Mr. Speaker, I was asked to speak in this debate today and it is right up my alley. I have spent most of my life in entrepreneurial business ventures and I will get into that.
I would like to put on the record and bring to the attention of the House that in my mind the response to the last question typifies the problem this country has and why it is in the mess financially and emotionally as far as unity is concerned. The reason is that for all of my adult life politicians have been motivated by politics and not principle. There is a difference.
If a government is given a mandate by the electorate to achieve a particular end, then principle and character come into play. If that government is swayed from its pole, if it is swayed from north, if it is swayed from what it was elected and given a mandate to do, then it is playing politics. It is the playing of politics and the pandering to the flavour of the day which has got our country into the mess it is in.
If we are ever going to get our nation back on track, we are going to do so because we put politics in its rightful place which is somewhere distantly behind principle and behind character. It is a sign of character that a political party would have the fortitude to brave the weather, the storm that is taking place in Ontario right now, to do the right things for the right reasons. Having weathered that storm it will find itself in exactly the same place as the Government of Alberta. It did exactly the same thing and retains a 67 per cent popularity rating, even higher than the popularity rating of the Liberals opposite who have achieved that for no discernible reason.
It is interesting to note that the government members opposite are pursuing a fiscal regime which has Liberals of the past 30 years spinning in their graves. They cannot recognize the Liberal Party today because it bears no relationship to the Liberal Party of the past. It is an interesting observation that members opposite would make when they show a lack of fortitude, a lack of strength and a lack of principle in not carrying forward the reforms that absolutely must be achieved if we are going to pass along the country to our grandchildren in the shape we found it.
Members of the Liberal Party opposite should get down on their knees every night and say: "Thank you, God, for having Reform Party members facing us who give us the fortitude and the courage to do what we know must be done. Without them we would not have gotten anywhere. At least we are now taking the first few tentative steps on the road to recovery of our country. You should know that we are magnanimous in accepting your good graces".
As Lincoln said, if you do not care who gets the credit, there is no end to what you can accomplish, although at times it is very trying as we stand here and see the Liberals getting credit for the good works we have brought to our country. However we are happy to do so in the name of our grandchildren.
Having said that, let me get to today's Bloc motion. Usually the Bloc supply day motions are pretty well thought out. I have not looked at any Bloc motions thus far, prior to this one, and wondered what it was trying to get at. Usually it has been direct.
The Bloc motion speaks to the recent budget and it speaks to something in our budget which I thought really made a whole lot of sense. For the benefit of those members who have not been here for all of the debate and for those viewers at home who are just tuning in, the Bloc supply motion moved by the member for Saint-Hyacinthe-Bagot states:
That this House deplores the fact that the technical committee set up by the Minister of Finance to analyse business taxation is comprised of members who are both judge and judged with regard to business tax reform; and that, this being so, the Minister of Finance should set up a joint committee of experts and parliamentarians to examine business taxation in an impartial manner according to an open and transparent process.
I looked at that and wondered what it implied. It is implicit that the government should not put together a group of experts strictly because of the group's knowledge of the corporate income tax world, that parliamentarians should be involved in it. There is also the implication that somehow, at least in my interpretation of the motion, corporate Canada gets up in the morning and asks how it can screw the country, how it can rip off the country, what it can do wrong. Corporate Canada is somehow the bad guy.
Corporate Canada is us. We are all corporate Canada whether we are owners, shareholders, or whether we work for a business enterprise in Canada. It is us. Corporate Canada makes the world go around as far as business and employment are concerned. It is not the government but corporate Canada.
It seems to me the budget makes eminent sense. I will quote from the budget document: "Finally an effective business tax system should not only raise revenue, it should be designed to help create jobs. We believe it is time for a comprehensive look at this issue. In order to identify any obstacles to job creation currently contained in its tax act and to suggest reform, we are announcing today" the implementation of a group to look at it. That group would obviously include people from corporate Canada who are experts in tax law.
The question then is: Will Parliament have a chance to debate it, to get involved in it, or is it strictly a one way deal? There is cause to be cautious. Very often we find that legislation comes to the House as a fait accompli, or once the government has a report and there is political baggage associated with it, the government is loath to change it.
It is important that this information be vetted through Parliament while it is still in a very malleable condition. There is no reason to believe that would not be the case. Any potential legislation would go to the various committees of the House of Commons and would be thoroughly vetted.
The part of the Bloc motion that speaks to input of parliamentarians and through them citizens in general to changes in the corporate tax act is pretty bogus. Perhaps the most important issue in the Bloc's motion is the presumption that somehow corporate Canada is a bad guy. If I were a representative of Quebec, I might be a little further down that road than I am since I come from Alberta which is known as the bastion of free enterprise in Canada.
If we were to dispassionately examine the attitude of fear, an attitude that is represented in the Bloc motion toward corporate Canada, and look at what has happened to Quebec in the last 20 years or so, we would find that an attitude which puts down or somehow looks at corporate Canada as being the bad guy results in a very negative atmosphere for business and business investment in the jurisdiction. I would support that claim by quoting some statistics.
This is where I believe the Bloc is doing a great disservice to the people it wishes to serve. I do not suggest for a moment that the Bloc in its heart of hearts is not trying to do the right thing for the people of Quebec. However, inadvertently it is creating a disaster for the people of Quebec and the people of Canada by suggesting that somehow corporate Canada is a villain and should be treated that way.
At the beginning of the last referendum in 1980 the business vacancy rate in Montreal was 3.3 per cent. Today it is a 19.7 per cent. I believe this is a direct result of the way that the separatists treat corporate Canada as a villain.
The whole notion of separation and the climate of uncertainty that it brings to the table has caused a flight of capital and entrepreneurship from Quebec. A motion such as this is very poorly considered. I would accept and welcome any questions that anyone would have on this.