Ian McClelland

[Pensions, March 4th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, since other members are interested in speaking to the motion I will keep my comments brief.

When I was asked to speak to the motion my first reaction was what business was it of ours. This is a pension problem for some Canadian citizens but it is the responsibility of the British government to be make these payments. If the shoe were on the other foot, how would I feel if the government in Westminster were making decisions or passing resolutions that had to do with how Canada treated its expatriate citizens as far as pensions were concerned?

When I looked into it I wondered why on earth a pensioner who lives in Canada would be treated any different from the way the same person living in the United States would be treated. It just did not make any sense to me.

I quite cheerfully take up the cudgel on behalf expatriated Britons living in Canada who are scattered fairly evenly across the country. There are perhaps proportionately a few more living in the maritimes than in the rest of the country.

For the interest of members of Parliament present and those at home fixed to the television watching this debate, it is of particular interest that Britain does not index the pensions paid to expatriated Britons living in Commonwealth or former Commonwealth countries. Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Zimbabwe are the countries where Britain does not index pensions. Yet it does in Germany, France and other countries in the Economic Union.

In 1996 the stated British government reason for the discrimination was that the other countries had entered into agreements with the British government. Alternatively indexation is a requirement of the European Economic Community. Britain has entered into an agreement to index the pensions in the European Economic Community but not with Canadians.

It is interesting to note that if a pensioner lived in, as one example, Bosnia, they would be collecting a fully indexed pension. However, because they live in a former Commonwealth country or Canada they do not.

On behalf of the Reform Party and on behalf of those British ex-patriot citizens resident in Canada and who have come to us and other members of Parliament to ask that we take up their case, I am happy to do so.

I know the member opposite, who will soon be on her feet, will be taking up the cudgel on behalf of the British ex-patriots living in Canada as well.

There are 208,000 British pensioners living in Canada right now. Fifty-two thousand live in British Columbia. If the pensions to ex-patriot British pensioners living in Canada were fully indexed and were paid it would mean an additional $200 million annually to the budget at Westminster. There are many ex-patriot Canadians resident in Britain. Those ex-patriot Canadians resident in Britain benefit from the fact that we pay their indexed pensions. Does it not seem reasonable that Britain should also index the pensions to ex-patriots from Britain living in Canada? It seems to me that it would make good sense to do that.

I will terminate my comments on this subject by once again reiterating the fact that on behalf of the Reform Party we support

this motion. I understand that the member for Battlefords-Meadowlake has served notice that he will be asking for this motion to be made votable. We would certainly support that.

Seeing the member opposite ready to rise to her feet, I will terminate my comments.

[Pensions, March 3rd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians are not fooled by this. When the Liberals are asked a reasonable question and stand up and respond with rubbish and prevarication we can see right through it.

A tax by any other name is still a tax. The Minister of Industry referred to Canada pension plan premiums as a payroll tax. The Minister of Finance has said payroll taxes are a cancer on job creation.

My question to the Prime Minister is how many jobs will be killed by the $10 billion job killing Liberal payroll tax grab?

[Pensions, March 3rd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister knows full well that the Reform plan for the Canada pension plan would protect current seniors and would also make it possible for future Canadians to have a pension at all.

My question is to the President of the Treasury Board. Last Friday the President of the Treasury Board inferred that increasing annual Canada pension plan premiums $1,300 per employee will prevent the program from going broke.

Will the minister now promise Canadians that there will be no further increase in Canada pension plan premiums and that there will be no further decreases in Canada pension plan benefits?

[Social Assistance For Failed Refugee Claimants, March 3rd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I want to put this private member's motion in context. It does not bar the door to legitimate refugees. That is the last thing our country should do. As a matter of fact, throughout all of the world Canada stands as a beacon of hope to thousands and thousands of people. That should never change.

However, putting out the welcome mat does not mean that we have to be the doormat. That is what we are talking about.

Most Canadians intuitively understand the difference between welcoming people, in particular refugees, to our shores and being a doormat to anybody who wants to use and abuse the system. That is what we are talking about in this bill. We are talking about sending a message to the world, to people who would misuse our generosity and say to them you have an opportunity to come to our shores and apply for refugee status but if it is determined under a fair system that you are not a genuine refugee, then you cannot use taxpayer money indefinitely to try to work your way around the system. That is all we are talking about here.

We are not talking about barring the doors. We are not talking about being meanspirited. We are talking about using a little common sense.

We need to understand that new Canadians come to our shores through three separate doorways. One is the sponsored immigrant status. A sponsored immigrant is usually when someone has a relative who has come here before and sponsors them. Another is the landed immigrant status whereby someone applies on their own merit under the point system and is able to come to Canada because they have the ability. We also have the category where people are able to buy their way in. The category that we are talking about right now is the refugee status.

Canadians should really think about how we handle refugees and people who come to our country under the refugee status. I ask members to think about this. By definition how is it possible for someone to arrive on our shores from the United States, from England or from another safe country and apply for refugee status? Would it not make more sense if our country were to go to those places in the world where people who are genuine refugees, who do not have the wherewithal or the money to find their way to our shores, and would it not make more sense for us to make the refugee determination on site so that when people come to our shores they do not have to have this sword dangling over their heads of are they going to be granted landed refugee status or not?

That brings to mind the Somalis in Toronto who were invited to our shores by our government, welcomed by our government and then put into this limbo for all of those years where they are not granted landed immigrant status. They are left in this limbo, where they must utilize Canada's social safety net because they cannot work. We cannot assume that refugees coming to our shores do not want to work. Everybody knows that is not true. The vast majority of people who come to our shores are just dying to contribute, just aching to be part of our country. But if we do not allow them to work, then they have to access our social programs.

We need to make sure that our refugee claimant process is swift, accurate, compassionate and once a decision has been made, allow people to get on with their lives. It is this never ending opportunity

for people to appeal and appeal. Meanwhile all the time they are doing so they are accessing the very short funds that all provinces find that they have for social security.

One of the reasons that the provinces have a dramatic shortage of funds for social security is, as we all know, that under the Canada health and social transfer the transfers to the provinces have been reduced by $7 billion by this Liberal government. Therefore the provinces find themselves having to deal with more and more expenses with fewer and fewer resources.

My hon. colleague from the Bloc who spoke earlier mentioned that this motion was out of order because welfare and items of this sort were a provincial responsibility and not the purview of the federal government in any instance.

While it is true that welfare is a responsibility of the provinces, we are in a federal state. This government will be announcing today that the Prime Minister is on the west coast in Vancouver and that he will make a great to-do about making a deal with the government of B.C. for residency requirements for welfare recipients. As long as the federal government has its oar in the water through spending and taxing power, it has a role to play in the purview of the provinces whether the provinces like it or not.

It is interesting to note that on every single bit of legislation that comes before the House, members of the Bloc are very quick to defend the honour and the jurisdiction of their province but they are not so quick to say that they would be quite happy to pay for it themselves. The idea is "send us the money and let us make the decisions on what we are going to do with it".

There is a very genuine role for the federal government to play. The federal government makes the determination for what the international covenants on refugee status and claimants will be. The federal government has a role in the transfer of resources from the provinces to pay for social assistance and the federal government sets the rules by which all members play. The federal government has a very real involvement in this issue.

This is our obligation as a nation. When we open our doors to refugee claimants, we should do so expeditiously. We should make it possible for people to come to our country, to become landed immigrants and eventually citizens, the vast majority of whom will make great contributions to our country. We can see in the mosaic that is Canada there are people of all nations from all parts of the world who are coming together to build the democratic land that is one of the most cherished in the world.

Our doors should always be opened to genuine refugees. But again, we do not need to be a doormat in order to extend the welcome mat to genuine refugees. When people who have come to our shores as refugees have under fair and impartial hearings been determined not to fit the refugee classification, then it makes sense to me and to thousands of other Canadians that the taxpayer not be obligated to foot the bill indefinitely. That is what we are talking about here. It is not meanspirited; it is merely common sense.

[Canada Pension Plan, February 21st, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, a bad investment by the government on behalf of seniors is especially unconscionable, especially when it hits younger Canadians disproportionately hard. The most vulnerable Canadians,

employers and employees alike, will be badly hurt by this massive tax increase.

How can the Liberal government ask Canadians to pay 10 per cent of their income for a pension returning less than $9,000 which will be taxed back at 50 per cent, when Liberal politicians pay the same amount for MP pensions worth at least five times more?

[Canada Pension Plan, February 21st, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, payroll taxes have a direct influence on employment and job creation. The higher the tax, the lower the employment growth and that is an economic fact.

The new Liberal job killing Canada pension plan payroll tax increase will result in the loss of at least 160,000 jobs. If this is the way Liberals keep their jobs, jobs, jobs promise, why should Canadians believe any Liberal promise like the one to kill, scrap and bury the GST?

[Canada Pension Plan, February 20th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of Canadians, what we are trying to do is to link the very real damage done to employment by payroll taxes and the fact that payroll taxes have to come down.

We all understand that the Canada pension plan is a basket case. Everybody knows that. The problem is that for new people coming into the plan it must be fair. For businesses that now have to try to maintain a payroll we have to keep them from going broke. For the vast majority of businesses there is only one place the money can come from. According to the same CFIB survey, 49 per cent of small businesses with five employees are operating at break even or loss positions which means that the last person hired will be the first person fired.

How many small businesses will be forced to close as a direct result of this payroll tax increase? That is the problem.

[Canada Pension Plan, February 20th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, first I would caution the Minister of Finance not to speak too loudly of Reform ideas because it usually takes about a year for a Reform idea to end up being Liberal policy, as we all know.

Catherine Swift, the president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, wrote a letter to the Canada pension plan review committee. In it she wrote: "Increases in CPP premiums to as high as 10 per cent would be massively disruptive to small business finances and employment levels". The premium increase announced by the Minister of Finance to 9.9 per cent will cost a company with 100 employees $130,000.

Where will that money come from to pay this increase in taxes? Why will the government not link an increase in CPP premiums to a decrease in the UI premiums?

[Canada Pension Plan, February 18th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, that is like the federal government saying: "We are not guilty because all we are doing is driving the getaway car".

The most vulnerable Canadians in the workforce, younger Canadians, the last hired and the first fired, will pay the price for maintaining the Canada pension plan. The minister's own officials have admitted that younger contributors to the Canada pension plan will not receive a fair pension from the plan.

Is it right to force young Canadians to pay almost 10 per cent of their income into a retirement plan that will return substantially less than the same amount invested in an RRSP?

[Canada Pension Plan, February 18th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, the $1,300 job-killing Liberal Canada pension plan payroll tax increase will patch over deficiencies in the plan for the time being at a terrible cost in job opportunities for young Canadians. The very young Canadians who are already saddled with a $600 billion national debt will now be forced to subsidize the retirement of the very Canadians who built up the debt in the first place. However, because the Canada pension plan is still a pay as you go plan, it is not sustainable.

Will the government guarantee there will be no further premium increases or benefit decreases to the Canada pension plan?