Debates of Oct. 24th, 1996

Research And Development

[The Speaker]

Colleague, you must address the question through the chair. Please rephrase the question to me.

[Bob Ringma, Reform, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

The question, Mr. Speaker, for the Minister of Natural Resources is what will you do to redeem-

[The Speaker]

The hon. member for Davenport.

Pesticides Products Control Act

[Charles Caccia, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Health and it concerns the modernization of the best management regime in Canada.

Can the Minister of Health indicate to this House when the legislation amending the Pesticides Products Control Act will be introduced in the House?

[David Dingwall, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member will be aware that this subject matter is receiving careful and serious consideration in terms of consultations across the country.

The purpose of the review of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency is to provide good and easy access for farmers in this country who need those pesticides, but also in terms of the environmental concerns so that Canadians and their health are protected.

We are in the final stages of our consultations with farming groups and others. I hope to be in a position to come back to the House in due course in order to introduce this legislation.

Parliament Hill

[Nelson Riis, NDP, Kamloops, BC]

Mr. Speaker, on the eve of the Liberal convention, something rather sinister and mean is happening here on Parliament Hill.

The Deputy Prime Minister hails from a steel workers town. She will be aware that members of the steelworkers on the construction site on Parliament Hill were paid $7.25 an hour with minimum benefits. They are now locked out, having been asked to train scabs to replace them here on Parliament Hill.

My question is for the Deputy Prime Minister. Does she feel it is appropriate that scabs are working here on the front lawn of Parliament?

[Sheila Copps, Liberal, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Canadian Heritage]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly agree with the hon. member that working people in this country should be given every opportunity to better their situation.

I would also suggest to the hon. member that given his former colleague, the former premier of Ontario, is responsible for the labour laws they are currently facing which permit this, perhaps he should have talked to Bob Rae while he was in office.

Presence In Gallery

[The Speaker]

I wish to draw to the attention of members the presence in the gallery of Mr. Oleksander Kozhushko, Member of Parliament of Ukraine, head of a delegation of MPs and officials.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear.

Business Of The House

[Gilles Duceppe, Bloc, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would appreciate it if the government House Leader, or

his substitute, could tell us what the government's legislative agenda will be for the coming week.

[Alfonso Gagliano, Liberal, Minister of Labour and Deputy Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, the House will not sit tomorrow because, as is customary, when a party recognized in the House has a convention, the House adjourns. We have done so in the past for our colleagues and we thank our colleagues for returning the favour.

We will come back on Monday to resume the debate on Bill C-29.

This will be followed by Bill C-57 on Bell Canada; Bill C-49, the administrative tribunals legislation; Bill C-47, reproductive technologies; and Bill C-58, water transportation.

On Tuesday we will begin with Bill C-35, the labour code amendment on minimum wages, followed by Bill C-34 respecting farm marketing agencies. We will then pick up the earlier list where we left off and follow it until it has been completed.

[Paul Zed, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

I wonder if I might seek the unanimous consent of the House to revert to presentation of committee reports. The transport committee has a report to present. I have consulted with the parties and I believe you will find unanimous consent.

[The Speaker]

Does the hon. member have unanimous consent to revert to Routine Proceedings?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Committees Of The House

[Joe Comuzzi, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Nipigon, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the second report of the Standing Committee on Transport which deals with issues involving the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence seaway system.

[Paul Zed, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if I might, with the good graces of the House, also move a motion regarding travel. I move:

That the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs be authorized to travel to Nova Scotia to visit Cornwallis Park, CFB Greenwood, MTC Aldershot and CFB Halifax on November 7 and 8, 1996, and that the necessary staff do accompany the committee.

Mr. Speaker, I have had an opportunity to consult the parties and I believe you will find there is unanimous consent.

[The Speaker]

Does the parliamentary secretary have the unanimous consent of the House to present the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

(Motion agreed to.)

The House resumed consideration of the motion, of the amendment and of the amendment to the amendment

Supply

[Monte Solberg, Reform, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to the Bloc Quebecois motion which deals with the economic future of the city of Montreal. As I begin my remarks it is important to make reference to what was said by hon. members during the debate before question period.

The hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce pointed, as did other Liberal members, to separatism as being the source of the problems in Quebec. He was blaming the separatist movement for all the economic problems in Quebec. That was the common theme which I heard from other Liberal members throughout the morning.

On the other hand, the Bloc Quebecois members were pointing to the federal government and saying that it had not given Montreal enough support. It had not given Montreal enough goodies, according to the motion. It says in the motion that Montreal has not been given an equitable allocation of federal purchases of goods and services, et cetera.

Suffice it to say that obviously both sides are not right. I would argue that both sides in this dispute, the federal government represented by the Liberals, and the province represented by the Bloc Quebecois, can accept all kinds of responsibility for the problems in Montreal.

It is no secret that Montreal is not the city it once was. The hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce made reference to that. He lives there. He pointed out that several years ago Montreal was a vibrant and growing city, that there were all kinds of entrepreneurs. It was an international city. Today it still is, but it is certainly a shadow of the city it once was. Perhaps it is important, while we are having this debate, to ask what happened between the 1960s and early 1970s and today.

There have been many changes, not the least of which has been the rise of separatism and a very heavy tax load. There is a tremendous amount of debt in this country. We have seen an environment, really not for job creation but quite to the contrary, an environment that scares off the job creators for two reasons, one of them economic. The other is political. Obviously in that type of environment we cannot see a prosperous economy.

It is important to lay out some of the facts when we are talking about the economic problems facing the great city of Montreal. It is a great city. I think all Canadians would like to see it restored to its former greatness.

Since the present government came to power it has added somewhere in the range of $103 billion more in debt on to the overall debt load in the country. That means average taxpayers owe on behalf of the federal government about $45,000 right now or $290 per month of their taxes go just to pay the interest on the debt. That is $290 per taxpayer. It is an incredible amount of money.

A lot of people will be alarmed to learn, and I am certain this applies even more so to people in Quebec because of the traditionally high tax load there, but since the Liberal government came to power the average family's purchasing power has declined by $3,000 a year. That is unbelievable. It points to part of the cause for the economic woes in Montreal.

Since the government has come to power its tax revenues have rocketed upward by $23 billion more by the end of its four year mandate than when it came to power. That is a tremendous amount of money, a huge increase in its overall revenues.

When we reflect back on the promises of the last campaign, where the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the current finance minister were running around saying there would be jobs, jobs, jobs, all of the facts known today make that promise sound very empty and very hollow.

I will recount some of the facts on unemployment. As members of the Bloc Quebecois know, as do many members of the Liberal Party who are members from the Montreal region, Montreal has been hit perhaps harder than almost any major city in the country with respect to unemployment. However, it truly is a nationwide problem. Today 1.4 million people are unemployed.

It is interesting to look back over the history of the last quarter century to see how the rise in unemployment has paralleled the rise in indebtedness in this country. When former Prime Minister Trudeau was beginning his spending spree back in 1972 about half a million people were unemployed, 535,000 people if my memory serves me right. Ever since then unemployment has been on the rise. It virtually mirrors the rise in indebtedness in the country.

At that point the debt was somewhere in the range of $13 billion. Today it is $600 billion. Approximately 500,000 people were unemployed. Today it is 1.4 million. It did not matter what political party was in power. When the Liberals were in government, unemployment was bad and getting worse. When the Tories took over they even made it worse. It was up to 1.6 million people by the time they had their way with the economy. They added another $300 billion in debt. Obviously they did not do a very good job either.

Today there are 1.4 million unemployed people across the country, not to mention the two million to three million under employed. When we speak of under employed it is important that we define our terms. We are speaking of people who are in positions that really are beneath the skills they have spent a lot a money to acquire. All kinds of people are working in low wage jobs when they have been trained to be in jobs that are far more worthy of their abilities.

This blocks people who are unskilled from getting some of the wages where skills really are not as required. The people whom that really hurts are the youth. That is why we have 18 per cent youth unemployment in Canada today.

On the eve of the Liberal convention, when a lot of young Liberals will be coming to town, I hope they are asking some tough questions of their own government about why youth unemployment continues to be as high as it is today.

However, that is not the whole job story. We have about another 500,000 to 1 million people who have fallen through the cracks, people who are no longer reported in the unemployment statistics because they have given up looking for work. We also have one in four Canadians who are very concerned about their future. They do not know if their job is going to be there tomorrow.

I think I can say this is a fact, and I know hon. members in the Bloc Quebecois and members from all sides who come from Quebec will acknowledge that in Quebec the unemployment situation is certainly more pronounced than just about anywhere else with the exception of Atlantic Canada.

I have laid out a pretty bleak situation. It sounds pretty bad and it certainly is. However, that does not mean that we cannot somehow get out of this terrible mess.

The Reform Party has recently laid out its platform for helping not only the people of Quebec and Montreal, but people from all across the country. We believe that Canada needs to be defined by its citizens, not by its government. The debate over the last couple of days really makes the point. We have had all kinds of accusations flying back and forth in the House in the last couple of days because Bloc members say that we do not give enough money to Quebec and specifically to Montreal. Meanwhile, the government

is saying it gives lots. It just gave $87 million to Bombardier in Montreal. However, clearly that has not solved the situation.

Governments giving money to big companies, corporate welfare, does not work. It does not work when we flood one province with a whole bunch of money. That clearly has not helped Quebecers. Instead of that why do we not go back and do it the way that we used to, the way that created all those jobs back in the 1960s and 1970s that the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce was talking when he was bragging about the Montreal of old. When we talk about that we are talking creating an environment where all the job producers have the incentive to go out there and create jobs.

How do we get there from where we are at today with a $600 billion debt, a deficit of $28 billion, record high taxes and falling disposable income? Obviously the solutions are not easy. However, the Reform Party thinks it does have the solution. We believe we have a good plan. We say that the first thing we have to do is make the government smaller. We have laid out a plan whereby we would cut spending by $15 billion and we would have a $94 billion federal government, a smaller federal government that is not in the face of Canadians at every level, that is not in the face of the people of Quebec who have said over and over again that they do not want all this intrusion from the federal government. We are happy to help make that happen.

Not only that, we want a federal government that will do 10 jobs well in areas like criminal justice; knocking down internal trade barriers instead of building them up like it has done with the harmonization deal; defence, which obviously needs a lot more attention from the government than it is currently getting because it is truly a mess, certainly at the higher echelons. We would also like the federal government to pay more attention to foreign affairs and international trade and do 10 things well instead of trying to do 25 things and obviously doing them very poorly.

What we would like to see is a tax freedom day that falls in April instead of one that falls in June, July or August. People are taxed to the max. They can barely move. It puts a tremendous stress not only on the job creators out there but all those people who are struggling to make a living and those families that have both parents working even sometimes when they do not necessarily want to have both parents working, which creates tremendous stress in families. What we want is 5 per cent unemployment, not 10 per cent, not 12 per cent, not 18 per cent like we have for young people today. We want 5 per cent unemployment like we have south of the border. Somehow the Americans are able to have low unemployment. Certainly we should be able to have the same level of unemployment. We used to have it in this country.

When I speak of creating jobs through smaller government and lower taxes, I will talk about some specific ways we can do that. The first priority is to balance the budget. Hon. members across the way, who may not have had a chance to read our document, have made the accusation that we want to go ahead and start cutting taxes and not balance the budget first.

I assure my friends across the way that is not the case. We believe that would be very irresponsible, particularly when we are in such a precarious position with a debt of $600 billion. So we say let us balance the budget first. We would do that by reducing government spending by about $15 billion. We would run a very lean and efficient $94 billion government.

We would balance that budget by March 31, 1999. We would launch a debt retirement program. We would have balanced budget legislation. We would have free trade between provinces and of course we would have much lower taxes than we have today. The short answer to people who want to know how much tax relief they would get would be $2,000 for the average Canadian family by the year 2000. We propose a number of ways to make that happen.

We would like to increase the basic personal exemption from $6,456 to $7,900. We would also like to increase the spousal amount from $5,380 to $7,900. Those two measures alone will obviously affect every person who files a tax form if their basic personal exemption were to go up. It will obviously affect every married couple in the country to give them much lower taxes than they face today.

We speak in favour of extending the $3,000 to $5,000 child care deduction to all parents, not just people who send their children out to day care, even to people who look after their children at home. We think they are just as valuable when it comes to providing parenting. It is time in this country that we acknowledge the great job that parents do in raising their children by extending the child care deduction to all parents. That makes sense to me. It is treating people equally.

We believe that we must eliminate the 3 per cent and 5 per cent Conservative surtaxes. The Tories were great ones for raising taxes. Time after time they raised taxes and they spent more and more. We have to begin to repeal some of that.

We believe that we have to cut UI premiums by 28 per cent and we have to cut capital gains tax in half. If we could cut UI premiums, it would provide an immediate stimulus for job creation in this country.

Here is where we get back to Montreal. Many people on both sides of the House have been talking about the lack of jobs in Montreal, and it is truly a national disgrace. I do not know how else to word it. Back in the early seventies we had unemployment rates of 4 per cent and 5 per cent in Canada. Now it is rocketing upward well into the double digits in Montreal, well into the double digits in Atlantic Canada, well into the double digits in the entire country, especially for youth.

We have a tremendous unemployment problem in this country. There is barely an economist in Canada who has not pointed to the high UI premiums as one of the principle reasons for high unemployment rates. Surely the hon. finance minister and members across the way can see this is an impediment to job creation.

We have to give people some incentive to create jobs. One of the best ways is to balance the budget and then to bring down immediate reductions in unemployment insurance premiums.

We speak about cutting capital gains taxes in half. We have a private sector that is dying to invest in the Canadian economy. If we cut the inclusion rate in half for capital gains, we will have all kinds of capital flooding into the country. There will be all kinds of people who want to invest in Canadian business and create the types of jobs that people in Montreal and people everywhere need.

On the one hand, the finance minister says "hey, we don't need tax cuts, don't worry about it, interest rates will do the job".

Obviously the finance minister and the Prime Minister do not believe their own story or they would not be granting Bombardier $85 million plus in the form of an interest free loan. They just finished saying that low interest rates will spur that kind of investment on their own. Obviously they do not believe their own story.

The difference between the Reform Party and the old Liberal-Tory Parties has become fairly clear. The old parties believe in bigger government, higher taxes, that government should tell you how to raise and discipline your children. They will be in your face at every turn. They have proven when they do that they have ruined just about everything they have touched.

On the other hand, the Reform Party presents a new vision, a fresh start, as we say. Reform believe that government should be smaller. Canadians should be given the tools to do more of the providing for themselves instead of taking their money and funnelling it through a big, fat inefficient government and then having that government tell them what they are going to do with the money. Why not let people keep that money? Why not let Canadians keep the money themselves? Why do we keep taking the money away and putting tremendous strain on individuals and families across the country? This is hugely punitive to all the people who create the jobs, the people to whom the government should be accountable.

In conclusion, I urge the government to drop its stand against tax relief for Canadians, to drop its line that low interest rates are good enough when clearly it does not believe it itself. Clearly it has failed at every step when it has to hand out big grants to its friends in Montreal. Obviously it does not believe its own story. Obviously it does not believe it is working.

I encourage hon. members across the way and people in the Bloc Quebecois to quit pointing fingers at each other and look at how their own programs are hurting the economy in Montreal and right across the country. Look at the Reform approach of giving Canadians the tools in the form of lower taxes to begin to look after themselves and to create jobs in the Canadian economy.

[Jesse Flis, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened attentively to the hon. member from the Reform Party participating in this debate. Reform's solution to help the sagging economy in Montreal is to cut even more.

Reform is going to cut $15 billion if it ever forms a government. This would mean smaller transfer payments to the provinces. He talked about free trade with the provinces and I agree with him on that. How will he or his party achieve free trade with Quebec when every day, every week in this House the Reform Party does nothing but Quebec bashing? Then the Reform is going to sit down with it and negotiate free trade. Good luck. I would like to know how it plans to do that.

Reform is going to operate with a smaller government. Mr. Speaker, I am sure your constituents and mine are complaining now that we have cut government too far. There are people who want to have questions answered from Revenue Canada and from immigration. We have already, through our program review, cut the public service by 45,000 and probably another 10,000. The public service has been cut to the bone now. Reform wants to cut not to the bone but into the bone. It claims it is listening to grassroots Canadians. So am I and grassroots Canadians are saying do not cut anymore. They want the public service to serve them when they need it.

My intervention is more of a comment, but I would like the member to answer some of these questions. On the one hand Reform members continually bash Quebec. Of course Montreal is the capital city and the hub of the province and the country.

I think Reform fails to recognize that cities like Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto are still rated by objective international pollsters as the three best cities in the world next to Paris and London. If we compare Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto with U.S. cities, Boston will place third, whereas Montreal will still place in the top ten.

[Monte Solberg, Reform, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am certain the hon. member did not mean to say that Montreal was the capital city of Quebec; I think he meant Quebec City.

One thing I want to point out to the hon. member is that it was the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce who pointed out that Montreal is not the city it used to be.

The hon. member has to acknowledge that over the last 25 years Liberal governments have been in power in this country, with the exception of the horrendous Tory government. It did almost as much damage as the Liberal governments have done over the many years they have been around.

The member talked about cuts in services and cuts to staffing in the revenue and immigration departments. I do not hear complaints about those cuts nearly as much as I hear complaints about cuts to health care.

Government members campaigned as being the saviours of medicare. Then they turned around and cut $7 billion out of transfers to the provinces, over $3 billion of which went to health care. I sat before the finance committee today and heard all kinds of health care professionals pound on the desk very forthrightly because they are so frustrated. They know that on the one hand the federal government is saying that it is the saviour of health care and do not dare try and break the Canada Health Act. Then the Liberals turn around and cut every cent they can out of it and tell people to go and do what they can. That is blatant hypocrisy.

People from Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan and Manitoba who protest in front of legislatures about cuts to hospital funding should get on a plane and come and protest on the lawn of the House of Commons because this where the problem began. There is the duplicity of the government which on the one hand says it is the saviour of health care and on the other hand cuts the heart out of it.

On the question of how we would deal with Quebec, the member is absolutely wrong when he says that we bash Quebec every day. That is completely false. We are very, very upset about the Bombardier deal. However we are the ones who propose to give Quebecers the tools in the form of lower taxes. One-quarter of all taxpayers in the country come from Quebec. We are going to give three million people in Quebec lower taxes. A tremendous amount of stimulus will go into the economy of Quebec, $2,000 per family by the year 2000 in the province of Quebec. They will create a tremendous amount of their own jobs.

I am sure the member has said when he is speaking to his constituents that small business creates jobs in this country. Then let us give the people who create the jobs the tools to create them.

On the political side, we say let us give the people of Quebec and the Government of Quebec the tools they need to chart the future of Quebec. The people of Quebec do have a unique language, a unique culture and a unique history. Let us give them the tools and give them the jurisdiction to determine the future of the people of Quebec. That would go over well if every province had to do that.

That is how we are going to deal with the people of Quebec and the Quebec government.

[The Speaker]

We have only about 60 seconds left. The hon. member for Bourassa has 30 seconds.

[Osvaldo Nunez, Bloc, Bourassa, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I also think if there is a political party in Canada which is particularly anti-Quebec, it is the Reform Party.

How can you explain that over the last year, so many Albertans have come in Montreal to tell people in Quebec they care for them and want them as part of Canada, when your attitude is so totally anti-Quebec?

[Monte Solberg, Reform, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it was a rather incoherent question but I can guarantee that the people of Alberta do want to see Quebecers stay in this country. The best way to show that is for the federal government to create an environment for economic growth on the one hand, and on the other hand provide a decentralized Canada that will allow Quebecers and all Canadians to realize their aspirations within the broad framework of what constitutes Canada.