Debates of Oct. 20th, 1997

Income Tax Conventions Implementation Act, 1997

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the motion, which was negatived on the following division:)

Division No. 11

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

I declare the motion defeated. Resuming debate, the hon. member for Fraser Valley.

[Chuck Strahl, Reform, Fraser Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak to this, not because I think we should be debating this bill at 7.50 p.m. but because I would like to set the record straight as to exactly what has gone on here.

I am sure a good number of the members over there have no idea what they just voted for. They were told to vote and they did. Be that as it may, the general public should understand exactly what has happened here tonight. We have a system of doing business here in the House of Commons. We have an orderly order of business for a regular day. It starts at a certain time and ends at a certain time. We have an orderly calendar. Week in, week out we know where we are going to be on which week and at which time.

This allows the order of business to be conducted with some decorum and some decency in this place. With the odd exception up until recent years that was kept day in, day out by the government side. It realized that if it wanted this place to be productive it would work in co-operation with the opposition.

For the record this is what has happened with two successive bills. We have dealt only with two bills in this Parliament, and what has been done? On the first bill the Liberals brought in time allocation which means the end of debate. One day of debate, seven hours of debate, and it is finished. It is shuffled off. If the government had its way, the bill would be shuffled off and forgotten. Because the first bill was the pension bill we were not prepared to do that.

Furthermore, it was without any consultation by the other side that it brought in time allocation on the first bill. Kaboom, she comes in, no consultation, no debate. It is just the end of the debate. Canadians who wonder why this 73% increase in CPP premiums, why the changes to the seniors benefit, why all these tax law changes that affect seniors. They are not given a full hearing in the House. They are told “too bad, no debate in the House”. They sent members of Parliament here to debate but they are not allowed to debate because the idea of debate for those on that side of the House is debate just for a little while and then hopefully nobody will notice and we can shut down.

What have the Liberals done today? They have pulled another procedural stunt. At the last hour of debate the government can stand up and move a motion. It made the motion to extend hours indefinitely, day and night, until this bill is dealt with.

This is another pension bill, another tax bill for seniors whom the government should be concerned about, another bill that the opposition on this side of the House says it wants to hold debate on over two or three days. Is that too much to ask? Of course it is not.

Canadians want us to debate tax bills and important international tax bills before the House. On behalf of our constituents, it is our duty to stand on our record and stand up here and be counted. What happens over there is that the government says “We cannot have that. One day is enough. One day is all you get”. It then moves this motion to extend the hours day and night as if the proper way to conduct business is until the lights go out or until the day is done and not even then; all night it wants to debate. It is telling us if we want to debate we must stay up all night.

That is not orderly business. Orderly business is ladies and gentlemen on both sides of this House asking each other how many speakers they have.

[An hon. member]

Honourable ladies and gentlemen.

[Chuck Strahl, Reform, Fraser Valley, BC]

Honourable. Some of them are. However, they could ask how many members want to speak. Once we are down to five hours we are down to 10 minutes debate with no questions and comments. How many speakers can there be? If everybody in the Reform Party spoke we would only be looking at another 20 speakers, more than we already have.

Instead of another day of debate on Wednesday after the supply day or even a half a day—

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order. The hon. member, with all due respect, referred to “honourable members, some of them”. I would like to think that every member in this House is an honourable member. If he tells us who is not—

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

With respect, that is not a point of order, that is a point of debate.

[Chuck Strahl, Reform, Fraser Valley, BC]

I would like to thank the hon. member for voting for me earlier so I could continue this speech.

Just so the public knows, there are procedural things that can be done on that side of the House to make difficult the opposition's job of pointing errors or omissions in bills, things that should be improved on, amendments, consideration for the public, raised public awareness; all those things that we are supposed to do on this side of the House are disallowed when that side of the House says that there can only be one day of debate per bill.

So far the government has a perfect record. There have been two bills in the House and both bills have had restrictions on debate for this side of the House to even speak on the issue. There is something wrong with its idea of democracy when it says it is one bill and shove it through the House. They do not understand that the role of the opposition is to critique a bill, to try to improve a bill and to improve public awareness. It is a whole gamut of jobs given to us by the Canadian public to do.

When that side of the House says we cannot do it what are we supposed to do? We have to try to resort to procedural games ourselves. What a ridiculous thing they force us to do.

That side of the House should sit down and negotiate the number of speakers we have left, what day we are going to bring in the bill, how long it will go through the House, we can go back and forth because we want to make sure you get your business done. But we have a job to do on this side of the House to do all those things I listed earlier.

If the government feels compelled to use procedural shenanigans on every single bill, and it has a 100% track record so far, this is going to be a long four years. Canadians gave this party a job to do. They gave the other parties jobs to do as well. Those jobs are to hold the government's feet to the fire, to make it accountable, to propose amendments in order to help it design better legislation and to raise public awareness; all those things that all of us on this side of the House have been elected to do. There are almost as many of us on this side of the House as there are on that side.

In other words, one day soon there will be a vote that this government is going to be awfully close to losing. There are going to be many votes, some of them unfortunately without negotiation, without notice and without any negotiation between what I hope are hon. ladies and gentlemen all around. We will have to resort to the last resort which is to start out with the standing orders, then with Beauchesne's and then start duking it out on the procedural side. What a shame. We should be debating and voting on the issues of the day and trying to build a better country with this House of Commons. When we are not allowed to do that, then this party and many others on this side of the House will not stand down. We will rise to the challenge. We will not let the government ram this stuff through.

If the Liberals think they have won the day on this, let them remember that there is yet to come committee work, report stage, third reading. The idea of co-operation which makes this House work well will instead become confrontation. What a shame.

[Guy St-Julien, Liberal, Abitibi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

The Reform Party member claims that they will rise to the challenge. It will be noted that there are 30 Reform members here tonight. The rest are off to Monday night bingo.

[Bill Blaikie, NDP, Winnipeg—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I begin by saying that the Liberal member was formerly a Tory and was formerly in the House. I reserve commenting on the attendance of other parties when I look at the government bench, but I did not rise to talk about that. I did rise to talk about how unfortunate I think it is that so early in this Parliament we have arrived at the state of affairs we have tonight.

While there is an obvious tendency on the part of all of us to enjoy this parliamentary “silly-buggers”, it is unfortunate in the sense that I do not think any of this is really necessary. The government has not sought to engage in serious negotiations with respect to legislative planning. It has done things without consulting the House leaders of the other parties. The Liberals seem to have it in their heads that one day of debate is enough and that they are entitled to take whatever measures are necessary after a day's debate to speed things along.

I just think this is a very bad sign for a Parliament which I had hoped had considerable promise even though it had been dubbed by the media as various things, that it would be a fractious Parliament, a pizza Parliament, that it would be this kind of Parliament or that kind of Parliament. I thought we had a challenge here as five parties to see if we could work together. We started off well but we came to a very unfortunate place in that progress with the closure on the Canada pension plan. And now we have today's situation.

I say to the government that all of this would be completely unnecessary with a little bit of good faith negotiating about what the other parties require and a little less impatience on the part of the government with respect to its own legislation.

I want to say a word to my Reform colleagues because so far I think they have liked what I said.

It has become easier and easier for governments to do this kind of thing because the value of Parliament and the value of politics per se has been so consistently debased by the kind of anti-political, anti-politician ethos that has been stimulated, enhanced and encouraged by many of my colleagues in the Reform Party. The fact of the matter is that governments have found it easier and easier to do this because so little premium is put on political and parliamentary activity.

So much of a premium is put on efficiency and not wasting the taxpayers' money by paying all those people to go on and on and on. But these are the very people who now want to go on and on and on because they think that they came here to say something and that what they have to say is important. Now they are feeling the flames of a fire that they have added fuel to over the last 10 years.

They have fed this cult of efficiency in trying to streamline the public sector and devalue what goes on in political life, in Parliament and in the public sector. It all makes it easier and easier for the kind of despotism that we see increasingly over there on the government side.

They know they have a public out there which has been conditioned to say “Oh well, it is just politicians. Oh well, it is not very valuable anyway. The real decisions are made in the private sector. What decisions that are made should be made fast and efficiently, like they are in a corporate boardroom”.

This is not a corporate boardroom. This is Parliament. This is where people talk. That is what Parliament means, parl-iament. This is the place where we come to talk things out. To the extent that we devalue that function of Parliament, we make it easier for governments and we feed a fire that will ultimately consume all of us, including the democratic process.

[John Herron, Progressive Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for the Reform Party mentioned that we have entered into this debate because Reformers believe that the government has been usurping the parliamentary process.

What Parliament has to do is to talk about the issues that actually concern Canadians: that of less taxation, that of providing Canadians with balanced budget legislation, that of providing Canadians with a national health care guarantee.

I would like to point out to members of the Reform Party that initiatives in terms of theatreship as opposed to leadership with respect to legislation and the votes which we wasted time on after the throne speech do not provide Canadians with less taxation. They do not provide Canadians with a national health care guarantee. This sort of thing, to actually prove a point, deters the professionalism of Parliament. Therefore, I would encourage all members of the House to work in a more constructive manner. We do not have to have showdowns and take people on on a day to day basis.

[John Williams, Reform, St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I too would like to add my voice to that of the hon. member for Fraser Valley who indicated that it does seem to be this is not going to be a fractious Parliament but perhaps a raucous Parliament if the government continues in this vein of trying to impose its will without Parliament being given the opportunity to debate and for the people who were elected to come here and speak to be given the opportunity to speak.

This piece of legislation was introduced today. It is 138 pages long. It is an amendment to quite a number of international treaties. When we read it of course it does not make a lot of sense because it talks about deleting a paragraph and adding a new paragraph in its place. It jumps over to another part of the treaty to delete something else and amend something else. We cannot read this as we read a book.

This has only been in the public domain for one day and the government wants to pass it on to committee stage and bring it back here no doubt by next week. It will be through to the Senate before we know it. The public at large and experts will not have the opportunity to go through this with a fine toothed comb and add their professional opinion as to any potential flaws which might be in Bill C-10 with all of its amendments to the individual treaties.

I would like to draw the attention of the House to the issue last year regarding the Canada-U.S. tax treaty and the taxation of a family which took $2 billion out of this country. As far as we know they took it to the United States and paid no tax.

While it was debated about whether the family should or should not pay tax, the Minister of Finance deemed the situation serious enough that it had to be dealt with by the finance committee. He brought in amendments to the Income Tax Act to ensure that it would not happen again. He allowed the situation to remain in the public domain for over three months so that anybody who wanted to take advantage of the same opportunity obviously could. Then he amended the tax act to prevent any other usage of the same methodology of transferring money out of the country.

I read in the paper on the weekend about the situation that the amendments brought in by the Minister of Finance dealt with the taxation of privately held companies. Because of the amendments the Minister of Finance brought in, the article suggested that small business people who move to the United States will now find themselves subject to double taxation. When people leave the country, it will be deemed to have been disposed of and they will pay taxes on it. If they retain the asset for a period in excess of five years and dispose of it after that, the United States will tax it again because it only goes back five years.

Now we have a very simple situation. Our business people are being compromised because legislation was rushed through this House, pushed through this House by the Minister of Finance in response to an issue that had erupted.

I draw the parallels to this document, all 138 pages of it. We have not had the opportunity to go through it in detail. We have not had the opportunity to check with the professionals who make a living analysing and working with these documents to get their opinion on the validity of the changes. We have not had that. Yet the government wants to stand up tonight and say “If you do not speak tonight, you will not be able to speak on this bill because it will go off to a vote and off to a committee and so on”.

I agree with the member for Winnipeg—Transcona who talks about the debasement of Parliament. I too am very concerned about the debasement of Parliament and the fact that we are now being perceived as an addendum to government, one of the things that has to be tolerated.

A bill has to bypass its way through Parliament but that is only a perfunctory process. It will become law because those members deem it will become law. Not so, because Parliament is here to debate the pros and cons of this type of legislation. Complex though it may be, we are here to debate it and not to have it shoved down our throats by a government that wants to continue doing something else tomorrow.

That is not the way democracy works. We are here to uphold it. The fact that we have other members of my party around here who want to speak proves that we want to be heard not just on this issue but on all the bills coming forth that we want to debate.

We want to have the time to go back to our constituents and say “This is the legislation that the government is proposing. Should we take a stance for or against this piece of legislation? Is it good legislation? Is it legislation that needs amendment before we can call it good legislation? Is it legislation that we disagree with entirely on principle?”

We have to be able to ask these questions of our constituents if we are to do our job. Yet it is in and out of this House in one day flat. We do not even have an opportunity to phone our constituents to find out what they are saying, far less distribute the contents or the principle of this bill and find out what our constituents think.

It is not a good day for democracy when we find that the government in the first two to three weeks of its new mandate wants to adopt this type of procedure and attitude. That is why we have to take a stance. We tried to take a stance on Bill C-2. We registered our opposition by refusing to be counted on the vote.

We stand again today saying here is a government riding roughshod over the democratic rights of 301 members in this room, all who have the right to speak on this bill but who are going to be denied the opportunity. All of them have the obligation to go back to their constituents to find out what they think of this bill and to check with the professionals to find out if there are more loopholes in this bill before we vote on it, but no such luck. Here they go again.

That is why it will be a long four or five years. We must remember that their very small majority may wear thin. When we go back to our constituents and tell them how we are being run over and how their rights are being trampled, they will tell members on the government side that enough is enough and this has to stop; that they are supposed to have a decent debate in the House.

I hope they will have a change of heart, withdraw the motion and let us continue debate on this bill until all have had a chance to speak. Then we will know exactly what it contains so we can talk competently and intelligently about the fine print. I have a summary of the bill prepared by a research department but I have not had a chance to go through 138 pages. Have you? I doubt it. Has anyone else on the government side? I doubt it.

As somebody said before we had the last vote, stand up and vote and say yes because that is what you are told to do. That is not good enough. We are not here as stooges to do what the government tells us. I hope the backbenchers on the government side will not follow that procedure but will stand up and say “Excuse me, what does this thing say?”

I want the government to give me time to read this before I pass judgment on whether I am supposed to vote yea or nay on this bill. That is how this House works rather than as a rubber stamp the day the legislation is introduced.

Unfortunately I look forward to a raucous four years. I am going to do my bit to be heard in the House.

[Jason Kenney, Reform, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I spoke to Bill C-10 during regular debate earlier today. I opened debate on the bill on behalf of the official opposition and outlined our arguments for opposing the bill. As we hopefully come to a close in this sad affair, I would like to review the chronology of how this unfortunate conflict came to be.

It is often the practice of government to hope that opposition parties will accept the rapid passage of technical bills which make so-called housekeeping amendments to legislation. Bill C-10 amends various tax conventions and was presented to us and the other opposition parties as precisely such a bill.

Two years ago a similar bill was brought forward to the House, an amendment to the U.S.-Canada income tax convention. It was presented to the opposition then as a mere housekeeping bill, one without real substantive effect, one that we did not have to debate at any great length, one that could be passed if we were all to get along and do our business efficiently.

What that bill did by establishing the third protocol for the treatment of social security payments to both Canadian and American residents was to impose a considerable and burdensome and prejudicial tax increase on virtually every single Canadian collecting U.S. social security.

The members of the government, undoubtedly in good faith, took the mistaken advice of their officials who had drafted the legislation, advice which said this would not prejudicially affect Canadian seniors, that it would be revenue neutral, that none of them would end up paying higher taxes than they paid under the second protocol before 1995.

We took that on good faith. Seniors took that on good faith. The current deputy prime minister, the second highest authority in his government, said several times on the record that the third protocol would not increase taxes.

What happened? When Canadian residents got their social security cheques after that bill had been passed, many of them were financially devastated. Many were thrown into poverty. Members of the government know this is true. That is why we are debating this bill today. That is why we are trying to amend the mistake it made.

I go over this history not to be redundant but to make the point about what it is we are doing with procedure now.

It is necessary for opposition parties to identify flaws in bills that are presented to the Canadian people as merely technical amendments. Sometimes it is necessary because the government, lo and behold, does not actually get infallible advice from it officials. That was demonstratively the case in the passage of the third protocol two years ago.

[Randy White, Reform, Langley—Abbotsford, BC]

I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I would like to ask if there is a quorum in the House to listen to my hon. colleague.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

We have a quorum.

[Jason Kenney, Reform, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the third protocol was amended by the House two years ago. The government presented amendments which were supposedly innocuous and benign in their effect. Low income seniors got clobbered and hammered by that bill precisely because the opposition and the government members trusted the advice they received that the bill did not contain any deficiencies.

That is why we need to take these bills seriously. That is why we cannot rubber stamp them. That is why we cannot treat the House, as the hon. member from Winnipeg said, as some kind of a board room. Every piece of legislation that comes before the House is coming before the highest chamber of democratic deliberation in the country. These debates must be taken seriously.

I know it may not matter to the members opposite because they, like I, do not have the time to read 138 pieces of legislation. Most of them, when they do get up to speak, read the speaking notes given to them by their departmental officials. But that does not change the fact that this place has a history hundreds of years old based on parliamentary responsibility. It is ultimately here that the buck stops. We cannot shirk that responsibility.

We are not standing up using these tactics out of some whimsy. I do not particularly want to be here at 8.30 p.m. debating technical bills, but I saw a flaw in this one. As I am the critic responsible for it I advised my colleagues that, because it was a major tax increase for the Canadian recipients of social security benefits, we ought to oppose it. We ought to take it to committee eventually and have witnesses appear. We ought not to rush through committee of the whole without the people affected being able to have a voice in it. That is what taxation with representation is all about. That is what the democratic traditions of the House are all about.

I want to invite my colleagues, as I did earlier today, to look seriously at not just this bill but all similar technical tax amendments to see what they really say. Forget the advice you receive from finance department officials. It is our job as members to dig to the bottom of this, to debate these things and to look at the affect they are going to have on Canadians.

I want to correct one thing the members opposite have been saying. They have been suggesting that somehow the official opposition has been trying to stall the payment of retroactive tax payments to low income seniors who will benefit from the retroactive elimination of the huge mistake the Liberals made under the third tax protocol. That is not at all what we are proposing to do.

We would like to approve those retroactive payments as soon as possible, but within the context of a bill that treats all seniors fairly and does not increase taxes to any of them. That is a simple principle on which I was elected by 60% of the voters of my riding to come here and advocate. My colleagues and I have a prerogative. We have a privilege and indeed an obligation to do that.

On behalf of my constituents I want to put the government on notice. If it tries to pull fast ones like it did today we are going to play these games. Our role as opposition is to defend the privileges of this place, the traditions of democratic deliberation which this House represents. No amount of arrogance or abuse of parliamentary power by the government is going to stop us from taking that responsibility very seriously.

[Ken Epp, Reform, Elk Island, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is with mixed feelings that I stand at this time of the day to debate this bill because we need to have an opportunity not only to debate it in this House, not only to have experts who look at the many ramifications of the hundred pages of legislative change, but we should also have an opportunity to take it to the people back home whom we have been elected to represent.

It is devastating for me to find that my role as a parliamentarian is being limited by a government that again thinks it knows everything and that it cannot make a mistake. That is what is presumed here. If it puts forward a motion and says that it wants it all finished today I would hope that what it is saying is that there is no error in this legislation, that there is nothing that can be made better for the people of Canada, that it is a perfect piece of legislation, so let us just get it on the way.

I would have to concede that there would come occasions where there is a small technical change to be made where that may be the truth, but we do not know that. As my colleague from Calgary indicated, that was the assumption made a couple of years ago when the legislation was passed that we are now trying to undo.

How can the government carry on with this premise? I am insulted by it and I am hurt by it. Our respect for the parliamentary process and for this institution is being reduced. We have an obligation to maintain the integrity of it.

I feel so strongly that not only myself but also the members on the other side—we call them affectionately the Liberal or the government backbenchers, those who do not have a say in government—all have an obligation to provide scrutiny to these bills. These things have a tremendous impact on our society, on the citizens of this country, on the taxpayers of this country. For the backbenchers to go along with this charade and to say “No, we are willing to abdicate our responsibility and not provide that scrutiny” I think puts them also in dereliction of duty.

It is incredible to think that the ministers who sit in the front rows really do know everything. If that is really true then perhaps we ought to save the taxpayers a lot of money and just have a 20 seat Parliament and let them run it. We can just call it a cabinet and let them run the show. Let us call it what it is, an elected dictatorship between elections. That is what it boils down to.

I would like to see those backbenchers on the other side—what term do I use now. It was going to be a four letter word that starts with g and ends with ts but I cannot use that. I wish they had the internal fortitude to actually stand up and say “I'm sent here to represent the people who elected me” and to stand up against the front bench of their party when they pull these kinds of shenanigans. This is really despicable.

One of the greatest concerns we have in our ridings, at least I am hearing in my riding, is the concern of seniors with respect to their personal financial security. It is being eroded big time. They plan for their future and for their retirement given certain parameters. Now those parameters are being changed rapidly and they do not have an opportunity to make adjustments to their earnings, to their savings plans. Certainly they cannot anticipate all of the different and additional taxation rules that the government is giving to them.

It behoves us as members to show some genuine concern for the seniors in our society, those who are most affected by changes in these rules, those whose very continued livelihood depends on their financial security.

We ought to show a great amount of scrutiny and care when we propose to change bills. This is an affront to us. I am ashamed members opposite are going along with this kind of a charade and still claiming they won the election and can do whatever they want. That is not good enough.

The people of Canada will rise up and revolt against this kind of a government. They will say “Enough of this. We want a true representational government. We want a government where MPs are sent to Ottawa to represent the people”. They should take their voting orders from the people who elected them and not from their party bosses who think they know everything and will not even contemplate that perhaps one of their bills or motions should be subject to amendment, improvement or perhaps even defeat.

It is time that happens. I invite Canadians everywhere to wake up to what is happening in this place. It is a sham and it is a shame.

[Randy White, Reform, Langley—Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this should be a very peaceful and articulate presentation. It should be but maybe it will not be. At least it will be articulate.

Is there a quorum in the House?

And the count having been taken:

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. McClelland)]

We have quorum.

[Randy White, Reform, Langley—Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, with regard to Bill C-10—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh.