John Reynolds

[Ross Rebagliati, February 9th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, over the weekend at the Olympics in Nagano, 26 year old Ross Rebagliati of Whistler, B.C. brought Canada's first gold medal at the Olympics. Ross became the first ever winner of the gold medal in snowboarding.

Ross' gold medal is more than a personal achievement and a number in Canada's quest for gold. The gold medal victory signifies the bond between Ross and his long time friend Geoff “Lumpy” Leidel, who died last month in an avalanche in Kootenay national park, and to whom Ross dedicated the medal.

This is more than a gold medal for Canada. It is a statement to the indomitable spirit of Ross Rebagliati, the bond of a friendship and should serve as an inspiration and reminder of what the Olympics signify.

Ross, you are the personification of the Olympic spirit. Congratulations.

[Immigration, February 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, these two rapists are not the type of individuals Canadians want in Canada. Landing is a privilege, not a licence to rape.

Why does the minister refuse to do the moral and honourable thing and at the same time send a message that Canadians will not tolerate this type of behaviour from people in our country?

[Immigration, February 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

Two landed immigrants from Haiti have been sentenced in a Montreal courthouse to 18 months of community service for having repeatedly gang raped an 18 year old woman. Canadians are outraged with this lenient sentence.

Will the minister take immediate steps to deport these individuals?

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 1997, February 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, in December I asked the minister a question about the Immigration and Refugee Board. I would like to start off by congratulating an advisory group making recommendations to the minister for the work it did on that report, Mr. Roger Trempe, Miss Susan David and Dr. Roslyn Kunin,

One of the recommendations they made was to eliminate the Immigration and Refugee Board. The Immigration and Refugee Board is a national embarrassment to Canada right now. I could not agree with them more. What is interesting about it is that they make that recommendation, the minister puts out a press release congratulating them and a couple of days later she appoints a former Liberal member, Anna Terrana, to the Immigration and Refugee Board at a salary of $84,000 a year. We have to wonder how serious the government is in really looking at these recommendations.

The Immigration and Refugee Board has a 28,000 case backlog. Out of 21,000 people who have been ordered deported, there are 15,600 people left in Canada; 4,000 deported, 15,600 still in this country.

The people on this board make $86,400 each. That is the maximum. There are 198 members, $74 million a year. A good recommendation is to get rid of this board because it is not doing the taxpayers in this country any good at all.

There are 29,000 cases outstanding by the Immigration and Refugee Board. Eight-five hundred previously rejected are now under review. The average processing time for a claim is 13 months. Review of cases takes seven months. In reality the first processing of a claim takes two and half years.

Sixty per cent of the refugees who arrive in this country arrive without a passport or without identification. It costs about $300 million a year to keep these refugees on welfare and assistance.

It is time that this minister got serious about this board. The recommendations from her committee say that it should be cancelled. There was a great article this weekend by Anne Dawson of the Ottawa

Sun

. The chairman of the board, Mawani, refused an interview. So did the minister.

The public wants this board cancelled. It wants a different process. The Canadian people are fed up with what is happening with the refugee situation, people coming to our borders demanding status in Canada. They should have to apply from outside Canada like all the other people who come here. We hope the minister will take what the public wants, take what her committee is recommending and abolish this board.

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 1997, February 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I know the time must be up but I do not have to say very much. The people who are listening out there will understand from the comments just made by the Conservative Party as to why it went from the biggest majority in Canada down to two seats.

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 1997, February 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I advise my hon. friend that unless I have a lobotomy I will never join the NDP. He is absolutely correct that poor people in the United States are waiting six months. I am not defending that program. He also has to know that in Canada poor people and rich people are waiting six months. That is what is wrong with our medicare program. We have to make some changes to it.

I do not disagree with his party. Medicare needs more funding in Canada. My party said all during the election that medicare needed $2 billion more. We still say that, just as we say it for education. To try to compare Canada and the U.S. in that area, we are waiting as long as they are. There is no question that the wealthier people in the United States, those who pay for medicare, do not have to wait very long and poor people do, but that is not a comparison. In this country we all wait six months no matter what our status.

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 1997, February 2nd, 1998]

Mr Speaker, I am not ignoring the crying of Canadians. I am listening to the crying about their taxes.

The Reform Party tax program will yield fairness and simplicity like the parliamentary secretary has never seen before. If he would read it he might understand it.

The parliamentary secretary talks about universal medicare, pension plans and old age security. In Canada, 65% of our medical money goes in the public sector to look after people. In the United States it is 53%. Every senior citizen in the United States has medicare. Maybe the parliamentary secretary did not know that. Every senior citizen in the United States has medicare.

The government should not try to scare seniors about how the Reform Party will hurt them. I am not that far away from being a senior citizen. I will make sure seniors are well protected and will speak on their behalf, but the government should not use that old Liberal tactic of scaring people that the Reform Party will take something away from them.

The Reform Party will lower taxes. The Reform Party has offered to increase the transfer payments on medicare. Members opposite have not read our brochure. We have also agreed to increase payments to education, areas that increases in payments are needed in. We fought about those during the election. We will talk about them now. We will look after senior citizens with a much fairer taxation program.

The Liberal Party still taxes senior citizens. A senior citizen making $15,000 with no other income will pay $1,300 in tax to the government. Does the member think that is fair, even if their medicare is free? They could have free medicare across the line also. Seniors are looked after in the United States.

Someone living in the United States could buy a medical program. It costs so much a month to be covered under medicare. Anyone on welfare is covered under medicare. Fifty-three per cent of the dollar goes to medicare in the United States. It does not have a national program and we do. We have the best program but it has to be well funded, looked after and fair.

Hon. members must get calls from people. I get them. Maybe they get them more in provincial government offices. People with health problems, with heart problems, tell us they have to wait four months to get tests done. They may die of a heart attack before they get in there. If they have cancer, a brain tumour, they may have to wait three weeks to get an MRI. This is what is happening in some places in this country. It is not right. That is why $5 billion went out of the country and across the border. Those people were not prepared to wait to get something done here. That is one of the problems.

I do not know why the member would try to scare senior citizens about old age security. He should read the Reform platform. It is fair. We look after seniors in our program. I ask him to read it and to have some compassion.

Where is that Liberal compassion we all hear about? There is no compassion in charging $1,300 in tax on $15,000 in income. It may be more than that with the seniors benefit. There is no Liberal compassion there.

When I was a young man all my family were Liberals. I was always taught that Liberals had compassion. That is why one was a Liberal. It seems to have changed.

Those who are wealthy do not mind paying taxes or giving to the Liberal Party, but we want to be fair. We want to make sure that single parents do not have to pay the abusive taxes they are paying right now. We want to make sure that seniors who are on their own—and there are many of them—do not have to pay the unfair taxes that are there now. That is what we are talking about. We are talking about lowering taxes, about lowering taxes for young people who are just starting to work.

They get jobs that pay them $24,000 to $30,000 a year and suddenly the government starts grabbing a third of that. That is not fair. They should be given a chance to get going. Taxes should be lowered for people who earn under $30,000.

The Reform Party would eliminate taxes for people under that level. That would get the country going and that would create enthusiasm. It would create private enterprise. It would get away from the socialist attitude we are getting from the Liberals and the New Democrats.

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 1997, February 2nd, 1998]

An hon. member opposite says “You had better not get sick”. I can tell him about that.

I had the privilege of living in the United States for four years. I was doing a project. I had good medical care while I was there. Because of Liberal government programs, $5 billion went out of this country last year into the United States. Canadians are going to the U.S. for medical care. At least they can get in the door. They do not find themselves in long line-ups when they have major heart problems or cancer. Do not tell me how good it is in Canada. We have one of the best systems in the world, but it is underfunded and a lot of that is because of the cutbacks by this federal government.

We have to look into our medical programs in a major way. Do not talk about not getting sick somewhere where the taxes are lower. The standard of living in Canada has gone from number 3 in the world to number 12. Members opposite must understand that.

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 1997, February 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-28 and to listen to the different approaches taken by the parties in the House.

I am very pleased to be a member of a party that has talked about cutting taxes and reducing deficit over the last number of years. Certainly because of the pressure of the Reform Party the Minister of Finance has his deficit where he wants it today. I am sure he is pleased that we are here giving him that support because there are many members in his own party who do not give him that support. They just want to spend, spend, spend. Now there is real pressure on the minister to spend.

This bill is a band-aid approach when radical surgery is needed. The Minister of Finance is going to tell the country what he is going to do about taxation in the budget in the next few weeks. We have to really keep the pressure on him to give what the Canadian people want.

It is interesting to listen to my colleague, the member for Kamloops, in the NDP. He said we have to reform our tax system. It is nice to hear him use the word reform. I guess he is surrounded by so many of them in Kamloops now that he is starting to think the Reform way, although I know his party policy is to nationalize the banks. Of course that has been a policy of theirs for a very long time. I cannot wait until they get on to the next issue which will probably be corporate welfare bums which is another old issue that the NDP stands for. There is no real encouragement to industry or to the banks to progress and improve, the old standard socialism.

I found it quite interesting when the member for Charlotte in the Conservative Party was discussing this issue. He talked about the structural changes made in the economy during the PC government. If it had made the structural changes that Canadians wanted which would be reducing taxes instead of increasing the debt the Conservative Party would not be where it is today, the fifth party in this House of Commons. He said that Canadians need tax cuts now. We all agree with that. Why was he not saying that when his party was in power instead of increasing taxes and increasing the debt of this country?

In 1965 Canadians paid 27.7% of their income in taxes. Would Canadians not love to see that amount of tax coming off their pay cheques? In 1996, 43% of every Canadian's taxes are going toward the government.

We have all had a break in this House since December. We have all been in our constituencies. some have been in other people's constituencies. I am sure everyone has heard our constituents talking about what is wrong in Canada today. It is that our taxes are too high. It is incumbent on us as members of this House of Commons to make sure the Minister of Finance lowers taxes in Canada.

He does not have to look that far. It is not very many miles from Ottawa to Alberta or Ottawa to British Columbia. We always say when we come here that it is 3,000 miles from British Columbia to Ottawa, but old Premier W.A.C. Bennett used to say it is 35,000 miles on the return trip.

If the Minister of Finance were to look to the west, he would see Alberta which has the lowest taxes in Canada by far. It is not even close. In fact, residents of British Columbia have been moving to Alberta so they can pay their taxes there and save money on their tax bill in Canada. Is that not a sad situation, that in a country as great as this people will move from one province to another because they can reduce their taxes by that much?

Is it surprising to anyone, and maybe it is to some people, that in Alberta we have the best economy in all of Canada? The province with the lowest taxes in all of Canada has by far the best economy. Should that shock anyone? It seems to shock whoever the minister of finance is in the government, whether it is this government or the Tory government before. We would have thought the Tories would have known better. I think they had every seat in Alberta at one time. The Tories in Alberta did not listen to their people and that is why they are not here.

We can look to British Columbia, my home province, which had in 1992 one of the best economies in all of Canada. It has taken the NDP just six years to ruin that economy. What is the NDP government doing in British Columbia now to give us a better economy? It is lowering taxes. There are big headlines saying that Premier Clark is going to reduce corporate taxes, personal taxes to improve the economy. He is a little late. We are losing jobs by the hundreds every day in our province of British Columbia because the government there has increased taxes and chased people away. Entrepreneurs are moving to Alberta because it is a better place to live. The premier has not reduced taxes quick enough.

The Minister of Finance should look to that far away place in western Canada, Alberta and British Columbia, where the reduction of taxes helps the economy. If this Minister of Finance were to reduce taxes we could be on a roll in Canada like we have never seen before.

The average family pays $6,000 a year as its share of the interest on our debt. It is great for us to stand in this House and cheer because the deficit is down and we are going to have a surplus. That is wonderful. Every Canadian would agree with that. But every Canadian also knows that we have a major debt in this country and $6,000 per family to pay for it.

Every person earning $32,000 in this country knows that they are paying $3,000 in tax and they are not living in a very affluent way.

Even worse, a person earning $15,000 in this country is paying $1,300 in federal tax. We should be ashamed of ourselves that we are collecting tax from anybody in this country earning that small amount of money. They earn a little over $1,000 a month and we are making them pay tax on it.

There are people coming in here as refugees and signing up at the welfare office who are doing better than Canadians who have lived here all their lives and are paying taxes on $15,000 a year. We should be concerned about that.

I have a lot of seniors in my riding I visited in the last little while. They are very worried about what is happening because they are still paying this tax on such a small amount of money. That is not fair to these people in our country.

A single parent of two children of whom there are many in this country who earns $25,000 pays under this Liberal government $3,015 in tax. A single parent with two children at the level of $20,000 pays an income tax of $2,189.

Everybody in this House knows what they make. A lot of members of this House have two children. They know how difficult it is to live on their salaries if they have two children in school and two houses to maintain. How would they like to be a single parent in this country earning $20,000 and having to pay $2,189 of that to their government?

A single parent with an income of $15,000 pays $3,164. A single parent with an income of $10,000 pays $538 in taxes to the government, as they did to the Tory government before it. That is not right.

Anybody who wants to look at fairness in this country asks that we revamp our tax system. My party has a plan to revamp the tax system. We talked a lot about it.

Under our fresh start program, a single parent earning $25,000 would pay $1,300 which is over $2,000 less. The people at $15,000 and $10,000 would not pay any taxes at all. That is a fair system which allows people at that lower level to have that income, helps them to participate in society. They will spend that money in their communities and create jobs for other people and that will help our country.

What is our tax rate doing to Canadians? We argue in this House about whether it should be higher or lower. We hear the Minister of Finance in question period. He has been at it for a lot of years. He can give some good answers. They look very good on the 30 second clip during the news hour.

In reality, where are we with our tax system in Canada? Where have we gone? In 1975 in the world ranking of income per person Canada was number three. In 1990 we were still number three. Then the high taxation systems of the Tories, the increasing of debt. By 1991 we were in fifth place in the world. We had dropped two places on income per person.

The Liberals got in and in 1993 we went to seventh place. In 1994 we went to tenth place in the world in income and in 1995 we went to twelfth place in the world. When are our governments in this country going to learn that we cannot have a thriving country if there are high taxes, high debt and high deficits?

It is time that we lowered taxes for all Canadians and got back to the number three place in this world where we rightfully belong.

Look at unemployment rates versus the United States. In 1980 Canada had 7.5% while the United States had 7.1%. In 1991 Canada was at 10.4%, the United States at 6.7%. In 1995 Canada was at 9.6%, the United States at 5.6%. In 1996 Canada was at 9.3%, the United States at 4.9%.

What is the difference between Canada and the United States? It has lower taxes. When there are lower taxes there are more jobs and that is the difference.

NDP members are commenting from the other end but they are so far away I cannot hear them. That is where they will be for a lot of years.

The NDP member asked me if I switched parties. I did not switch any party at all. My party left me. I am in a free enterprise party in this House, a party that represents what the people out there are thinking. That is why it is the fastest growing political party in all of Canada. Next time we will take a few of your seats away and a few of theirs and be the Government of Canada.

These old line parties just do not understand. They do not understand the comparison of low taxes, jobs and enthusiasm. One only has to look at a lot of the members here who went across the line, even with that 68 cent to 69 cent dollar. I know this by the tans everybody has when I look around here. They can see the thriving economies in the cities across the border from us. Why is that?

As we just heard the leader in the Congress say the other day, they are putting a bill before the Congress to reduce income taxes to 19%. That is what the government spends and it should not tax the people any more than it spends. That was a very refreshing thing to hear especially for someone in this country where 19% is just pocket change for the government on that side and the excess is taxes from Canadians. It is time we all got very serious in this House and made sure that this government reduces taxes.

When the Liberal member who spoke before I was asked a question by my colleague from Calgary, he said hindsight is 20:20. One does not need hindsight to look around the world and see that we have dropped from third place to twelfth place. We have to look at why this government is in trouble. It is not hindsight when we look at the money it has spent in the last number of years. Regional development programs that do not work, $1.1 billion. That is what this government has done. It does not take hindsight to know that what it did in those areas was bad. There was the flag giveaway program, $24 million. There are a lot of seniors in this country who would have liked a share of that $24 million. There are a lot of young people going to college and university who would have liked that $24 million.

Golf courses and ski resorts, $2.8 million. Is that a high priority for a government that is not lowering taxes? Helicopter cancellation penalties, $478 million. Today we hear about the new helicopters this government has bought. It cancelled an order to try to make the Tories look bad and then buys the same airplanes and spends more money for them. Only a Liberal government could do that type of spending. That is what concerns the members on this side of the House.

Yes, we have the deficit down, but where are we going from here? Are we going to really attack that debt? Are we going to lower taxes for Canadians or are we going to keep on wasting taxpayer dollars?

The other question that should be asked is how many jobs is that helicopter deal going to bring to Canadians or is it going to bring jobs to people outside of Canada.

The bungled Pearson airport deal, $216 million. Why did the government not leave that airport alone? The British Columbia airport is operating separately and is making money. I understand last year it sent over $40 million to this government from the new program it instituted to run the Vancouver international airport. We are sending the government $40 million and it is giving out $260 million in Toronto for a bungled airport deal.

On the Mulroney Airbus payout, the government could have solved that problem a lot quicker if it had just apologized for attacking a former prime minister. If it had left the politics out of it it would have saved the Canadian taxpayers a lot of money.

People on the other side might ask what would we do on this side. There are a lot of things the Reform Party would do. We will give members some examples of where savings could be achieved. We would eliminate the regional development savings, $1.1 billion. We would end funding of wasteful and patronage regional development programs. We would cut the Department of Canadian Heritage by 33% or $800 million. The Deputy Prime Minister would not like that very much but it is about time she stopped giving away flags and the other things she is giving away to buy votes for the Liberal Party.

We would end subsidies to CBC television while preserving Newsworld and CBC radio. The rest would be saved by ending other wasteful programs and no cuts to national parks or amateur sports.

We would cut Indian affairs by 21% or $920 million. We would give the funds directly to natives, not to band councils, bureaucrats and lawyers. I come from a province with a lot of ongoing negotiations. The people who are making the money are the bureaucrats and the lawyers. It is not doing a darned bit of good for the native people of British Columbia or any other British Columbian. It is time we ended this nonsense and solved the problem.

We would cut employment insurance by 21%, which would amount to $2.8 billion. Currently there is a surplus of $8 billion per annum. EI should be returned to its original function of insuring against temporary job loss. Every employer and employee in a small business knows that EI has to be cut. It is costing jobs in the country and it is time we made major changes.

We would cut equalization payments by 12%, which would amount to $1 billion. Something is wrong when three provinces support seven in a country as wealthy as Canada. I come from one of those wealthy provinces, or at least it has been. The way it is going right now there may be two provinces supporting eight.

We could save this money while ensuring more equalization funds for the poorest provinces in Canada that really need the money.

We would cut the Canadian International Development Agency, better known as CIDA, by 31% or $520 million. Let us get our own fiscal house in order first. We would reduce foreign aid and end government to government grants.

We would cut general government services by $600 million. Government efficiency still has a long way to go in every department.

We would make cuts to other government programs by up to $1.2 billion.

We have the highest income taxes in the world. We are number one in the G-7. It is time that we lowered taxes in Canada to get Canada moving again in a positive way and to get jobs for all our young people.

Most members of the House have children. I have seven. I now have six grandchildren. I worry about their future in Canada.

During the election campaign I heard the leader of the Conservative Party say that he wanted a Canada for his children like he had when he was growing up. I want a Canada for my children better than what I have. I want a Canada with lower taxes. I want a Canada in which my children want to stay because it is the best place in the world to live. I want a Canada where they can find a job. I want a Canada where my children do not have to go to the United States or other countries to get a job. They should be working right here in this wonderful country which has a very large land mass.

I understand the frustration of the hon. member for Yukon when she asked my Liberal colleague why Yukon was not mentioned. Why were the Northwest Territories not mentioned? What about British Columbia and Alberta? We in the west feel alienated from Canada. We are creating some of the best pockets of jobs in the country. Some of the best taxation is in the province of Alberta. Yet eastern Canada is not paying attention. Central Canada is not paying attention.

Western voters are frustrated. I get the feeling from travelling around Ontario that Ontarians are also becoming frustrated. Their taxes are too high. They read in the papers that their friends across the border are paying much lower taxes. Americans earning $80,000 a year have an extra couple of thousand dollars more in their pockets than Canadians earning the same amount. It is not fair.

[Immigration Appeal Board, December 2nd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, the minister knows that a minister that does something can get a standing ovation in this House. I quote the auditor general. He said: “To preserve the integrity of the immigration program, removal orders need to be carried out quickly.”

This department has 35,000 people in the backlog of refugees and we have 16,000 people ordered deported. What is the minister going to do, and tell the Canadian people, to solve this problem not next year or the year after, but right today?