Don Boudria

[House Of Commons Standing Orders, February 7th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, since I do not have a good memory for historical events in this House, the member opposite certainly remembers the blue books better than I do. After all, he is the one who sat as a Tory in the House, not me.

Nevertheless, I do not claim that-and I do not want the member to suggest that I do-my government, the Canadian government will never be at fault and will make no mistake. Of course not. Nobody is perfect. What is important to know is whether the government is acting in the best interests of Canadians, not whether it is going to give a new grant to my riding or to that of the member opposite. The government is here for the common good, and I know that our Prime Minister, our government, intend to do just that. As I said before, if the government does not behave in a fair, honourable and account-

able way, the House has the power to exercise the many prerogatives it has.

[House Of Commons Standing Orders, February 7th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me pleasure this afternoon to have the opportunity to speak on the motion before the House to amend our rules.

We are amending the rules pursuant to a commitment made by our party during the last election campaign when we put out a program to Canadians. They voted for that program which included a number of things on Parliament. It mentioned allowing more free votes, giving MPs a greater role in drafting legislation, giving more power to House of Commons committees and involving the public in consultation before important legislation was introduced.

Many of these issues have been done already. The others are in the motion we are debating today. That is what it is all about. This is part of the program I and all Liberal candidates stood for in the last election campaign.

I want to advance the proposition to all members today that it is untrue to state at the present time there are no free votes. As a matter of fact a very successful argument can be made that all votes in this Parliament are free. I say it for the following reason and I am not saying we do not need to improve our system. After all we are proposing to do just that today.

Nevertheless as a member of Parliament I have the power to make an accusation against any citizen of Canada in this House and I could never be sued in a court of law for saying it. I have the ultimate freedom in this Chamber on behalf of the people who sent me here to say anything, anything at all. I, though, must live with the consequences of that which I say in this House once I leave this House. Nevertheless, I still have that freedom. I as a member of Parliament together with my colleagues have the freedom to defeat my government in a non-confidence motion.

Did the people of the United States have a tool like that in the Watergate scandal? Do they not wish they had had something like that? The process for getting rid of a president that country no longer wanted and Congress no longer wanted dragged on for months and months before the United States Congress. It would take about six minutes to do that in the House of Commons today.

We talk about freedom and powers that MPs have and do not have. Maybe MPs do not use all the power they have, but they have power in this House and to state the opposite is simply incorrect.

We are talking about recall in this whole business. Does anyone realize what the whole process of recall would do to the freedom of a member of Parliament? If I were under threat from my own riding association for leaving my party to be recalled and lose my seat in Parliament, would that give me more freedom as an MP? No, that would mean I would be subject to even greater pressure from my colleagues. How much of that has been considered by those proposing recall? I submit not much thinking went into that particular proposition.

We are talking about voting only as it reflects the aspirations of our constituents. I have been elected to this place three times, to the provincial legislature of my province once, to municipal council three times. I was fortunate and blessed by having received the support of my electors on seven different occasions in my life. I think I have done a few things which people might consider controversial. I have not always voted according to the wishes of the majority of my constituents.

Mr. Speaker, I think you will have some understanding for this but I voted against abortion in this House. Was that the reflection of the majority of my constituents? Probably not. When I voted against capital punishment was that according to the wishes of the majority of my constituents? Probably not. And when I made very strong pronouncements against euthanasia probably the same logic applies.

However in every case I made copies of my speeches and sent them to every single constituent in my riding. I stood by what I had said and stood there to be judged later by my constituents about what I had said. That is what it is all about. It is being accountable to those who sent us here and not necessarily always voting in the manner that 50.1 per cent of the people advocate.

We are debating changing the rules of this House, rules that have existed in one form or another and in this Parliament or the mother of Parliaments for probably about 1,500 years dating from the period of Saxon-Wettins through the Norman invasion of Britain and then through all the changes that occurred. Then there are those forms we have adopted here and modified for our own use. We have to remember that there is a reason those rules have evolved. Yes, they can be updated. Yes, they can be improved. Yes, they can be modernized. Yes, they can be liberalized. Yes, we can do all those things to those rules. But let us remember why they are there.

On the confidence convention, I saw someone resurrecting the ghost of William Lyon Mackenzie earlier today. Is that not interesting. William Lyon Mackenzie and Louis Joseph Papineau both fought for the institution of responsible government. Both fought for the institution whereby there would be confidence votes so that the government could be accountable to the legislature. The member for Calgary Southwest had the right argument but was making it in reverse, unless I have totally forgotten everything I learned in history and I do not believe that I have.

I say that having a system known as responsible government means to have a vote of confidence. It means ultimately that the government in this Chamber is accountable to all of us, where at one point we can all say or have the right to say that we can turf the government out right in here. That is an ultimate power few legislators have. What does it do? What kind of pressure does that put on our government, to say that it has to be accountable to all of us, that all of us have that great power over the government? I suggest to you that it can make government listen to those who were sent here to represent the people of this great country.

Let us change this institution, let us modernize it, but let us be careful as well that we do not destroy it in our zeal to make it better.

[Canadian Milk Board, February 7th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister of agriculture. The minister is aware that the subsidy cheques from the Canadian Milk Board were delivered to farmers almost eight days late in December and four or five days late in January.

In view of the problems facing the Canadian agricultural industry, what does the minister intend to do to assure farmers that those cheques will be delivered on time in the future?

[Agriculture, February 4th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister of agriculture concerning a cattle disease known as BSE.

In the 1980s some 60 animals were imported into Canada from the United Kingdom and one of these animals died of BSE. There is some concern that this disease is still in the country. Will the minister now share with the House what his plans are in regard to this disease?

[Social Security System, February 3rd, 1994]

First of all, Mr. Speaker, it is not only the case with Unemployment Insurance. My colleague opposite should know, if he worked in that field, that welfare recipients are confronted with the same kind of problems. So, it does not happen only with federal programs. In fact, as we speak, the problems facing welfare recipients may well be worse.

Now, the member opposite is asking me: would it not be possible for certain programs to be administered by a single level of government instead of two? It is certainly not impossible, and no one said it was. As a matter of fact, if I am not mistaken, the hon. member for Hull-Aylmer and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs stated clearly that he was planning and had in fact started negotiations along that line. So, it is far from impossible to negotiate successfully with provincial officials and it is not fair to say that the programs are the same-

[Social Security System, February 3rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, if I understood correctly, the hon. member is suggesting that we should not have consulted him, as the duly elected representative of his riding, and the other duly elected members of this House, that the government should have acted in an arbitrary manner, without consulting Parliament. This may be a Bloc Quebecois pattern of thinking but we, Liberals, have more respect than that for this place than the Bloc has demonstrated. I might add, regarding the member who has asked me the question in particular, that I know his own political background much better than the previous Conservative government?

Basically, what we want to do is to hear from the duly elected representatives of the people to ensure that our programs will meet the needs of Canadians. After all, that is what we were sent here for.

[Social Security System, February 3rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take a few moments this afternoon to discuss the reform of Canada's social security system.

Given your role here in this House you are of course non partisan, but you will remember clearly that, during the last election campaign, our party made a commitment to the people of Canada. Indeed, we promised to give new confidence to the majority of Canadians about having a job and a more promising

future in the years to come than they could hope for in recent years.

As the then Leader of the Opposition and now the Prime Minister said on the steps of Parliament Hill the day the election campaign started: We must give Canadians their smile again. We must give them that hope. We must make them feel better.

I am very much in favour of this initiative because, after all, the goal is to improve social programs. For example, the proposals put forward by our colleague the Minister of Human Resources Development are aimed at improving the social security system, so that it can better meet the expectations and needs of Canadians.

A good number of these programs have been in place for several years and the Canadian economy has changed since they were first introduced. I remember the days when an unemployment rate of three per cent was considered equivalent to full employment. Today's figures are totally different. I also remember the days when it was perfectly normal to have one salary per household, the bread winner usually being the man in the house. It goes without saying that these standards no longer apply. The situation has evolved and we must not only adapt accordingly, we must also change our social programs.

I am of the view that the best social program is a job. There is nothing quite like it, as they say in the commercial. If the best social program is a job, as I submit it is, then surely all of the other programs that we have must be such that one is always better with a job than without one.

That is not the case with social programs today. How many times have colleagues in this House heard constituents tell them that they cannot afford to work, that the social program that they are on is designed in such a way that they are taking a cut by going back to work?

For a single mother with three or four children going back to work is not easy. As a matter of fact, in many cases it is, without saying impossible, very hard. I am of the view that it is high time we started thinking of such concepts as guaranteed minimum annual income in such a way that no one is punished for trying to make life better for themselves. No one is punished for finding a job. That is not the case right now. That is not the case at all.

The other part to this is the unemployment insurance programs that we have. A few years ago we got into training programs in a rather major way under many aspects of what is commonly referred to as UI. Some of these programs are for training but they are confusing at best.

Those of us who have referred constituents to training programs under section 26 of the Unemployment Insurance Act know that these people can, if they get benefits the day that the training begins, receive those benefits for a period which could be extended to 156 weeks. However, if these people make a claim under a program not covered by section 26 and go back to school while receiving UI benefits, they not only lose the possibility of having their benefit period extended, they also lose those benefits.

You will agree that if the objective is to provide training, programs should be structured so that people are not penalized precisely because they take a training course, as they should.

On the other hand we have section 14. People qualify under section 14 to take a training program sometimes identical to those under section 26. If they are taking a program and if they are offered a job they must resign forthwith from the training that they are taking to go to the job.

However, if they were approved under the other section they do not have to do it. That does not make a lot of sense to me. It seems that whatever little block was ticked off beside one's name determines how the training one will be receiving will be administered and whether one will receive benefits, extend benefits or have the benefits cut off altogether. That does not seem like a reasonable proposition to me.

If you are on unemployment insurance and you apply to work on some of these make work projects, under section 25 of the Unemployment Insurance Act, you go back to work and you receive a form of top-up in addition to your benefits, providing you have enough benefits to cover the whole period of the project you are going to work on.

In other words, if you have nine weeks of coverage left and you are starting to work on a project that will last ten weeks, you cannot work nine weeks and then quit. You have to refuse to take it altogether because you must have the requisite number of weeks for the duration of the program.

Maybe this makes sense to somebody but it does not at all to me. I am having some difficult explaining all of this to those who asked me to represent them in this Chamber.

I would like to see the government take a look at the administration of its programs, so that these are better managed and, more importantly, better co-ordinated, to meet the needs of Canadians.

I will conclude by saying that I do not agree with those who claim that we are spending more and more on social programs.

I just received today a document entitled "The National Finances", published by the Canadian Tax Foundation. According to this document, social programs subsidized by the federal government represented 23.1 per cent of the tax base in 1984, compared to only 22.8 per cent in 1993-1994. We must not forget that. We must not claim that we are proportionally spending more and more all the time.

[Pre-Budget Consultations, February 1st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the comments of our colleague. He referred particularly at the beginning of his remarks to cutting and eliminating some loopholes in the tax system. He gave a few examples.

I seem to remember only a few days ago the leader of his party talked about getting assurances from the government that a measure that existed for utility companies in his province whereby they did not have to pay taxes would be retained. I find the discourse rather interesting in that regard.

I want to ask him about another so-called loophole, at least in the eyes of some, not me. I consider the lifetime capital gains exemption of $500,000 on the disposition of farmland to be a very valuable instrument. It is a form of pension for farmers as they accumulate wealth gradually. When they dispose of their assets they are able to keep those funds without taxes. This is much the same way that people accumulate by making tax deductible contributions toward their pension fund if they are teachers, factory workers or what have you.

Does this capital gains exemption fit into one of the loopholes to be abolished? Does my colleague agree with me and hopefully with all the officials of the finance department who may be listening to us making these remarks now that it should be retained for the benefit of farmers so they can have what is the equivalent of a pension plan for the agricultural community?

[Pre-Budget Consultations, February 1st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the comments made by the member opposite, and even though I seldom agree with the Bloc Quebecois members, I must say that I share his feelings regarding the need to put a stop to smuggling. Needless to say that, as the member representing the riding of Glengarry-Prescott-Russell, which includes Akwesasne, I will fully support any measure which might be taken, and which I hope the federal government will take soon to eliminate contraband. I do hope we will convince those stubborn members of the Ontario Legislature that the problem is not one which exists exclusively in Quebec, or in a region of Canada called Quebec, to use the words of Fred Laughren, the Treasurer of Ontario.

Two other comments were made by the hon. member and I want to ask him a question on those. The member referred to the issue of streamlining income tax returns. It just so happens that today I contacted Revenue Canada about something currently allowed in the tax return, namely the possibility of contributing or overcontributing to a registered retirement savings plan. As the hon. members know, we and our constituents all have the option of making an overcontribution of up to $8,000 to an RRSP. However, Revenue Canada has currently no way of keeping tab of these overcontributions, unlike, for example, in the case of the capital gain exemption, for which a cumulative total is calculated, thus enabling Revenue Canada to know whether a taxpayer has used $25,000, $30,000, $35,000, $40,000 or more of the total tax-free capital gain. However, such control does not exist for overcontributions made to a registered retirement savings plan, and I wanted to point this out to the members of this House. As for simplifying tax returns, I think that rather than being an area requiring streamlining, it is one where we need to keep data which are not currently being kept.

Finally, the hon. member opposite tells us that we cannot replace the GST in two years because it will be too late. Are we then to conclude that when this House asks its members to refer the GST issue to the Finance Committee, we can expect a quick and even a unanimous approval from the Bloc Quebecois, so that this review can be completed and a recommendation can be made as quickly as possible to the House?

[Tobacco Smuggling, February 1st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Revenue.

Last week the Ontario Minister of Finance said that tobacco smuggling was a regional problem in Quebec only. I want to ask the Minister of National Revenue what he intends to do to educate his provincial counterpart, to make him aware that one-third of all cigarettes in Ontario are illegal and that it is a national problem, not just a regional one?