Stephen Harper

[Program Cost Declaration Act, December 13th, 1996]

Mr. speaker, it is a pleasure today to debate Bill C-214, the program cost declaration act tabled by the hon. member for Durham.

Let me take a few minutes to outline the purpose of the act and what is behind it. The act, which is a votable item, would require departments of the government to provide a financial or cost analysis of each piece of legislation on its introduction to the House of Commons or at the time the minister or governor in council issues regulations or other instruments.

The auditor general would certify that the method used to arrive at this analysis was fair and reasonable under the circumstance. The cost would be disclosed in total as well as based on the per capita cost for each Canadian citizen.

This legislation would cause legislators and their departments to be more conscious of the financial impact their legislation would have. The PCDA, as it is called, would provide for a greater degree of disclosure and accountability for government programs and lead toward a more integrated expenditure system. It would give members of Parliament and the public more knowledge and to that extent more control and scrutiny over how government spends.

If this type of legislation had been in place years ago, I believe it is true that would not have so easily created the massive deficits and debt which the federal government is now forced to deal with.

That really is the purpose of the legislation, as stated by the member for Durham. I think it is transparent that the legislation is worthy of support. It has been supported in statements from the auditor general and the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation. The retiring president, Mr. Jason Kenney, has said that he supports the legislation. James Forrest, the executive director of the Alberta Taxpayers' Federation, has indicated that they support it. During the first hour of debate it received fairly favourable reviews from MPs representing all the recognized parties in the House.

I could also note that professional accounting organizations have also indicated their support. Marcel Latouche, president of the Charted Association of Certified Accountants has indicated support; the Certified General Accountants Association of Ontario; the Society of Management Accountants of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. They endorse the principles behind the bill, and I could go on.

I guess the real question is why anybody would do it any other way. When we think about it, it is quite extraordinary that in this day and age governments would think of tabling and publicly adopting legislation without providing assessed cost information as part of the process.

I do not believe there is any chief executive officer in this country who would go to his board or his shareholders and not be prepared to give a definitive cost assessment on a project that the company had undertaken. Nor would any intelligent head of a household enter into a major purchase, any purchase other than out of pocket, without making an assessment of the real costs over time.

If anything, I think the bill probably does not go far enough. This is absolute bare bones, as some of my colleagues have pointed out. There are other things that could be done with the bill but which have not been done. There are no sunset clauses on any of these expenditures. There is actually no provision for making the targets that are assessed by the auditor general mandatory or for any amendment if the costs are out of range from the original estimate. There is no assessment required of benefits or of the present value of the cost stream. There is no requirement to indicate what the source of the income would be to cover the cost or how precisely these sources are related to the benefits and the beneficiaries of any of the projects.

This is a very small step, one that is worth pursuing and I believe ultimately worth adopting. However, it is not putting any kind of undue restrain on government, nor is it even challenging some of the basic Liberal philosophy that I think is ultimately the problem here. I may get into this later if I have time.

This is what the member himself is ultimately up against because $600 billion in debt was not run up in this country by accident. It may have been run up through incompetence but it really came down to the heart of the Liberal Party philosophy and the philosophy of modern liberalism which is that government exists to spend, to transfer money from some people to other people for the benefit of politicians and bureaucrats, and ultimately it is a political and not an economic question on how resources are allocated. That is the philosophy of modern liberalism, not just to serve a dependency but to create it, to nurture it and to build big government around it.

That is why we have the problems we do in this country. That is ultimately what the hon. member is up against in trying to move this bill forward not just with the philosophy of liberalism but, frankly, with a political party and a leadership that have to justify the last 30 years, justify the way things have been run. They surround themselves with the representatives of the old way of doing things. That is a problem when getting the House to look at this kind of measure.

I would point out in the few moments I have left that this is not by any means the only measure that parliamentarians of various parties have tabled in this Parliament to attempt to bring modern cost evaluation and cost control to the federal government.

I will mention a few of the private members' bills that are on the Order Paper right now, all of which relate to this kind of matter: Bill C-213 put forward by the hon. member for Capilano-Howe Sound to amend the Constitution Act to require balanced budgeting and spending limitations; Bill C-294 by the hon. member for St. Albert which would require the periodic evaluation of statutory programs, two-thirds of federal spending not subject to a regular review process; Bill C-342 by the hon. member for North Vancouver would require stated principles of fiscal management from the Minister of Finance consistent with generally accepted accounting principles and would require public periodic reports that deal with approaches to debt reduction, to balanced budgeting, contingency for risk and stable tax rules; Bill C-349 by the hon. member for Medicine Hat to require public disclosure and parliamentary scrutiny of federal user fees; Bill C-361 by the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville, the people's tax form act, which would give

voters and taxpayers a say on their tax forms in terms of what kind of federal government programs are supported and with what kind of tax dollars.

There are various other propositions. I think all the ones I mentioned are reform propositions but there are others from Liberal members which deal with not just reforming spending directly but making government more accountable, whether it is through giving people more say on their tax form or through referendums or through reforms of the House of Commons. There are endless numbers of propositions. None of these has been addressed so far in this Parliament or seriously entertained.

I would like to review some of the objections that have been raised to this type of legislation if I have time. Let me say before I get to that in summary that what all of these objections have in common, and I am sure we will hear this from the parliamentary secretary later, is somehow the theme that we are doing it right now. Everything is just fine the way it is. Cost control is really terrific. We now have only a $30 billion deficit this year. Therefore what are we really worried about when it comes to taxpayer dollars? The other objection is how can we afford to spend this money to control federal spending and to control the federal budget.

These people never have any problem with spending money at the front end. They always find it very expensive to monitor. They can always afford to spend the money. They can never afford to have the accountant to keep the records. That is an amazing philosophy but it will come out in all the objections.

As I say, there is really no valid reason for opposing this type of bill. It is standard practice in every other institution. The auditor general knows this is consistent with modern accounting practices and would like to see his office handle this sort of role.

I commend this bill to the House. I know that many Liberal members support it. They reject the old philosophy. I ask them to vote in favour of this legislation.

[Questions On The Order Paper, December 13th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out that we currently have nine questions still sitting on the Order Paper with regard to the airbus fiasco. All of these are designated 2, meaning the response was requested within 45 days. Our Questions Nos. 62 to 70 were put forward by the member for Beaver River, the member for Lethbridge and me. Six were put forward on June 19 and my three questions are dated September 12.

We have not received responses to any of these and the government has missed the deadline. These questions are to be answered within 45 days and today is day 55.

Will the government tell us why it has missed the deadline and when it plans to respond?

While I am on my feet, Mr. Speaker, I would also like to point out that we also have concern about the lack of response to our Notices of Motions for the Production of Papers, again related to the airbus fiasco, the role of former Prime Minister Mulroney and this Liberal government in those particular contracts. We currently have 17 such notices and have not received anything from the government on any of them. We gave notice for two of these on March 19 and for the other 15 on September 12.

Given that this is or at least is supposed to be the last day of sitting before Christmas, we would have appreciated a response from the government. So can the government tell us when we might get some action on these matters?

[Holidays Act, December 13th, 1996]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-365, an act to amend an act respecting holidays.

Mr. Speaker, this bill would restore the name Dominion Day to the July 1 holiday. The country founded on July 1, 1867 was not Canada but the Federal State of the Dominion of Canada, still the country's official name.

The word "dominion" has its linguistic roots in the French language and was chosen as the name for this country by the Fathers of Confederation from the 72nd Psalm: "He shall have dominion from sea to sea and from the rivers unto the ends of the earth".

It has been a mistake for this country to try and preserve its future by destroying its past and the name Dominion Day should be restored.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)

[Petitions, December 12th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is signed by 28 residents of the city of Calgary. It calls on Parliament to urge the federal government to join with the provincial governments to make the upgrading of the national highway system possible beginning in 1997.

[Petitions, December 12th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36 it is my duty to present two petitions.

The first petition is signed by 138 residents almost exclusively from the city of Calgary. They ask Parliament to zero rate books, magazines and newspapers under the GST and under the proposed harmonized sales tax, and they ask the Prime Minister to carry out

his party's repeated and unequivocal promise to remove federal sales tax from books, magazines and newspapers.

[Excise Tax Act, December 10th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to follow the previous rant from the member for St. Paul's. It is the first we heard from the Liberals today on the issue and gives me an opportunity to address some of his comments.

It was interesting when he said this move was in the interest of Atlantic Canada. Yet few members on the government side from Atlantic Canada are willing to speak to the issue. Very few members are willing to speak to the issue of GST harmonization. Almost none from Atlantic Canada. One spoke earlier today, the hon. member for Gander-Grand Falls. We can check the blues, but I do not think he mentioned GST anywhere in his speech. He obviously was not too thrilled about the initiative.

The government makes the point that it must be governing for the benefit of the people of Atlantic Canada because the Liberal government in Atlantic Canada likes this initiative. The role of the Parliament of Canada, I would remind the parliamentary secretary, is to govern for the benefit of the people of Canada; not just the people of Atlantic Canada but all Canadians.

Interestingly enough we did not hear mention of the people of Atlantic Canada. Where are the petitions to Parliament demanding this harmonized GST? Where are the letters of endorsement from the business community and from consumers groups? We are not getting them in our offices. We are getting precisely the opposite.

The federal government should have a broader view of what is in the interest of the people of any region of the country than just what the party of the government thinks in a particular region.

We get the same line every time the Reform, the Bloc or any other party criticizes a Liberal government initiative directed at a specific region. Its members always say they are the guardians of the region. They ask where we were when they were giving something to our region or to somebody else. The great tragedy of the country is governments that do not govern for the entire country. Historically governments, particularly Liberal governments, have used policies to divide, conquer and pit one against another so they can act as the defender of one region at any point in history, depending on where they need to pick up some votes.

It is a terrible way of approaching government, but that is the history. I am addressing second reading of Bill C-70 on GST harmonization which, as has been pointed out by many speakers, is being implemented with time allocation.

It is important to point out that this bill was read for the first time in this House only on December 2, just over a week ago. This is only the third day we have had any debate at all on this piece of legislation.

The hon. member for Burlington, a Liberal member, had a tremendous argument. This one we need to get bronzed over here. It was that they would not need to move time allocation if the opposition would just support their bills. That would make it much easier.

There is a pattern here. We saw this pattern not just in this fall sitting but in previous sittings in the last three years. That has been that we have had a very slow legislative agenda for several months.

Just as the House is about to rise for a break, important legislation appears which must be passed immediately. In this sitting, the fall sitting, we passed only nine pieces of legislation, including some supply bills and housekeeping measures that were of fairly minor significance.

Last week three pieces of legislation were introduced which most analysts of Parliament would argue are the three most important bills introduced in the fall sitting, the harmonization of the GST, amendments to the Canadian Wheat Board, and the tobacco legislation. These are three of the most important bills.

Now they must all be passed according to some rushed schedule. I should add, just a couple of weeks before that, changes to the rules for the next election campaign. That is probably the fourth most important. It came in only three weeks before the end of the session.

Why does the government do it this way? I have tried to figure that out. Why are we rushing, for instance, an important debate on a GST package in order to have a prebudget debate, which the government will have no intention of listening to whatsoever? It is not on a substantive piece of legislation. Why are we doing this?

Some of it may be disorganization. Some of it may be unclear priorities. I fear the longer I am here the reason it does some of this is it really ultimately wants to rush committee stage of these bills.

Committee stage is where the public and affected interests get to express their views on the bill to indicate where amendments should be made and where parliamentarians and other expert witnesses are able to go over the clause by clause of a bill to suggest technical amendments.

That is the stage the government wants to rush. It has been increasingly rushing it, even on important legislation. The consequences of that have been very obvious in this Parliament to observers. Often we are passing legislation that is not well thought out, that is poorly drafted technically and that ends up being amended or delayed in the Senate.

I suspect we will see that happen again, if not on this bill at least on one of these three bills we are now rushing.

We have today the Liberal Party bringing in a bill to support and enhance the position of the GST across the country. I will not dwell too much on that. It is tremendously humourous to see the Liberal Party now being the one enacting the new version of the GST.

Perhaps even funnier than that was the appearance of the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party to vote against the GST. Of course, just his mere appearance in the House of Commons is funny enough, seeing how infrequently it seems to occur.

Let us go back to the original GST. The original GST was discussed in a white paper presented by the previous government in 1987 and implemented in the 1990-91 period. It is important for me to acknowledge, as I want to address a serious issue here, that many conservative people in the country, many business people, very conservatively oriented people, were very supportive of the thrust of the GST, at least initially. Some still are.

Why was this? It is important to understand why some supported it and why they do not today and why it is an error to support this tax.

They supported it because of the deficiencies of the existing manufacturer's sales tax. They supported it because it was a value added tax implemented in a multi-level way that ideally would not distort prices. On top of that it was a consumption based tax which therefore would not have strong incentives against investment.

However, these were very short term reasons for anybody to support this tax. They were very short term reasons because the real issue this country has been facing for the last 10 years and will face for the next few at least is the deficit and whether we will end the enormous deficits of this federal government by increasing taxes or whether we will end them by cutting spending; in other words, whether we will ultimately balance the budget in this country by having very big government or by having much smaller government. Of course, big government got us into this economic situation in the first place and we favour a solution that will bring us back to smaller government.

If we take a big picture look at the GST, the big problem with it is not the specifics of its construction. It is in the end a powerful revenue generator, one that works best if hidden. It makes it easy to raise rates, easy to broaden the base, and it brings the federal government into an area that is traditionally provincial authority. It leads to tax collusion rather than the phrase harmonization or rather than competition between governments.

That is what we see happening with this GST harmonization today. We see a deal that buys off the Liberal Party in the Atlantic provinces, that uses the term harmonization for essentially arranging a collusion scheme between governments to make it easier for them in the future to raise taxes. They can do it with a majority vote. But it makes it virtually impossible for them to ever lower the rates of taxation. It takes another step toward hiding and burying taxes in prices and it broadens the base of existing provincial sales taxes on Atlantic consumers.

The real agenda of the Liberal Party is to make sure the fiscal actions it takes, both on the spending and taxation sides, ultimately secure big government and high taxes in this country. I believe that in the end this is what has caused the slow economic growth in the past generation. This will ensure the country continues to slip.

We need another way. This harmonization of the GST, this tax collusion between provincial and federal Liberal governments, is not the way to reverse the economic decline of this country.

[Excise Tax Act, December 10th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, just to assist the Chair, that sounded to me like a challenge of the Chair's ruling. The Chair has ruled that the amendment is in order. It would seem to me that the appropriate time for the member for St. Paul's to have raised that objection would have been at the time the amendment was moved by the hon. member for Delta. However, that was not done and you have ruled. We would appreciate resuming debate on the amendment.

[Labour, November 29th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the government, despite the fact it says that it wants the workers to vote, is hiding behind the provision of the labour code that Mr. Hargrove is using to prevent a vote.

Yesterday I was at the human resources committee meeting. The parliamentary secretary suggested this is a temporary solution and may not be a profitable solution in the long run. That is not what the company, most of the workers or provincial governments say, and it is not what the federal government has said.

Is the federal government refusing to allow a vote to occur because it really does not believe in the future of Canadian Airlines?

[Labour, November 29th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister who is answering for the Minister of Labour.

The minister said very clearly in response to the transport critic for the Reform Party that the government wants the workers to be able to vote on this legislation. As the minister said, the government knows that the present provisions of the Canada Labour Code do not allow that.

The government is here to pass legislation for the benefit of Canadians. If it wants the workers to be able to vote on this, why will the government not give the workers the ability to do so?

[Canadian Airlines, November 28th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, what we are asking for is for the employees of Canadian Airlines themselves to be able to intervene in their own future rather than take the 100 per cent pay cut that some of their union leaders seem to want them to take.

Does the minister not realize that we have a public and pressing interest here? We do not have time for the games. The future of the company and jobs are at stake. We do not have time for a lengthy mediation. Will he introduce in this House legislation that will allow the workers to speak on their own economic future?