Scott Brison

[Goods and Services Tax, February 10th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, in 1999 the Auditor General warned the government about GST fraud and urged it to stop handing out cheques without proof of transaction. A simple way to do that would be to require that receipts or bills of sale be attached to the refund request form.

Could the minister explain why three years later she has not followed through on such a simple recommendation?

[Goods and Services Tax, February 10th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, in 1995 the Liberals disbanded Revenue Canada's enforcement services unit, a 40 person intelligence unit whose sole focus was GST fraud.

Because of that decision, today there are no auditors specifically tasked with fighting GST fraud.

Will the minister commit immediately to restore the GST enforcement services unit created by the Progressive Conservative government to fight GST fraud?

[Question No. 87, January 27th, 2003]

How much did the Romanow Commission cost and what is the costing breakdown of those expenditures?

[Prebudget Consultations, December 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the report on economic freedom was very important. The economic freedom and the future prosperity for any country are closely correlated.

We need to ensure that we have regulatory policy and tax policy that effectively do not prevent individuals from investing and developing the best technologies and approaches to maximize productivity. In Canada, we do not have that currently. We are falling behind in that regard. There is less economic freedom in Canada now than there was 10 years ago. That is a dangerous trend. Probably the best way for governments to help both in terms of regulatory policy and tax policy is to simplify regulatory policy, to simplify tax policy, and to seek to reduce the burden in both cases.

We need to find a way in Canada to celebrate success and stop apologizing for it. We need a tax system that rewards hard work and investment, not one that attacks ambition and initiative. The federal government ought to be working with provincial governments across Canada to ensure that we introduce policies that create this culture of opportunity and plan for prosperity for all Canadians.

[Prebudget Consultations, December 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, if Dr. McGowan was not operating at the Sunnybrook hospital at night, thousands of Ontario cancer patients would not be receiving the treatment they are receiving now.

The ideological blinders are not being worn by me. I am interested in seeing the best possible health care system for all Canadians.

I would like my hon. colleague to consider whether or not it benefits the Canadian system to have Canadians taking their money and buying health care from the U.S. What could be more Canadian than attacking the U.S. health care system and then buying health care services from the U.S.?

There is something fundamentally wrong with a system that does not allow an individual to use money out of his or her own pocket to purchase health care for his or her mother in her own country in a timely manner.

The ideological blinders are being worn by the New Democratic Party on this issue. The fact is we do have a multiple tier health care system in Canada. Part of it is the result of unilateral and draconian cuts by the Liberal government. The fact is that Canadians are choosing to purchase health care. Because of the cuts to health care by the government they are choosing to buy it in the United States.

If we create a system that continues to underfund the public system and if we fail to recognize that some level of flexibility can ensure better health care for Canadians, we will continue to send more Canadians across the border to buy health care with their money. In doing so, we will be sending more Canadian doctors to practise in centres of excellence across the border. If want to gut the Canadian public health care system, the best way to do it is to wear ideological blinders and prevent any level of private participation in the Canadian system.

[Prebudget Consultations, December 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his softball question.

First, it was the policies of the previous government, and I named the GST and deregulation of financial services, transportation and energy along with the monetary policy of that government which wrestled inflation to the ground. Those were difficult choices, ones for which my party paid a significant political price, that enabled the member's government effectively to go on the public policy equivalent of a nine year Sunday drive and do nothing and actually eliminate the deficit.

It was the economic growth from free trade that enabled his government to eliminate the deficit. It was the revenue generated by the GST that enabled his government to see the end of the deficit.

The fact is the Mulroney government inherited a deficit as a percent of GDP that was 9%. It was reduced to 5% of GDP by the end of that government and for the first time in around 15 years there was an operating budget surplus, if we take out interest rates. At the same time, that government was able to wrestle inflation to the ground through the monetary policy.

The member asked how we could prevent the policies of that former government from ever being introduced again. He is sounding more like the Liberals did when they were in opposition because every single initiative that was proposed by the Mulroney government was vociferously opposed by the opposition, including the GST, free trade, deregulation of financial services, transportation and energy. In fact, when the Mulroney government cut back on spending, it was the member for LaSalle—Émard and his colleagues who were crowing the loudest about the cuts.

The member should not be criticizing those policies but should be waking up every morning and thanking God that there was a Progressive Conservative government that had the vision, foresight and wisdom to do that which his government would never have had the ability to do.

[Prebudget Consultations, December 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it with pleasure today that I rise to speak on the prebudget report of the House of Commons finance committee.

I am a member of that committee. I ultimately was disappointed in the fact that the report of the committee failed to address some of the most significant issues facing Canadians. People talk about the disengagement that Canadians feel toward federal politics today. In particular, young Canadians are disengaged with politics in general, particularly federal politics.

I think part of the reason why Canadians are disengaged is that for the last nine years there has been nothing in which to be engaged. We cannot be engaged in a non-debate. For there to be debate about the future of the country, there has to be a government with a vision, with some ideas and views about the future and with some policies, some of which would be agreed with or disagreed with but all which would represent change and a different approach.

Whether we look at the governments of Pierre Trudeau or Brian Mulroney, in both cases we could have agreed or disagreed with their visions, policies or ideas. However Canadians were engaged in debates about the future of their country under both the Trudeau and Mulroney governments. There were important debates about issues, for instance under Mulroney, about free trade, the GST and the deregulation of financial services, transportation and energy.

If we look back, those courageous and visionary steps by the Mulroney government, particularly free trade, the GST and the deregulation of financial services, transportation and energy, helped lay the groundwork for the economic growth, prosperity and the elimination of the deficit, which has occurred under the watch of this caretakership, cruise control, Sunday drive sort of government which we have had opposite now for nine years.

It is sad, not just from the perspective of bad public policy for Canadians but from a political perspective, that we are disengaging a whole generation of young Canadians in political debate and discussion because of this sort of lackadaisical approach to vision, courage and public policy of the government.

I would argue that over the last 10 years there have been more changes globally in terms of economic change, much of which has been precipitated by technological change, trade agreements, technology and greater integration of economies. Companies, individuals and governments have radically changed the way they do things. One of the few countries in the world that has not kept up with that change and has done nothing during a period of unprecedented rapidity of change globally is Canada under the Liberal government. In that 10 years the government effectively has been more focused on next week's polls than on the challenges and opportunities facing Canadians 10 or 20 years from now. There has been great economic damage to the country as a result of that.

The fact that the Canadian dollar has lost 20% of its value under the watch of the Liberal government is the price tag that Canadians are paying for a government that has not updated or reformed its tax system, its regulatory policy, its competitiveness policy, or its research and development policy. When other countries have been investing in education and health care, this government has made the wrong choices, has slashed transfers to the provinces for health care and education and at the same time has not tightened its own belt or addressed wasteful spending in its own government.

Canadians could have a well-funded health care system and a strong military if we had a government that had the wisdom to invest in the priorities of Canadians and the courage, competence and integrity to cut wasteful, non-core spending. However this is not that kind of government.

We are all familiar with the HRDC scandal and the fact that under the government billions of dollars were wasted, misdirected and lost for a time, and the Auditor General helped us identify this at the time. However from a basic competence issue, this is a government that lost billions of dollars for a period of months. It is pretty hard for a Canadian to consider how a government loses billions of dollars. What happened in the next budget presented by the finance minister? The minister for HRDC received a $1 billion increase as a reward for her gross incompetence.

We are all familiar with the public works scandal and the millions of dollars that were wasted, misdirected and misappropriated by Minister Gagliano, who was of course punished by being sent off to Denmark to represent our country. I do not know what Denmark ever did to Canada to deserve that kind of treatment, but I hope it does not reciprocate by sending us one of its worst crooks.

Whether it is Public Works, or HRDC or a gun registry, billions of dollars have been wasted. Over $1 billion has been wasted for a misguided, poorly designed long gun registry program that from the beginning was destined for failure and has achieved that end in a very flamboyant way, and we have a government that has worked assiduously to hide the information about that waste from Parliament.

This is a government that is looking for the trust of Parliament to ratify and implement a Kyoto agreement. It is atrocious. This is a government that could not organize a two car funeral, let alone implement a Kyoto agreement in terms of domestic engagement within Canada.

There are significant problems that need to be faced by the government on fiscal and social issues. I would argue that the productivity issue is absolutely key for us to have the sort of prosperous economy that Canadians need to provide the wealth to afford the kind of health care, education and social investment that Canadians value and treasure as Canadians.

We have a tax policy that attacks hard work and investment. We should be celebrating success. Instead, we apologize for it. We have to address some of the fundamental flaws in our tax system, both on the corporate and personal side. On the personal side, we have to address our marginal tax rates. There is something fundamentally wrong with a tax system that pummels people as perniciously as this one does.

For instance, let us look tax bracket when people go to the $30,000 range. When they cross what I think is the $35,000 tax bracket and their incomes have increased a little, and those are not high incomes, they lose all their child tax benefits. They are taxed at a higher marginal tax rate. The impact is that they make less money ultimately than they did at the lower pre-tax income. What a terrible way to punish Canadians or Canadian families who are trying to bootstrap themselves, achieve success and pull themselves forward into a more prosperous and sustainable life for themselves and their families. That is the reality of our marginal tax system.

If we look at what happens when we go up every marginal tax bracket, what we do to Canadians is absolutely immoral and fundamentally wrong as they are try to succeed and prosper in Canada. It is little wonder that our tax system and some of our other antiquated economic policies are sending tens of thousands of young Canadians to the U.S. seeking greater opportunities and prosperity.

The top marginal tax bracket in Canada is hit at about $100,000, which is equivalent to about $62,000 U.S. The top marginal tax bracket in the U.S. is not hit until about $380,000 Canadian.

We cannot maintain that level of disparity between our tax systems if we expect to keep Canada's best and brightest here. We are gutting the future competitiveness and productive capacity of our country if we cling to an antiquated, out of date, anachronistic tax system that simply does not work to create greater levels of prosperity, opportunity and promise for Canadians.

We need regulatory reform. Out of date and oppressive regulatory burden works in a very similar way to how oppressive and out of date tax policy works. Canada has a regulatory policy that encourages bureaucrats, without parliamentary scrutiny, to develop and introduce by stealth every year hundreds of new regulations. Hundreds of regulations are introduced with very little parliamentary scrutiny or perhaps no parliamentary scrutiny at all. This adds significantly to the cost not just of Canadian businesses doing business, but also adds significantly to the cost for Canadian consumers when they are paying for these regulations ultimately through higher prices for goods and services without making a case for why these regulations make sense.

The government is not making a case for these new regulations nor is it forced to make a case for them. They are introduced by stealth without any level of parliamentary, bureaucratic or governmental scrutiny. That is costing Canadian businesses and consumers significantly.

We need to take a serious look at our competitive policies as a country. We have to consider what other countries have done in the past 10 years.

In the last 10 years Canada has achieved a 5% growth in GDP per capita. During the same period of time, Ireland has achieved a 92% growth in its GDP per capita. Why is that? Because Ireland was willing to reform its tax system. Ireland was willing to tear down barriers to success, opportunity and investment in Ireland.

While this government increased barriers to success, increased a tax burden through much of its mandate and failed to reform, simplify and streamline its tax system, Ireland and most countries in the industrialized world reformed and updated and improved their tax environments. They knew to attract capital and investment and to be competitive and improve productivity, they had to have more competitive tax regimes.

In the old economy high taxes redistributed wealth. In the new hyper competitive global economy high taxes redistribute people and capital. Capital and people, particularly talented people, have never been as mobile as they are right now.

It is not an option for us to choose whether we want to reform our tax system. We have to do it. The price tag Canadians will pay for a government that has done nothing for 10 years to improve the Canadian economy in a substantive way and make the kind of courageous structural reforms that are necessary will be demonstrable and evident in 10 years, 15 years or 20 years.

We have to address not just the tax burden but tax structure. Reforming our tax structure is extremely important. The Mulroney government had the courage to replace a manufacturer's sales tax, which was hurting industry and our competitiveness, with the controversial goods and services tax. It was one of those taxes fought vociferously by members opposite, a tax now embraced by them. On international travels the Prime Minister has even claimed having invented the GST because he likes it so much. The fact is the GST, the free trade agreement and the deregulation of financial services, transportation and energy have enabled this Liberal government to pay off the deficit.

Canadians need to have the same opportunities for growth, prosperity and opportunity that other countries have because their governments have made courageous choices to reform regulatory authorities and have taken some steps forward to change their economies.

One issue which the federal government ought to be working on but is ignoring is that of a national securities commission. Canada is the only industrialized nation without a national securities commission.

Having a securities commission in every province and territory in Canada represents a significant impediment to capital formation for Canadian entrepreneurs and businesses. Trying to raise capital, encourage investment and receive the kinds of investments necessary for businesses to buy the productivity enhancing equipment and technology they need to be more successful and more competitive globally is made more difficult by the tremendous barrier to capital formation of having all these securities commissions in Canada and the tremendous bureaucratic overlap and inconsistency across Canada.

In addition, the recent corporate governance crisis has impacted and reduced the confidence that Canadians and also Americans and any capital market participants or investors around the world have in the capital markets. This makes it even more compelling for Canada to have a national regulator which would work with the provinces to achieve a national regulatory authority. It would ensure that there were standard rules across the country in terms of the regulation of our capital markets and our securities industries.

Canadians could then depend on a regulator with the resources required to regulate and make sure that Canadian companies and capital market participants were playing by the rules. Currently, that is very difficult to do with the mishmash of securities regulations and the balkanized resources that we have in Canada.

When I speak of a national securities regulator, I am not talking about taking the OSC across the country. I am not talking about a federal regulator. I am talking about a truly national regulator that respects and works with the provinces to achieve input and develop a consensus. It is very possible that we could achieve that, with respect for the provinces in a cooperative federalism.

Some people see a federal regulator as the answer. I do not think that is either realistic or a good idea particularly. I do not think that simply imposing the OSC on everybody is the best way to move forward.

In terms of the health care debate, the government has delayed, dilly-dallied and avoided making decisions on health care for far too long. It is the government which in 1995 unilaterally slashed transfers to the provinces, turning health care into a crisis in every province in Canada. At the same time, it did not tighten its own belt. Only when the health care crisis reached such a point that Canadians were in a turmoil about it did the government, because of political pressure, pretend to act with the Romanow commission. It really has not acted yet; it simply sought more advice.

There is the Mazankowski report, which is a very substantive report from the provincial government of Alberta. There is the LeBreton-Kirby report. I call it the LeBreton-Kirby report in deference to my colleagues in the other place, particularly Senator LeBreton. She made a significant enough contribution to that erudite and perspicacious report that she deserves equal billing to Senator Kirby. And there is the Romanow report.

I would say that of those three, while the NDP may crow about the Romanow report being the one that was most substantive, I believe the Romanow report was in fact the least responsible of the three. There was absolutely no addressing of where the money would come from. I thought it was incredibly irresponsible for Romanow to develop a set of proposals that only focused on more money with no significant and substantive reform.

Regarding greater accountability for the provinces, the provinces were not at fault when the federal government failed to be accountable and slashed the transfers to the provinces and threw health care into a turmoil. It is not the provinces that have an accountability problem today. We have to be able to speak the truth about the future of health care in Canada if we are going to ensure that Canadians have a sustainable health care system that they deserve.

[Prebudget Consultations, December 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the leader of the NDP her view of the private operation of the Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto.

For the benefit of members, that is a public hospital that is currently being used at night as a cancer diagnostic centre by a Doctor McGowan. The output of that hospital in terms of the number of patients being diagnosed for various cancers has doubled as a result of this level of flexibility and the ability for Dr. McGowan to privately operate that facility at night. As such, thousands of Canadians are able to, in a timely manner, receive the cancer diagnostics they need.

I would appreciate the leader of the NDP explaining to the House how it benefits Canadians to prevent, by wearing ideological blinders, the operation of the Sunnybrook Hospital from participating in some level of private delivery in order to deliver better health service to Canadians.

[Kyoto Protocol, December 2nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the fact is Ontario members of Parliament in the government are not defending the interests of Ontario if they have not asked the cabinet for detailed information on job losses to Ontario of the blind ratification of the accord.

Terrance Salman, chairman of the IDA, has informed the Prime Minister that senior equity analysts on Wall Street are warning that blind ratification of Kyoto in Canada is going to cost jobs and investment in Canada.

Will the government confirm that in fact--

[Kyoto Protocol, December 2nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the president of Decoma International Inc. has said that his Canadian company is building its new plant in the United States and not in Ontario because of the Kyoto protocol. He has said that the blind ratification of Kyoto will prevent companies from investing in Canada.

The job losses from Kyoto ratification will affect all regions of Canada. Have the Ontario Liberal members of Parliament asked the government for detailed information on job losses in Ontario due to the blind ratification of Kyoto? Will the government table this information?