Debates of Oct. 29th, 1996

Committees Of The House

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

Mr. Speaker, I believe you would find unanimous consent for the following motion. I move:

That the Standing Committee on Finance be authorized to travel west to Vancouver, Edmonton, Regina, Winnipeg and Toronto, and east to Montreal, Fredericton, St. John's, Halifax and Charlottetown during the week of November 4, 1996 to hold a pre-budget consultation and that the necessary staff accompany the committee.

(Motion agreed to.)

The House resumed consideration of the motion.

Committees Of The Whole

[Eugène Bellemare, Liberal, Carleton—Gloucester, ON]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for giving me the floor on the motion on the appointment of a deputy chairman of the committees of the whole House.

The position of deputy chairman is sufficiently important that we should appoint someone worthy of the honour, such as the individual the government recommended. The government has recommended the member for Kingston and the Islands. He is a well balanced individual, well educated, who weighs things carefully and has many merits, and who, above all, is familiar with procedure.

The members of the Reform Party are objecting to this appointment. They would like to see someone from the opposition appointed. What sort of people do we have in the opposition right now?

There are the members of the Bloc Quebecois, who do not want to abide by the Constitution. This morning I proposed to a committee on procedure that a swearing in, in addition to an oath of allegiance to the Queen, should include an oath of allegiance to the country known as Canada and to the Constitution. The Constitution means a great deal. One of the things it means is respecting the rights and freedoms of individuals.

Should we appoint a member of the Bloc Quebecois as deputy chairman? I think not, given that members of that party do not respect the Constitution, nor do they support my proposal that allegiance be sworn to the Queen, the country and the Constitution.

As for the members of the Reform Party, how can we appoint we appoint someone from such a grumpy, ill tempered bunch, who have forgotten how to smile? And when they do, it is because they are about to pounce on someone they disagree with. They make fun of people, so when they are smiling, watch out.

You know, the members of the Reform Party put me in mind of old westerns. They form a sort of posse. These fellows in the Reform Party-and a few women, a very few, because the Reform Party is mostly for macho types-would like to see anyone accused of a crime, any crime at all, immediately strung up.

This describes our friends in the Reform Party, a sort of cowboy posse. They are a gang of cowboys. What they would like, if a child is accused of wrongdoing, is to see him beaten, whipped, kicked, taught a proper lesson.

If someone is accused of a violent crime, well my goodness, why wait for the judge? Why waste a jury's time. Who has a rope? Let us lynch him.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Eugène Bellemare, Liberal, Carleton—Gloucester, ON]

You see, now, what a show the Reform Party is putting on. They are losing it completely.

Can you see one of those guys as Deputy Chairman? The Deputy Chairman must be someone who weighs things, who must be reserved and knowledgable. Not a gang of yahoos like this bunch of cowboys-and I say this with the greatest respect for real cowboys. I am comparing them to the Hollywood type cowboy. Those guys from the other side of the House, those Reformers, who subscribe to the principle that those who yell the loudest get the most. That is their attitude, their philosophy.

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I would like to bring the member back to some relevance. I do not appreciate the huge disinformation he is giving about us. I want him to be relevant.

[The Speaker]

It is my great wish that all members this evening will be relevant. I know we are going to get there. The hon. member for Carleton-Gloucester.

[Eugène Bellemare, Liberal, Carleton—Gloucester, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would dearly love to have the Reform Party's definition of the word "relevant" in English. I am sure that they could not give me one in French, indeed would not give me one in French since, in my opinion, they hate francophones, having brought out a resolution last year to abolish the commission on bilingualism. What is their definition of bilingualism?

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Eugène Bellemare, Liberal, Carleton—Gloucester, ON]

You hear the applause for abolition of the commission on bilingualism?

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

[The Speaker]

My colleagues, I respect when you rise on a point of order and I do hope we are not taking advantage of one another. I am going to listen to the hon. member's point of order.

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I respectfully request that you check whether we have a quorum in this House. I do not believe we do.

And the count having been taken:

[The Speaker]

By all counts, my dear colleague, we do have a quorum. I am going to give the floor to the member for Carleton-Gloucester.

[Eugène Bellemare, Liberal, Carleton—Gloucester, ON]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for giving me the floor again. I am glad to be able to tell my constituents that I upset the members of the Reform Party, those Hollywood cowboys who all want to gang up on people who are more sensitive than most. I think I know how sensitive they are.

These are people who believe that all francophones should go to Quebec and all anglophones should live outside Quebec. They have great respect for Quebec's anglophones and they have great respect for francophones. They have great respect for the history of our country.

I bet you that if we had a history test, if we had a high school history teacher, but no, that would be getting our sights too high. I was too demanding. If we had a grade school teacher, maybe a second grade teacher who would ask them elementary questions about the history of Canada, how Canada was formed, I am sure they would score a big fat zero, because that is what they are on the other side, just a gang of zeros.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Eugène Bellemare, Liberal, Carleton—Gloucester, ON]

Listen to those Hollywood cowboys shout. They are talking about the Plains of Abraham again. They want me to go back to the Plains of Abraham. These people forget what francophones did for Canada. They forget that the reason we are not the fifty-first state of the United States is that the francophones joined up with the British, who conquered this country and entered into a relationship that was to form a new country.

I know it is a very sore point and that these complainers like to play rough and tough. That is their whole attitude. You see, their friends are very rich, so one of their priorities here in the House is to cut taxes. In fact, what they would like to do is close the whole government down. They could not care less about immigration or citizenship or the poor. They could not care less about families or the poor worker.

I almost forgot to remind the House that when health care is on the agenda, they would like their friends to take advantage of our health care system and make our hospital and health care system more like the one in the United States. Down there, private companies take the money and prevent people from getting the medication and the kind of hospital care they need, but everything is based on systems à la Ross Perrot or Newt Gingrich. These people have no interest in the common good.

The members of the Reform Party, those Hollywood cowboys who, as they say, want to lynch anything that moves, believe only in the rich and protecting the rich. They do not believe in the middle class and especially not the poor, except when they feel like giving some money to help people who are in need, to make their consciences feel better.

As you can hear, during my speech, the Reform Party members just keep shouting. Can you imagine one of this gang of tough guys sitting in your seat as Deputy Chairman? They would just spend their time shouting at us. They would not spend their time saying that we have to improve the circumstances of the average citizen. They will not recognize what the Liberal government has done since 1993. They do not believe in all this. They believe in the law of the jungle. They want to see the deficit completely eliminated within a very short time. They would like to take us back to the time of the depression and cut everywhere.

This afternoon in committee, we were talking about government cuts in public service spending. I really felt uncomfortable, because a lot of public servants have lost their jobs. Reform Party members told me that if they formed the government, public servants would really get the short end of the stick, because they want to close the whole government down. They want to cut everything. They would like to fire all public servants, then turn around and give all these

jobs to their friends so they can make a buck at the expense of Canadians.

The worst scenario we could have during this session would be to have a member of the Bloc-but at least Bloc members are often reasonable-but Reform Party members are never reasonable. Can you imagine a member of the Reform Party as Deputy Chairman of the committees of the whole House? Do you want to work with someone from the Reform Party? Absolutely not, no one could work with them.

They would sit over there with their whips-and we must not forget the rope too, since someone needs to be hanged from time to time. As for those accused of something, not someone found guilty, they deserve a royal thrashing.

I would be greatly disappointed if the government were to decide to have a Reformer as Deputy Chairman. Theirs is an anti-people party, a party for the strongest, one which believes that he who yells the loudest get the most. For anyone who is sick or poor, theirs would be the last party in the world to vote for.

[Lee Morrison, Reform, Swift Current—Maple Creek—Assiniboia, SK]

What do you know about poverty?

[Eugène Bellemare, Liberal, Carleton—Gloucester, ON]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for allowing me to speak and for giving me far more attention than I got from those yahoos on the other side, with all their uncontrolled bellowing, and with absolutely no qualifications or qualities to be the Deputy Chairman of the whole House.

[Monte Solberg, Reform, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand to speak to this motion.

I first want to say that the remarks I am about to make should not be construed as being remarks that are negative toward the hon. member who is pursuing the position of deputy chairman. As everyone knows, the hon. member has done a good job in the House in terms of being able to understand the rules and certainly he is up on the rules. Nobody would quarrel with that.

I think the quarrel that the people in the Reform Party have and anybody who has read the red book has is that this is completely contrary to what the government promised it would do. The great irony is that the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands who is pursuing the position is the one who wrote the policy for the red book. There is a great inconsistency here.

We do not need to hammer too much on that broken promise. I think it has been done fairly sufficiently this evening. It is pretty obvious for anybody who wants to have a good look at it. The fact is the hon. member himself wrote the red book promise and is breaking it himself. People can judge for themselves whether that is integrity. I would say it is not.

I want to follow up on some of the comments I have heard tonight and perhaps talk a little bit about the two fundamental visions we are hearing about in the House. One of course is the Liberal-Tory vision and the other is our vision.

Before I do that I feel compelled to follow up on the smear campaign that we are hearing. Certainly the member for Carleton-Gloucester was going on calling us all kinds of names. That is fine. I do not think that carries much weight with ordinary Canadians.

I do want to make reference to his point where he said that he thought the Bloc Quebecois members were very rational thinkers. He seemed to agree with them a lot. He is certainly entitled to his opinion, but I am surprised at his comments. I would be surprised if the people in Carleton-Gloucester really agreed with him. We are talking about the people who are proposing to break up the country. The hon. member for Carleton-Gloucester seems to be supporting them. That is quite shocking. In a sense, when we consider how close the government came to losing the last referendum campaign, within 50,000 votes, perhaps it is not so surprising after all.

I do want to talk for a moment about the two fundamental differences which really relate to this whole issue. This whole issue is a microcosm of the two fundamental differences in visions of the country between the Liberal-Tory regime and the Reform Party regime. The best way to explain the differences is to look at the history.

An hon. member back here is continuing the smear campaign that was started earlier in the day. Hopefully they will find out that it is futile.

Let us look at the record. With the Liberals and Tories in power, going back to the early seventies the debt has gone from about $13 billion to about $600 billion. I will do for my Liberal friends across the way what I often do for high school students. I will point out to them how much money that is. If I had a stack of hundred dollar bills about two metres high, that would be a million dollars. If we stacked our debt in one hundred dollar bills, it would be 1,200 kilometres high. That is an astounding amount of money.

Only a few weeks ago the finance minister made a presentation to the finance committee. It was a sort of state of the nation address with respect to the economy. I was quite surprised when, knowing that we had this huge debt problem, the finance minister came in and announced that the deficit for last year was only $28.6 billion. Only $28.6 billion. And what happened? The Liberal members began to clap. They said: "Is that not wonderful. It is only $28.6 billion".

As my leader pointed out, only in the never never land of Ottawa would $28.6 billion in the hole be applauded. There they were lined up like crows on a telephone wire applauding away as if this were some great accomplishment. However, I can assure the people across the way that back home in the real world there was no applauding because the people back home know the only place that money comes from to pay for these deficits is out of the pockets of ordinary Canadians.

I think this is a fundamental difference between the Liberal-Tory vision and the Reform vision. The Liberals and the Tories have for years and years piled up the debt, ran up taxes. Hon. members across the way have probably heard over the last few days, because we have mentioned it once or twice, that in the three years they have been in power the average Canadian family has seen its purchasing power go down by $3,000 per family per year; a national pay cut courtesy of the Liberal government.

The Liberal member across the way is laughing. But I can say that the people who do not have incomes of $64,300 plus all the expense money that MPs have are not laughing because they have to pay for that out of their savings.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh.

[The Speaker]

Colleagues, it is getting a little late. I am having a tough time hearing the hon. member. I know you want to hear him, so I wonder if we could just keep it down a bit.

[Monte Solberg, Reform, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the courtesy. I am sure I can expect it from hon. members across the way as well.

Taxes are not the only thing that separates the Liberal-Tory vision from the Reform vision. Their belief in big government, high taxes and bloated bureaucracies breeds something perhaps even more insidious. There is no question that it does. I am talking about the record high levels of unemployment in this country.

There is no coincidence that as the debt started to grow in the early 1970s so did the unemployment rate in the country. When Pierre Trudeau took power in 1972 somewhere in the range of 535,000 people were unemployed. By the time he left office in 1984 it was up to 1.45 million people.

The Tories continued that trend and again there was record high unemployment. What kind of unemployment do we have today? There are 1.4 million unemployed.

It would be bad enough if it were only the 1.4 million unemployed, but that does not take into account the 500,000 to 1 million people who have completely given up looking for work because the Liberal vision of bloated government has not worked for them. There are 2 million to 3 million people who are underemployed. By that I mean people who have an education but who cannot find a job that suits their skills. One in four Canadians is very concerned about losing their job.

Canadians have no confidence in the economy. Too many people have been laid off, too many tax cuts have come down the pike to ever be assured they will have a job for very long.

This is also a key difference between the Liberal-Tory vision where they seem to tolerate high levels of unemployment and can offer up nothing creative, nothing new to give people some hope.

A great concern I have and which I gather has been shared lately by the Prime Minister and the finance minister is their dependence on these make work programs like infrastructure. The Prime Minister and certainly the finance minister in the past have said that these programs simply do not create long term, permanent jobs. But what do they do? They keep coming back to the same old ideas because they cannot bring themselves to face the fact that big government and bloated bureaucracies cannot do it all. The government cannot have its fingers in everybody's business all the time because it kills jobs. Surely by now, after 25 years of social engineering, big government in everybody's face, we have to arrive at the conclusion that big government does not work. It does not create jobs, it kills jobs. The facts speak for themselves.

It is not only about taxes and unemployment but also the tremendous strain this puts on families by both parents having to work, one to simply pay the taxes for the government.

The other issue that we run into when there is a government that spends $600 billion over 25 years, more than it takes in, a deficit last year of $28.6 billion, is that we have interest payments on that debt that this year will be about $49 billion.

The hon. member across the way thinks that is funny. I should point out to the hon. member that the finance minister writes cheques to bankers in Japan, Germany and the United States for amounts that are much larger than he writes to the provinces for things like health care, old age security and unemployment insurance. That is $49 billion.

I do not think that is a laughing matter. I would argue that it is deadly serious. It is deadly serious because of the impact it has on social programs.

My friends across the way have cloaked themselves in the flag of medicare. They have run around telling Canadians how they are going to save it.

The last election campaign I remember extremely well. I am sure my colleagues on this side do as well. I remember how members

over there were engaging in a smear campaign at that time and said that Reformers were out to get health care.

As it turned out, it looks like the Liberals were wolves in sheep's clothing. Not only were they not telling the absolute truth about the Reform Party, they went out and cut $3 billion plus out of health care themselves.

They have closed more hospitals, have put more health workers out of work than any provincial government in this country. The provincial governments combined have not taken a whack out of health care like the federal government has. That is a fact.

It is about time that the Liberals started to face some of the scrutiny falling on the provinces which are taking a lot of the heat for health care cuts.

I would dearly love to see Canadians get on planes, get in their cars and get on trains to come to Ottawa to protest on the lawn of the Parliament Buildings over the cuts to health care. That is where the cutting started. The federal government cut $3 billion and left the provinces no choice.

By the way, I am going to say how the Reform Party would remedy that. Forty-nine billion dollars a year in interest payments has also pinched the federal government with respect to payments to old age security.

I remember in the last election campaign the Liberals went after us hammer and tong: "You guys are going to cut benefits to seniors". I remember it very well.

I hope I run against the same guy I ran against last time. I can hardly wait to confront him with the fact that it was the Liberals who cut seniors' pensions more than any government in the history of the country.

Who was it? It was the Liberals. That is the difference between the Reform vision and the Liberal-Tory vision. We have always been straight with Canadians. We have told people the truth.

I do not know what the members opposite were saying in the last election campaign about social programs. I expect a lot of people are going to be examining those documents as we get closer to the next election campaign.

There is another important way that we differ from the Liberal-Tory vision.

[An hon. member]

We are sane.

[Monte Solberg, Reform, Medicine Hat, AB]

We are sane, as my friend says.

The Liberal-Tory vision is one that is full of broken promises. We talked a minute ago about the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands who has broken a promise himself, in effect, even though he is pursuing the position of deputy speaker.

He has written, basically, the red book promise to allow deputy speakers to be chosen from the opposition benches but he, himself, is allowing his name to stand, rather unbelievably. That is just a microcosm of the overall bigger problem.

We have broken promises on the GST. I hope my hon. friends across the way have not forgotten that the Deputy Prime Minister was finally hung by her own words last spring and had to run for re-election. It was a national embarrassment.

I could not believe that the Deputy Prime Minister had to take a poll in her own riding to determine whether it was safe for her to finally hand in her resignation after she had been shamed into it by not only this party but Canadians from around the country. Absolutely shameful. That is only one of the broken promises. There are a lot of them.

I could not believe the spectacle, again involving the Deputy Prime Minister, on the weekend. She was running around telling people that it was not her fault the CBC was being cut. She said that it was the finance minister's fault. I believe she is the Deputy Prime Minister. I believe she sits around the cabinet table. I believe there was a red book promise to provide stable funding.

Stable funding does not mean funding enough to run a stable. It means that the funding will be there in the same amounts as it was in the beginning.

That is only another of many promises. I remember during the NAFTA debate how hon. members across the way railed against free trade: "Free trade is going to kill Canada. It is going to be horrible. It is going to be something that steals our sovereignty". We heard it from every single member across the way, and what did they do? As soon as they got in they signed the agreement. They broke both legs to sign the agreement. Again, we see that their actions cannot meet their words and they should be ashamed.

On the issue of day care the Liberals said that when there was growth in the economy of over 3 per cent, or whatever it was, they would create 150,000 day care spaces. That has still not happened. What is going on here? That was a promise that undoubtedly got the Liberals a lot of votes. They told people they wanted to ensure working parents would have some support.

I personally do not agree with their promise but they used it to lever themselves into power, which is absolutely ridiculous. They should be ashamed of that.

I do not want to tie up the whole time talking about the Liberals' poor record. That is too depressing. People need some hope. Let me talk about Reform's fresh start. Let me talk about the new way to do things.

Reformers want to give Canadians a government they can afford, a smaller government, a government with lower taxes, a government that will leave more money in the pockets of taxpayers and the job creators so they can make these decisions, so they do not have big government in their faces at every step, so they do not

have a government in their faces that tells them how they have to raise their children, what they have to do at every turn.

For crying out loud, ordinary Canadians are asked to raised their families. They are expected to fill out their income tax forms. Surely they can decide what to do with their own money. We do not need big government in our faces at every step. No way.

We are going to do more. We are going to provide lower taxes for the people who create the jobs. I cannot think of an economist in the country who has not spoken of the need to lower unemployment insurance premiums. Reform is offering a 28 per cent cut. That would be an immediate surge of energy to the job creators in the economy and we would see a tremendous amount of job creation.

I ask members across the way to compare that to the government approach to job creation. Recently Atlantic Canadian provinces signed the GST harmonization deal with the help of $1 billion to make it a little easier for the premiers to go along with it. But now housing prices in Atlantic Canada are going to go up by $3,000 to $4,000.