Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak at this stage of Bill C-43.
The Bloc Quebecois has expressed constructive opposition to this bill from the beginning. The government is laying open to question a vital principle, with its desire to create an instrument for collecting taxes that would allow it to encroach on others' areas of jurisdiction. Take, for example, the taxes that could be collected in Quebec.
There is also the fact that the taxpayers' independence will be greatly diminished if they have to deal with this huge bureaucracy for tax collection. Every citizen must contribute his proper share, must participate in the government budget, but not excessively.
We are familiar with the cases of a number of people who have received notices of assessment and then, after these are looked into, it is found that a compromise could have been reached, that more could have been done. Most of these cases are settled through the usual mechanisms, but not all.
This bill will lead to more such cases. The government says it must collect a lot of money. Such is the philosophy behind their collecting money for employment insurance, money deducted at source. I fear the same attitude will be behind the proposed agency.
As well, the employees of this agency need to be independent, and in the past their independence was linked to their status as public servants, which is likely to undergo a significant change. They may end up more vulnerable to political interference. In the end, the people will be less well served by the new formula proposed by the bill.
The argument that the provinces, Quebec for example, could voluntarily come under the new proposal for this federal agency to collect all taxes, strikes me as rather fallacious. It smacks of Plan B. Some years ago, Quebeckers decided that they wanted part of their taxes to be collected by Quebec, so that the money would be divided as the Government of Quebec wanted. We agreed on the GST. The GST is collected and administered by Quebec, which then hands it over to the federal government, and the future lies much more in this direction.
If people, even federalists, were prepared to consider taking the opposite approach and, instead of letting the federal government collect taxes and giving it spending authority in all the provincial areas of jurisdiction, were to let any province so wishing collect taxes and remit a portion thereof for its share of services provided by the federal government, the entire dynamic of Canadian federalism would be altered.
The bill before us is not based on this approach. Instead, it is based on ensuring that the federal government has an increasing number of ways in which it can invade the provinces' areas of jurisdiction, gradually strangle them and take their place. Ultimately, the federal government is becoming ever-present. This is one more way of confirming the old vision of Canada as a country with a single level of government, in which the provinces are seen as little more than overgrown municipalities. They have very limited powers and they are certainly not seen by the public as the central authority.
If I may digress, last night I was astonished to learn that the first thing Mr. Charest did as leader of the opposition in Quebec was to ask that Canada's flag be present in the National Assembly. This from someone who says he is in touch with Quebeckers.
It is my impression that he has not completed his “Quebec 101” course, and that it may take years for him to understand. Sometimes too, a person has to be willing to understand. There is, perhaps, something missing here.
This whole dynamic is what underlies the bill before us. The main focus of government for Quebeckers, the control centre, is the Quebec Legislative Assembly. Quebeckers want to see it collecting as much of their taxes as possible. We are not prepared to go before the federal government like lambs to the slaughter and to forgo our fair share of autonomy.
This bill was dormant for a long time. Preparations were under way for a very long time to try and get it past Parliament, and finally it was decided to table it. But it is running into considerable opposition, particularly from experts in the field and from all those who work for the department and feel that this bill will make the taxpayer the loser in the long run and deprive them of the necessary autonomy to perform their duties.
I am going to propose another possible mode, one which the government ought to consider. Instead of steamrollering a bill through like this, the provinces ought to have been consulted in order to see what model might have been acceptable to them, and whether there are any conditions which might prove to be of interest without making a government such as the Government of Quebec feel caught in a trap.
Tax collection is certainly not the answer to all the country's ills, but it is the kind of issue that goes to the heart of what is really bothering people. In its determination to ram this bill through, the federal government is invoking closure so as to cut off debate before all parliamentarians have had a chance to express their views.
There is no rush. We do not have a national or international crisis. We have a bill that is sadly in need of improvement. It is clear that the bill would have needed many more changes at report stage to be acceptable to the majority of parties in the House.
This is the sort of issue that demands that we take the time to reach a consensus because it has a direct effect on the public through tax collection and through negotiations with individuals and with companies. There has to be broad consensus on the approach. This was not a bill that had the support of the majority, such bills often standing up very well in the long run because enough thought went into them at the outset.
Instead, we have a bill passed by a majority that has its head in the sand and has decided to ram the bill through, without making the necessary amendments.
For these reasons, and for all the reasons mentioned by the Bloc Quebecois members, I think it important that this bill be considered further and sent back to committee, or withdrawn so that it can be worked into something acceptable.
We would do better to take our time to produce something acceptable and to remove all the irritants the bill contains for those who would like a government, such as Quebec, to be allowed to retain and to broaden its autonomy with respect to tax collection.