House of Commons Hansard #31 of the 35th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was budget.

Topics

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95Government Orders

5:25 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

I congratulate the hon. member on his maiden speech as well.

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95Government Orders

5:25 p.m.

NDP

Len Taylor NDP The Battlefords—Meadow Lake, SK

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address the House today on the important matter before us, the matter being the borrowing authority bill. Bill C-14 provides the government with the opportunity to borrow some $34 billion to see us through this fiscal year.

I have stood in the House many times over the last five years. In each of those years I have seen the government come forward about this time, shortly after the budget was brought down in the House by a finance minister, and ask the House for the authority to borrow money in order to get it through the year.

Each year these funds address the central problem of the past, that program spending has been greater than the revenues received by government. We have now reached a point where as a nation we are borrowing money simply to pay the interest costs on the debt that has accumulated over a number of years.

Every Canadian manages debt of one kind or another. Many Canadians who purchased homes have gone to the bank and borrowed money in order to mortgage the facility and be able to live in it. Many Canadians with businesses have borrowed money or have incurred debt either to maintain the capital of the business or maintain an inventory for the business. Many Canadians have borrowed money for furnishings, holidays or whatever they want on credit cards. In each case, whether a home owner, a business person, a farmer who borrowed money for equipment to operate his farm or a consumer on a credit card, the debt is always considered in terms of manageability.

As a nation we continue to ask ourselves how much money we need in a given year and then borrow to make up the total over and above what we have. The difference between us as a nation and us as homeowners, farmers, business people and consumers is that as a government we are not managing our way through. We have no specific plan to deal with the accumulated and accumulating debt other than to talk about reducing the annual deficit to the point where we might come to a percentage above our GNP. In and of itself that certainly is not good enough.

Looking at the public debt charges we see right off the bat that last year the government's budgetary spending was $161 billion with revenues of only $121 billion, resulting in a shortfall of over $40 billion. This year, 1993-94, the government is adding $45 billion to that total. The spending will reach $167 billion and revenue is only $115 billion, resulting in that $45 billion shortfall. Of course the next couple of years continue along those lines.

As I said, in and of itself that is a horrible situation. Debt itself when it is manageable is acceptable. When it is unmanageable, it is unacceptable. The situation here is the government is not prepared to manage that debt accordingly.

When that is combined with other initiatives it leaves us in the position that we are rapidly losing our ability to care for the citizens and residents of our nation. We are rapidly reaching the point of losing our economic sovereignty because of the programs, policies and debt that have accumulated around us. Let me give a couple of examples of what I mean by this.

On the debt side of all of this we recognize that much of our borrowing today is coming from the foreign marketplace. We continue to sell treasury bills and bonds to ourselves in Canada. However of the some $400 billion accumulated debt at the end of 1992 more than $80 billion was held outside Canada. It was held by governments or banks or others outside Canadian borders.

Of that $80 billion, $8 billion a year in interest payments alone is leaving this country. That is $8 billion earned in this country by those people who are still working. It is earned and paid in taxes to this government, only to find that the money is put in buckets so to speak and transported across the border ending up in the hands of foreign banks or foreign governments.

Those tax dollars which leave Canada are of no use to us. Everyone knows that money earned in Canada and spent in Canada creates a nice little circle allowing for the money to be used several times. However when it is put in those buckets and sent on trucks outside this country so to speak, that money is not used again in Canada. Add that to other policies of the government and policies of past governments that remain in place and it is creating a very difficult situation for all Canadians.

We recognize from the Auditor General's report of two years ago that our tax system rewards companies that invest outside our borders. Canadian companies and American and other foreign multinationals operating in Canada and paying, one would hope, income taxes in Canada, that take Canadian profits and invest those dollars in other countries and create jobs in those other countries can then reduce their income tax or corporate tax paid in Canada.

When foreign companies operating in Canada make their investments, and there have been fewer investments in recent years, the investments made are generally in existing Canadian operations. They are businesses that are producing products and employing Canadians. When they invest, companies are inevitably downsized. Foreign investment has resulted in unemployment in Canada.

We used to encourage foreign investment to the point where jobs would be created. It would create new product. It would create new investment in our country. But the investment taking place today simply removes jobs from Canada. Of course with that downsizing and the so-called greater efficiency in that marketplace the profits earned end up going outside Canada as well.

The Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement has spurred investment from Canadian companies into the United States. There is a greater influx of Canadian capital into the American marketplace for investment. That is not something the business community has criticized because of course it is very excited about expanding Canadian opportunities in a larger marketplace.

That means that money invested in the United States employs workers in the United States at the expense of Canadian workers. If that money were invested inside Canada instead of inside the United States the return for Canadians would be much greater.

The economic circumstance taking place is one where government tax policies and other policies and government debt make it very difficult for this country to participate in building jobs, what the government says is its main mandate out of this budget.

Our economy is almost bent on self-destruction. This economy will not create jobs while we continue to support corporations, particularly transnational and multinational corporations which create jobs outside our borders. It is time this government took a long hard look at the way the creation of debt, the tax policies and the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement have diminished the government's ability to control the types of jobs that can be created in our country.

I do not want to leave the impression that perhaps all is lost. The important thing for government to understand is that, to use the language of the prairies, it must have some guts to stand up in the international marketplace and support Canadian industry and Canadian workers. It must support Canadian citizens who want to create a better life in Canada and to have some economic sovereignty within the North American and the world context.

Canada's tremendous resources in the past have simply been cut down and put on boxcars, fishing boats or whatever and shipped off some place else to allow for job creation and sales to take place in other parts of the world. For years we have forsaken a tremendous opportunity to create jobs and wealth, create new wealth in Canada that circulates in this country creating additional jobs and additional support.

If we continue to allow the marketplace to tell us what to do throughout Canada, through government, through the private sector, then our economy will slowly work itself down to the point where the only jobs left will be those servicing the unemployed or people on welfare. We have to find a way to pull ourselves out of that. Our economy cannot be allowed to shrink.

Mr. Speaker, you are signalling that my time is almost up. I will not abuse the privilege of the Chamber, although there are

probably two dozen other things I would like to mention. I thank you very much for your patience this afternoon.

Committees Of The HouseRoutine Proceedings

5:35 p.m.

Kingston and the Islands Ontario

Liberal

Peter Milliken LiberalParliamentary Secretary to Leader of the Government in the House of Commons

Mr. Speaker, I think you will find unanimous consent of the House for the following motion. I move that the first report of the Special Joint Committee on Canada's Defence Policy presented to the House on Friday, February 25, 1994 be concurred in.

Committees Of The HouseRoutine Proceedings

5:35 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

Is there unanimous consent?

Committees Of The HouseRoutine Proceedings

5:35 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

(Motion agreed to.)

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-14, an act to provide borrowing authority for the fiscal year beginning April 1, 1994, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95Government Orders

5:40 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

Before recognizing the hon. member for Gaspé I would indicate for the record since there seems to be some misunderstanding that my list says only Bloc Quebecois members were to speak because of an error and there were also Liberal members to speak. In order to accommodate the member from the New Democratic Party who is allowed to speak and in fairness, based on my understanding of what has happened, I will now go to the hon. member for Gaspé.

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95Government Orders

5:40 p.m.

Bloc

Yvan Bernier Bloc Gaspé, QC

Mr. Speaker, I will try not to go beyond my speaking time in order to allow my colleagues to speak in turn.

There are two points I want to underline in the budget of the Minister of Finance. First off, fishermen, be they from Canada or Quebec, are again the ones who have to bear the brunt of the federal's bad management. Secondly, the Maritimes are also penalized by a way of management which is ignoring the people. I will deal with these two points.

My first comment is about the fishermen of Canada and Quebec. They are among the most affected by this budget. Minister Crosbie had allocated a billion dollars to support fishermen over the last two years. The Liberal government reduced that amount to 340 million a year over five years, a cut close to 30 per cent. Under the Conservative government, we witnessed a drop in fish stocks and it seems that, under the Liberal government, we will witness a drop in the financial support offered to the fishing industry's victims.

The cut in the fishermen's support envelope should have come about naturally, through the industry's reorganization or the redeployment of workers in other lines of business, not as a consequence of Liberal cutbacks. Will the government give to fishermen the means to adapt to their new reality or will it go on reducing their financial support without giving them any means on which to build their future?

If no financial envelope is created for the purpose of opening new avenues to the fishermen, the relief measures, such as the $1.7 billion that will be invested, will necessarily have to be recurrent ones. They will have to be repeated over and over until the government puts an end to it without ever solving the problem.

The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans must tell the fishermen exactly what financial measures he intends to implement in order to reorganize the industry and reassign workers to other areas of activity. Will the minister put some money into that program or can we conclude, as the budget seems to indicate, that he has abdicated and that fishermen will be left to fend for themselves? The minister must let us know what he intends to do after the May 15 deadline. He owes that to the thousands of people who are now living in doubt. It is even more pressing for him to act now that his colleague, the Minister of Finance, has presented his budget.

We have not yet said it enough. This budget is an outright attack on the far regions and the poorest regions of Quebec and Canada. The maritimes are among the hardest hit by the Martin budget. There are three examples.

The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency received cuts of $90 million over three years. The federal government created this agency to stimulate and diversify the economy of the region. It pretends now that it will restart the economy by cutting this agency's budget.

The government goes even further. The Department of Industry which finances the larger projects not handled by ACOA has also received drastic cuts. What is the good of having development instruments if they are not given the means to succeed?

The second example is the military. Following the federal election the government promised to re-evaluate its role in defence. We were pleased by its sensitivity as the world changed significantly even from what it was five years ago. The role and

the budget of the military have to be reviewed. The government has to be sure to study the ministry to make all the necessary modifications and cuts.

The government's mistake is in proceeding with the cuts without the smallest concern for the people it will be affecting. The Bloc believes in the government cutting military spending. However, it believes in converting the military industry. We cannot tell thousands of people that one day or the next they will lose their jobs without giving them other alternatives. The extent of the cuts requires that we proceed while simultaneously proceeding with a plan to convert the private sector. The government has not done this. It has not taken responsibility for the people of the maritimes.

The third example: unemployment insurance. The extending of the eligibility period from 10 to 12 weeks is an extremely hard blow for the Maritimes and, I should say, for all eastern Canada. For instance, only in the areas of Gaspé and the Magdalen Islands, there are about 11,000 seasonal workers who will be affected by that decision. In the middle of an economic crisis, the government will take $725 million next year only and more than $6 billion in the next three years in the pockets of the unemployed, the victims of the lack of jobs. In the meantime, it reduces its spending by only $400 million. Big deal!

Moreover, the Minister of Finance announces that the regional rate of unemployment will have less impact on the level of benefits. The Minister has found yet another way of attacking the people who already have trouble getting by. Raising the number of weeks required to be eligible to unemployment insurance without proposing a catalyst to restore the economy is utopian. Besides, as some renowned economists mentioned this morning in La Presse , the federal budget is like, and I quote: shovelling the snow into the provincial yards''. Effectively, since a lot of people will go directly from unemployment to welfare, the provinces will have to pay at least $1 billion more in welfare. I call thatshovelling''.

In conclusion, I will draw a parallel between the situation of fishermen and that of the Maritimes in general. People who fish see their income shrink, but the government is not proposing anything to revitalize fishing. For their part, the Maritimes see their defence installations close, their unemployed under attack, but the government is not proposing anything to diversify the economy in general or transform the defence industry into a civilian industry. There are people behind all those moves. The Chrétien government had set for itself the goal of giving hope to people, but hope is what is sadly lacking in this budget.

I do not know how long I still have-three minutes, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to add that during the week of Parliamentary recess, I met with some of my constituents. I have one of the largest ridings in the country. There may be larger ones, but mine covers three county regional municipalities. So, in a riding where unemployment in December was 27 per cent and where employment is highly seasonal, the big question that the mayors of the three municipalities were asking was: What are we going to do? What can the government do for us? We want to work for the longest possible periods, but they prevent us from doing so. Mr. Speaker, the great question in this financial balance the Minister of Finance, Mr. Martin, tried to achieve is what came first, the hen or the egg? I have the feeling though that at the present time he is eating both. How can we make it? I will work and form a committee with these people; we are thinking about the issue. However, we will need some financial assistance. When you are out of gas at the bottom of a steep hill, you need gas if you want your car to climb. Right now we have none.

I hope we will find other ways, Mr. Speaker; I hope we will succeed in influencing this government and make them listen to the people in my riding, the people of Gaspé, because I know the problem will be the same all over Eastern Canada: seasonal jobs. I am not asking for charity; all I am asking is that they give us the financial means of reaching our goals. All I personally want is for the Gaspé Peninsula not to be a burden anymore. And we will not be a burden; just give us the proper means and we will say goodbye to you and your social programs.

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95Government Orders

5:50 p.m.

Liberal

Alex Shepherd Liberal Durham, ON

Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak in support of the budget. The budget is about jobs. It is about opportunity. It is about a new path away from the past, the path of unemployment, of poverty, of stress. It is about a new path for the future which involves new technology and growth for our economy.

It is about new initiatives such as the Canadian investment fund. This fund will be sponsored by the banks as well as governments in a supportive partnership to find and finance new technology for new jobs.

It is about a technological network, where we encourage the use of technology and people getting these technologies together to create new wealth.

It is also about a study into our pension funds, how we invest our money, and how we can utilize that money in our economy.

If we reduced unemployment by 4.5 per cent we would create $70 billion, more than enough money to pay off our deficit, to create a surplus, to put people back to work. That is the long term goal of the budget.

We talk in the budget about a new code of ethics for the banks and how they deal with small businesses. We have heard constantly of how small business enterprises are having difficulty raising capital. Why should this be? After all, that is what banks do for a living. One thing we have not focused on very effectively is that the government is competing in the capital markets with small business. A $500 billion deficit means the government competes in the market for the same supply of funds to finance small businesses.

People have not realized how our economy has changed over the years. When we think of British Columbia, we think of the forestry. There are more people employed in medical research in British Columbia than in the forestry. When we think of Nova Scotia, we think of the fishery. There are more people employed in teaching in Nova Scotia than in the fishery. The banks we talk about have only 6 per cent of the capital base of the country.

In some ways we are going at this in the wrong way. I suggest that we need to take the studies that are mentioned in the budget to review pension funds and how the savings of Canadians can be more effectively used to support the economy. The budget refers to research and development initiatives, more expenditure on things like the space program. This will put Canada into the 21st century.

My hon. friend, the minister of state talked earlier today about the information highway and how this is going to bring Canada into the 21st century, linking up our small communities, linguistic groups and things of commonality throughout this country, making this nation strong and whole again.

Why does the government have to get involved in all these things? Why has this become a problem? Why have we come to this point in our history where we are living through this deep recession? I suggest it is partially the psychology of Canadians in general. We have not invested in our own economy.

The economy is probably typified more than in any other country in the world by foreign ownership. Canadians have allowed foreigners to control major sectors of their economy. I am talking about automobile manufacturing, aluminum smelting, big sections of the forestry industry and on and on it goes. What has the effect of this done to us? We have not had significant investments in research and development. We have short changed our future by allowing others to take over the role of investment.

Fortunately the world has changed in a very effective way for Canada. We are now seeing the end of what I and many have called the smokestack economy. The larger companies in our economy are getting smaller every day. Many of us in our ridings feel this very much as these companies shed employment. These are the things that make the headlines in our local newspapers. However, this is also an opportunity. It is an opportunity for Canadians to take control of their economy once again.

Why is it that someone living in a home on a particular street is complaining about receiving 5.5 per cent interest rate on a guaranteed investment certificate and someone else in a company is laying off workers because they cannot get capital to finance their business. This is the dilemma and the strange aspect that affects Canada today.

Why is it our small businesses cannot get access to equity capital? What is it that prevents them from raising funds in the open market? It is very costly to get access to our market exchange. Many TSE and other stocks are foreign owned.

For the small businessman it is almost impossible to jump from his small business entrepreneurial investment and get access to registered stock exchanges.

What is the solution to some of these problems? I suggest that the budget has started us on the path to a new definition of access to capital and how Canadians have to take control of the economy into their own hands.

We have a number of institutions we can utilize to create new capital and confidence for Canadians by investing in the economy. The National Research Council, as members know, is very interested and has been very involved in new technology.

My review and discussions with some people at the National Research Council leads me to the conclusion that 75 per cent of all inventions the council has created over the years are still resident in Ottawa. We are not involving this kind of technology in the marketplace. I am happy to say that the industry ministry has talked about departmentalizing and moving some departments out into the areas where businesses are affected. I believe that the National Research Council could be an effective method of certifying processes.

Another agency we now have is the Federal Business Development Bank. I believe it can act as a secondary marketing tool creating pools of minority interests in small businesses to sell these pools to registered retirement savings plans and other pension funds. In this way Canadians will have some assurance and liquidity from the aspect of investing their money in Canadian small businesses.

How many times have we as members of Parliament watched some of our clients come before us, our constituents, and talk about the fact that they have a good process, that everybody wants it, that it is marketable, but they cannot receive funding for it and they have to go south of the border? What happens to most of them is they fail. We have to do better.

I believe that the budget is only the first step in the long process of creating new capital for Canadian businesses and ending our drudgery with unemployment.

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95Government Orders

6 p.m.

Bloc

Yves Rocheleau Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC

Mr. Speaker, during the last election campaign the Liberal Party of Canada, wishing the Canadian electorate to be well informed of its intentions, published an important document entitled "Creating opportunity". As you have probably guessed, the ultimate purpose of that paper was to kick Progressive Conservatives out of power and replace them by a team determined to create jobs, fight unemployment and not the unemployed, and make sure that the deficit would not be tackled at the expense of the poorest. That document is the red book.

Millions of Canadians, in particular in Ontario and in the Maritimes, believed in it and were deluded. Quebecers and Westerners proved to be more cautious and shrewd. Only 30 per cent of Quebec voters, for instance, trusted the Liberal Party.

Now that they have reached their goal, the Liberals who are in government must act and show concretely that they really are different from the bad Conservatives.

However, they missed a first opportunity to prove it with the speech from the throne, a text rife with clichés, pious hopes and vague declarations of intent. Subsequently, Mr. Speaker, the government, under the finance minister's leadership, embarked in extensive consultations with a view to outlining the first Liberal budget, a much touted about exercise which was to bring hope back to Canadians from coast to coast.

This great event took place on February 22, 1994, at 5 p.m. What a disappointment! The red book is becoming increasingly valuable. Never since, have the Liberals being able to find free-lance writers with such lucidity, such imagination, such insight, and so able to develop new solutions.

As a matter of fact, one must accept the obvious, that this government is following right in the previous government's footsteps by attacking not unemployment but rather the unemployed, when it announced that it intended to renew and revitalize, to use its own words, Canada's social security system within two years.

And yet, the red book did say, on page 73 and 74 of the English version:

The failed economic and social policies of the Conservative regime have left 1.6 million people out of work and 4.2 million Canadians living in poverty, of whom 1.2 million are children; and 62 per cent of families headed by single mothers are living in poverty with their incomes falling.

Since 1984, the Tories have systematically weakened the social support network that took generations to build. [-]they have taken billions of dollars from health care and from programs that support children, seniors, and people who have lost their jobs-

And yet, in its first budget, this government announces to us that henceforth, people will have to work longer in order to collect 5 per cent less in unemployment insurance and that the revitalization of social security will mean savings of roughly $7.5 billion at the expense of the least fortunate.

Another example that is particularly interesting to me, in my capacity as industry critic, is that of industrial conversion as mentioned on page 55 of the red book.

The defence industries today employ directly and indirectly over 100,000 Canadians. The end of the Cold War puts at risk tens of thousands of high-tech jobs. A Liberal government will introduce a defence conversion program to help industries in transition from high-tech military production to high-tech civilian production.

Since being elected, this government has not mentioned this subject again, except once, very cautiously, in the budget plan when it stated that it would not proceed until 1996-1997. Yet, two projects that have been shelved could satisfy the need for diversification by utilizing both human resources and budgets. I am referring to the establishment of a high-speed rail link between Quebec City and Windsor, via Trois-Rivières, and to the awarding of a contract to MIL Davie of Lauzon, a company which specializes in the building of military ships. Having drawn up its own plan to convert from military to civilian production, this company needs the encouragement of the federal government, which it would get if awarded the contract to build the Magdalen Islands ferry.

Not a word about these two issues, Mr. Speaker, in the budget speech or elsewhere.

So what are we to make then of such behaviour by the government? Is it cynicism or contempt? Is it just a way to fool the people so that they can take power by saying or promising anything? How can one reconcile such behaviour with the parliamentary integrity mentioned in the red book on page 90, where it says that cynicism about public institutions, governments, politicians, and the political process is at an all-time high? Is this government not giving Canadians and Quebecers new reasons to be cynical?

But that is not all. So far, we have seen some commitments made during the election campaign which have not been kept by this government. It will also do some things that it never mentioned before. I am thinking, for example, of the decision

announced in the budget speech to close the military college in Saint-Jean.

Since Quebec receives only 15 per cent of national spending by the defence department, we think that it is an unfair and unacceptable decision that we can only denounce.

Moreover, if we think back to the reasons and the historical background for setting up this institution, it is an unjustifiable decision which shows the failure of a certain Trudeau-style federalism where bilingualism would be recognized everywhere and francophones and anglophones would have equal opportunities in this great united Canada.

To suggest that French-speaking Quebecers can get along easily in Kingston and go ahead as if nothing had changed, as the Minister of Defence suggests, shows naivety or bad faith.

Here is what an eminent citizen of Trois-Rivières, a constituent of mine whom I salute gladly, the first francophone chief of staff of the Canadian armed forces, General Jean Victor Allard, said in the local daily Le Nouvelliste of February 26, 1994: ``It is ridiculous to think that Kingston can offer bilingual training''.

The front page of La Presse yesterday, March 6, carried the following headline: ``No services in French in Kingston''.

Unless this is an operation brilliantly orchestrated to allow the current Premier of Quebec, Mr. Johnson, to make political capital out of this event in complicity with his Liberal cousins in Ottawa. That is what awaits French-speaking Quebecers in the increasingly unitarian, centralized and impoverished Canada of tomorrow, where Quebec will weigh less and less in demographic terms.

This federalist complicity is also remarkable with regard to one impact of the changes to unemployment insurance concerning the percentage and duration of benefits. Unemployed workers will go more rapidly from the federal unemployment insurance program to provincial social assistance programs. It is estimated that the bill will reach at least $1 billion for all the provinces, including $280 million for Quebec.

The Liberal Premier of Quebec, Daniel Johnson, a federalist, has been very silent on this question so far, in spite of leading a government whose deficit will amount to close to $5 billion and which cannot afford to give presents to the federal Liberal government.

It is this same federalist brotherhood that will come to Quebec in the next few months to preach the Canadian gospel to the people of Quebec, to try to sell the merits of financially viable federalism, to say that francophones have their place everywhere in Canada and that the doors are wide open from the Rockies to Percé Rock.

This brotherhood includes Mulroney, Trudeau, Johnson, Ryan, the hon. member for Saint-Maurice and even the hon. member for Sherbrooke who, united by the Holy Spirit and by mutual interests, will explain to Quebecers that dependence is better than independence, that it is better to be a minority than a majority, that Quebec cannot be anything but a province and, what is more, a province like any other. That is their opinion but it is not ours. We will talk about this again, Mr. Speaker.

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95Government Orders

6:10 p.m.

Liberal

Charles Caccia Liberal Davenport, ON

Mr. Speaker, the budget proves that this government has rejected the economic theories of the Reform Party and that it has put most of its emphasis on its belief, and quite rightly so, that what we are facing today in our economy is a crisis of revenue. It is not a crisis of expenditure as the Reform Party would like Canadians to believe.

At the next election we will be able to demonstrate to those who voted for the Reform Party that they placed their confidence in the wrong party. Let me stress the fact that the crisis of revenue is going to be tackled by this government by stimulating the economy, by creating jobs and by bringing back confidence in the economic system of Canada which for many years has been the object of decreased confidence. This has resulted in the formation of an underground economy.

The budget places an emphasis on increasing revenue through a number of initiatives, not believing that our economic situation can be remedied through cuts alone. It is an encouraging and well received statement by Canadians at large.

The budget also contains a green strategy, so to speak. It is modest but it is timely. It is the first step but it promises others because the minister announced changes that will encourage companies to contribute to mine reclamation funds, commitments to improve the tax treatment of a certain type of tax conservation equipment and enhanced incentives for newer and cleaner technologies.

The Minister of Finance announced that the strategy for encouraging the growth of environmental technology and services will be revealed later this year. These announcements outline the fact that there is a willingness and a commitment to turn our budget making into a green colour as the years go by.

There are many items that are still to be considered in future budgets. One is the introduction of green taxes. Time does not permit me to go into detail. Let me only say that a graduated taxation system which would recognize the environmentally friendly role of certain products would be helpful and well received by Canadians.

Lower taxes, for instance, for products approved by the environment choice program would be a highly desirable step which has been adopted in other jurisdictions. In the United States, to give members another example, there is an annual vehicle registration fee that is geared to the weight of the vehicle. There is a recognition that the tax system should reward those who use vehicles that weigh less and are more fuel efficient.

There is a whole range of initiatives that could be taken and I hope will be taken under the general heading of green taxation.

It is interesting to note, when it comes to natural resources, a white paper produced by the European communities a few weeks ago. It states: "Market prices do not incorporate sufficiently the limited availability of natural resources and the environmental scarcities related to their consumption". The result is a systematic overuse of our national resources. Here again a graduated taxation on a resource demanding products and services would serve as an incentive and would be highly desirable.

Next the minister announced in the budget speech his commitment to create a task force to examine certain subsidies and taxes which are harmful to the environment. They are commonly called perverse subsidies. Although they are well intended, over time we have discovered they are damaging.

This task force has a terrific opportunity to examine existing and major federal subsidies, programs, expenditures and the like, including federal-provincial agreements from the perspective of development and growth that is sustainable environmentally speaking.

There will be an opportunity for the task force to examine, for instance, the budget of the Canadian International Development Agency and the budget of the energy department. The incentives that have been and are being provided in agriculture, in forestry, in fishery and in trade will be examined with the hope in mind or with the intent of ensuring long term sustainability through fiscal and other measures, including policies in the field of energy. Fossil fuel subsidies and programs will be at the core of the particular task force.

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95Government Orders

6:15 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

It being 6.15 p.m., it is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 73(b) to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith the question necessary to dispose of the second reading stage of the bill now before the House.

Is the House ready for the question?

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95Government Orders

6:15 p.m.

Some hon. members

Question.

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95Government Orders

6:15 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95Government Orders

6:15 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95Government Orders

6:15 p.m.

Some hon. members

No.

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95Government Orders

6:15 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

All those in favour will please say yea.

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95Government Orders

6:15 p.m.

Some hon. members

Yea.

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95Government Orders

6:15 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

All those opposed will please say nay.

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95Government Orders

6:15 p.m.

Some hon. members

Nay.

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95Government Orders

6:15 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

In my opinion the nays have it. And more than five members having risen :

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95Government Orders

6:15 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

Pursuant to order made Thursday, February 24, 1994, the division on the question now before the House stands deferred until 6.30 p.m. Tuesday, March 8, 1994.

There being no further business before the House, we will suspend for 10 minutes or until 6.30 p.m. for the late show.

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95Government Orders

6:15 p.m.

Liberal

Peter Milliken Liberal Kingston and the Islands, ON

Mr. Speaker, I think the members required for the late show are in the Chamber. There might be unanimous consent to proceed with it now.

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95Government Orders

6:15 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

Is there consent to proceed with the late show now rather than 10 minutes from now?

Borrowing Authority Act, 1994-95Government Orders

6:15 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.