Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose the motion put forward by the hon. member for St. Boniface. I know he put it forward with the best of intentions and he gave us some examples. There are some constituents in his riding who unfortunately have missed out on some of the government largesse through either lack of knowledge that programs were available or for whatever reason they were not able to claim the benefits available to them had they applied.
There are two sides to every coin. If there is a responsibility on one side for the people to apply for it and there is also the obligation for the government to pay then it should not be an open-ended commitment by the government to pay forever should it be found at some future point that someone did not apply for a benefit.
We must remember the concept that benefits are to help people in their daily living. It is not for them to build a nest egg or a small fortune because they did not apply for it last year, the year before, five years ago or twenty years ago. The idea of the programs we have today, be it the guaranteed income supplement, be it the family allowance program, be it the old age security program or be it the Canada pension plan, is to help people in their daily living. It is not a savings program for them to pass on to their heirs. That is the first philosophical objection I have to the point raised by the hon. member.
He talked about being able to recoup a lost benefit. Yes, I know in the interest of fairness it would seem that if I had missed out on an opportunity to claim a benefit from the government some considerable number of years ago, it might be nice if I were able to go back and claim it. However I do not think we can leave it as an open-ended commitment.
The hon. member talked about responding to real needs. I mentioned, as I said, we are here to help people in their daily lives, not to build savings. He said it was the right thing to do. Yes, perhaps there is some merit in the fact that it is the right thing to do. However I believe if the person does not take some onus and some responsibility upon themselves to find out what they are eligible to apply for, to find out the programs offered through the government, a certain onus should be applied on constituents to say: "I have a need that perhaps the government will provide. Let me check it out".
He also mentioned that the government had few limitations on its side in order to collect the money from our citizens. I beg to differ on that. There is the statute of limitations. There are many rules, for example in the Income Tax Act, that put very specific
deadlines on how long the government has before it loses its ability to go after the taxpayer to collect lost taxes.
I remember a tax case about four or five years ago wherein the government had for some unknown reason a tax return in its files that it had failed to process. About six years later the file was discovered and processed. In the particular case the taxpayer had actually owed the government $250,000. It went to court. The government lost because there was an item in the Income Tax Act that says the government shall process tax returns within a reasonable period of time. The court decided that six years to process a tax return and send the person a notice of assessment showing how much he owed was not a reasonable period of time. In that particular case the government was out a quarter of a million dollars, plus whatever interest would have been applied.
There are rules on both sides. As I said, there are two sides to the coin. We have specific limitation rules on the government being able to collect and I think it is only fair that we have them.
The hon. member talked about examples of social programs to help people. He talked about the need and desire that we be fair. I think the hon. member is trying to be fair and generous with taxpayers' dollars. The point we are trying to make as the Reform Party is that there is a limitation to what the taxpayer is prepared to pay. Therefore that suggests we should not continue to have an open-ended situation.
I was thinking in reading the member's motion that 100 years from now someone on reading their great-grandmother's correspondence may find that she said: "I did without my guaranteed income supplement because back in 1994 I felt the government deserved a hand. I passed up on my claim". The heirs come along and say: "Wow, here we are. Great-granny is long since gone but the claim is there". Let us not forget the interest. It is now tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars that the taxpayer would be on the hook for. Therefore, I cannot support the motion.
The member talked about people getting shafted. I remember some years ago while driving along I was pulled over by the RCMP. He advised me that I had entered a lower speed limit and because I was driving too fast he was going to give me a ticket. He said to me: "I've got good news and bad news for you. One, I'm going to reduce the amount of the ticket, but the bad news is that I'm going to give you a ticket anyway". I thought I was being shafted. I did not see that I was going to get any redress so I ended up paying the ticket.
I think the hon. member's point really is that we should simplify government so that we are here to help people in need. That has been the Reform Party policy. There is a myriad of programs out there. That is why people today cannot wade their way through the red tape and government bureaucracy to find the programs that are there for them.
I suggest the hon. member go back and examine the nature and philosophy of his motion. We should simplify government and make it more responsive to the needs of people. In that way people in need will know that we have a program available for them. The complexity of government adds to the cost of government. It removes government from being able to help genuinely needy people while throwing all kinds of money through all kinds of programs to many thousands of Canadians who could get by fine without the money but it just happens to be a program that is there for them.
I therefore speak against the motion. I feel that the government does much today and, in many cases, goes overboard in the way that it spends taxpayers' money. I recommend that we oppose the motion.