John Williams

[National Library Act, May 27th, 1994]

Mr. Chairman, if the parliamentary secretary is suggesting that the fines should be increased an exorbitant amount to take care of inflation over the next unknown number of years as the finance minister tries to keep his books balanced and inflation may get away on us, who knows when we will be back revisiting this point?

As I mentioned earlier I hope the government will apply the same attitude as it introduces other legislation, for example the Young Offenders Act, to ensure that fines and punishments will be equally severe to take care of it for the next number of years. Then we can be assured that we will not have to worry about crime on our streets as well as book publishers sending books to the National Library.

[National Library Act, May 27th, 1994]

Mr. Chairman, I am not suggesting the fact that the National Library gets two editions of every book published is not in the national interest. The point I was trying to make was that these books are being donated, not freely but by legislation. They are being donated by the book publishers of the country to the National Library and we are turning around and increasing the fine.

The parliamentary secretary already admitted there was only one particular case. Why are we increasing the fine from $150 to $25,000? We have heard about inflation but this is ridiculous.

This stick it is now going to hold over businesses if they do not send two books to the National Library is far too draconian. Therefore it should be scaled back if the government would like the co-operation of businesses to achieve its particular agenda.

[National Library Act, May 27th, 1994]

They are suggesting that they want to reduce the debt. If they want business to hand them something for free and wield one mighty big stick worth $25,000 over its head to do so, it sends the wrong message to business. We want businesses to create jobs in the country. They are already handing $350,000 to government through the bill. I would suggest it should rethink the size of the fine it intends to impose.

[National Library Act, May 27th, 1994]

Mr. Chairman, I have a question on subsection 13(4) of the act and the replacement of the $150 fine. In the case of corporations it is being increased to $25,000 if they do not send two books to the National Library.

The Reform Party has indicated over many months its position on young offenders, but it seems the government takes far more seriously a book publisher that does not send two books to the National Library than young offenders who roam our streets and commit crimes. The government has a draconian attitude when it comes to increasing fines to $25,000 in the case of sending two books to the National Library.

The speaker for the Reform Party mentioned that these books were now to be delivered free to the National Library and that there would be a savings of about $300,000 to $350,000 to the government. If it is a case of trying to raise some money, I am sure $25,000 fines to a few book publishers would raise that amount of money and more.

[Budget Implementation Act, May 26th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I rise this morning to speak on Bill C-17. The first thing I have to say is that Bill C-17 is an omnibus bill. It covers many areas, some of which we support and some to which we take exception.

We have asked the government to break the bill into its constituent parts, which it refused to do. We were therefore left with little or no choice but to put these motions in order that we may stress the point that we agree with some parts of the bill and disagree with other parts. While we will be forced to vote against the bill in its entirety, we wish to go on the record as saying that we do support certain parts of the bill and hence our motions this morning.

Basically we are in favour of the sections pertaining to the freezing of wages of the public sector. As everyone knows we are in a serious debt and deficit crisis. Anything that can be done to help alleviate that problem has to be in the best interests of the country.

However as the Reform Party has pointed out on many occasions, much more could be done by the government rather than turning on its own civil service and squeezing some extra money out of its pockets to help the government come to terms with its debt and deficit situation. If we had not only frozen the salaries of the public sector but eliminated every civil servant in the country and saved every nickel that we were paying in wages to these people, we would still not save even half the annual deficit.

Therefore if the government thinks it is going to balance the budget on the backs of the civil servants, it has it entirely wrong. However the basic concept that we are going to save some additional money because every nickel helps in this exercise has to be supported.

There are some items that I want to point out. One is the extension not only of the salary freeze for an additional two years but the introduction of a two-year suspension of pay increments within the salary grades.

I have had numerous representations made to me as a member of Parliament for the constituency of St. Albert where the Royal Canadian Mounted Police perform the police services. In the RCMP, when a new Mountie graduates from training school, his pay increases semi-annually over the next three years until he reaches the normal salary for a police constable.

With this change the increments of a new RCMP constable are now frozen. Now we have an inequity between the amount of money that is paid to new RCMP constables on the beat and the ones who are there already. It is not that they do not want to do their part, but members of the RCMP are subject to transfer from one part of the country to another more frequently than any other member of the civil service. As they move from rural Alberta or Saskatchewan to perhaps downtown Vancouver the cost of living is going to change dramatically.

They are being asked to maintain their salaries at exactly the same level as they entered the police force rather than have the semi-annual increments to bring them up to the level of any other constable in the force.

We see the rise in crime. We have talked about it in the House on many occasions. Perhaps we should give some consideration to recognizing the value that our police force provides to us in the maintenance of law and order. How can we expect them to get by on less than a shoestring? We are not adequately compensating these people as they in many cases put their lives on the line for our protection. We are asking them to do that with less than reasonable salary for the new members of the force.

We support the wage freeze in the public service. We want to do whatever we can as the Reform Party to ensure that every effort is made to come to terms with this horrible deficit that we have. It may be a small step but it is a step that we support with some reservations in some areas.

As I said at the outset, while we will be voting against the bill in its entirety when it comes up for a vote we wish to go on record as having supported the basic thrust of the clause regarding public service wages in Bill C-17.

The other sections that deal with compensation in other areas outside the ones I have mentioned we are basically in support of, especially the one that would freeze the salaries of MPs. We have always wanted to send a clear signal to Canadians saying: "Let us provide leadership".

During the last election that was one of the things that we as Reformers said, that providing leadership to Canadians, demonstrating that we as government and parliamentarians, as those elected to show the way and lead the way in the country, are prepared to do our part to ensure efficient government is provided at a reasonable cost to Canadians at this time when restraint has to be the watchword.

[Budget Implementation Act, May 26th, 1994]

moved:

Motions Nos. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11

That Bill C-17 be amended by deleting Clause 5.

That Bill C-17 be amended by deleting Clause 6.

That Bill C-17 be amended by deleting Clause 7.

That Bill C-17 be amended by deleting Clause 8.

That Bill C-17 be amended by deleting Clause 9.

That Bill C-17 be amended by deleting Clause 10.

That Bill C-17 be amended by deleting Clause 11.

[Budget Implementation Act, May 26th, 1994]

moved:

Motions Nos. 1, 2 and 3

That Bill C-17 be amended by deleting Clause 2.

That Bill C-17 be amended by deleting Clause 3.

That Bill C-17 be amended by deleting Clause 4.

[Income Tax Act, May 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, while we allowed the bill to pass through the committee stage without real debate I would like to echo the remarks of the previous speaker on two points. Number one, we are dealing with some amendments that were announced by press conference as far back as December 1992. That was a year and a half ago and the House has only be asked to deliberate these items today.

The Reform Party would like to see some improvements in the way this government and this House are run. I think from now on any time we find material being brought to this House for our consent, 18 months after it has been introduced by press conferences no less, we would take an entirely different point of view.

This House has the privilege of passing legislation. As far as the Income Tax Act is concerned, as we know, many people have made decisions based on these proposals that we are being asked to implement into law today. To go back and have that all changed would make it almost an impossible situation for the people of this country to try to figure out their taxes. Therefore

let us put this government on notice now that this type of long delay will not be tolerated from now on.

The other thing the previous speaker from the Reform Party said concerned the complexity of this document. The Income Tax Act is far too complex, far beyond the comprehension even of many tax experts and lawyers, far less the average Canadian on the street. When it comes to fairness in taxation not only should a tax be reasonable in amount but also a taxpayer should be able to understand on what basis he is being taxed.

The way this Income Tax Act has become over the years is far beyond the comprehension of many Canadians as to how the government levies taxation in this country. This government would be well advised to simplify the Income Tax Act and take that as an ongoing project. No doubt at the speed at which it is introducing legislation in this new government it will take many years. We will leave that for another debate on another day.

Another point I would like to mention is regarding the taxation of life insurance companies. I understand that their taxation may be a little different than others. One of the points that was made was that insurance companies pay an appropriate level of federal tax. I was a little taken back by the words "appropriate level of federal tax".

It seems this government and governments today have this idea that everybody who makes a dollar has to share it with the government, rather than the government saying it needs to collect revenues to pay for the services it delivers to Canadians. We have moved away from that. The fact is we are obligated to share a larger and larger share and now it is almost a majority share of what a person earns. It has to be taken by government in this country. That whole attitude I think is indicative of one of the reasons this country is in the financial mess it is today.

One of the items in the bill is the simplification of income tax treatment of automobile operating costs. It took the government a whole year before it could rewrite the rules regarding the simplification of automobile costs. Even today under the new rules to ask somebody to understand the simplified rules is complex, except for one thing; namely, you can work on a very simple rule provided you give more than what would be your normal share to the government.

If you are driving a company car and you use that for a small portion of your private travel, provided you pay taxes on half the cost of that automobile, even if you only use it for 10 per cent or 20 per cent or 30 per cent of the time for private business, they will let you take a simple 50 per cent of the cost and pay taxes on that amount.

It puts the onus on the taxpayer to keep the detailed method, otherwise he is being hosed by the government. This attitude again is endemic and goes back, as I said, to the life insurance company; pay your appropriate level of taxes, make sure you share your profits with us, and as far as taxpayers using automobiles is concerned, provided you pay more than what you would otherwise do you can use a simple method of making your calculation.

The whole system, the whole attitude toward payment of taxes, the collection of taxes by the government I think has to change.

These are the concerns that we have. As I say, 12 to 18 months is far too long for legislation to be presented in this House.

Taxpayers are expected to know the Income Tax Act, which is now beyond their comprehension. The other thing is that if you take a look at the Income Tax Act as published, remember it does not have many of these things that are being proposed today and passed into legislation today. Many of these things pertain to last year, 1993 tax returns. How is the taxpayer expected to know really how he is supposed to prepare his tax return for 1993, which should have been filed by April 30, a month ago, when we are only setting the rules today? That is the type of situation that has to change.

I will close there and hope that this government will take these points under advisement. Then we will not have to go through this process of 18 months after the fact approving legislation.

(Motion agreed to, bill read the third time and passed.)

[Questions On The Order Paper, May 25th, 1994]

What were the names of the federal statutory programs that expended over $250 million in the fiscal year 1993-94, and under what department or departmental jurisdiction did each of these programs fall?

[Polls, May 12th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I also asked whether the results of the polls would be kept secret. According to the guidelines, they are to be kept secret at the discretion of the minister. Perhaps the next government will also find an empty book when it goes looking for the rules. There do not seem to be any.

My question for the minister is this. If the government is elected by the people and uses money that belongs to the people to ask questions of the people, why is he going to keep the results secret from the people?