Madam Speaker, the member from the Bloc moved this debate into a very interesting area but not entirely on topic since we are discussing Bill C-70, the HST tax proposed by the Liberal government.
I would like to say a kind word about the member. I noticed he is wearing a daffodil on his jacket. I want to mention, and I will be mentioning again later today, that the daffodils come compliments of CKNW-98, a radio station in Vancouver. This is a tradition it does every year at this time for the first day of spring. I thank the member for wearing that daffodil. I notice a few other members have them as well. They are set out nicely in vases in our lobbies as well.
I would like to refer back to a government member who gave a speech approximately an hour ago. I had wanted to question him but unfortunately we ran out of time. During his speech he said what a wonderful job the Liberal government had done. He mentioned that exports were at record highs. He forgot to mention of course that is due to NAFTA which was one of those things the Liberals said they would oppose. They were going to renegotiate NAFTA, scrap it if necessary and here they are now trying to claim credit for something they did not want anything to do with.
In addition, we have low interest rates that they constantly claim credit for and what a wonderful thing it is. And yet it was the low inflation policies of the Bank of Canada that gave us low interest rates, not the Liberals. They are very happy to take credit for all these things that they did not do and that they have even opposed. When they were in opposition they opposed the interest rate policy of the Bank of Canada and now here they are wanting to take credit for it.
Through all of that they will not take any credit for the unemployment figures or that for their entire time in office the unemployment levels have remained at unacceptably high levels, 10 per cent to 11 per cent through their entire mandate, making 77 straight months now of unemployment levels, as high as the last depression.
When we question them in question period the finance minister gets up, takes his glasses off and says "we have the lowest interest rates in the whole world and it is wonderful and people are saving so much money on their mortgage". Of course that is Liberal thinking. In order to get a benefit you have to borrow money.
What happens to people who do not have a mortgage and are struggling to actually get into a house? What happens to the people who do not have a car and are struggling to get a car or other things? According to the Liberals the only way to save money is to actually borrow money and that is typical Liberal tax and spend type thinking which put us in the problems we are in today where we need a GST and now some sort of HST in order to help pay for all these bad decisions of the past, mostly by Liberal governments where they have borrowed, taxed and spent trying to make Canada prosperous. All they achieved in the end was a lot of misery and terrible problems we are facing now and trying to deal with in the budgets that come before the House.
The HST we are debating today would not even be necessary if this government had followed Reform's zero in three plan that was proposed in 1993. We would be spending surpluses instead of still discussing these massive deficits.
Two months ago I was dialling into the Internet via Sympatico, the service I use in B.C. It has an introduction page when you first dial in and it said: "Question of the day: Now that the government has its deficit down to an excellent $19 billion should it begin spending again?"
I almost blew a gasket. Excellent $19 billion deficit? A $19 billion deficit is not excellent. A $19 billion surplus would be
excellent but a $19 billion deficit, excellent it is not. You can be sure I very quickly put my comments on that chat line.
If we had been following Reform's zero in three plan, we would be like New Zealand is today. It is running massive surpluses and it is able to give people terrific tax cuts instead of trying to introduce an HST, hiding the government's tax grab in a newly constructed tax that was only obtained by bribing Atlantic premiers with $1 billion taken from other taxpayers throughout the country to subsidize the people in Atlantic Canada with this new HST which will end up being the worst tax of their lives. If we think the GST was bad, wait until they experience the HST.
I mentioned that New Zealand is running surpluses. Many members know I am originally from New Zealand. I have watched with interest some of the developments there because New Zealanders have been through many of the fiscal problems that Canada still has to face. For the past three years New Zealand has run very healthy surpluses. Remember its economy is only about the size of British Columbia's economy, but this past year it ran an $8 billion surplus. As a result of that, the New Zealand government was able to give the average wage earner in New Zealand a tax decrease of $200 a month.
Imagine if Canadians were offered today a $200 a month tax break instead of a new HST which would strip them of tax money. Think of the boost that would be to the economy. Think of the jobs it would create if people in Atlantic Canada had an additional $200 a month in their pockets to spend instead of another tax grab of HST.
This government should be ashamed of itself. We know that what we are going through today is a big hurry up on this bill to try to force it through by April 1 because it is the deadline. The government is trying to ram this bill through against the wishes of many retail groups that have already said that the HST will result in lost jobs because of closed businesses right across the province.
The Retail Council Canada, independent retailers and many large national companies have complained that the tax inclusive provision of the legislation would create confusion and add additional costs. For example, Woolworth Canada estimated that it would consider closing one-quarter of its 126 stores with a resulting loss of 300 jobs.
We have consistently heard from the finance minister who admits that high taxes kill jobs. So it is reasonable to ask, if that admission is there, why are we not working to get rid of the GST, as was promised by this government. There is a whole list of ministers and members on that side of the House who made the promises during the election campaign that the GST would be gone, history, toast. The most hated tax would be gone. They used the emotion of the GST to win power in this place and then let people down by breaking the promises.
There is a court challenge going on in British Columbia against the NDP government for breaking its promises. The court challenge is going ahead and will be heard very soon. If the government there is found guilty of deceiving the voters by breaking its promises, by telling lies in effect, it will be thrown out of office and the election declared void.
What a healthy thing it would be if we could have similar provisions at the federal level. This would force these people to tell the truth in their election campaigns. Then they would not say they will scrap, abolish, make the GST history, toast, gone forever in order to get elected. They would not fiddle around and change the rules and say "all we really meant was to harmonize, to change it, not to give any tax relief to Canadians at all, not one cent of tax relief, but simply to increase taxes and invent this HST", the horrible sales tax. That is exactly what it is. It is a horrible sales tax. It is worse than the GST that preceded it. Certainly constituents in my area of the country are very unhappy their tax dollars are being used to subsidize this change in the taxation process.
In terms of harmonizing and tax inclusive pricing, the average person by having a tax inclusive price loses the ability to see what portion of that price is government taxation. That is a very serious problem. Although it may be printed on the cash register tape, it requires a person to examine the printout to see what the taxes are. Maybe it will be printed there. That is fine. However when people look at the price of an item on the shelf, go to the cash register, hand the money over, accept the receipt, put it in their pockets and throw it away with the garbage later, they are not concentrating on what portion of the price is actually sales tax.
It is very important for them to see when they are actually hit with the sales tax at the cash register which takes the price up from maybe $320 to $395 what the government is taking out of their pockets.
For taxation to be fair it should be visible. People should know what they are paying to the government in terms of taxation. It is a bad precedent to have harmonized sales tax that hides the GST in tax inclusive pricing.
Many retailers and small businesses are very upset that anything like this could be proposed. There has been a lot of opposition to the bill. Many groups are opposed to it.
The Reform Party did a minority report as a result of the finance committee hearings on GST harmonization. They were the usual type of sham as most committee hearings are, dare I say all committee hearings are. Just like debates and votes in this place, we know before committee hearings start exactly what the outcome will be. That is a very unfortunate fact of life.
Recently I was visiting New Zealand where there have been some quite dramatic parliamentary reforms which make it more democratic to work in its house. All committees of the New Zealand parliament must report back within six months on every piece of business that goes before them. They are not allowed to do what happened with the private members' bill that went through this place to get rid of section 745. That cannot happen under the revised rules in New Zealand. It would have to be reported back to the House and action would have to be taken.
In addition, every private members bill is votable. The assumption is made that if people are intelligent enough or responsible enough to be members of the House they should be trusted to be able to bring forward pieces of legislation that would be voted on. If they have made an error in judgment and introduced a stupid piece of legislation, it will be cut down in the vote.
Combined with that, there is now proxy voting for members in New Zealand. Members who are legitimately in their ridings on riding business or away on committees or other legitimate business associated with their activities as members of Parliament may vote by proxy. They call in their votes to the party whip who during the vote in the House stands and says that there are x number of proxy votes for or against an issue. That is a very civilized way to conduct business.
Many of us in these modern days of easy travel and communications have to be away from this place doing other official duties that prevent us from being present on every vote. We are always following the debate because we have access to television and news wherever we are. It would certainly be very civilized to be able to call in a proxy vote on issues of importance to us and to our constituents.
In addition the committees of the house in New Zealand, ones like the one that considered the HST, are structured to be much more democratic. Approximately 10 per cent of all chairs are selected from opposition parties based on a free vote. The vice-chairs of all the committees are selected from the opposition parties in proportion to the number of seats they have. That division of vice-chairs is arranged between the opposition parties according to the particular committees they would like to be vice-chairs of.
There have been a lot of changes to the rules in that house that have made it much more democratic. Cross party voting is actually encouraged and not frowned upon at all. On a regular basis members vote with the other side.
What a tremendous, refreshing thing it would be if we could see those sorts of reforms in this place. Then we would not be facing the situation we are today with time allocation. A bill is being rammed through this place. Our debating time is being cut off. That would not be happening if this place was more democratic.
If the government side was responsive to the input, if it truly cared about the feedback it was getting and if it allowed its members the freedom to truly vote according to the representations in front of them, we would not be faced with the time allocation problem we are faced with today.
Some of the points that were made by our minority committee relating to the debate on legislation to harmonize and streamline the GST concerned integrity. The member for York-South Weston who was responsible for the private member's bill on section 745 of the Criminal Code was banished from the Liberal Party caucus by the Prime Minister for voting on a matter of principle, on a matter of integrity, on a matter of promising to get rid of the GST.
What a terrible shame to see such an infringement upon democracy. Members are not free to represent their constituents, to truly represent them or to vote on principle without suffering total banishment from his caucus. Their riding associations are stripped of money and virtually put out of party business. It is an awful thing to happen. It leads to the situation of today where members are afraid to vote against the government, if they are on the government side. They are afraid they will lose the nomination, lose all their funding, lose their riding association and somebody will be parachuted in to take their place.
What an appalling comment on how our system is run. It has degenerated from the original idea of what Parliament should be. It should be a place where people come to debate and discuss the issues, come to a conclusion and tell cabinet what it will do. It has degenerated to a house of the parties, a place for fulfilling the party agenda. The government side of the House thinks that it owns the chairs we sit upon, that it owns the desks we sit at and that it can dictate to us how we vote.
My constituents can be sure that the chair I sit upon and the desk I sit at belongs to them. They pay my salary in the House. They are entitled to have me represent them. Whenever they can show me they have a majority position that is against my party, against my personal beliefs or agrees with the government, they can be sure I will vote to represent them. I have proven that on three separate occasions when I voted against my party line. Once I voted against my own beliefs to represent my constituents.
I did not get thrown out of my caucus. I did not get my riding association banished from the face of the earth. Democracy prevailed. In the event it is clear a majority of my constituents want me to vote in a certain manner I am obliged to do so by the constitution of the Reform Party. It actually requires me to do that.
That is a major break for democracy which I hope will gradually spread to other areas of the House.
I realize that my time has run out at this stage so I will deign to sit down. This was my first opportunity to speak to Bill C-70. I look forward to hearing more speeches later in the debate.