House of Commons Hansard #117 of the 35th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was rights.
Dan McTeague Liberal Ontario, ON
Madam Speaker, a point of order. I find it rather hypocritical of the hon. member for Swift Current-Maple Creek-Assiniboia to call quorum when several members on this side of the House have been sitting here attentively and nothing on the Reform side, including the opposition.
Excise Tax ActGovernment Orders
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais)
We are resuming debate. The hon. member for Swift Current-Maple Creek-Assiniboia.
Lee Morrison Reform Swift Current—Maple Creek—Assiniboia, SK
Madam Speaker, I suppose I should feel guilty for disturbing the free lunch of the Liberals. In case they follow the usual practice of getting a quorum and then quietly sneaking out like naughty children evading the headmaster, I am prepared to stand here and call quorum all afternoon if necessary.
With regard to the question of closure, it is unthinkable that the government of a democratic country could use this heavy-handed blunt instrument to bludgeon Parliament with the regularity that this government has done. I do not know what the final outcome will be. Perhaps at some point in the not too distant future it will simply dissolve Parliament and say: "We do not need it any more. Let us have permanent closure, permanent time allocation" because that is the Liberal idea of the democratic process.
Remember, 31 times it has moved time allocation or closure in the short period of three years and one month. That is one-third more times than those blunt instruments were used in the entire pre-Trudeau era in this Parliament, back in the days when people actually believed in democracy and when Parliament was still a place where people came together to debate the issues and arrived at conclusions.
With respect to this marvellous HST that is being brought in by this bill in the Atlantic provinces, it is pretty easy to see why the government is so desperate to hide the GST. However, it is only going to be able to hide it in three provinces because nobody else is willing to get on board.
I would like to quote a comment by the hon. member for Mississauga West with respect to the GST. She said: "I keep hearing from the finance department that Canadians are getting used to the GST and now accept it. If anyone really believes that I do not think they are in touch with reality". Bravo to the member for Mississauga West because she sure had that right.
Then the hon. finance minister said: "We have to do something about this GST because we made a mistake. We are sorry, but it was an honest mistake". That is not good enough. Let us face it, despite their public pronouncements, the Liberals never had any intention of killing the GST. Instead they had this cockamamie plan to run around and hide it, meld it in with provincial sales taxes and then maybe nobody would notice. Long term planning, harmonization of the dreaded GST.
The fact that it is going to cost citizens of the three non-harmonized provinces something in the order of $900 million in subsidies does not bother this government. What does it care, it is only money and this is a Liberal government. It is going to hurt small businesses in the three Atlantic provinces. What does the government care, it is not in business. It is made up of politicians and politicians do not care what happens behind that cash register. We are going to have it because the hammer has been brought down. Democratic debate has again been forbidden in this place which was designed for the democratic debating of the issues.
I see the Speaker is signalling me, my time being up. I do thank all of those good Liberals who allowed their lunch to get very slightly cold. Members will notice that I did not fulfil my threat of continuously calling quorum.
Elwin Hermanson Reform Kindersley—Lloydminster, SK
Madam Speaker, it is good to hear that Saskatchewan is being heard from in the House of Commons this afternoon. I know Saskatchewan has some pretty strong views on taxation. We know a lot about paying taxes. Like many Canadians, we feel we pay more than our fair share of taxes. We are not very excited about Bill C-70, to harmonize or blend the sales taxes.
We have talked about the Liberals a lot in the House of Commons. It sounds like a broken record but it is not. It is broken promises which are serious business. It is important for Canadians to know that Reformers are holding the Liberals accountable for their broken promises here in the House of Commons. I think this
has been said a number of times but it needs to be repeated because these are important people who have made these statements.
The current finance minister on April 4, 1990 when he was sitting on this side in opposition said: "I would abolish the GST". That is pretty plain and simple. I can understand that. Canadians understood that and they elected a Liberal government because they had a pretty good hunch that the current finance minister would hold that position in a Liberal government.
The current Prime Minister on September 27, 1990, just a few days after his finance minister had made that statement, said: "I want the tax dead". I know when something is dead. Coming from the farm I have seen dead animals. We bury them and they are no more. They are gone. They are forgotten and we do not deal with them any longer.
The GST is not dead. It is alive and kicking. In fact, it is growing new hands. It is going to pick more pockets through a blended sales tax, a BST. That is a fitting name for the Liberals' approach to tax reform, call it BST. Again, coming from the farm I know what BS is and this is an accurate name for this sales tax.
I want to tell the House about what is happening in Saskatchewan. We already have a 9 per cent sales tax, one of the higher sales taxes in Canada. There is only a province or two with a higher sales tax. We take the GST of 7 per cent and add it to our provincial sales tax and we have got 16 per cent or actually a little over 16 per cent sales tax on most of the goods we purchase. If it is services, because it is not a blended sales tax, we pay only the GST. As as farmer, if I go to my accountant or if I take a piece of machinery to a mechanic for repair or, as we all do if we have to get a haircut, we pay the GST but we do not pay the PST. It is on goods only.
Liberals think that they are not getting enough revenue from taxes and they have to blend it so that the provinces and the federal government can extract more from us, particularly in the service industry which all of us rely on so much.
What did the Liberals do? They thought the provinces would just jump at this chance of having a blended sales tax. They forgot one thing. Provincial governments also have to get elected. They were concerned and said "how are we going to sell this BST, taxes going up on new items that currently are not being taxed or at least taxed at as high a level as it would be under a blended sales tax?" There is a little problem with the provinces. They did not jump on board.
The Deputy Prime Minister could not keep her promise and had to resign, albeit a rather odd resignation, having done a poll first to see whether she could get re-elected before she resigned. I guess that is the way the Liberals think. Put honour at the bottom of the list and check out expediency and pragmatic opportunity first.
In any event, so be it. The Liberals were in trouble over the reform of the sales tax. Killing the GST was out of the question. They were trying to cloak that in some new scheme called blending or harmonizing the sales tax. They finally were able to sell it by offering three Atlantic provinces $1 billion. Whose dollars? A billion of our dollars, taxpayer dollars, to blend this new sales tax.
The Liberal premiers of the Atlantic provinces went along with this buyout. Suddenly they found out that Atlantic Canadians were not so excited about it. They realized that the bottom line is they are going to pay higher taxes. One province did not go along with it because of course that province had to go to the electorate sooner than any other province, the province of Prince Edward Island. The Liberals found out that they were not very popular in Prince Edward Island as that government went down to defeat. I believe that the blended sales tax was a part of the reason the Liberals' ship sank in Prince Edward Island.
We have an NDP government in Saskatchewan. Believe me, NDP governments know how to tax. They like to tax about as much as Liberals do. We have a 9 per cent sales tax in Saskatchewan. We are killing jobs and sending business to Alberta where there is no provincial sales tax. We have high taxes on our phone bills; we have high taxes on our power bills and the rates are going up; we have increased our gasoline tax, meanwhile our roads are in shambles; we have a high provincial income tax; provincial crown leases have increased; municipal reassessment is being done in Saskatchewan, which is increasing the cost to the taxpayers. Of course the taxpayer, no matter what level of government it is, is the same person.
The NDP got a sudden shock in Saskatchewan the other day when it lost a byelection in North Battleford, a seat it had held for most of the last 40 years. People in Saskatchewan were telling the NDP that they do not like the high taxes. They do not like the NDP nickeling and diming them to death. They are not prepared to pay more and more for less and less. Surprise, surprise. In Saskatchewan the NDP lost a safe seat. A new Liberal MLA was elected in the riding of North Battleford.
The Liberals have also selected a new provincial leader. Of course they have had all kinds of problems. They have been shooting each other in the foot and stabbing one another in the back, as Liberals are prone to do once in a while. Out of the whole mess they had to choose a new leader. What did the new provincial Liberal leader in Saskatchewan pronounce almost at the beginning of his mandate? He said: "I think we should harmonize the federal and provincial sales taxes".
I was jumping for joy. That will ensure that Liberals will not be re-elected as members of Parliament for Saskatchewan. Saskatchewans simply do not want higher taxes on services. We are opposed to it. I believe the Liberal leader is already backtracking. In later press releases and interviews he has talked about reducing the provincial sales tax more than he has about blending or harmonizing the federal and provincial sales taxes. Politicians, when they make as big a blunder as the new Liberal leader made, are pretty quick to change their ways before they totally annihilate their political future.
Harmonizing, he thought, would save Saskatchewan taxpayers money. Obviously Saskatchewan people do not think so. That is why he is changing his tune and talking about tax relief rather than a new tax.
Where did he get the idea that tax relief might be sold to Canadians? He has probably looked at Reform's fresh start, for one thing. He has probably listened to the people, the common sense of the common people, who are saying "we do not want more taxes, we do not want to see how imaginative you can be by introducing some kind of harmonized sales tax".
What Reform has offered Saskatchewan is not some new program, not a new tax scheme. It has offered tax relief. In the case of the province of Saskatchewan it would mean that $440 million would be left in taxpayer pockets. That is money they would not have to send to Ottawa.
In Saskatchewan we send everything out of the province. We send our young people out of the province. We send our raw products out of the province. We send our opportunity and our future out of the province. We send our tax dollars out of the province. Only Reform has talked about leaving tax dollars in Saskatchewan, in the hands of the people of Saskatchewan, so that they can make the best decisions as to how that money will be spent. That idea is going over extremely well.
We are looking at how we can keep things in Saskatchewan and how we can make that province grow. Reform has put forward a fresh start proposal which would leave $440 million in taxpayer pockets, rather than losing it through the BST, which was so aptly named by the Liberal Party.
My time has just about expired, and so I will set the record straight. The NDP tax high, Liberals tax high, Reform spells tax relief. That is what Canadians want. That is what the people of Saskatchewan want. That is what the residents of Kindersley-Lloydminster want. That is why I am speaking on their behalf in the House of Commons.
Chuck Strahl Reform Fraser Valley East, BC
Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak on behalf of the residents in my area of the country on the GST issue. It was a very profound issue in the last election campaign.
It is interesting and maybe not surprising that nary a Liberal will stand to try to explain, defend or otherwise obfuscate what they are doing about the blended GST, BST, HST or whatever they want to call it. Liberals today are hiding. They are laying low, hoping this will blow over. Of course it will blow over. It will blow over because the government forced closure again, for a record number of times. It is almost an admission of the incompetence of House management. They say "we just cannot manage our affairs well enough to get this stuff through the House and what we have to do is force closure so there will not be any debate on these subjects". We have seen that happen on routine bills, on very divisive bills and on very controversial bills. It does not seem to matter.
It seems to be that the routine now is bring in a bill. If they cannot manage their House time properly, they can cancel the debate. They do not let democracy interfere with the workings and machinations of the government. They just tell them how to vote in the backbench, cancel the debate and see if they can get away with it.
So far if I could chastise for a moment the national media on this for letting them get away with this, it is beyond me. We stand up here and repeatedly say that this is not right, it is not fair, it is not due process. It is not a chance for Canadians to debate something as significant as the GST.
Think back to when the GST was brought in. The bells rang for two weeks in this place. Things here were held up for two weeks. The Liberals were all in favour of that. Yet here today we are not allowed to debate for two days changes to the GST.
It is a shame. It is a shame on the media, too, for not reporting it. It should be on the Liberals' case saying that democracy is not of interest to these people. It should be broadcasting that from coast to coast. It probably will not. I will leave it to the readers and the media watchers of the world to figure out why that is.
I would like to talk today for just a couple of minutes about the politics of division that are being practised on that side of the House.
My colleagues have gone through what is wrong with this tax per se, about the increased costs to the consumers, about how it is driving business out of Atlantic Canada, there very place where they are trying to draw business in, how it is a half baked scheme that does not have the support of the chambers of commerce and other business groups in Atlantic Canada.
That is already in Hansard . That is in the record but if I could talk a little today about why this bill is symbolic of the type of politics that seems to be acceptable to the Liberals.
What they have done here, of course, is pit one region of the country against the other. It is not a new idea for a Liberal. It is not new at all. They practice that pretty well constantly. "Let us play Atlantic Canada against the rest of the country. Then we will go back to Atlantic Canada and try to buy its votes somehow. We will try to buy it off somehow and promise it something in the next election campaign. In the meantime, play one part of the country against the other".
We stand in the House and ask the Minister of Finance to explain himself when it is going to cost so many thousand jobs. He stands up and says "the Reform Party hates Atlantic Canada". The proof is in the pudding. This harmonized sales tax is going to hurt Atlantic Canada.
In turn, the Liberals blame it somehow on the Reform Party. Who do they think brought in this tax, but the finance minister himself? Who thumbed their noses at the businesses in Atlantic Canada? The finance minister and the whole front bench.
They do not mind, play one area against the rest. What about last year in my own province of British Columbia. British Columbia was trying to control its welfare costs. It brought in a residency requirement. The federal government said "no way, if there is federal money involved, you have to have access for all Canadians through this federal program". It fined British Columbia some $30 some million for bringing in the residency requirement.
It is interesting in Quebec now the fees for universities subsidized by the federal government are twice as high for non-Quebecers as they are for Quebecers. In other words, if someone from my province wants to go to la belle province and get their university education, their tuition fees are twice as high.
Just to rub salt in their wounds, there are 50 countries of the world that can get cheaper rates at their universities than one can if from British Columbia. An argument on both sides of that equation can be made but the issue is why is it okay to punish British Columbia for having a made in B.C. policy. Maybe they should have. It is okay to punish there but do not say a word over here.
When it comes to another province or another region, we will not say it. We will just let British Columbia take it in the ear.
For that matter on the distinct society question itself, again symbolic of this government it says: "We are going to push through the distinct society clause and it does not matter who protests. It does not matter whether British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario, the three largest provinces outside of Quebec are dead set against it, we are going to push it through".
The Liberals pushed the veto through the House of Commons, which makes it virtually impossible to ever change the Constitution. I do not know what kind of idea that was from the Prime Minister. It was made on a napkin at the parliamentary restaurant during lunch break, I guess.
The minister brought in these proposals and said that they are going to be pushed through. The Quebec Liberal Party endorsed by the federal Liberal Party says: "We have to have distinct society and we have to push it through". What has that accomplished? The Bloc Quebecois, the Parti Quebecois and Mr. Bouchard all say it is nonsense anyway, that it is not going to solve anything, that it is not going to bring us together and that they are not going to believe in Canada more with this.
They took it out west where I live and asked: "Will you guys accept this in full?" Eighty per cent of Canadians in my area of the country said: "No way. We are not going to discuss this. We will discuss devolution of powers to all provinces, certainly. We will talk about a smaller role for the federal government, certainly. We will talk about areas of jurisdiction where there is overlap and we should get rid of that, certainly. But writing distinct society in our Constitution is just not going to happen".
The Liberals over there seem to think that by bringing in this controversial idea and by pushing it on the west and on Ontario it will somehow bring us all together, that somehow we are going to sing solidarity forever in 10 part harmony. It is not going to happen but the Liberals continue to do it.
It is the same thing with the harmonized sales tax. The Liberals bring it in and what happens? Right away the premier of Alberta asked: "What is going on? You gave a billion dollars to Atlantic Canada in order to harmonize the tax? What about Alberta which is paying the bills to harmonize this, in order to buy the favour from the Quebec premier?"
The people in British Columbia rightly said: "Wait a minute. You are saying a separate program for a separate region of the country with a separate pay off, a buy out and a Liberal handout is going to be paid for by people in our province in part?" The people of Quebec would rightly say: "Wait a minute. You have a sales tax over there and we have to pay the bills when right across the border is a province which is getting a pay out in order to blend its sales tax and enhance the reputation of the finance minister?"
This government practices the politics of division. Time and again, whether it is distinct society, whether it is different rules for different regions of the country, whether it is the harmonized sales tax, whether it is the UI system, whether it is how to get a government grant, which region of the country one lives in plays a big part. Probably the icing on the cake is that those who are
heavily connected with the Liberal Party, either a company, a government or their contacts, have a licence into the hallowed halls of power that sit in the throne room.
I hope Canadians will take the government to task over the Christmas break and tell it that special deals for special regions are off and that they should not happen. The national media should be the first to report that.
Garry Breitkreuz Reform Yorkton—Melville, SK
Madam Speaker, for the past three years I have been sitting here listening to debates. Of course, I have been sitting here all day listening to what has been going on. Madam Speaker, would it be out of order to make a simple request, that I stand here for 10 minutes and say nothing? Complete silence. Madam Speaker you are shaking your head. I wonder why.
If I stand here and talk for 10 minutes it makes absolutely no difference because the government does not listen. In fact the government does not listen to me as an MP and it does not listen to the people of Canada. If we had total silence and did not debate anything, if the opposition was silent, the government would continue to do what it is doing, which is to run roughshod over the desires and wishes of Canadians.
The government has invoked closure on approximately 30 bills. Each time it does that, one question seems obvious: Why? Why is it invoking closure? I have observed a pattern over the past three years I have been in the House. Each time the government does not want Canadians to know what is going on, when it does not want a topic properly debated, it invokes closure.
Yvan Loubier Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I do not think we have a quorum in the House. I call for a quorum count.
Excise Tax ActGovernment Orders
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais)
We shall proceed with a count of members present.
And the count having been taken:
Excise Tax ActGovernment Orders
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais)
We have a quorum
Garry Breitkreuz Reform Yorkton—Melville, SK
Madam Speaker, I sometimes wonder if when we have warm bodies in the House it makes any difference. I still do not think it helps anything. The government is not listening to what we have to say.
We began today's debate with one of the members opposite making some blatantly false and misleading statements. It is interesting that the Liberals continue to propagate this not just within this House but outside this House as well. They continue to make completely false statements. The member also explained that this is the best finance minister, except for the one we had in the mid-seventies who is the present Prime Minister.
If the Liberals are going to set that person up as the best finance minister we have ever had, they are saying that the deficits begun by the Liberal government, the deficits that led to our tremendous present debt were good. They are saying that the past finance minister, the present Prime Minister, who started us on the road to overspending had the right idea. I cannot accept that. To set him up as the best finance minister we have ever had is totally false and misleading. That has to be the sorriest statement I have heard in this House to date.
I made the point that approximately 30 bills have been rammed through the House. Full debate was not allowed on those which indicates this is a very undemocratic institution. The people of Canada must ask what is really going on here. Fundamental to this debate on taxes and on the GST is the question of why we need it. Why does the government need to continue raising all of this money?
I discovered an interesting coincidence. This morning I introduced the people's tax form which is a voluntary tax form that all taxpayers could return with their income tax forms every April. On the forms they could indicate to the government the programs they support and the programs they oppose. It would be an indication to the government of what the people of Canada want.
In light of the debate we are having today, would it not be interesting to include on that form a question which asks people what they would like done with the GST? Do they want it to be a hidden tax as this government is proposing? Do they want it hidden in the prices of products so when the government decides to increase the tax it will not be very visible and the government will not get all the negative publicity it hates? If the government were to ask the people of Canada, I wonder what their response would be.
I believe that Reformers are speaking up on behalf of the people of Canada. The silence of the Liberals indicates that this government does not want to debate the topic.
Each time the government raises taxes, we have already indicated in many previous speeches over the past three years that these taxes kill jobs. It is very simple. As long as people are paying more money in the form of taxes into the government coffers, they cannot spend that money on other things that create real jobs. They cannot buy goods and services which really creates a better lifestyle for all of us. Every time they send millions of dollars to Ottawa it is as if that money is put in a big black hole. It is not an effective way of producing jobs, I can guarantee that. In fact, taxes kill jobs. Studies have been done. They are out there.
Taxes also hurt families. The GST really hurts our average family in Canada. How do taxes hurt families? Forty-six per cent of the average taxpayer's income now goes to government. It has come to the point where both parents feel they have to work in order to maintain a decent standard of living. One parent works for the government when we have a tax level that is so high. It hurts families because those parents would like to be spending more time at home with their children. Studies have found that the high tax level has really hurt families.
The Liberals then turn around and appear to be compassionate. They are going to have a big program to target child poverty. Who has created the poverty? It has been these very people who now pretend that they are going to help people in some way. Reducing government programs so that we can reduce taxes should be our priority and fundamental to the entire discussion we are having here today.
If we ask Canadians, as I have done, what their priorities are in spending and what things they would oppose, we would get some very interesting answers. If the government actually listened to Canadians, it could scrap the GST because it could reduce taxes which is what has to be done.
I took a survey which has been tabled in the House along with the people's tax form bill that I introduced today. I believe the survey in my riding will not be substantially different from surveys taken across the country. What was the number one program, the sacred cow for the government, that people opposed? Official bilingualism. They felt that the government has been wasting money in this area for decades. The second thing Canadians opposed was funding for special interest groups. In my riding, the third thing they opposed was gun registration. Members may think that is just because I come from basically a rural riding, but I will tell a story.
I spoke at the University of Toronto and half of the audience were young females. It was a good cross-section of the entire population. At the beginning of my speech I took a little survey. I asked them how many thought that gun registration was a good thing and a wise way to spend our money. The vast majority of them raised their hands and said they thought it was a good idea. I then asked if they minded if I explained it to them. I told them how it was going to take quite a bit of tax money to implement and in the end people would have a piece of paper lying beside their gun. To make a long story short, by the time I was done explaining to them what it was all about, I took another survey and the exact opposite happened. There was virtually no support for this.
What happens is that if we properly inform Canadians as to what some of the programs are that this government is implementing, the support drops and they feel it is not a wise way to spend our tax
money. In fact, they would rather spend it on health care, family crisis centres and those kinds of things, not the sacred things this government is implementing.
I wish I could go on longer, but I will conclude. Let us look at the fundamental problem. The government is wasting money on so many things that are totally unnecessary and this could be scrapped if it did away with those things.
Jim Silye Reform Calgary Centre, AB
Madam Speaker, I rise today to finally address Bill C-70.
I find it ironic that the first thing the government does is it invokes time allocation again. When the Liberals sat here in opposition and the Conservative government did it, the Liberals cried about how it was anti-democratic, how it was restricting freedom of speech, and how it prevented people in all parts of the country from speaking out on an issue that is as important as this one.
This bill is going to cost taxpayers in excess of $1 billion. The sum total of the bill's ramifications will be in excess of $1 billion. I will get to another amendment on getting rid of exemptions on the ways and means motion in a second.
Why put this kind of pressure on members of Parliament by not allowing proper time to debate an issue? Why push this through the House of Commons real fast? Is it because the government has used an incentive of $961 million to get these Atlantic provinces to buy into a program that is going to cost Atlantic consumers more in the long run? Is it to make three provincial premiers look good today, while in the long run they are going to lose their jobs? I predict what just happened in P.E.I. will happen to the rest of them.
People across the country have one thing in common: if it affects their pocketbooks they get upset. When they find out in Atlantic Canada that this harmonization is strictly helping business, that this tax inclusive pricing will tend to lead to higher prices in the long run without them knowing it, there is going to be a huge rebellion in those provinces in the next election.
How can the government justify invoking closure on a bill like this? It goes back to the March 6 budget of this year and here we are today in December. Does the government not know how to plan an agenda? Does the government not know how to present something in the House of Commons so members can totally debate it?
We have been here for three years and I have counted 26 time allocations and three closure motions. For those people who do not understand the three closure motions, closure allows time to talk out the issue until 11 o'clock that day. That gives more time for members of Parliament to discuss it.
What does the government do? Twenty-six times it has used the hammer of time allocation, not closure. This means the debate ends at the end of Government Orders which is usually around 5.30 p.m. This debate will be over at 5.30 p.m. tonight and it denies us an extra five and a half hours to debate the issue.
Where are the Liberal members from western Canada? Do they agree that we should give $1 billion of taxpayers' money outside those provinces? They are too chicken to say anything. I challenge them to stand in the House and say something. I challenge the members from B.C. to speak for 10 minutes in support of the finance minister on this issue. I challenge all of Atlantic Canada Liberal members to get up and support this and say how wonderful it is. I expect them to do that and justify it.
Twenty-three per cent of the bills that we have been debating in this House have used either time allocation or closure. Let us look at the statistics a little further. One hundred and twenty-three bills have been passed in the three years to date and half, or close to half, of those bills have been supported by the opposition. That reduces it to 62 bills. That means whenever the opposition, either the Bloc or the Reform, puts a little pressure on the government by trying to show how a bill can be better, or tries to improve it through amendments or whatever, the government has invoked time allocation and closure 29 times. That then increases the percentage to almost half.
This government does not appreciate debate. This government does not welcome debate. Its members are hypocrites when they say they listen to the public. They are duplicitous when they tell the Canadians public that members of Parliament are given lots of time to speak. We are not. Our ability to speak out on this issue has been severely restrained and it is time for us to tell the Canadian public what is happening.
A payment of $961 million was made to three provinces in October of this year. It was charged off to last year's budget, to last year's income statement, to last year's deficit ending March 1996. This finance minister is setting a bad precedent. That is not just my opinion, that is the opinion of the Auditor General of Canada. That is in the public accounts.
Yes, the auditor general signed off on the financial statement. He did not have any reservations about them because he felt the bottom line of $28 billion is a true number but not because it includes the $961 million. He would not have included that. It is because there were other circumstances. I got this from the testimony of members of Treasury Board and the auditor general in the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. It is because there were other areas of revenue, small amounts and bigger amounts, that add up almost to the same amount. Because he saw those offsetting amounts he did not have a reservation. If those other amounts had not been understated by the government he would have had a reservation in this last year's presentation.
Jim Silye Reform Calgary Centre, AB
Yes. Cooking the books is what it is.
It is a fine line but a lot of people have compromised on it. If we had proper time to debate this, and if the member opposite would sit and listen for a while instead of just jabbering off and trying to interfere with my speech, he might learn and understand that this is a bad precedent. It is bad for Canada.
Politicians cannot be allowed to cook the books. The finance minister needs to stick to generally accepted accounting principles, stick to government precedents and not change the rules as he goes along just to make himself and his government look good on their promise to achieve 3 per cent of GDP and to get this out of the way so he does not have to show it in this year's statement.
That is why we are upset about time allocation. It restricts the time that members have to say what they want to say. We have to waste half our speech to get this message across to the Canadian public that our democratic rights are being infringed on when we are being denied the opportunity to speak.
Another thing that really upsets me when it comes to finances is yesterday, in answer to a member from the Bloc Quebecois, the finance minister bragged that he has not raised taxes in three years, that personal income taxes have not increased in three years.
Jim Silye Reform Calgary Centre, AB
Is that true, hon. member across the way?
Jim Silye Reform Calgary Centre, AB
There is another member who does not understand the facts of what the Prime Minister has done. There are two ways taxes are raised. One way is to raise the rate. The other way is to reduce the exemptions or the deductions or to tinker with the tax base on which one has to pay that rate of tax. He has not raised the rate, but he has surely and often in a number of ways tinkered with the deductions.
Let me give an example. From now on if ever the Prime Minister or the finance minister says that he has not raised personal income taxes-and I dare him right now to say it after I have put this into the record-his nose will grow like Pinocchio every time he says it.
The current rule in the Income Tax Act for labour sponsored venture capital corporations is that you are allowed up to 20 per cent of the net cost not to exceed $5,000. In layman's terms that is what the rule says basically. Now the government is reducing that for this year. There is a transition from 1996 to 1997. It has amended section 127.4 to provide that an individual's tax credit is limited to a uniform 15 per cent of the net cost. That means it has been reduced to $3,500. It means that those people who were putting money away, working for companies that sponsored these RRSP type investments now have to pay tax on another $1,500 that
prior to this they did not have to pay tax on. That is a personal tax increase.
The finance minister has increased personal taxes to the degree of disposable income for families on a personal basis going down by $3,000. I just hope that this finance minister has the courtesy to admit this and never again say in this House that he has not raised personal income taxes. That is as close to the Pinocchio syndrome that we have in this House. I would use another word, but I respect the Chair and I know that I cannot use language like that.
My final comment is that there is a member from Newfoundland who was talking about what I said about harmonization. We are against this nickel and dime, two bit effort to harmonize. If a package was presented to us that harmonized with all provinces we might consider supporting it. We would have to see it first. We have not seen it yet.
Second, if the government is going to harmonize and we do want to have the lowest rate, we have to look at the possibility of taxing everything that we can. This is what the member from Newfoundland will not put in his speech. To help the poorest and the neediest of the needy you have an increased rebate program to make sure that those people do not suffer. This would really tax the rich and that is what the Liberals like to do-
Excise Tax ActGovernment Orders
The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais)
Resuming debate.
Dick Harris Reform Prince George—Bulkley Valley, BC
Madam Speaker, we have had a lot of the truth spoken here by the Reform Party members in the last couple of hours, as usual.
I heard a most astonishing thing in the House. A day or two ago the Minister of Finance said in the House, on national television and in front of all members, that the Liberal government had not raised personal income taxes one cent since it formed the government in 1993. A lot of words went through my mind when he made that statement. The closest description to a term I cannot use in the House would probably be something like stable waste. It was such an outrageous statement. The Reform member has just pointed out in clear terms that the Pinocchio syndrome is present in so far as the Minister of Finance is concerned and other Liberals who harmonize with him on that theme.
There are two things I want to talk about today. One is the recurring scenario of the Liberal government limiting debate on this most crucial subject.
We all understand that the GST is probably the most hated tax, the most railed against tax, the most despised tax in all of our taxation system. That was clear from the minute it was brought it. I wish I could say that it was the Liberals who brought it in. That would make my day. However, I cannot do that because we know that it was the Conservatives who brought it in, under Brian Mulroney, who incidentally still has his protege sitting in the House, the hon. member for Sherbrooke, who now leads the Conservative Party.
We have all heard the hon. member for Sherbrooke say that some day Canadians will realize what a great Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was. We hope he keeps on saying that because we will keep reminding Canadians that it was the Mulroney Conservatives, and the hon. member for Sherbrooke was part of that government, that rammed the GST down the throats of Canadians without a question of whether it was fair or honest or whether the way it was done contained a hint of integrity.
In spite of all the things that Canadians hated about the GST and the Mulroney reign of terror in Parliament, the one thing that they hated the most was the way the Tories used to shut down debate on crucial issues. They used to limit the time that MPs would be permitted, on behalf of their constituents, to put forward their constituents' views.
We watched in absolute astonishment as the leader of the Tory Party did that. He did it time and time again, with the full support of the hon. member for Sherbrooke, who was part of the cabinet and who now leads the Tory Party. He continues to say that the former Prime Minister, Mr. Mulroney, was a great leader. We will remind Canadians of that.
The amazing thing is that the Liberals, when they were in opposition, used to speak in utter outrage at the way the Tory government limited debate. Time and time again Liberals rose, individually and in unison. They railed against the government for this trampling of democracy. They were so self-righteous. They called the Tory government the worst dictator that this country has ever seen. They would rail against it.
I want to make a statement that the number of times the Liberal government has brought in closure on debate since it moved from one side of the House to the other would make Brian Mulroney look like a saint when it comes to putting closure on debate in the House.
I think it is such a perfect example of hypocrisy when the Liberals spent day after day slamming the Mulroney government and now they are doing it themselves, only twice as bad. It is almost an embarrassment to sit in the House and watch democracy be trampled on. I said before that the ghosts of the great parliamentarians who once sat in this House and represented the great Liberal Party of years past and who knew about democracy must be hanging their heads in shame when they see these Liberal members trample on the sacred ground they laid here. And let us make it clear that there was a time when that party understood the fundamentals of democracy. They fought for that state of democracy only to see this Prime Minister throw it aside like yesterday's
garbage. It is almost an embarrassment to sit in the same House with a party that does that sort of nonsense.
I think we will move on now to the harmonization plan and talk about some of the comments from the provinces about this great Liberal harmonization plan.
The province of Ontario said that if the plan were implemented in Ontario it would cost Ontario consumers from $2 billion to $3 billion more a year in purchases. The Canadian people have seen a decrease in their disposable income over the last 25 years like they could never have imagined or dreamed would happen. They have seen personal income taxes raised by the government in the last three years. They have seen our national debt go to about $600 billion. They have seen our health care and our social safety net gutted, having the heart ripped out of it by the $50 billion we are paying to service the debt. And now the Liberal government has the audacity to present the harmonization plan which is even going to make what disposable income is has left appear to be even less. In fact, it will be less because a tax is a tax is a tax, no matter where it is put or where it comes from; it can only come from one place, the Canadian people.
I share my colleague's thoughts about this harmonization plan. I share the thoughts of the great Parliamentarians who have gone to the great House of Commons in the sky and who look down and see the way these Liberals are trampling on democracy.
All I can say is again, as with many bills in the House, it is truly a sad day for democracy, a sad day for the Canadian taxpayers. We will stay here and fight for the Canadian people. We will fight for their freedom and their tax freedom.
Bob Mills Reform Red Deer, AB
Madam Speaker, as we have heard, this is a sad day for all of us in Parliament. We have had approximately 30 other sad days like this when the government has used closure to shut down debate in the House of Commons. Not only do we not believe in democracy in the House but we also, as we have seen time and time again, have no vision for the country in this House either.
This is a despicable act that the government continues to put on Canadians; the lack of vision. I am afraid for our children and our grandchildren.
Having travelled extensively this year, seeing the vibrant, booming economies of the Asia-Pacific, seeing the booming economy of Germany, looking at so many countries that have long term plans, standing in Potsdam plaza and seeing $7.5 million being spent to rebuild Berlin is a vision. This country has none of that.
We have a Prime Minister who is tired, a Prime Minister who has nothing to offer the country, who will come up with a plan because he has a dream to bring himself to some kind of glory and maybe get named by the United Nations or something.
It is a disgrace what this government is doing and how it is mishandling the governing of this country. It is hard to believe that as we close each session, all of a sudden we get to a great rush to get legislation through.
The only legislation that we are going to discuss tomorrow will be a prebudget debate, which is promised in the red book. Everyone is excited to get right to it because, again, it is just Liberal propaganda.
Yet there is an issue like the GST in this harmonized tax which affects every Canadian, men, women, children, seniors. Everybody in this country is affected by this and the government uses closure on it to shut down debate.
What kind of leadership is that? What kind of vision, what kind of plan does this government have for this country? When the other side of the House was over here, it called the PCs everything it could think of in all those many times that they used closure.
It certainly is different how things change when those members cross the floor. Let us all of us stand here and say "that cannot happen to us, we cannot let it". Canadian people have lost respect for this place and it is because of those kinds of actions by governments like this one.
We need to reform this place. We need to change this place dramatically. This place is not working. This place is not respected by the people of Canada. The people here are yesterday's people led by yesterday's man.
We are going nowhere into the future. We are going to be out competed by the countries that I have mentioned, by southeast Asia, by the European Community. They will knock us off in terms of our position and our quality of life if we do not learn how to compete, if we do not have a vision that goes longer than six months at a time in this country.
A good example is how many Liberals are not here to listen to this kind of statement. Where are they if this place works? Where are they?
Enough of incompetence, lack of planning, lack of vision, lack of guidance for this country. The Canadian people know that already and will get that message. I am confident in the people of Canada.
We have problems like $600 billion in debt. We have problems like $50 billion in interest payments. We spend $14 billion in education. We spend $16 billion on health care, $20 billion on pensions and $50 billion on interest payments. This country has problems.
We have to turn it around for our children and our grandchildren. We must do that. We must have that vision. What about this GST? We heard lots of comments about it. In my riding we had rallies of
6,000 people and more who said that the GST was a bad tax, a tax that would not work.
We had an association that put out thousands of bumper stickers. Every car in my riding had a bumper sticker on it saying what its owner thought of the GST. The group is called Canadians AGAST. It had rallies. One of the biggest was over 6,000 people who told the politicians what they thought of the GST. Of course, the Liberals were on that bandwagon as well.
Think of the comments that were made by the now finance minister, the now Prime Minister and the now Deputy Prime Minister. "We are going to get rid of this terrible tax. We promise we will". Why have the Canadian people lost their belief in this place? It is obvious why they have lost it. It is because in here members say one thing when they are on this side and another thing when they are on the other side.
Even though interest rates are where they are today, people are not investing in businesses or in their communities. People are going to the underground economy. They are taking their money out of this country.
Let us think about this. One hundred and fifty-three students who have graduated after a five year course are saying they have a job and are thankful to have a job. However, 90 per cent of these students have a job outside of this country. Those faces, which I can see in front of me, have said they cannot stay in Canada. There were 700 graduate students hired in Sweden in the last couple of years. Those are people who are potential taxpayers and the future of our country. Why are they leaving in droves? It is because they would have to work at McDonald's if they stayed here.
There is no future for this country without a vision. We know we have a country today that has the potential to be the very best and stay the very best into the 21st century. However, it is promises that are not kept and the changing of one's position all the time that have caused us all concern.
People in the Liberal Party are no different than the Kindys and Kilgours of the last Parliament. We can now throw in the Mills and the Nunziatas. If Liberal members disagree with their party they are out on their heels.
There are so many people in business who are disgusted with this tax. There are also many people in Atlantic Canada who are disgusted with this harmonization. In my riding, we have many people in the service industry who are fed up with the administration and the nature of this whole tax called the GST.
We must keep our promise and not harmonize but eliminate the GST.
Darrel Stinson Reform Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Madam Speaker, Okanagan-Shuswap is probably the best place in Canada and maybe even in the whole world. It is a great place to live.
Unfortunately we have the same problem as most people in Canada have. We are here today to speak to Bill C-70. In case people out there do not understand exactly what this bill entails, here it is. It is totally unbelievable. It contains 335 pages on how to harmonize a tax. I would hate to figure out the cost of each page. Believe me, Madam Speaker, you probably will not make that much in your lifetime nor in mine nor in a number of other lifetimes in this House.
This government has spent hundreds of hours and days trying to figure out how to broaden the tax base in this country.
Let us take a look at what they mean by broadening the tax base. I want the people who are listening and every member in this House to understand that whenever a politician talks about tax that means they are going to raise the level of tax. That is what it means, no matter what they say.
The Liberals spent days, weeks, months trying to figure out a way to soft sell this to the people. They spent millions of dollars to figure out one word that the public might just accept: harmonize. All they had to do was look it up in the dictionary but I suppose that would have been too simple.
So now we are looking at this harmonization of taxation. We try to debate this issue but the government has decided that we do not need any more debate in this House. It does not want any debate in this House. The government would not like the people outside this House or off the Hill, those people who have a life outside of these walls, to even know what goes on in this House and therefore will invoke closure.
Darrel Stinson Reform Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
The government says "No, we will put a time allocation on you people. We will see that you only debate it for a certain length of time, and that's it. You will be curtailed to a certain length of time". This is in Canada, in the House of Commons. I do not know what is going on here. I know a lot of people did not spill their blood and die for this type of set-up. And I call it a set-up because that is exactly what it is.
The other day I mentioned a parasite, a bug we have out west. It is called a tick. It latches on to human beings and sucks the lifeblood out of them. Likewise there is politickitis, a two legged insect that is found in government. Ninety per cent of all politickitis sit on the frontbenches; 10 per cent sit on the backbenches. I will not deny that.
A politick is a politician in power who latches on to the taxpayer and sucks the living blood out of them just as this government has been doing since it got in here. And there has been no change.
I well remember the 1993 election campaign. I remember how we were going to be rid of this GST. Since the Liberals have come to power there is a new name for it. It is called "get stuffed, taxpayer". That is exactly what it is and that is exactly what the Liberals are telling the average taxpayer. "Get stuffed, we're not interested in it". And they get away with it.
But it will stop. The taxpayers will make sure it stops. Sooner or later taxpayers are going to throw this bunch out. It is only a matter of time. They are tired of politicians knocking on their doors every four years. They are tired of politicians getting down on their knees and begging the electorate to put them back in power. They promise they will not do it again.
I have a question for you, Madam Speaker. Name for me one policy, one tax that a government put in which defeated that government and that an incoming government got rid of? There is none. The new government just expands upon it. It raises more money.
As I sat and thought about how the government is broadening the tax base, I came to one conclusion. The main reason it has done this has to be, beyond a doubt, that it needs money for its pension plan. It has to be. The MP pension plan has to be in serious trouble. It is the million dollar pension plan which members opposite will take. That is what it is going to do with the money. That is what harmonization is all about. It has absolutely nothing to do with the word harmonize.
In most places that is called legalized theft. That is exactly what it is. Liberals said it was not personal tax. Every tax in this country is a personal tax. When I buy something, whether it be a shirt, shoes, fuel for my car or for my house, the tax on those items is a personal tax. When they say it is not a personal tax they are snowing the public. It goes on and on. They get away with it because they implement time allocation and closure. Is that a democratic society? No. We have long past the point of being a democratic society.
As a matter of fact, I would probably characterize us, along with many members of the House-and I am sure many members opposite would agree with me-as having probably the greatest dictatorship in the free world. It sits right here in this Parliament. I cannot believe it. I cannot believe that we have allowed it to go as far as it has. What is happening in this country is absolutely ridiculous. It is being fostered by many members opposite. When those members disagree, they are kicked out of the caucus. "Do not come back into our caucus. I will not sign your papers".
