Debates of May 30th, 1996

Supply

[Maurizio Bevilacqua, Liberal, York North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I paid attention to the hon. member's speech. Why is he so bitter about life as a parliamentarian? It seems that you question the importance of public service, when you cannot enjoy a historical moment like the one we had yesterday when the names of people who have contributed to the history of this country, who have given of themselves to the improvement of our society, that somehow you would view that-

[The Speaker]

Order. I do not know if the hon. member is addressing the other member directly, but I would prefer he address the Chair.

[Maurizio Bevilacqua, Liberal, York North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it was an initiative that you initiated as a Speaker. I wonder why the hon. member would feel that somehow it is an abuse of power to respect history. The names that appear on those plaques are of people who have been nation builders. They helped create the social security system, medicare, Canada pension plan. The modernization of our nation has occurred because of the input of so many members of Parliament who have practised their faith in the country here in this Chamber. You

do a great disservice to this nation by saying that members of Parliament do not play an important role.

I will return to some of the issues you raised.

[The Speaker]

My colleague, you must address me, please.

[Maurizio Bevilacqua, Liberal, York North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will return to some of the issues the hon. member mentioned. He sees nothing good coming out of this session of Parliament. He feels that the world is falling apart, that Canada is nowhere.

This country has been named by the United Nations as the number one country. We have one of the best employment records, job creation records in any of the industrialized countries. Over 604,000 jobs have been created. There has been a reduction in unemployment. Past governments stated that we would not have single digit unemployment in Canada for a long time. They said it would be double digit for a number of years. That has been reduced.

Consider the deficit. Not only has the government met its target but has even improved on its projection. The hon. member said that things are so bad in this nation that absolutely nothing is working right. Yet there are so many positive indicators that the government is moving in the right direction, that Canada has a great opportunity to remain as number one in the entire world.

The member talked about having a Prime Minister who is a dictator. I do not know which House of Commons or which Parliament he is in. On many occasions the Prime Minister has expressed the will of the party in very democratic ways. There have been free votes in the House. I have seen how many times there have been free votes on the other side. The hon. member ought to pay a little more attention to what is going on.

Is it part of being a member of the Reform Party that you have to be bitter about life in general and bitter about anything that governments are doing to bring about positive change? Why is it that you cannot see the positives that are occurring throughout the country? Have you not been around long enough?

[The Speaker]

Once again I urge members to address the Chair at all times, not one another.

[Ted White, Reform, North Vancouver, BC]

Mr. Speaker, first I would like to deal with the issue of free votes. As the critic for democratic reforms for the party this is my area of specialty. I would like to put on the record that every vote which is held in the House is a free vote for the Reform Party. It is just that our definition of free votes is a little different than the other side's.

The way we define free votes is that a member must show that in order to vote contrary to the general principles of the party there must be support from constituents. We do have a process which a member must go through in order to demonstrate that the way he or she is voting is actually representative of constituents. There is a process. Every single vote that we have is free.

In terms of whether or not I am bitter, I would prefer to call it passionate. I am passionate on behalf of my constituents who are, very rightly, cynical about what this government does. It is cynicism which led to the dumping of the PCs at the last election and the voting in of 52 Reform MPs.

The people came to the Hill yesterday to honour themselves and to look at their names on plaques. The member says they built a great country. I will admit that they contributed to the country, but in ways in which a lot of people would disagree with. Most Canadians are not satisfied with the way the justice system treats them or protects them. They are not satisfied with the level of debt.

The member mentioned what a wonderful job they had done in controlling the deficit. The fact is, they have cut $9 billion out of government spending at the same time as they added $9 billion in interest payments. The finance minister, with great credit, has walked along a tightrope right down the middle, but he has kept us on the treadmill. The problem is still not solved. The debt is still rising dramatically. In the last hour in which we have been debating, the debt has risen another $2 million. That debt is a millstone around our necks which will continue to erode our social programs.

I would like to deal with the names on the gold plated plaques. I never intended any disrespect to our Speaker. I am well aware that the plaques were funded with private money. Really, that was not the point. The point I was trying to convey on behalf of my constituents was how that exercise looked when someone was watching it on a television set in western Canada. I believe I was successful in making that point because of the reaction of the member.

My constituents would have no problem whatsoever supporting plaques in the House of Commons showing the names of everyone who has served here if they thought they were getting value for their money, if they thought MPs were not ripping them off, if they thought MPs were following the will of their constituents. There is not a scrap of evidence that ever happens. Every piece of evidence that every constituent has is that nobody gives a darn for their opinion from the day of the election until six weeks before the next election. That is the way this place operates.

I have a letter which was sent to me by the minister of immigration in response to a letter I sent asking her to deport yet another group of criminal refugees who are committing crimes in my riding. I have had a plethora of them over the past year. I cannot get rid of these people. They are a menace to society. I wrote to her again on March 18. She was kind enough to reply on May 15. She said, basically, that she does not want to deport anybody in lieu of

sentencing because she wants to make sure they realize they must serve their sentences and that simply deporting them would be to diminish the severity of their crimes. Frankly, that is a load of rubbish.

The way my constituents look at it is that these people will get out on early release to wander around in the community. Early release and probation are considered to be a part of sentencing. There is no accountability. These people should be deported at the time they are convicted.

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to Minister for International Cooperation]

Madam Speaker, today we are debating a very weighty subject which is the origins of cynicism. I do not know if we pursued the debate to its final conclusion we would have to have a debate on the human condition, but I suppose we would have to do it with the political conditions we find before us today.

I suppose one could ask who is putting the question about cynicism and perhaps ask them a couple of questions back. I want to start with something rather specific that was said by the member for Medicine Hat. In his speech he raised a litany of things which he said would be the source of cynicism about our government. I was curious at his roll call.

One detail leapt out of his speech on which I decided to do a little research. The member informed the House that the Canadian Bankers Association in Vancouver received from the Government of Canada a grant of $105,000. This was cited as an example of waste. Of course there were no details provided so I decided I might try and help out the hon. member by finding some details myself.

It turns out that this much criticized grant which the hon. member referred to was used exclusively to train aboriginal students and persons with disabilities. They would be better prepared to enter the workforce, get off social assistance and expand their skills so they could access entry level positions within the banks.

The banks themselves provided on the spot training and all sorts of support significantly over the period of the grant to help these aboriginal people and disabled persons. There were 55 students from 1991 to 1994. Forty-seven of them graduated and 30 of them were hired by the banks.

I only raise this seemingly minor point simply to ask: If the hon. member had done the research and had found out what I found out, would he have made the point? If he had made the point knowing what he knew, would that not have contributed to the cynicism which surrounds the political process, that he might have deliberately suppressed the most crucial information about the case he cited?

There are broader reasons for political cynicism which can be laid directly at the door of the Reform Party. One might ask what the source is of cynicism about public institutions, governments, politicians and the political process.

I suspect that if one examined the very origins of the Reform Party itself, one might say it is an anti-political political party. I dare say Reformers would not disagree with that. These are politicians who say they hate politicians. Indeed, the entire Reform Party platform is based on catering to a fundamental dislike which human beings have of public institutions, governments, politicians and the political process itself. Therefore, if one likes, the Reform Party was constituted on a principle of self-loathing as a political party.

The origins of those ideas of course are to be found south of the border and across the Atlantic. The origins of those ideas come from that bundle of concepts which could be described as Ronald-Thatcherism. It is a strange view of the world which basically states that governments are not neutral actors, they are bad actors, and that for all of the major social and economic issues of our time the marketplace should decide and the individual must reign in complete freedom. Those are the major tenets of the Reform Party and they belong to a larger school of intellectual thought which we saw active in the 1980s.

There is also a certain connection, which I dare say they would deny, between that chain of ideas and the ideas of the predecessor government to our own. The previous Prime Minister, Mr. Mulroney, very much subscribed to the Ronald-Thatcherite school of thinking with its libertarian ideas. He also subscribed to the notion that the model for society was the United States. He used to state so simply about Canadian foreign policy: "I know who my friends are".

I suspect that the cynicism which Canadians feel about the political process which was certainly accelerated during the Mulroney years comes from two sources, not one. The obvious source was the suggestion of favouritism and patronage. But more subtly the source was a fundamental belief by the leader of the country that the model was somewhere else, that headquarters were somewhere else and we would be very well off if we could emulate those values and that kind of society. That was a subtle undermining of the political process and a major contribution to cynicism. The Reform Party has contributed to the continuation of this cynicism.

It was interesting to observe the Winds of Change conference over the past weekend. There was such a clear distinction between what I would call true Conservatism, which I do not think Mr. Mulroney embodied, and the kind of radical rightist thinking which is characteristic of the Reform Party. I entirely sympathize with the Reform Party because of course there can be no true union between true Conservatives and radical rightists.

What do radical rightists believe? Jeffrey Simpson put it very nicely the other day in an article:

These radical rightists are essentially libertarians with little sense of community. As such, they represent the antithesis of genuine conservatism, which emphasises the organic nature of society, tradition, pragmatism, order and reciprocal obligations. A society that values cohesion and order must have a sense of obligation, of what we owe each other, but a libertarian society is founded on the idea that we owe each other nothing except the ability to protect individuals from interference in the unfettered enjoyment of their liberty and property.

This is the radical rightist or Reform world view. Of course, it represents cynicism not only about governments, politics, institutions and the like referred to in Reform's motion, but it represents-and here I echo the remarks of the member for York North-a cynicism about the human condition, about human beings. It is a meanspirited view of humankind. It is a distrust of society. It is, as I have said, a kind of political and social self-loathing.

One might ask what the alternative is to this and why would our alternative Liberalism be of a different order. There are five principles of Liberalism which help to dissipate cynicism, which give people hope and differentiate us not only from the radical rightists of the Reform Party or of Mr. Frum. They not only differentiate us in some sense from the traditional Conservatives, although we would be closer to them, but also from the New Democratic Party, whatever that is.

The first important distinction which separates us from the pack is a dedication to innovation. It is true, particularly in this century, that the Liberal Party has been innovative in economic reform and innovative in social reform. The Liberals are innovative now in recognizing that when institutions which were created for one purpose, such as unemployment insurance and the health care system, now find themselves in a different situation, we are not afraid to innovate again by going back to the fundamental principles of what it is we are trying to achieve with the social system in question, be it the health care system or social support for individuals. Innovation is at the heart of what we did in the red book and what I hope we will be able to do in the remainder of our mandate.

A second distinguishing characteristic, which is almost a psychological tone if I may say, is optimism: optimism about human beings, optimism about society, optimism about the future of the world. It is an optimism which is not to be taken for granted but to be worked on through innovation. We have to be optimistic about this country, about our families, and about business if we are to make a go of it. We cannot start from the principle that it is dreadful and getting worse. We have to be optimistic.

A third important strand, and here we connect up with some of the other ones I have referred to, is a concern for the individual's welfare, not ignoring vast numbers of humankind because they are not our kind. It is a concern for the individual.

A fourth distinction-and this one really does separate us from the others-is a view of the state which says on the one hand, unlike the NDP, we do not think the state can do it all. On the other hand, unlike the radical right, we do not think there is no role whatsoever for the state. It is a view which says sometimes it is useful and sometimes it is not.

I wish to pick up on some remarks made by the Minister for International Cooperation. More important, the state now has to be in a partnership with all elements of society. We no longer speak of nations in a sense and we no longer speak of states; we speak of societies which compete collectively as state-sharing vessels.

Sometimes I agree with the language of Mr. Bouchard when he talks the language of social solidarity. It is all of the elements coming together to compete. It is the Team Canada approach internalized which will advance the cause of this society. We cannot command and control this economy or this society, but neither can we neglect it.

We have to use our convening power to bring together all the elements of Canadian society to advance the technological agenda, to advance the social agenda because no one person, no one institution, no one situs, in sociological terms, can do the job alone. That is a distinguishing characteristic: that we view the state as having an active but not dominant role. That is the fourth condition of Liberalism.

Finally, and I think this is crucial as well, Liberals do not see themselves either as individual members or collectively as representing the interests of one group of Canadians or one social group as in contradistinction to another. It is the difference between what has happened in Ontario in recent elections where the ins under the NDP represented a certain group of people: the trade unionists, the environmentalists, very worthy people. Then suddenly there was a swing and the new ins represent the country club set and reject the views of labour and all the rest of it.

Liberals do not play that game. Liberals say they protect all those interests and attempt through society to harmonize their interests to a common purpose. That is the distinction between what we do and what the Reform Party does. That is why I think Canadians have a great deal less to be cynical about as they think about the Liberal Party than as they think about the Reform Party.

[Jim Silye, Reform, Calgary Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member for Don Valley West talks about what a Liberal is. It seems to me, especially in the last two and one-half years I have been here and when I participated in my first election campaign,

the definition of a Liberal is to say anything you need to to get elected and then do what you want when you are here.

The Prime Minister himself exemplified that statement when he said: "Ask me after I am in government. I will tell you how I govern after I get elected". Make any kind of promise you want and then get here and do what you want. In my speech I will talk about the broken promises.

The member claims that the Liberal Party has a social conscience and it is looking after health care. How do the Liberals look after health care, education and welfare? They lumped it all together, said that they did not know how to do it, so they just took $7.5 billion and cut it. They cut $7.5 billion form established programs financing and the Canada assistance plan and that is how they solved it.

Is that a solution? Is that responsible government? Is that the way the member thinks that his party has a social conscience, by downloading health care, education and welfare on to the provinces so that the Ontario legislature gets the rocks thrown at it and not this building?

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I spoke of the importance of innovation. If the hon. member for Calgary Centre were to read the chapter in the red book on health, he would discover a radically new way of thinking about health care which would link it to our social programs, to the way in which we view education and training and indeed to the way in which we view universities. That is what I mean by innovation.

There was a time when we concentrated on health care. The most advanced thinking in the field is to concentrate on the determinants of health itself. Surely health is what we hope to be the outcome of a health care system, but it is not the outcome of the health care system. Health is the outcome of what happened to us earlier in life, in early childhood for instance.

It is our position that we have to work with the provinces because we do not, as the hon. member well knows, have the constitutional responsibility for the things he mentions. We should work together as partners in a Team Canada approach that looks at how all these issues are connected.

If we get it right with early childhood, from birth to the time children enter the school system, the positive outcomes will not only affect health status of adults, the learning status of adults, but will radically improve crime statistics, which the hon. member is worried about.

What I am suggesting is that they will continue to go up until we take a holistic view of how these things hang together. That is what I mean by innovative thinking and a willingness to rethink old problems.

[Monte Solberg, Reform, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I must address some of the assumptions the hon. member was making about the Reform Party. He talked about the radical right and all that kind of nonsense.

There are many people on this side who believe in a very organic way of looking at the world, a conservative way of looking at the world, but we view it a little differently than the member opposite.

We believe good common sense, an organic view of the world and slow growth come from people and not from the government. That is why we reject Liberal government social engineering. I will give a good example that ties in precisely to the example the hon. member used about the subsidy that goes to the banks, the $105,000 I raised in my speech.

The member mentioned that the $105,000 that goes to the banks, which made $5 billion in profits last year, is used to hire aboriginals and people with disabilities. What the member failed to mention is that his own government has put into place social engineering in the form of affirmative action that forces banks and others to hire visible minorities, women, people with disabilities and aboriginals.

Therefore what we have in this situation is legislation that forces the banks to do something. The banks make $5 billion in profits and then the government gives the banks $105,000 to fulfil the legislation they have set out.

Would the member acknowledge that perhaps what the Reform Party really stands for is allowing people to make a lot of the judgments themselves because they are the ones who are truly socially conservative, the ones who create a sense of community, not the government?

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Madam Speaker, that was a very confusing question. Let us start with the $105,000 that went to the bankers association to train aboriginals and disabled people. It was intended to do precisely that, to allow people who would not otherwise be in the workforce to cease to be liabilities and to become social assets by entering the work force. They did. The program worked.

The member used the language of force. The banks, he suggested, would not have done that. They were forced to take on board, because of equity legislation, these kinds of people and were therefore forced to train them. What if they had not been forced? Is he telling me they would not have done it, that it was not worthwhile doing it in its own right, that somebody in this society should not take care of aboriginal people and disabled people to integrate them into the workforce?

He may well say if we would let the banks do it on their own, but that is not what he suggested. He suggested they were forced to do it. The implication was that they would not otherwise have done it. If they would not have done it, who would have done it?

[Monte Solberg, Reform, Medicine Hat, AB]

Madam Speaker, the member's comments betray his attitude toward the people. The point that I am making is people will make good judgments about how they treat other individuals. The reason I say that is in the situation the member refers to he forgets there are a complex set of variables involved.

We have a bank industry that is very tightly regulated. There is no competition among banks. We have all kinds of very high tax levels. We have high payroll taxes. There is actually a disincentive to hiring all kinds of people.

We have high unemployment due in large part to the fact that the government has intervened so heavily in the economy that it actually provides a disincentive to hiring.

That means banks and other groups hire people who come best prepared. That is not a surprise to me. It may be to the hon. member. When we look at it at the local level, when people have a choice people are more than willing to help out their neighbour. They are more than willing to help out people down the street who may come from a disadvantaged situation.

The hon. member has forgotten a huge part of this equation. There are all kinds of factors he did not consider such as interventions from the government that provide disincentives to hiring some of the people he talked about.

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Madam Speaker, in this case it comes down to this. If there are people who are disadvantaged in society how are we to ensure to the maximum that they will cease to be disadvantaged, that they will as individuals, which I stressed in my talk about Liberal principles, have the best possible chance of access to jobs?

I do not discount what the hon. member said about the virtue of community and the importance of individual initiative or community initiative or company initiative. I do not discount that in the slightest. It is a crucial part of the social fabric of the country. I do not think it is only the role of government to do that.

What worries me in that analysis is what happens to the people who are not the neighbour at our gate. What happens to the people who are the strangers in our streets? In the case of aboriginals, many of them are. Look at our large urban cities. Look at who those people are and how disconnected they are from our neighbourhoods and our families and our communities.

If it is not society acting through its state, working with its partners, the private sector and communities, that will take care of those people in some kind of fairly systematic way, then not only will we be an unkind and uncaring society, we will be an inefficient society. We will be forced to use more of our resources for security guards and prisons and deal with people who drop out of schools and all the rest of it.

It is in everybody's interest to behave in a collective manner and to recognize the potentially positive role of government in doing that. We are not saying government is any better than the private sector or individuals or anything else like that. We are simply saying it is no worse. I say this as an economic historian. Its track record in worrying about the betterment of humankind is considerably better over time than that of the business community.

[Jim Silye, Reform, Calgary Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak in favour of our motion.

I refer to the Prime Minister's 1993 election commitment that "there will not be a promise I do not keep". I went through the red book. I researched the red book. I found in the red book 187 promises. I found also, as I checked them off with some help from some researchers, that 46 have been kept. That is drastically less than the 75 per cent bragged about in the testimony of the Prime Minister a couple of weeks ago in the House. The Liberal government has 121 promises to go if it wants to keep the promises in the red book.

The Prime Minister also challenged any Canadian, not just MPs, "any time hold up the red book and ask me where I am on this promise". I would like to review some of these promises and maybe I will ask him where he is on some of these promises.

To get elected, as I mentioned to the member for Don Valley West earlier, this government when in opposition, when out on the hustings, used rhetoric, language and words to get elected that are so far from the reality of what it is doing today that it really brings into question integrity and accountability. Those are the two areas I will touch on.

We have even had a deputy prime minister resign because of the promise she made. The finance minister admitted they cannot keep the GST promise. The only person left who will not admit he cannot keep it, will not keep it, will not kill it, will not get rid of it, will not scrap it, is the Prime Minister.

He still thinks he is keeping his promise, that he will replace it. He says read page 22. I read page 22. It says they will replace it with a system of taxation that generates equivalent revenues. It does not. It will cost $1 billion in three provinces alone. "It will be fairer to consumers and businesses". It is not. To small business only it is fairer. For consumers it increases taxation on those goods and services that the PST did not apply to.

The reality is the government has not replaced the GST. What it has done is replaced the PST. Is that what it campaigned on? Did it say replace the PST with the GST? It has entrenched the GST into our lives forever. It has now become a 15 per cent GST. It is now to be there for all future generations. We will never get rid of it now unless a new government comes in and abolishes it with a new system of taxation. This was a big promise made to get elected, a big promise the government has failed to keep. It smacks of duplicity and exaggerated claims.

The Minister of Finance, the minister of myth, is now trying to brag about how he has done everything in the world to make this a better place to live. I have never yet seen a finance minister or a chief executive officer of any corporation in the private sector, of which I was a part for 25 years before I came here, stand up before a board of directors or shareholders and review the balance sheet of that corporation or the balance sheet of a nation and brag only about one side of the ledger, about how the deficit is coming down.

The finance minister gave an 80 minute speech to the shareholders of the country and not once did he mention the word debt. Look at his speech and find where he talks about the debt, the interest costs to service the debt or how much the debt is going up. He brags about six, five, four, three and hopes for two, one, zero, but will not make a commitment to it and does not talk about the debt, how the interest is rising on that debt and how that interest cost will suffocate the very social programs the member for Don Valley West brags about in terms of helping the disabled.

As much as they brag about how much they are helping, we subsidize and give $8 billion to aboriginals and he still claims they are disabled. Through five different programs in the expenditure system we have, we give $9 billion for children one way or the other and we still have a million starving children out there. That is a poor job and it reflects on the government.

To get elected the government promised to introduce an infrastructure program that would create jobs, jobs, jobs. There are still 1.5 million Canadians unemployed. Where are the jobs? The Prime Minister has now admitted once again that he cannot deliver on that promise of jobs. The infrastructure program has helped in some areas but overall it has been a failure. It has created 100,000 interim jobs and maybe 30,000 full time jobs at a cost of $6 billion. That is $60,000 a job. Is that worth it? I do not know.

The government also promised to reduce UI premiums to help businesses have money for investment and growth. Today we had a statement from the minister that they have reduced premiums, one-twentieth of one per cent. How much will that help businesses? How much will an entrepreneur reinvest? How many people will he hire on that basis?

What the government also did is increase the taxes on part time employees. Now when a business hires part time people it has to go to the trouble of filling out these UI forms. It is another tax. It increased payroll taxes by 7 per cent on part time employees, which inhibits and hurts. Businesses do not want that. No, the government wants more revenue. The minister talks about no taxes. That is also a myth.

There was talk about the Young Offenders Act, what is the root of increased crime and what is the problem in society. We have to empower people, but if we are to empower people we have to do two things. We have to leave more money in their pockets so they can look after their families and themselves and we need tougher rules for those people who do the crime. If someone does the crime they should pay the time. I do not care if they are 12 years old. I have been to public schools talking to kids in grades 6, 7, 8 and 9. They all say that if they do the crime they should pay the time.

However, the Minister of Justice, this soft hearted Liberal, does not want to do that. He talks like he is doing a lot of stuff but he is not. Crime is up.

What has the government promised on health care. It stated it would have a national forum and get to the bottom of health care. It would solve the problem and guarantee that every Canadian will have free health care.

Is health care free? The Prime Minister thinks it is free. He says it is free and he is going to protect it. The government and the provinces had one meeting in two and a half years and they broke up. What happened next? We are not going to hear about it until the next election. So much for health care.

The government reduced the funding for health care and education. It said to the provinces: "We are going to give you less. You handle it. But we will guarantee that five years from now we will always give you $11 billion. We will do that for you, but you handle this cutback. We do not know how to handle it".

The Liberals also said that they would restore integrity in government and bring in an ethics counsellor who would be accountable to Parliament. That is another broken promise. I even forget the name of the ethics counsellor, we have not heard of him for so long. He is responsible to the Prime Minister. That is not a watch dog. The ethics counsellor is a lap dog. That is not the integrity about which the Prime Minister spoke. It is an example of the rhetoric the Liberals used to get elected. The facts are different than the rhetoric. I am asking Canadians to recognize that.

The Liberals said they would cancel the Pearson airport deal. Yes, they did. They kept that promise. It has cost us half a billion dollars so far. It has been kicked around in the Senate. Guess what? It is coming back here. They will do another study to show that if they had gone ahead and privatized it those people who would have been taking the risk would have lost X amount of dollars. How silly. Do something with it. If it is to be cancelled, then cancel it. Handle the lawsuits and get rid of it. No, this government does not know how to do it. So far it has cost us half a billion dollars and it will cost more.

The Liberals said they would get rid of the EH-101s. They were going to cancel the helicopter deal. There were 55 or 54 EH-101s. Kim Campbell knocked the number down to 45 to try to save her butt and get re-elected. However, she was not re-elected. The Liberals said they would save that $5.8 billion. They said the country did not need the helicopters. Guess what? The department of defence needs more helicopters.

Did the Liberals tell us door to door that they would cancel this deal but spend $2 billion on another one? No, they did not say that. The rhetoric they used to get elected is different from the facts and what they are doing. The definition of a Liberal: "Say anything you want, do anything you want, be anything you want to get elected. Once you are there, do what you feel like doing".

As far as accountability goes, the Prime Minister said: "They can vote for me or not vote for me in the next election". He does not care. It is just one day every five years that he wants to be held accountable.

In opposition members of the government railed, ranted and raved about closure. When the Tories used closure the Liberal opposition said it was anti-democratic and dictatorial. This government has used closure on numerous occasions. It has limited debate on important issues that all Canadians should know more details about. It has invoked time allocation which has limited the amount of members who can speak. The government has impeded our freedom of speech. It has restricted the amount of time that 295 members can speak on controversial bills in order to get them out of the way. Canadians do not know both sides of the issues. That is what debate is all about. That is what democracy is all about. That is how the House should work. We must have proper time to debate both sides of the issue before we vote. Time allocation is anti-democratic. The Liberals said that when they were in opposition.

When they were in opposition they had integrity. When they were here they had values. What happened when they went over to that side of the House? Why did they lose it? Why do they no longer do the things they said they would do when they were in opposition? I do not understand it. I guess I never will.

Let me talk about travel. When Mulroney travelled the world there was a headline in the media every day. When this Prime Minister travels it is Team Canada and it is good. What did the Prime Minister do to the media? How did he get the media on his side? This Prime Minister has travelled more than Mulroney did in his first four, five or six years. In two and a half years this Prime Minister has travelled more. Nothing is being said about it.

We talked earlier about the patronage appointments to the Senate. Where is the integrity when a prime minister of this country stands up and talks about appointing senators? I know that is our system. We want senators to be elected. That is what this party stands for. We want a Senate which is effective, elected and equal. We think there should be two Houses in the country.

The system is patronage. The people who they think will do a good job are appointed. There are rules as to where the senators come from. Should a senator not be appointed to represent the region? I think so.

There are people on the other side who are well studied-I see two of them across from me-who are well learned and probably have impeccable credentials when it comes to the meaning democracy and political values. They know more about it than I do. I am just a businessman. I know the two members across from me know this.

Is it not important for the Prime Minister to simply say: "I appoint this man because I think he will do a good job for Alberta", instead of, "I will appoint a Liberal and he will represent my party in the Senate?" Is that democracy? That is not right. I know it is not right. The Prime Minister knows it is not right, yet he does it and he gets away with it.

I will get back to the GST by reading from two letters. In opposition and even in government, what some of these members have done with the GST and harmonization is replace the PST, which was not in the red book, with the GST. They entrenched it into our lives forever.

When the Liberals were in opposition they said such things as: "The GST is to be applied to reading materials. How do we expect to have another generation of people who can know more and can compete in the a world around us?" This question was asked by the former Minister of Health in 1990.

"Thousands of other Canadians are appalled that the government decided to tax books, magazines and newspapers. We in the opposition objected specifically to the inclusion of these products. We continue to oppose it". This was said by the member for Kingston and the Islands in 1993 when the Liberals were in opposition.

"The government is proposing to add GST by taxing the printed word. It strikes a blow at learning, the transfer of information". This was a statement made by the current member for Willowdale, the chairman of the finance committee.

They all said that it is wrong to tax reading. They all said that it is incorrect to tax reading. They all talked about, but what did they just do with harmonization? They increased the tax on reading by 7 per cent. I give up, that is enough on that topic.

The minister of myth, the Minister of Finance said: "We have produced three budgets and we have not increased personal taxes in the first, second or third". He has said it so often that I can almost do an imitation: "We haven't increased personal taxes, we haven't increased corporate taxes, we haven't increased excise taxes. In

fact, we haven't increased taxes". Wrong, wrong, wrong. I will point this out.

Here is one example, a letter from a senior in South Surrey, Mr. Sidney Martin:

Do we now have a government that blatantly lies to us? We were told that there would be no change in income taxes, 1994-1995.

On line 301 of the income tax return a non-refundable tax credit of $3,482 is available to those over 65 years of age-subject to certain limitations. In 1994 a minimum credit of $1,741 was allowed, but in 1995 this has been reduced to zero dollars.

Although my taxable income is down $1,244 in 1995, my income tax, as a result of this change, has increased by $138. In other words, I am suffering a net loss of $1,382 in 1995.

As a World War II merchant navy veteran I question, is this the type of government we deserve after defending our country from 1939 to 1945?

Is this the kind of finance minister we deserve, one who stands up and blatantly misrepresents what he has done in his budget when he claims that he has not raised taxes? There are two ways to raise taxes: raising the personal rate or broadening the base and reducing deductions. That is what he has done. That is clearly a tax increase.

On May 7 the Prime Minister claimed that the Liberals have managed to reduce the deficit with no tax increases. This is untrue. It is blatantly untrue. On the same day the Minister of Finance, the minister of myth, stated that in the last three budgets the government did not raise personal taxes. This is also untrue. This letter is evidence that he raised taxes for this gentleman by $138. This is proof.

The following facts about the three budgets of 1994, 1995 and 1996 are for the minister of myth and his Department of Finance that keeps feeding him these wonderful lines to use to try to fool the Canadian public. Economists agree there are two ways to increase taxes: explicitly raising the tax rate from 26 per cent to 29 per cent, or 17 per cent to 20 per cent or by broadening the definition of taxable income to include previously excluded income. The federal government has relied on the latter method because of its stealth characteristics.

Taxpayers do not see an increase in their tax rates and hence are fooled into believing that their tax liability stayed the same. It is on that basis that this minister of myth claims no tax increases. However, at tax time that taxpayer's tax liability will increase just as surely as if tax rates had been specifically raised. Once again, this is a specific example of how that works.

Excluding changes to the Income Tax Act designed to improve compliance and crack down on the underground economy, the government has instituted 14 revenue positive changes to personal income taxes; 15 positive changes to corporate income taxes and 2 revenue positive changes to excise taxes for a total of 31 revenue positive changes to taxes, which means 31 tax increases. Yet the Minister of Finance stands before the Canadian public and says: "No tax increases".

I have just shown that he has raised taxes 31 times. These increases add up to $10.5 billion in extra revenue over four years. The truth is, what Liberals say and the rhetoric they use does not match the facts.

Liberals have increased taxes 31 times and taxpayers will pay an extra $10.5 billion. As much as the Liberals claim they are reducing the deficit, the debt is growing faster, the interest costs to service the debt is growing. Since they came to power it has gone from $40 billion to $50 billion and the debt is up by $70 billion. When they leave this Chamber in the next election, they will have increased the debt by $112 billion. That is the true financial picture of the country. We need a finance minister that will address the problem of the debt and the service cost of that debt.

[Pierre Pettigrew, Liberal, Minister for International Cooperation and Minister responsible for Francophonie]

Madam Speaker, I was astonished to hear the hon. member tell us that the government has done nothing right since it was elected. I would like to know if there is anything that it has done right? Just a little thing. It would be good for the Canadian public, the viewer who may be watching, to see that there are some things to hope for in this country, which I love very much.

In a more and more global world, can we honestly blame the Prime Minister of Canada who travels the world with business people to create jobs by helping business people to develop contracts.

I would like to ask the hon. member what he thinks about international affairs and what he thinks the government should do concerning international trade, given the fact that so many present and future jobs depend on it. We have an extraordinarily good record as far as job creation related to international trade.

[Jim Silye, Reform, Calgary Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his question. First, I never said that the government does nothing right. He must remember that I am in opposition. My job is to hold the government accountable. Therefore, by holding the government accountable I point out the areas where it is deficient: 121 promises yet to be kept, 46 broken promises. It is my job to point that out.

The one thing the government has done right which has helped the respectability of the country, is setting a deficit target to GDP, even though it is low, and meeting the target and appearing that it is doing better all the time is a positive, good message for the economy. It is good for everybody and good for the finial markets.

There is your compliment. I gladly give it. However, having given it, the problem is the debt. By concentrating on the deficit and not making a commitment to get to zero, not to get to a surplus, the government is focused in the wrong direction. It is my job to point that out. The focus should be on the debt, the cost of servicing the interest on the debt. Therefore, the increases in the revenue have to be greater than the growth of the debt and the service costs on that debt. That is my advice, that is my recommendation which has been ignored by the government for two and a half years.

There is no question with respect to international affairs that there is a time when the Prime Minister should travel and there is a time when there is a need to travel. The first trip he took to China was a necessity because of those deals. The member now claims the finance minister has signed and closed those deals as if he is the one responsible. Let us tell the truth. He is not responsible for that. These were deals and negotiations that have been going on for two, three, four and five years by private and public sector and government to government as well.

There comes a time when certain people in politics in Asia have to see that the politicians here are behind and backing and would shore-up. That trip was worthwhile. That was one trip, five days, but how many other days has the Prime Minister been out of the country? It is 176 days. How many other jobs has he created with those other trips? My point is this gentleman made a lot of promises to get elected. He should be in the House more. He should be leading his party because it needs to be lead. The ranks are pretty thin.

Then he had to fire all his parliamentary secretaries, fire a couple of cabinet ministers and bring in two rookies from Quebec to help him handle that province, which the finance minister almost lost. He had to bring in two experts from Quebec. That is the kind of depth that party has and that is a sign of weakness, although the two members he brought in are outstanding in their field.

[Jean Augustine, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am forced to ask the member a question. It seems this entire motion and the member's remarks are very self-serving especially when the member says "my position is to oppose and I can recount some of the good things you have done, but I would put a motion on the floor that calls for non-confidence in you because you are not doing what I would like you to do".

It seems that if he is putting forward our positive record, if the member is telling of some of the things we said we would do and did, there could be some other ways in which the member can find opportunities to work with us to ensure that some of his good ideas connect with our good ideas and that we do the best we can for Canadian society.

Would good ideas does the member have that could match some of the good things we laid out and some of the paths we are working along for the benefit of all Canadians? How can he work with us to ensure that agenda becomes the best possible one?

[Jim Silye, Reform, Calgary Centre, AB]

Madam Speaker, I can help the government by the very method I am using here today.

It is not what we promise but what we say. I am only criticizing the red book. We and other people took a look at the red book. There were 187 promises made in the red book. I have said the government has kept 46 of them. There is the compliment. It has 121 to go and only one year left before an election. It had better crank it up.

How we in opposition help the government is to hold the government accountable to those policies and principles it uses to get elected. The Liberals promised to protect the civil service. They fired 44,000. They promised stable funding for the CBC. When we came out with our first budget and said we would cut spending on the CBC by $330 million guess what? The Liberals broke that promise. They called us slash and burn and draconian for recommending that. They slashed the CBC to the tune of $337 million, $7 million more than what we said. Where is the slash and burn now? Where is the draconian budget cutting now?

Our job is to to exactly what we are doing, holding the government side accountable, questioning integrity and showing incompetence if there is any because taxpayers have invested in 295 people to look after their interests. The government can brag about what it has done and done right. I wish it would not distort the truth, though.

I wish the minister of myth would use reality rather than fiction. I have to point out what he is doing wrong. That is wrong. It is wrong to talk to Canadians that way. What is right is to talk about the whole picture. A true financial picture has assets and liabilities. People have to talk about their liabilities and not only their assets. Although he has done well on the deficit, what the government should be doing is targeting the debt as a percentage of GDP.

On a federal basis currently that is running at 76 per cent. Our debt at close to $600 billion is 76 per cent of our GDP. If the provincial debts are combined with that, we are at a trillion dollars. We are at 104 per cent debt to GDP. That is very high and the credit rating goes to risk.

Control over finances is not in our hands when 40 per cent of that debt is outside the country. My contribution to the government is to make it aware of the facts, remind it of the facts and hope it addresses the facts. That is how I help.

The government, the finance minister and the Prime Minister have the power to act. We do not. There are so many things the government is missing that it may sound like a diatribe on poor

government, but for me to talk about all the good ideas that we have would take another week.

[Art Hanger, Reform, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to support the Reform supply motion on government broken promises.

I refer to the Prime Minister's statement in 1993 during the election that "there will not be a promise I do not keep". Those words ring very clear in my mind given that during the campaign in my riding of Calgary Northeast it was a very heated time.

It became very intense over one issue in my riding, criminal justice. There was a calling to account from all the candidates about what they would do about the crime problem in the country. There was concern about the Young Offenders Act, early release, what is happening in our prisons and why the police are not able to enforce the law adequately and uniformly.

Of course the Prime Minister and the red book reflected how safe the streets would be under a Liberal government. The problem at that time was the streets were made unsafe by previous Liberal governments. Another Liberal government came forward with statements that it would make people feel much more safe and that it would look after the violence that was increasing in society.

I refer to 1962 stats and compare them with stats of 1994. In 1962 there were 221 violent incidents per 100,000 population in Canada. In 1994 the violent crime rate increased to 1,037 per 100,000 population. That represents a 369 per cent increase in police reported violent crime over a 32 year period.

I was a police officer during those years. I could see crime increase over my tenure with the Calgary city police force. Nobody here, especially those on that side of the House, could ever tell me or the people in this country that violent crime has not increased by at least that percentage, regardless of what Statistics Canada is telling everyone here, and those on the government side believing violent crime and crime in general are going down.

Let us look at the broad picture. In 1962, 221 violent crimes per 100,000 population as opposed to 1,037 in 1994. That speaks for itself. Most of that is a result of Liberal policy initiated by not only this government but the two previous governments.

Let us look at some of the statements regarding the present policy as passed by this Liberal government. The government started with a bang. It started with the gun control bill. The government said it will among other measures counter illegal importation of banned and restricted firearms into Canada and prohibit anyone convicted of an indictable drug related offence, a stalking offence or any other violent offence from owning or possessing a gun. That is quite a mouthful.

Go to Cornwall and see what kind of importation is going on. Go to Cornwall and find out what the smuggling problem is in that area of the province. There is a smuggling problem there and it includes illegal firearms.

The Liberal government keeps nattering about what a great job it is doing clamping down on smuggling, especially the smuggling of firearms. It is a joke. The government is doing absolutely nothing to counter the smuggling problem. It is happening in several areas across the country on the border of the United States.

[An hon. member]

How do you know that?

[Art Hanger, Reform, Calgary Northeast, AB]

I have been there. I tell you to go there.

[The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Ringuette-Maltais)]

I remind the hon. member to put his remarks through the Chair.

[Art Hanger, Reform, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Madam Speaker, I will do so. I tell that member to go there if he questions whether there is a smuggling problem in this country. Either that or the Liberal members as always are burying their heads in the sand if they cannot realize there is a problem relating to smuggling. It is not just firearms but drugs and alcohol. Ninety per cent of the illegal alcohol being smuggled into the country comes through that area over by Cornwall. There are cigarettes and other contraband.

The Liberal government is ignoring the plight of many people in the country who are really being burdened by this type of crime in their communities. I refer to another area, Ipperwash, where the law is not enforced adequately or equally. There is an entire community in Pasangquet whose property values have decreased to such a degree that it does not know how it will survive after investing considerable sums in those properties. The government sits on its duff. The solicitor general sits on his duff and does nothing to intervene. This is a crime in itself. It is falling on the shoulders of this government and the solicitor general for not doing something about it.

People not only in those two regions I just mentioned but also in urban Canada are very concerned about their safety. They are very concerned that the law is not adequately applied. I will turn to Toronto, Vancouver and the lower mainland. I suggest to the member for Halifax that she go to those two regions to see for herself just how the people in those cities are being victimized. They feel so much tension because of the crime in their cities. It all comes down to the enforcement of the law. People desire that. They seek government intervention in the whole area of safety. It is the responsibility of the government to ensure it happens.

I know many government members cannot grasp this, but it is unfortunate there are areas in our major cities where crime is

unchecked. The safety of many people is being jeopardized. The government talks about safe streets and safe homes. Nonsense. It has done nothing to make our homes and our streets any safer.

I will briefly touch on the Young Offenders Act. My colleague, the member for Crowfoot, is doing a more than adequate job in researching the Young Offenders Act. The government has had two and one-half years to straighten it around and it still has done nothing to address the major concerns people have. People want the age for young offenders lowered. They want those 11-year olds who commit rape charged. They want to see those who commit violent crime charged and tried as adults. They want to see punishment in the system. It does not exist. It is a joke.

Government members are reluctant to face reality. The member from Don Valley forgot to add reality to the reasons for being a Liberal. He did not refer to the reality that people's lives are being jeopardized, many by a very small element, the young offenders who are not being punished.

Government members should look at the detention centres and prisons across the country. The justice minister and the solicitor general can talk all they want about making things tough but it is only rhetoric. They are doing absolutely nothing to tighten up the problems which exist within our prison system or our detention centres.

As an example of some recent problems we could look to the women's detention centre, or jail, in Edmonton. I call it a retirement home, a comfort cottage. The prisoners in that home murdered another prisoner. The warden was told there would be a major problem if one particular woman was integrated into the regular population. The warden ignored the advice. Corrections ignored any advice it was given.

It was a philosophy which was supported by the solicitor general. It was decided to create that type of incarceration, that type of facility. The programs which followed were suggested by CSC. The minister supported it. As a result, a few weeks after the prison opened, one person was murdered and one-quarter of the prison population walked away. I say walked because all they had to do was step over a four-foot fence and walk away.

The government claimed it was going to make our streets and our homes safer. Where is the safety? The philosophy adopted by the cabinet, the solicitor general and the justice minister is to contrary. They say one thing and do another. Our streets are no safer. In fact it is the opposite.

Given the fact that facilities such as the women's prison in Edmonton can have those serious problems within a few short weeks of opening just shows the mentality of what is really happening within that system. This should be of concern to all of us. The reality is that crime is not being punished. Our streets are not safe and our homes are being jeopardized even more every day. Individuals have to lock themselves up in their own homes while the criminals run around free.

The Liberal government talks about the rehabilitation of sex offenders. It has expressed concern about releasing sex offenders into society. If we look at some of the recent releases it is clear that individuals who are being released are not being punished. They are not being rehabilitated. They are refusing to participate in any form of treatment and are refusing to co-operate with prison officials. They are refusing to follow the minimum requirements. This is despite the warnings that if released these individuals will reoffend.

They are serious sexual offenders and that is what is happening. They are being released back into society and are jeopardizing the communities in which they are placed. As a result, many of them are reoffending. Efforts have been made to stop this process or at least to identify those who are being released. What has happened instead? The government has ordered the RCMP not to release any information about these individuals to the communities or to any groups that want to protect their communities. This is insanity.

Right now Liberal members are laughing. This is not a laughing matter. This is serious business.

[Jean Augustine, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

No one is laughing.