Mr. Speaker, I too wish to say a few words on the bill that is before the House today.
It is a bill to establish a taxation agency. In other words, it takes the function that Revenue Canada now has away from Revenue Canada and establishes a taxation agency which would have sweeping powers to administer not just income tax at the federal level and to collect that tax, but to collect income tax at the provincial level, to collect the federal GST, to collect provincial sales taxes, to collect liquor taxes, gasoline taxes and eventually down the road to collect taxes from municipalities. That is the purpose of the bill before the House today.
It is a very important and fundamental change in the administration of taxes in this country. It is a bill that deserves a lot of attention by members of this House in terms of whether or not we want to go in this direction as a country.
The minister spoke this morning. He told us that there are a couple of important reasons for proposing this legislation. I want to review those very briefly. He said it is important that we have a federal-provincial tax agency that the provinces and federal government subscribe to in terms of collecting taxes. He said that this agency would be more efficient, would save money and so on. I raise a few concerns about this because of what I see happening in the country.
On the question of provincial-federal co-operation, if that were the case it would be an excellent theory. As I read the country around me, I find there is very adamant opposition to this by the provinces of Quebec and Ontario. Right there, two provinces representing around two-thirds of the population of the country are opposing this bill. Saskatchewan and British Columbia are certainly not convinced that this is good legislation.
My understanding is that there is not a single province to date, unless I am out of touch here, that has officially signed on to this agency or has even signed a letter of intent. Maybe the minister will get up and correct that.
That seems to me to be a very bad start when the provinces are in opposition to a bill that is supposed to be there to collect taxes for the provinces and the federal government. The provinces see this as an intrusion into their field of jurisdiction. I think that is a serious matter in terms of federal-provincial relations. It is a serious matter of the lack of co-operative federalism in a country where we need more co-operative federalism and governments working together in concert with each other. I know the minister agrees with that but it has not happened so far.
The minister tells us to be patient. We can be patient but in the long run we are all dead. How long does he want us to be patient? He tells us to trust him. Well a lot of people in politics have said “Trust me and things will work out”. The minister is a pretty honest and straightforward guy but he cannot by himself get the Ontario or Quebec governments or any other province to come onside.
There is also the issue of Quebec. I worry about some of the national unity consequences of this in terms of the timing. The Quebec government certainly sees this as an intrusion into provincial jurisdiction. Quebec is not talking about ceding more power to a federal agency. In fact most Quebecers, including the provincial Liberal Party, talk about a greater devolution of power to the province of Quebec. Whether it is a greater devolution to all the provinces or asymmetrical federalism, they would like a greater devolution.
This bill is now coming within months of the writs being dropped for a provincial election in Quebec. It is a very crucial election in terms of that province and the future of our country, which may or may not result in another referendum about the future of Canada.
Again I worry about the timing of this bill in terms of the federal-provincial consequences and the consequences in the province of Quebec. I question the wisdom of this. If we want to make this country work, we need co-operative federalism.
A long time ago we had leaders in this House of Commons who talked a lot about co-operative federalism: Lester Pearson when he was prime minister of the country; Bob Stanfield, the leader of the Conservative Party; Tommy Douglas, the leader of the New Democratic Party. This country was making great progress in terms of national unity, in bringing this country together, in the sharing of powers and in co-operation.
Now it seems that we have a bill here that is going in the opposite direction. If there were a federal-provincial agreement on this and agreement from the provinces, it would be a different case, but that is not the case in the bill before us today. That is a major concern I wanted to raise in the House.
I also want to raise the concern about the diminishing power of government itself. This is really the most major privatization this government has carried out. It is quasi-privatization. It is taking away 40,000 public servants from the Department of National Revenue, which is about 20% of the public servants. It is slicing away about $2 billion from the estimates of this country to establish an agency that will be run according to the business practices that will be arm's length from the Parliament of Canada and from the minister himself.
The minister assures us that the powers are still there and that he is still responsible because that is the way the legislation is written. Even the auditor general was concerned about this in his report in December 1997. He was concerned about the public interest and about the arm's length of this agency in terms of accountability. As was mentioned by a member of the Reform Party, there is a growing lack of accountability of government agencies and government bodies.
I am also concerned about the diminishing role of government and of the public sector which has certainly been expedited since the Liberal Party took office. The Liberal Party used to complain when the Brian Mulroney government privatized something or diminished the role of government, yet that has been expedited since the 1993 election.
There has been a lot of talk about uniting the right. I think the right is pretty much united. It sits across the way. It is the Liberal Government of Canada.