The Environment September 17th, 2012

Mr. Speaker, today the opposition House leader changed his story. Some might say that he misled Canadians by claiming the NDP leader would not impose a carbon tax that would raise the price of everything. However, earlier this year the opposition House leader championed the idea of a carbon tax saying, “I'm more of a cap-and-trade kind of guy. I think it’s a much more accurate assessment of full cost but, again, the point of the exercise is putting a price on carbon”.

Cap and trade or cap and tax, a price on carbon is a tax on carbon. That makes it a carbon tax. Our government will continue to stand up against the NDP's plan to impose a job-killing carbon tax on Canadians that would raise the price of everything, things like gasoline, home heating fuel and groceries.

Government Priorities June 20th, 2012

Mr. Speaker, hope, growth and opportunity, these are the outcomes we seek as we advance our ideals in policy or legislation.

A government that keeps taxes low, while making balanced budgets a priority, is a government setting the stage for long-term economic growth. We will not solve our problems with debt financing and easy money, for no nation has ever taxed itself into prosperity.

By reducing needless and overlapping regulations, we fuel growth. Making hard decisions today means avoiding impossible ones tomorrow, like we experienced in the 1990s, and today are witnessing in parts of Europe, because of years of chronic and reckless overspending.

Governments need to prioritize what is important and what is not. It should focus more on education and less on corporate handouts, reward work, not idleness, and understand our great challenges as a nation will not be solved by government officials but by the hard work and ingenuity of ordinary hard-working Canadians.

Jobs, Growth and Long-Term Prosperity Act June 11th, 2012

Mr. Speaker, I do not like to speak ill of the third party. In the past, it has offered great leadership to this country at times but I do worry about its future given that its presumptive leader finds himself in a difficult situation. On one hand, when he is questioned by the official opposition, he is forced to defend the Liberal measures in the mid-1990s, which involved restraint and balancing the budget, measures that, I would concede, helped Canada through the downturn and measures we have built on and improved on.

At the same time, with the same measures, the leader of the third party is also rightly criticized for his record as the former and, I believe, failed premier of Ontario, which is a very difficult position to be in because Canadian taxpayers can never be sure which policy the member would champion, that of taxpayers or, more likely, that of failed policies, which were on display today when he called for a bailout of European banks.

Jobs, Growth and Long-Term Prosperity Act June 11th, 2012

I will get to all that, but I want to start by pointing out that the member's party is the party of tax cuts for the elite and our party is the party of tax cuts for ordinary hard-working Canadians.

As to the reforms to employment insurance, I am proud to say that, yes, I was a member who was consulted by the minister. These are comprehensive reform packages that I believe will connect the unemployed with jobs that are available in their area. These are modest reforms that will lead to a better labour market. I do not believe there will be a negative adverse impact that the opposition continues to fear-monger about. These are--

Jobs, Growth and Long-Term Prosperity Act June 11th, 2012

Mr. Speaker, our party is the party that cut the GST. The member's party is the party that proposed we increase the GST.

Jobs, Growth and Long-Term Prosperity Act June 11th, 2012

Mr. Speaker, as a government, we are spending billions of dollars to make sure our country will be strong in the future. But we are spending only what we can, and we are asking taxpayers to pay only what they can. Giving money also to the Europeans because they have problems too is not a priority for us. It is up to them to find solutions.

Jobs, Growth and Long-Term Prosperity Act June 11th, 2012

Mr. Speaker, last week we were treated to the unbelievable sight of the Leader of the Opposition demanding that Canadian taxpayers bail out failing European banks. I confess I initially gave the Leader of the Opposition the benefit of the doubt. I assumed that he had misunderstood the situation because as an honourable Canadian, clearly he could not seriously have been proposing that the ordinary working people of this country, the people the NDP members claim to represent, should, from their hard-earned tax dollars, relieve the distress of Europeans who have lived for far too long on money borrowed from the next generation. No, I could believe no such thing; it was preposterous.

However, over the weekend, my hon. friend from Markham—Unionville, in fact a former finance critic for the Liberal Party and in a past incarnation a prominent banker of a leading Canadian bank no less, called for a massive bail out. It is impossible that he does not understand economics and I know the member to be a patriot. So I wondered what malign influence could possibly have come upon him, in his disturbed slumber perhaps, and vexed his waking hours with doubt over what is clearly in the best interests of the very people who entrusted him with their vote. Alas, I am sorry to say that his confusion about who is actually responsible for European debt, that is, either European taxpayers or Canadian workers, could be traced to none other than the leader of his party, the hon. member for Toronto Centre.

Unbelievably, my hon. friend stood in this very House today and said that any Canadian transfer to the IMF “goes on our books as an asset”. Perhaps I should not say “unbelievably”, for some who have known my colleague from Toronto Centre for a long time and are all too familiar with how he looks at government finances would say that his reaction was to be expected. Indeed, it is completely believable that the former NDP Premier of Ontario would have an auto worker from Windsor, or a fisherman from my own New Brunswick riding, or a hard-working grain farmer on the Prairies stake his or her meagre assets upon the management expertise of a European bank, or the financial acumen of the people who continued to lend money to European governments long after debt loads had climbed into the red zone; and completely believable that Canadian taxpayers, in need perhaps of a medical procedure for which he or she must wait in line, should instead use his or her dollars to refinance the medical procedure enjoyed by a citizen of the eurozone some 10 or 20 years ago and paid for with borrowed funds. “Yes,” they would say, because for those who have carefully followed what the opposition members have had to say about public finances over the last 10 years, it is all very believable.

That is why those members are the opposition and should remain so. They do not understand economics 101. I am not even sure they understand the simple reality that if something cannot go on forever, it will eventually stop. We know we cannot fight debt with debt, we cannot borrow our way to prosperity and we cannot expect to run deficits forever without hitting the wall. The question is, will Europe stop before it hits this wall or will it simply crash into it?

Europe is a rich continent. It has 10 times the population of Canada. Many Canadians trace their ancestry to the countries of Europe and forever hold dear the heritage of their forefathers. Indeed, their fathers and grandfathers fought to liberate their ancestral homes from tyrannies. Therefore, we wish them well. However, Europe has lived too well for too long on borrowed money and the time has come for Europeans to deal with it. We do them no favours if we facilitate their addiction to borrowed money by sending them some of our own, for yes, we too have a debt.

Perhaps this is a good time for us all to review first principles. As former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once said, the facts of life are conservative. Well here are a few facts. One, people are better able to spend their own money than the government is able to spend it for them. Two, government does not create wealth; it only consumes, by way of taxes and usually even more taxes, the wealth created by entrepreneurs, labourers and investors. Three, if society wants less of something, they tax it and, similarly, if governments want to encourage an activity like job creation, it ought to remove barriers, be those regulations that tie businesses in red tape or high taxes that drive away investment and encourage people to work less.

These are not new ideas but they are appropriate ones when the goal is to foster a nation's long-term economic prosperity and they are ideas that Europe should adopt rather than asking other nations to bail it out.

That is why our government met the recession with a package of measures to make the economy grow, our economic action plan. That is why our government has made it a priority in that plan to eliminate the deficit. That is why our government has introduced vital reforms to labour, employment insurance, immigration and to regulatory review processes. This is done to stimulate growth, to build employment and to give people hope that their tomorrows will be better than their yesterdays and to spare them the hardships of a government that does not know its place.

We have two paths ahead of us: prudence today or austerity tomorrow. I choose prudence. That is why we keep taxes low and work to spend within our means. Low taxes reward the industrious. They encourage the enterprising. They lead to higher employment and they give ordinary people more power over their own lives to dispose of their income in their own interest as they see best.

It is no accident that Canada flourishes while others do not. It is not by chance that our Prime Minister says that Canada is an island of stability in a hostile world. This is the result of good, sound economic and fiscal policy.

I note that today, June 11, is tax freedom day. This is the day Canadian taxpayers stop working to pay taxes to all levels of government and, instead ,start working for themselves and providing for their families. When our government won office this day fell on June 6 some six years ago. That is over two weeks later than it is today. This is an accomplishment we can be proud of for it has benefited millions of Canadians. I for one hope tax freedom day continues to arrive earlier and earlier and we as lawmakers push for that day to fall in April some day. That would be a tax freedom day for which we could all be proud.

Canadians have worked hard, paid their taxes and trusted their government to do the right thing by them. We respected their hard work, as they deserve. We have been good stewards of their taxes, as we should. We have delivered on that trust, as we are obliged to do. We will not repay them now by rewarding the foolhardy. We will not help the entitled in other lands to meet their exaggerated expectations.

I believe the measures in the budget will reduce Canada's overspending, which will ensure our economy remains strong and jobs continue to be created and generated here in Canada. That in turn will allow us to fulfill our election promises to provide income tax cuts for middle-class families.

This is a lesson Europe should learn. The path to prosperity and economic renewal is not the road that involves ever more debt and higher taxes. It will begin when nations live within their means and there is less debt and lower taxes. Regrettably, this would seem a lesson the leaders of the two opposition parties ought to know. No wonder they do not know how to respond to the crisis in Europe. They would have us follow them on the road to fiscal ruin here at home. To that we stand with taxpayers and we say no.

Privilege May 28th, 2012

Mr. Speaker, it has come to my attention that what appear to be ten percenters have been mailed into various ridings in New Brunswick, including my own.

On many of these ten percenters, the return mailing address is to the Liberal member for Toronto Centre. One such mailing to my own riding of New Brunswick Southwest came in a franked envelope from the Liberal member for Cardigan.

I have submitted this evidence to you, Mr. Speaker, along with notice of this question of privilege. I ask you to consider the following points.

On November 3, 2009, the member for Sackville—Eastern Shore raised a question of privilege, claiming his position on the long gun registry was misrepresented in a mailing from another member.

In the subsequent decision by Speaker Milliken on November 19, 2009, it was found that the privileges of the member for Sackville--Eastern Shore were breached for these very reasons, and that it had the effect of “...unjustly damaging his reputation and his credibility with the voters of his riding...”.

Also, on November 19, 2009, a question of privilege was raised by the member for Mount Royal on grounds that his privilege was infringed by the actions of another member who sent a ten percenter into his riding. This resulted in Speaker Milliken stating that “...the mailing constitutes interference with his ability to perform his parliamentary functions in that its content is damaging to his reputation and his credibility”. This can be found in Hansard, November 26, 2009.

On March 15, 2010, the Liberal member for Malpeque moved a motion calling for the Board of Internal Economy to “take all necessary steps to end immediately the wasteful practice of members sending mass mailings, known as 'ten-percenters', into ridings other than their own...”. Again, this is from Hansard, March 15, 2010.

This motion passed, and the Liberal member for Malpeque issued a press release on March 29, 2010, stating that “The Conservatives abused this privilege--both in quantity and content--by sending excessive partisan attacks into unheld ridings and wasting millions of taxpayers' dollars. The Liberal motion ended these partisan out-of-riding mailings and won a victory for Canadian taxpayers”.

So much for that.

I remind the House that according to the April 19, 2010, decision by the Board of Internal Economy, ten percenters are only to be distributed as bulk mail from the House postal services, effective May 1, 2010. The April 1, 2012 version of the manual on members' allowance and services states, “Ten percenters may only be distributed within the member's own constituency and may not be distributed as addressed mail”, yet the material sent into my riding and others by Liberal members is generic in nature. Inside the franked and addressed envelope there is nothing that addresses the individual whose name is on the outside of the envelope.

In the mailing from the member for Toronto Centre into the riding of Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, the letter begins with a generic “Dear Friend”. In the mailing into my own riding by the member for Cardigan, there is not even a salutation line.

Regardless of whether these materials were produced by the House of Commons printing services, in the offices of the member in question or in the research offices, these mailings are bulk in nature. They are not specifically addressed to the individuals whose names appear on the outside envelope and they are printed using taxpayer-supplied resources.

As you will see, Mr. Speaker, from the paper I supplied to you, they are partisan in nature, generic in content and should not be sent using franked envelopes into other members' ridings.

If the Liberal Party of Canada wishes to launch bulk partisan mail into Conservative—or, for that matter, New Democratic-held ridings—it should do so with its own funds, not House of Commons resources.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that there is a breach of privilege in this matter and I am prepared to move an appropriate motion should you agree. That motion would involve sending this question to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

The actions of the members for Toronto Centre, Cardigan and possibly others are in direct contradiction of the spirit of the rules governing House of Commons mailings and, I believe, in contradiction of the letter of the law, which of course was to not only not direct such mailings into a riding held by another member but to do so with taxpayers' dollars.

It is clear that Parliament previously sought to end the practice of bulk partisan mailings being sent by one member into another member's riding. The Liberals seem to believe that they have found a way around this rule by stuffing bulk partisan materials into addressed and franked envelopes.

It is important that the House have the opportunity to examine this matter in the appropriate committee. It is necessary to determine whether the actions of some members are in breach of House of Commons rules. In addition to this, I think it would be prudent for the members of the Liberal Party who are participating in this practice, which they have previously publicly denounced, to apologize to this House and to Canadian taxpayers for their misuse of the resources entrusted to them.

If these mailings were paid for by the Liberal Party of Canada—meaning both the cost of printing and of postage—I would be the first to claim this matter was outside the purview of Parliament. That, however, is not the case.

Mr. Speaker, thank you for reviewing this important matter that I am sure you, like me, had believed was resolved.

Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act May 8th, 2012

That was an excellent question, Mr. Speaker, and I appreciate the opportunity to answer it.

Any charity that is involved with any political activity should not receive the generous tax breaks that it does. When I was head of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, an advocacy group, we also raised money, but we were unable to issue tax receipts to our supporters because we were involved with not partisan but political activity, trying to advocate a position.

If environmental groups want to engage in that kind of activity, they are absolutely free to do so, but they should not do so on the backs of Canadian taxpayers.

If we need these dollars to root out people who misuse the tax code, then I am okay with that because it will ensure we have a better democracy and a better tax system.