member for Peterborough, Health.

[Ken Epp, Canadian Alliance, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I again have the privilege of standing in our House of Commons representing not only the people of Elk Island but also many Canadians right across this country as we debate Bill C-28, the bungle implementation act.

It was no bungle that I used the word “bungle” instead of budget. Bill C-28 is the bungle implementation act, the Liberal bungling of the finances of Canadian taxpayers.

We have had a little chat in the last couple of months about trust funds and the fact that there should be a blind trust for cabinet ministers when they undertake to become managers of large amounts of money so that there would be a reduction of personal gain by doing that. We had a blind trust suggestion. It is supposed to be in the rules for cabinet ministers. We found out, of course, that the former finance minister had a blind trust that was not blind at all. In fact, it came complete with a Seeing Eye dog, I guess.

The reason I bring this up is that unknown to many taxpayers in this country their money is in a blind trust. They send it to Ottawa and the government here manages to spend it at an astounding rate. It is mostly in a blind trust because no one really can account for where it went afterwards, so it is totally blind. I should not say totally, as we know where some of it went, but a lot of it is very badly mismanaged.

Over the last 10 years that I have been a member of Parliament and even before that, when I remember my dad saying it many years ago, I have had many people say to me they did not mind paying fair taxes. My dad said that he did not mind paying fair taxes, that “It shows that I have an income and I am very happy with that and very grateful to live in a country where I can earn money to provide for my family”. He used to say that he was certainly willing to pay some money for the privilege of living here and to make his contribution to the economic milieu in the country.

However, over and over in the last number of years I have heard people say that they do not mind paying a fair rate of taxation but they have two complaints. One is that the rate is not fair, that it is too high. Second, they tell me that when they send that money they are not content with the way it is mismanaged here. I had someone ask me, “How about these advertising contracts? How is it that somebody can get a contract with the government and not do any work for it but still cash the cheque?”

That is a very good question. The cabinet ministers on the front bench over there should be very concerned about the fact that they are not managing the financial affairs of this country properly and looking after the finances of the country properly. They are really mismanaging money that has been entrusted to them. It was given in trust, but they are not treating it in trust.

I want to mention something about the rate of taxation, and I do not know whether people are aware of it. I like to dabble in mathematics. There was one computation I did, although I do not remember the exact number. If all the money spent by the government of Ottawa, which over the year is around $183 billion, were paid out of Ottawa--and of course it is not, there are huge cheques and large equalization payments and health care transfers--by putting the loonies on a conveyor belt and shipping them out of Ottawa to wherever they go, or within Ottawa, that conveyor belt would have to be going at around 630 kilometres per hour. As I recall the number, that is what it would be. That is the rate at which the loonies are flying out of here.

We know that the loonies are flying in from the taxpayers at an even faster rate because we have been enjoying surpluses. Some of that money has gone to reducing the debt at way too slow a rate, while program spending is going up at the rate of 20% per year. That is not sustainable. That is another area where the government is mismanaging the money that is entrusted to it by Canadian taxpayers.

Certainly, there are programs that need more money. We have been calling for more money for the military. It is atrocious that we send a ship to attend a war that the Prime Minister says we are not in and the helicopter on board cannot fly. First there was the one that crashed on the ship and we had to bring it home. The next one went out, and when it arrived, it got a hole in the firewall and could not fly.

We are asking our servicemen and women to go out there with totally inadequate equipment and no moral or other support from the government, and yet they are putting their lives on the line.

That is an atrocious misuse of taxpayers' money as well because taxpayers are sending the money to Ottawa to, among other things, preserve the national interest. Certainly, as a nation we should be a major player when it comes to looking after the concerns of peace and fighting terrorism around the world. Yes, we would like to have more money there.

We have said since we came here that health care must be improved. I hesitate to use this example, but I will. On the day of my father's funeral just several weeks before Christmas, my mother fell and broke her hip. This happened in Saskatchewan, the province which is the home of medicare. She had to wait for 35 hours before she had attention to it and as a result missed dad's funeral. It was a pretty bad day. I guess that is an understatement.

However, for there not to be appropriate health care in a province like Saskatchewan because of lack of funding is atrocious. We know this because the federal government dried it up in 1993 and 1994 when it first took power. Afterwards the government comes here like a shining white knight saying it will fix medicare. First it gives it the fatal blow and then it tries to blow some breath back into it. Then it wants us to proclaim it a hero for doing it.

I had a phone call or an e-mail, I cannot remember which, from my daughter who lives in Regina. She told of two of her friends who had to travel out of the province in order to get needed health care because the province could not provide it. One was a mother with newborn twins. There was not a reasonable amount of equipment in Regina to look after these babies so they had to airlift this mother and her new twins in a makeshift apparatus to keep them alive until they got to Calgary so they could look after them. That is just not good enough.

We want our government to use taxpayers' money responsibly. I have said a number of times that the government would spend a billion dollars on registering duck hunters. That is a blatant waste of money. There is no proof whatsoever that even if the registry did work successfully that it would save any lives.

I did a little computation. A billion dollars would buy four MRIs for every riding in the country. A city of Edmonton has eight ridings, six in Edmonton and two right outside, one of them being mine. That would be 32 MRIs in the city of Edmonton. Members should ask those people what they would rather have, a registration system for their shotgun, or MRIs so that for serious medical problems they can get a proper diagnosis and receive treatment.

My big complaint with the budget and with Bill C-28, the bungle implementation act, is that the government is bungling the finances of the country and it is time that comes to an end.

[John Duncan, Canadian Alliance, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-28, the budget implementation act.

It occurs to me that only in Canada could we have a former finance minister who owned a company that registered its ships in foreign countries to avoid paying Canadian taxes and wages. Only in Canada could we have a former finance minister who would reflag his ships in tax havens and replace them with Korean or Filipino crews because they were paid much less. Only in Canada do we allow that kind of behaviour and not hold our ministers to account. I cannot explain it, but all I know is it is completely inappropriate.

We had a new budget presented in February by a new minister. Many of us thought we would see a new course set in the new budget. What we continue to see is the same Liberal direction and the same misplaced priorities.

Canada is a trading nation. Our ranking in the world is dependent on trade. We are very dependent on trade, much more so than people in mainland China who are about 10% dependent on trade and people in the United States who are 15% dependent. Canada exports 45% of our GDP and imports 40% of our GDP, and 87% of that trade is with the U.S.

What is our most precious asset when it comes to trade? Obviously our relationship with the U.S.

We have $2 billion a day in two-way trade across the Canada-U.S. border. Given our need to diversify export destinations while at the same time addressing concerns of our southern neighbours who have expressed great security concerns about border issues and points of entry, the budget should have spent a lot of time addressing those issues and it did not. There was $11 million over the next two years and $5.5 million a year to add regional offices and increase consular presence in the U.S. These are insignificant moneys and much less than what was given to a simple PR program for the softwood associations in the U.S. to affect opinion makers in the softwood lumber dispute.

I find this problematic and I want to talk about some of those misplaced priorities. For example, Canadian infrastructure is a large and current but looming problem as well. We have major problems in the air, on land, and in the sea. The budget did not address those priorities.

Everything the government has talked about in terms of improving our land infrastructure border crossing needs is reliant on a $600 million announcement that is not going to cut it. That program was announced in 2002 and is only a start, it is not comprehensive.

The message that Canada has been sending to the U.S. on our domestic security, international security, border issues and military issues through the budget and in other ways, that we are all too familiar with in the House, is imperilling our long term trading relationship in a major way.

For example, the government collects $5 billion in fuel taxes every year and only a slight amount is returned to transportation infrastructure. In fact, 100% of those taxes go into general revenue. Last year only 4% was returned to highways.

There was a recent spike in gas prices at the pumps. If that 10% increase were to sit there for 12 months, it would represent $350 million in windfall revenue to the federal government. That little increment alone would be more than enough to pay for the spending promises for the Olympics and every other highway spending announcement in British Columbia that the government has made this year. In 2000, the federal government actually spent $400,000 on highway infrastructure in British Columbia alone. It was one-twentieth of 1% of fuel tax revenues taken out of that province. This large increase is actually still minuscule.

What is happening is that provinces are putting 92% of provincial fuel tax revenues into transportation related infrastructure. The federal government is putting in 4%. We need a new direction on this. The provinces and municipalities are the main responsible parties for land transportation and highways. We call on the federal authority to vacate its fuel tax room to the provinces and municipalities. This is essential to our well-being as Canadians.

We have another form of land transportation and that is rail. VIA Rail has cost Canadian taxpayers $3 billion in taxpayer subsidies over the last 10 years. That works out to $10 million per federal constituency. If the average constituency were to think about what it could do with $10 million, its wish list would include a lot things before it would include subsidizing the VIA Rail network. VIA Rail has become a self-protective, self-perpetuating organization which, once again, wants to enter into competition with Rocky Mountaineer, the very route that it wanted to abandon and that Rocky Mountaineer turned into a profitable route. VIA Rail now wants to get back in with a subsidy and the Minister of Transport is buying this argument. This is opposed by communities and chambers of commerce from Kamloops to Calgary, the very route that the rail would take.

I will give another example of misplaced priorities. We have a government committed to Kyoto. We have some exciting wind and wave energy projects on the west coast. Because of a lack of commitment by the government, those projects which have been moving along nicely on the promise of federal contribution have been pulled. That is not what I call commitment to Kyoto. That is something very hypocritical.

In the few seconds left I would like to say that there is a spending side and there is a revenue side. On the revenue side, one year ago Canada Customs and Revenue Agency hired 92 auditors for my province alone to go out and get new revenue. They are beating up on all of the wrong people. That is another misplaced priority and one the government should address.

[Ken Epp, Canadian Alliance, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. My reputation of being able to do mathematical computations is at risk. I would like to set the record straight. I think I may have said that the government expenditures for the year is represented by loonies flying at 630 kilometres per hour. It should have been 531. I just recomputed it and I want the accurate number on the record.

[Garry Breitkreuz, Canadian Alliance, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to briefly address the budget implementation bill.

One of the concerns the people in my riding of Yorkton--Melville have is that the budget really has turned the surplus into a slush fund. There are a whole bunch of different programs funded by the government. There is no direction. The Liberals are buying a few votes here, buying a few votes there and creating the impression that they are doing something wonderful for society, but when it comes right down to it and we look very carefully at it, there is really no substance to it.

I will deal in a few minutes with one of those slush fund projects that really is a symbol of what is wrong in this country.

[An hon. member]

It wouldn't be the gun registry, would it?

[Garry Breitkreuz, Canadian Alliance, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

It would be the gun registry but we will get there in a minute.

There is a lot more of a surplus than the government would have us believe. Surplus is a nice word for overtaxation. If we used that surplus to lower the taxes, we could create a lot of jobs in this country. There would be an incentive again to invest. Companies would have more. Canadians would have more money in their pockets to spend. They could buy goods and services in their local communities rather than send the money to Ottawa where it just gets lost in a big black hole.

That kind of tax reduction is desperately needed. It would help the poorest in this country. If we raised the personal tax exemption that would have a huge impact on helping poor people in this country.

The budget announced $17.4 billion in new spending initiatives over three years, but the tax cuts were only $2.3 billion. The Liberals talked about all the tax cuts and they were almost insignificant compared to the huge increases in spending.

[Anne McLellan, Liberal, Edmonton West, AB]

Is $100 billion insignificant?

[Garry Breitkreuz, Canadian Alliance, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

This backward budget really reflects the backward Liberal promises that it contains.

The government projected another $2 billion on Kyoto. It is probably the same as the gun registry. Where is that money going? What are we going to get for it? Has a cost benefit analysis been done? No. We have asked for a cost benefit analysis. The minister who is now replying to me was one of those people who should have done the cost benefit analysis on the gun registry before she handed it over to the next justice minister and before he handed it over to the Solicitor General. That cost benefit analysis should be done.

Are taxpayers getting value for their money? Absolutely not, because that study which I have asked for has never been relayed to Parliament. In fact when the Auditor General brought her report out on December 3 last year, she clearly said that Parliament has been kept in the dark. That is one of the ways it has been kept in the dark . Where is the cost benefit analysis? It has never been given to Parliament. We do not know if there are any benefits at all and whether they are cost effective in saving lives and reducing crime. But I digress.

The Canadian Alliance also believes, and I really want to underline this one, that the child care options should be given to parents and not to bureaucrats. Every parent in this country deserves the opportunity to choose the kind of child care he or she wants. By limiting their choices the government is doing a disservice to parents.

One program which I think has become a symbol of what is wrong with government in this country is the whole gun registry program, or as the Liberals like to paint it, gun control. I challenge Canadians to scratch below the surface on issues. If they scratched below the surface on this issue, they would realize that the gun registry has nothing to do with gun control, yet the government is asking for more and more money. The projected cost by the end of next year that the government admits to is $1.07 billion. It is unbelievable.

Last week the government released a report on priorities and spending on the gun registry program. The government filled in a few of the blanks in this report, but there were 105 blanks where it did not know what the costs were.

It is unforgiveable that a government would table its spending priorities and leave all of those blanks. I call it shooting blanks. In effect the government is keeping Parliament in the dark. It is firing a bunch of missiles across here, asking Canadians to believe this is gun control when in fact it is not.

What could the government do with $1 billion? I was listening to my colleague a few minutes ago talking about how many MRIs could be bought. MRIs in our medical clinics would really help preserve people's lives and help improve the health of this country. That is not being provided.

The government could get 238 MRIs fully installed, staffed and running for that kind of money. If those MRIs were spread out across the country we would have something that is cost effective. That is why a cost benefit analysis is so important and needs to be done. It has not been done.

When former Bill C-68 was introduced the government was spending $16 million a year on cancer research. Think of the number of lives that could be saved if $1 billion was put into cancer research. That is why a cost benefit analysis is needed.

The Liberals will always come up with the mantra that if it saves one life, it is worth it. How many lives are being lost because of the misplaced spending priorities of the government? It is unforgiveable that it would go down this road and not examine what could be better done with that money.

The Liberals are great at creating impressions. I believe this is what the budget was all about. I believe that the gun registry was simply creating an impression. Why? To get votes. The Liberals were playing politics with taxpayers' hard-earned money, creating impressions that they are somehow improving public safety, creating the impression in the budget that somehow they are improving the lot of Canadians.

If Canadians scratched below the surface, and I challenge them to do that, they would find that the opposite was true, that the Liberals are taking the hard-earned money away from Canadians and putting it into funds that really do not accomplish anything in a material way.

My colleague talked about the amount of money that is collected through gasoline taxes, almost $5 billion a year. The government talks about its infrastructure project. If we actually scratched below the surface on that, we would see it is just a helter-skelter spending of money here, there and everywhere with no focused direction in getting our products to market and ensuring that it is helping the Canadian economy. If that was the government's purpose it would use that $5 billion to improve the highways in this country, to put in place those things in our transportation system that will be effective and truly help Canadians.

I have to touch on one other thing. It is unforgiveable and borders on a crime for the government to not pay down the debt when we have the opportunity to do so.

[An hon. member]

We are paying.

[Garry Breitkreuz, Canadian Alliance, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

I hear them complaining about my comments on this.

This is an ethical issue. Why should our children and grandchildren be saddled with this huge debt, having to pay that for generations to come? Why do we have to support the government's habit of wasting money on a gun registry, on wasting money on all kinds of slush fund programs and not paying down the debt? That is unforgiveable.

The government should seriously look at the trust that has been placed in it by Canadians. It has to take that seriously and start doing the right thing. That would be to pay down the debt.

One of the things that has really come to the fore lately is that there will be a great leadership change within the Liberal Party. The leaders that are coming forward now have been the ones that have been signing the cheques, that have been part of the mess that has been created in this country. For us to suddenly think that this is somehow going to change if there is a change in leadership is again misleading Canadians.

We should remind Canadians that this firearms registry, which has become a symbol of what is wrong with this country, was funded by a finance minister who now wants to become Prime Minister. I warn Canadians that we have to start to make substantial changes in this country or we will continue to slide downhill.

[Bev Desjarlais, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the comments made this afternoon are important to note. What they have indicated is the failure of the government to address real issues facing Canadians, as well as to address the wastage of taxpayer dollars. It was mentioned that dollars spent on advertising contracts were flippantly wasted.

I want to highlight another example where a middleman, although I would refer to him as a bookie, was used in a Health Canada contract. A company, which does car restoration, somehow acted as the middleman for someone else to do contract work on providing information related to aboriginal health. I found that one the most disturbing.

Half the first nations in Manitoba are in my riding. I know the challenges they face with health care. To see the government resort to a car restoration company to get information or to use a middleman bookie agent to get information on aboriginal health is absolutely a slap in the face and a total insult to aboriginal people in Canada, certainly in Manitoba.

What I will focus on the most today is on the duplicity of the Liberal government and the budget. I apologize to my Liberal colleagues who I know do not support some of the nasty things the government does. I know everyone is not of the same mindset that there should be wastage and duplicity. I am speaking of the duplicity of the government in its actions of talking the fine talk and never following through, of all these amazingly wonderful Liberal caucus task forces where they use their dollars, head out across the country to listen to Canadians and come back with great policy that will benefit Canadians.

The one I want to speak of right now is with regard to the 1996 Liberal task force on disability issues. I recently received a letter in my office, and I am sure a good number of members of Parliament have as well, from the Canadian Association of Independent Living Centres. The subject of the letter is the $15 million for spinal cord research in the budget. Everyone would think it is great that it is getting some money for this. I want to read some sections of the letter that the Canadian Association of Independent Living Centres sent to us. It states:

It states, “In 1996 a Liberal task force on disability issues was formed to examine the role of the federal government and its responsibility to Canadians with disabilities. Members of Parliament and the disability community travelled to each and every province and territory and consulted with Canadians with disabilities, their organizations, service providers, family members, unions, businesses and other community groups. The members of Parliament involved, along with the community, tabled the report “Equal Citizenship for Canadians with Disabilities: The Will to Act”.

The Canadian Association of Independent Living Centres goes on to say, “We firmly and naively thought that this document would be a blueprint for action for any upcoming Liberal initiatives. Thousands of Canadians with disabilities participated and sent a very strong message back to Ottawa through this report that the federal government has a very serious role to play in the lives of Canadians with disabilities.

The task force report included 52 recommendations on what both members of Parliament and the community believed were achievable recommendations. There are only eight recommendations to date that have been acted on”.

This is since 1996. It goes on to say, “The majority of the recommendations followed through on were simply programs already in place, yet at risk of extinction”.

I say at risk of extinction under this Liberal government not following through with its commitment to disabled Canadians.

I will leave out a couple of paragraphs and go on to another key section which brings in the $15 million. It states, “In this year's budget there was some good news for children with disabilities and their families through the tax system. However, there was once again no new investment in programming. To everyone's surprise, there was $15 million dedicated to research for spinal cord injuries, sending another message to Canadians with disabilities that maybe the eradication of disability is much more important than supporting citizenship and services to the millions of people living with disabilities that want to have equal access in Canadian society”.

It goes on to say, “What is truly surprising is that after each and every report that has been written and supported by national, local and provincial groups, by Human Resources Development Canada and the federal Subcommittee on the Status of Persons with Disabilities, there is not one mention or recommendation that spinal cord research was a priority of the disabled community in Canada.

In fact the federal government released the report advancing the inclusion of people with disabilities on December 3, 2002 and this report included federally funded research results that identify that human and financial resources in the disability community are stretched to the limit. This is not a sustainable situation and it is a critical time to develop support to enhance the capacity of the disabled community”.

Once again the government has turned its back on Canadians of the most vulnerable nature, those with disabilities. Worse than that, the duplicity in its actions of travelling around telling people it is listening to them, that is listening to their recommendations and that it will make things work is absolutely disgusting. It does not do a darn bit of what it says it will do. This is not coming from myself as an opposition member. It is coming from disabled Canadians, the people to which the Liberal government was supposed to be listening. Even more scarier than that is the fact that I was not shocked by this.

For the past two years, we have listened time and time again to people who have told us that the government has not acted responsibly toward disabled Canadians. It put a system in place where disabled Canadians, who tried to get a tax credit, were literally hammered at every angle. The $50, $75, $100 that they should save on their taxes, they were told they had to get a medical certificate for this or that. Even though they had a disability, if they could walk 50 meters or if they could lift a spoon to their mouth, they could not get the tax credit. That is with what we have been dealing.

It should have come as no surprise that this was before us. I know the rest of my colleagues in the House will join me in calling on the government to act responsibly if ever that were possible. If it is going to spend taxpayer money, it should listen to them and follow through on their recommendations. If it is not going to do it, it should quit wasting money and quit pretending.

It is absolutely true that human and financial resources in the disability community are stretched to the limit. Taxpayer dollars are stretched to the limit and should not be wasted by the government. That is the problem here. As my colleague from the Alliance mentioned earlier, it is not that Canadians do not want to pay their fair share, they do. What they want to receive is a fair and disciplined government with those dollars, not the wastage.

Another one of my colleagues mentioned tax breaks that went to companies. It is unconscionable to think that the former finance minister tried to get around paying taxes to Canada, the country for which he supposedly running to be prime minister. There is no beating around the bush on this. If there were, we would not see the articles in the paper. Imagine the shame we would feel, if someone would try and skirt around paying his fair share of taxes in Canada and then possibly, on the vote of a bunch of Liberals, be the next prime minister. It is absolutely disgusting that any Canadian, who has the gumption to think about running for the position of prime minister or even as a member of Parliament, would skirt around paying taxes by flying a flagship of a different colour so to speak. It is unconscionable.

If the government can put in place little rules that hammer at the disabled community and at seniors, and not pay seniors dollars that are rightfully due them because they have filed too late, it could act responsibly and put in a fair taxation system where everybody is paying fairly. That is what we need to see.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

The question is on the motion that the question be now put. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.