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.