House of Commons Hansard #67 of the 36th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was finance.

Topics

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:10 p.m.

NDP

Nelson Riis NDP Kamloops, BC

Mr. Speaker, I have a second petition on another matter to present.

The petitioners are from throughout central British Columbia. They are concerned about the government's seniors benefit package that will soon be coming to parliament.

They are worried that the clawback will penalize those Canadians who have provided for their retirement years while rewarding those who have not.

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:10 p.m.

NDP

Nelson Riis NDP Kamloops, BC

Mr. Speaker, I have a third petition to present.

The petitioners indicate that if the government is to proceed with any form of tax reform, which we have just seen it is really not, it should be phasing out or phasing down the GST.

This would benefit all Canadians and put money into the hands of Canadians to stimulate their local economies.

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:10 p.m.

Liberal

Paul Steckle Liberal Huron—Bruce, ON

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I am happy, on behalf of a great number of constituents in my riding, to present a petition this afternoon.

The petitioners believe that consumers in Canada are basically at the mercy of the pricing policies of oil companies. They therefore petition the Government of Canada to adopt legislation which would require gasoline companies to give 30 days written notice to the Minister of Natural Resources of an impending significant increase in the price of gasoline of over 1% of the current pump price per litre. Also the notice should contain the reason or reasons for the increase and when it will take effect.

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:10 p.m.

Liberal

Janko Peric Liberal Cambridge, ON

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36 I have the privilege to present four petitions to the House.

In the first petition 40 citizens of my riding of Cambridge wish to draw to the attention of the House their concerns for the sanctity of life.

The petitioners pray and request that Parliament retain current provisions in the Criminal Code prohibiting assisted suicide and that Parliament not sanction the aiding of suicide or euthanasia.

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Liberal

Janko Peric Liberal Cambridge, ON

Mr. Speaker, in the second petition 25 concerned citizens in my riding call on Parliament to ask the minister responsible for Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to protect the future of housing co-operatives in Ontario.

The petitioners request that the minister only negotiate with his provincial counterpart under publicly declared principles established with input from co-operative housing stakeholders.

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Liberal

Janko Peric Liberal Cambridge, ON

Mr. Speaker, the next petition, which contains 130 signatures, calls on Parliament to enact legislation protecting health care providers from having to take part in abortions or in referrals for such procedures.

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Liberal

Janko Peric Liberal Cambridge, ON

Mr. Speaker, in the final petition over 500 citizens in my riding of Cambridge and surrounding areas draw to the attention of this House their concerns with the issue of nudity in public places.

The petitioners pray that Parliament clarify and reinforce the relevant sections of the Criminal Code to ensure that these laws will meet the reasonable limit test under the charter of rights and freedoms.

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

NDP

John Solomon NDP Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK

Mr. Speaker, I have three petitions to present to the House today pursuant to Standing Order 36.

The first one is a petition signed by many Canadians who are very concerned about the seniors benefit and are calling on the Parliament of Canada to undertake to review the entire retirement income system in Canada to ensure there is adequacy in the system today and tomorrow.

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

NDP

John Solomon NDP Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK

Mr. Speaker, the second petition pursuant to Standing Order 36 is from a number of Canadians who are very concerned about the multilateral agreement on investment.

These Canadians are concerned that the House of Commons would be signing this without public debate. They are calling on the government and the House of Commons to debate this issue in the House publicly and to place the issue, if the Government of Canada decides to sign the MAI, before a national referendum for all the people of Canada to make that decision.

They are concerned about this because obviously the rights of Canadian citizens and the power of the Government of Canada would be greatly superseded by those foreign—

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

Order. I know the hon. member will not want to make a speech on the presentation of petitions but comply with the rules and give a brief summary of the petition and perhaps the place where the petitioners are from, which I think the rules allow.

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

NDP

John Solomon NDP Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that advice. My final petition is pertaining to the tax system in Canada. These Canadians are very concerned about the unfair tax system and they are calling for fair tax reform.

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Liberal

Paul Szabo Liberal Mississauga South, ON

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition signed by a number of Canadians including from my own riding of Mississauga South.

The petitioners draw to the attention of the House that police officers and firefighters are required to place their lives at risk on a daily basis and that employment benefits for them often do not provide sufficient compensation for the families of those who are killed in the line of duty.

They also state that the public mourns their loss when they are killed in the line of duty and wishes to support in a tangible way the surviving families in their time of need.

The petitioners therefore ask Parliament to establish a public safety officers compensation fund for the benefit of families of public safety officers killed in the line of duty.

Questions On The Order PaperRoutine Proceedings

February 25th, 1998 / 3:15 p.m.

Peterborough Ontario

Liberal

Peter Adams LiberalParliamentary Secretary to Leader of the Government in the House of Commons

Mr. Speaker, I suggest that all remaining questions be allowed to stand.

Questions On The Order PaperRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

Is that agreed?

Questions On The Order PaperRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

Motions For PapersRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Peterborough Ontario

Liberal

Peter Adams LiberalParliamentary Secretary to Leader of the Government in the House of Commons

Mr. Speaker, I would ask you to be so kind as to call Motion No. 7 in the name of the hon. member for Brandon—Souris.

That an Order of the House do issue for copies of all plans, drawings, documents and proposals initiated by the Crown, or by others on behalf of the Crown, surrounding the Health Canada study on the licensing of the bovine growth hormone drug (rBST) in Canada.

Motions For PapersRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Liberal

Peter Adams Liberal Peterborough, ON

Mr. Speaker, it is acceptable to the government except for the documents which cannot be released pursuant to the Access to Information Act. These documents are tabled immediately.

Motions For PapersRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

Subject to the conditions mentioned by the hon. parliamentary secretary, does the House agree that notice of Motion P-7 be deemed adopted?

Motions For PapersRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

(Motion agreed to)

Motions For PapersRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Liberal

Peter Adams Liberal Peterborough, ON

Mr. Speaker, I ask that the other Notices of Motions for the Production of Papers be allowed to stand.

Motions For PapersRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

Is it agreed?

Motions For PapersRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

The House resumed from February 24 consideration of the motion that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government.

The BudgetGovernment Orders

3:20 p.m.

Calgary Southwest Alberta

Reform

Preston Manning ReformLeader of the Opposition

Mr. Speaker, I rise to begin the debate on the 1998 federal budget. In the interests of civility I would like to find something in the budget on which I could compliment the minister at the outset. The best I can do is we note that the colour scheme of the 1998 budget is not Liberal red but Reform green. I would like to compliment the minister on this change in colour scheme.

It is the duty of the official opposition to hold the government accountable for its actions and to present constructive alternatives where we consider the government's course of action weak or misguided. This duty we now intend to discharge in relation to the federal budget presented to the House yesterday.

I begin by commenting on what could have been. This budget could have been the best piece of economic news to be received by Canadian taxpayers in the last three decades. It could have been a budget and budget day to be celebrated by all Canadians regardless of party. This could have been the case because, for the first time in 28 years, the federal budget is balanced. For the first time since fiscal year 1969-1970 the federal government will not be spending more than it takes in in taxes.

A balanced budget, the elimination of the deficit, has been a goal to which the Reform Party has aspired since its inception. It is a goal which has been pursued by many other Canadians, by the chambers of commerce, by the boards of trade, by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, by the C.D. Howe Institute, by the Business Council on National Issues, the conference board. The fact that this objective has been reached could have been, for all of us, a day of unqualified celebration.

But I say could have been for a good reason. I say could have been because this budget unfortunately and regrettably also contains a great betrayal of those Canadians who are chiefly responsible for eliminating the deficit.

I refer to the oft abused, oft ignored, long suffering Canadian taxpayers, the 14 million Canadians who pay personal income taxes, the hundreds of thousands of business people who pay corporate taxes and payroll taxes year after year, the millions upon millions of Canadians who pay consumption taxes including the hated GST every day on almost everything they buy.

Let us begin this budget debate by clearly recognizing that it is the taxpayers of Canada who are chiefly responsible for eliminating the deficit.

Let me establish this. When the Liberals took office the deficit, the legacy of fiscal mismanagement left over from the Tories, stood at $42 billion. It now stands at zero or near zero, but how was it eliminated? It was eliminated in part by offloading federal spending on the provinces, by slashing transfers by $7.4 billion. This offloading accounted for about 16.5% of the reduction of the deficit.

Primarily, however, the bulk of the deficit, 70% of it, was eliminated by increased tax revenues collected from the long suffering Canadian taxpayer. The federal government will collect $35 billion more from taxpayers in 1998 than it did in 1993. It has levied 37 tax increases on top of the 71 tax increases levied by the previous tax happy Tory administration. So 70% of the deficit was eliminated not by cutting federal spending but by increased revenues from the taxpayers.

This brings me to the most regrettable feature of the budget, a feature that will go down in Canadian history as the great betrayal. If it is the Canadian taxpayer who has through the payment of increased taxes contributed the most toward eliminating the deficit, then by all that is fair and just and equitable it is the Canadian taxpayer who ought to be the first to be rewarded and ought to receive the most.

The first claim on any surplus ought to be debt reduction and tax relief, the two highest priorities of the very people who made elimination of the deficit possible.

Canadians had a right to expect that this might happen. In the 1997 federal election the Prime Minister solemnly promised the following, from page 29 of the 1997 red book: “We are moving towards a time when the budget will finally be balanced and the government will have a fiscal surplus. When we reach that time, we will allocate every billion dollars of fiscal dividend so that one half will go to a combination of reducing taxes and reducing the national debt”.

By this promise millions of ordinary Canadians were led to understand that as soon as there was a budget surplus they would be rewarded by half of every billion dollars of surplus going to tax relief and debt reduction, and they understood this would occur over the entire mandate of the government in the first year, the second year, the third year and the fourth year. But what happened? Let me tell the House what happened. Let me trace the downward spiral of government credibility on this issue.

Earlier this year the government's Fiscal Monitor showed a December 1 public accounts surplus of $1.4 billion and financial surplus of $11.3 billion. In other words, the official figures from the finance department showed a significant surplus. But at the same time the finance department's spin doctors began to predict a year end deficit of $2 billion; in other words, a sign for anyone watching of front end loading by the government endeavouring to spend any surplus before it could accumulate.

This is an old story. Finance ministers since the days of Sir John A. Macdonald have complained about civil servants, sensing a possible year end surplus in departmental budgets, rushing out to spend it before the fiscal year ends. But in this case we have the Minister of Finance himself, the finance department itself, following exactly the same practice which it has decried.

This downward spiral of credibility was further advanced by the Prime Minister's prebudget speech on Tuesday, February 17. Remember, this is the Prime Minister who a few months before was talking about debt reduction and tax relief. In that speech on February 17 there was not a word about debt reduction and not a word about tax relief. It was as if the red book had become a dead book.

Instead, the speech focused almost entirely on a new spending proposal in a sphere of provincial jurisdiction, namely the Prime Minister's $2.5 billion millennium scholarship fund. By the Prime Minister's own election promise, if there was enough of a surplus to support a new $2.5 billion spending initiative there should automatically have been announced a $2.5 billion contribution to debt and tax relief.

There was not a peep from the Prime Minister on February 17 about debt and tax relief, only the scratching sound of the Prime Minister's pen writing a cheque on the account of the taxpayers of Canada.

The breaking of the Prime Minister's election promise, which was soon to come, became a fait accompli on February 18 when the finance minister told the CBC that he would not be “constrained” by the Prime Minister's election promise.

Now the great betrayal is confirmed in this budget speech. The budget discloses that the entire accumulating surplus for 1997 was spent and no new tax cuts in 1997 and no real debt reduction. That surplus should have amounted to $3 billion and the government spent the whole thing.

In this budget there is no serious effort to tackle the debt. Despite the fact that the polls say the majority of Canadians want debt retirement to be the number one priority of this government, the minister devoted only one and a half pages in his budget speech to debt reduction while he spent eleven pages and a great deal of time on spending proposals.

Net public debt remains constant at $583 billion over the mandate of the government. Interest charges on the debt increase to $45 billion per year. The claim that the government has reduced market debt by $13 billion fails to mention that much of this has been done by the government using its MasterCard to pay off its Visa card, using funds from the civil service superannuation fund and from CPP to pay off government debt.

The provision for only a $3 billion contingency reserve, which may go to paying down the debt only if it is not needed by the big spenders in the government, is completely inadequate. In the 1997 federal budget, and I quote from page 47, it said in big bold black letters—the finance department was trying to impress us—“the contingency reserve is not a source of funding for new policy initiatives”. It said the same thing on page 94 of the 1996 budget. It said the same thing on page 68 of the 1995 budget.

However, in 1998 the contingency reserve disappeared and was replaced by an equal amount of new spending. Program spending was budgeted at $103 billion. The actual spending was $106 billion. The difference was made up from this contingency fund that was not to be touched for that purpose. This says that statements by the minister, even if they are in the budget, about what the contingency reserve fund may or may not be used for are not worth the paper they are written on.

What is needed is the ironclad national debt retirement fund proposed by the official opposition and established by law, to which fund 50% of any budget surplus would be allocated by law each year.

The big story of the budget is that while no serious effort is made to tackle the debt, spending is nevertheless up by $11 billion over the next four years.

While tax relief measures amounting to $7 billion are offered over three years, total taxes paid by all taxpayers increased by $46 billion over the period. In other words the government is prepared to put $900 in tax relief into the average family's right pocket and then take almost $6,000 in additional tax revenues out of the left pocket and hope that the hapless taxpayer does not know what is happening to him.

We find it unbelievable that the finance minister was able to get this shell game through the government caucus. Picture it. He apparently came to the Liberal caucus one day, that great sheepfold where Liberal backbenchers are told what to do and think. He must have said to them “I am going to give the Canadian taxpayers $7 billion in tax relief over the next three years and I am going to take 400,000 people off the tax rolls”. He must have said that.

Apparently nobody stood up. The chairman of the finance committee must have been sitting there; he did not stand up. Nobody stood up and said “Mr. Minister, while you are giving $7 billion in tax relief over three years with one hand, our CPP payroll tax hike over the same period takes more than $7 billion from the pockets of those taxpayers. So how can the taxpayers be further ahead?”

Furthermore, when the minister said he was going to take 400,000 people off the tax rolls, surely someone in the Liberal caucus must have stood up and said “But Mr. Minister, bracket creep alone will add 460,000 people to the tax rolls over the same period and again the taxpayers are worse off at the end of the day”.

That is why it is necessary to have an official opposition. To hold the finance minister accountable, because there is absolutely no accountability demanded of the minister by the Liberal caucus.

Therefore 1998 should have gone down as a landmark victory for Canadian taxpayers, the end of overspending, the elimination of the deficit, the beginning of a new era of tax relief and debt reduction. Instead it will go down as the year of the great betrayal, the year of the broken promise, the beginning not of broad based tax relief and debt reduction but the beginning of more Liberal spending, the very thing that led to high deficits, high debt and high taxes in the first place.

This budget eliminates a fiscal deficit but leaves in its place a credibility deficit which will not be eliminated until this government is driven from office.

I suppose that Canadians should not be surprised by these betrayals and broken promises. Exactly the same thing happened after the 1993 election. Canadians were led to believe that if they voted Liberal, the promise to kill, scrap, abolish the GST would be kept. But in the end the vision and the promise of tax relief was shattered by a broken promise.

I suggest that this pattern of betrayal has become an inherent characteristic of Liberal governments: winning votes by presenting a vision encased in a promise and then shattering the vision by breaking the promise. It is a pattern of which I am personally reminded every day.

Perhaps not all members of the House are aware that the office on the fourth floor of the Centre Block which I now occupy as Leader of the Official Opposition is the old office which was occupied by Mackenzie King, the founder of modern liberalism. He occupied it from 1920 to 1948, not just when he was leader of the opposition; he liked it so much he kept it when he was prime minister.

Mackenzie King helped to decorate that office. He helped to choose the frescos, the pictures around the top of the walls just below the ceiling. These are pictures of knights in armour in various poses intended to depict the various virtues which parliamentarians are to display. There is one displaying struggle. There is one on integrity. There is one on justice. There is one on conciliation. But it is the last fresco which is the most interesting. It is entitled “Vision”. It is the picture of an angel receiving a vision and handing it to the knight.

According to historians, the face on the angel is Mackenzie King's mother's face. He asked the painter to put his mother's face on that picture. We will recall that next to his dog, there was no creature on Earth more highly esteemed by Mackenzie King. Reformers esteem Mackenzie King's mother as well because she of course was the daughter of a Reformer, William Lyon Mackenzie, so I would not want to say anything to denigrate Mackenzie King's mother.

However, beneath this lovely portrait of “Vision” is a wall panel. If we push it, we discover that it is on hinges and swings open to reveal a dark secret passage out of the office. I suggest that this is the perfect picture of Liberal politics. Up on high is this glorious vision, like the vision of a balanced budget, a vision of fiscal responsibility, but just beneath it is a trap door to enable them to escape the burden of the vision.

This is a shameful pattern. It is a shameful legacy. It is one which the finance minister will not be allowed to forget. When the current finance minister replaces the current Prime Minister, as he seems determined to do, and when he then loses the next election, as he most surely will, he may very well find himself planning his retirement in the Turks and Caicos, sitting in that same office as leader of the official opposition. He will then be daily reminded of that fatal flaw of a degenerate liberalism, a congenital predisposition to betray in government the visions it espouses at election time.

Having outlined the greatest fundamental weakness of the budget, the betrayal of the interests of the taxpayer in debt reduction and tax relief, let me comment further on the spending and taxing components of the budget.

The government has made it clear that its number one priority once the budget is balanced is to increase spending; 50% of any surplus should go to spending. The budget itself contains 17 spending proposals amounting to $11 billion over four years.

Members should note that the spending program proposed by the government has two major flaws, flaws which have become characteristic of Liberal budgets.

The first flaw is that government spending still contains billions of wasteful expenditures. There is almost $1.1 billion of wasteful and patronage ridden regional development programs that simply do not work, have never worked and will never work. There is over $800 million in subsidies to CBC TV which should be eliminated through privatization while preserving Newsworld and CBC radio. There is at least $1 billion to DIAND that does not have a hope of ever getting down into the hands of ordinary aboriginal people. The list goes on and on. I have not mentioned the small wasteful expenditures which add up to big waste, such as spending $97,000 of federal money on a study of idolatry and religious practice in colonial Peru, or $57,000 on a study on wives and husbands in 15th century England.

My colleague, the hon. member for St. Albert, chairman of the public accounts committee, will be dutifully digging out all these wasteful expenditures and reporting them in his regular “Waste Report”.

The second flaw in the government's spending program, and this is a big one and a bad one at this point in our history, is that the government continues to abuse its constitutional spending power by spending without consultation and without co-operation in provincial areas of jurisdiction.

Its biggest new expenditure item is the $2.5 billion millennium scholarship fund. Did the government go to students and ask them “We have $2.5 billion to spend on education, how do you think it should be spent?” If the government had done that, it would have heard that the preference of students is to pay down existing student debt which is now accumulating at the rate of $2 billion a year and to increase transfers to institutions in order to lower tuitions.

Did the government go to the provinces? This House is to be bound by the Constitution. It has a list of what the federal government does and what the provincial governments do. If we go through the list, education is under the provinces. Presumably the government went to the provinces and asked them “We have $2.5 billion for education. How would you like us to spend it?” If the government had done that, it would have heard that the provinces' priority would have been for the federal government to restore the $7 billion in cuts to health and education transfers made in previous years.

The biggest flaws therefore in the government spending programs are its abuse of the Constitution and its failure to eliminate waste.

The constructive alternative, and the official opposition is in the business of constructive alternatives, offered by the official opposition is contained in our booklet entitled “Securing Your Future”. Our alternative is to hold the line on spending at $103 billion. This can largely be done by eliminating the wasteful expenditures that I have referred to earlier.

We propose to hold that line for three years while the focus is entirely on debt and tax relief. Then we say allow spending to rise but only by the percentage rate that the economy itself is growing. The difference between the government spending program and the Reform spending program is the difference between irresponsible, unconstrained spending and responsible limited spending.

Let me turn for a minute to taxation. To finance its spending program, the government will collect $151 billion in taxes next year, $35 billion more than the Liberals collected in 1993. If the CPP payroll taxes are included, the total rises to $42 billion more than the government was taking in 1993.

To maintain this level of revenue, Tory and Liberal administrations over the past 14 years have established one of the most socially and financially repressive tax regimes in the western world.

I am here today, at the commencement of the 1998 budget debate, with the full backing of 58 Reform colleagues to say on behalf of millions of Canadian taxpayers, enough is enough.

On behalf of the 14 million personal income taxpayers upon whom the government has inflicted the highest personal income taxes in the western world, we are here to say enough is enough.

On behalf of the hundreds of thousands of small and large business people who are strangling in Revenue Canada red tape and who cannot expand or hire more employees because they are paying too much income tax, too much excise tax and too much payroll tax, we are here to say on their behalf that enough is enough.

On behalf of the 2.7 million taxpayers, single mothers, young graduates, retired Canadians, Canadians whom the finance minister described today in question period as ones for whom he has such a passionate concern, and from whom he collects $1.4 billion a year in taxes, we are here to say enough is enough.

On behalf of the 7.7 million taxpayers, hard working, often underemployed parents and citizens making $30,000 a year from whom this finance minister extracts $12 billion a year in revenue, we are here to say that enough is enough.

On behalf of the hundreds of thousands of Canadian young people who see their first paycheque chopped by Revenue Canada, we are here to say enough is enough.

We deplore the hypocrisy exhibited by the other side on this point. The youngest members in this House are in this caucus, not in that caucus. If anyone is entitled to speak on how young people feel about taxes and debt, it is this caucus, not that aging caucus.

For the hundreds of thousands of seniors who are worried sick when they see an ever increasing proportion of their fixed income clawed back by the government, we are here to say on their behalf because they cannot stand here and say it themselves, that enough is enough.

On behalf of the millions of moms and dads, like the Kim Hicks family that visited the House earlier in the year, who cannot make ends meet because they are paying more in taxes than they pay for food, for shelter, for clothing, we are here to say that enough is enough.

On behalf of all those Canadian families who have taken a $3,000 a year pay cut because of the spend and tax policies of the government, and who cannot personally stand in this House to protest the injustice and the frustration and the unfairness of it all, we are here to say enough is enough.

For more and more Canadians, the federal government is no longer identified with the services it provides. This government is not considered by the rank and file of people as the government of medicare, or the government of old age assistance, or the government of the CBC.

Today in the minds of millions of Canadians the federal government is most identified with the excessive taxes it imposes. It is the government of Revenue Canada. It is the government of T-4s. It is the government of the GST. It is the government of taxes which, if not reduced, threaten to render the very name of the Government of Canada and the finance minister and the finance department odious to the Canadian people.

If there are members opposite who do not know the meaning of the word odious, its synonyms are: repulsive, repugnant, disgusting, disreputable, despicable, detestable, execrable, infamous, invidious, obnoxious, offensive, contemptible, abominable, loathsome, repellent and hateful.

I realize that the Canadian taxpayer did not get into this abused relationship with the federal government all at once. This confiscation of the taxpayers' income and resources by successive governments has happened gradually, one tax at a time, one increase at a time, the hope of such governments being that the taxpayer will be annoyed and inconvenienced by each tax bite but never angered enough to revolt.

The Liberal government's approach to taxpayers reminds me of an old story. When it comes to taxes there are no new stories.

It is an old story of a travelling salesman whose car broke down in the country. He hiked over to a farmer's house. The farmer offered to help but first invited him in for lunch. As the salesman sat down at the table he noted that seated at the farmer's table were the farmer's wife, three children and a pig. The pig had three medals around its neck and a wooden leg.

This salesman was a Canadian. That meant he was polite. He did not want to appear nosy. He did not want to appear inquisitive. So he sat through the whole meal without saying anything, just making small talk. Finally he could not contain himself. He said to the farmer “What is with the pig?”

The farmer explained “One of our children once fell into the dugout. That pig ran into the dugout and pulled the child out so we gave him a medal”. He said “Our second child once set fire to the barn. The pig ran in there, pulled that child out from the flames and the smoke and we gave him another medal”. He said “The third child was once cornered in the field by a bull but that pig rushed in, diverted the bull so that the child could run to safety. We gave him another medal”. “That explains the medals”, said the salesman, “but what about the wooden leg?” “Well”, said the farmer “when you have a pig this good, you only eat him a piece at a time”.

I suggest that that farmer's attitude toward the pig is very similar to the Liberal government's attitude toward the taxpayer.

The government is willing to recognize the heroic achievements of the average taxpayer who is raising a family, paying the mortgage, paying taxes. It gives him a medal for that. The Liberals are even willing to give him or her a taste of tax relief now and then, like the $7 billion promised over the next three years while at the same time collecting $46 billion more through general tax revenue increases.

But in the end, this government's primary interest in that taxpayer is to confiscate more and more of his or her income. Only with a taxpayer that good, you do not eat him all at once. You just eat him a bit at a time, a leg today, an arm tomorrow and the rest next year.

In summary, the Liberal-Tory record of overtaxation is one of the most socially and financially repressive regimes in the western world and Canadians are paying the price.

Every Canadian who is out of work or working for low pay and under poor conditions, and there are millions of them, is paying the price of this high tax regime in this country. Every parent or senior who is living in despair below the poverty line and still paying taxes, and there are millions of them, is paying the price of too high a tax system. Every entrepreneur who defers investment in a new project, every business person who decides not to hire another employee because their income is strained by overtaxation, they are paying the price of too high a tax system.

These people want real tax relief, not token tax relief. They want real tax relief moved up, way up on the agenda of this Parliament and this government.

On the subject of tax relief, my colleagues, in particular the official opposition critic for finance, the member for Medicine Hat, and the official opposition critic for revenue, the member for Calgary Southeast, will have more to say on the official opposition's proposals for tax relief.

Suffice it to say that if the tax relief proposals contained in the official opposition's “Securing Your Future” program were to be fully implemented, they would deliver more than $20 billion in tax relief per year to Canadians. They would lift 1.3 million lower and middle income Canadians off the federal tax rolls altogether which in turn would lift a tremendous weight of worry and anguish off the shoulders of those taxpayers. They would deliver more than $2,000 in tax relief to the average family of four by the year 2000 which in turn would deliver stress relief to families such as no government program could deliver.

When fully implemented, our tax relief proposals would deliver over $1.4 billion per year in tax relief to Atlantic Canada, over $4.5 billion per year in tax relief to Quebec, almost $7.5 billion per year in tax relief to Ontario, over $1.4 billion per year in tax relief to Manitoba and Saskatchewan, over $1.9 billion per year in tax relief to Alberta, and over $2.5 billion per year in tax relief to British Columbia.

That is tax relief that would do more to stimulate local economies and accomplish regional development than all the regional development programs and policies ever conceived of or implemented by this government.

These Reform proposals would deliver genuine broad based tax relief to people, but I am talking about more than financial relief. I am talking about relief from stress and guilt and worry and anxiety and despair. I am talking about people being able to sleep better at night, being able to get out of debt, to have more money to put away, to build more security and freedom in their own lives and to have more opportunity to get a decent job with a good income. Tax relief is not just a fiscal policy. It is a social policy.

I have spoken earlier of the great betrayal of the Canadian taxpayer contained in the budget. But there are two other groups of Canadians for whom this budget will also be a huge disappointment. I refer first to Canadian youth and second to Canada's unemployed.

We just had a marvellous convention last weekend with an active group of young people from across the country. They are acutely conscious, much more conscious than perhaps their elders that under the Liberal-Tory mismanagement the federal government has piled up this federal debt of $583 billion or $20,000 worth of debt for every man, woman and child in the country.

This debt constitutes an intergenerational transfer of wealth since the taxes needed to finance the interest and the principal are levied on future taxpayers while the borrowing that the debt represents enriches the lives of current citizens. The debt in fact constitutes a $77,000 second mortgage on every family of four in the country, both the principal and the interest on which must be paid off by future generations of Canadians.

In addition, as if that was not enough, the young people of this country are conscious that under Liberal-Tory mismanagement of the Canada pension plan the unfunded liability of that plan now amounts to another $485 billion. So the unfunded liability on the Canada pension plan constitutes a third mortgage on every family of four in the amount of $65,000, the repayment of which falls squarely and disproportionately on the young.

Against these huge obligations, the $77,000 second mortgage, the $65,000 third mortgage, which successive governments have loaded on to young people, what does the government have to offer? A $2.5 billion millennium fund. An amount insufficient to pay the interest for one month on the debt imposed on young Canadians; an amount which pales into insignificance when compared with the hundreds of millions of dollars in tuition fees paid by students each year or the billions of dollars in student debt already accumulated; an amount which pales into insignificance when compared with the CPP premiums young Canadians will have to pay after the minister's 73% hike in CPP payroll taxes.

To address the betrayal of youth by a generation of shortsighted and self-serving Liberal and Tory politicians, the official opposition offers not tokenism but constructive alternatives. Some of these details will be elaborated on by my colleagues.

Suffice it to say at this point that we support the reform of the student loan program to make interest on student loans deductible and to make repayment less onerous and more secure by directing it through the income tax system. But we want to do much more than that.

In the weeks ahead we intend to enter into a public discussion on a reform of CPP which will give young people a choice between the current CPP managed by the government and a personal pension plan designed for younger and middle aged workers owned and controlled by them, not by the government. But our greatest commitment to youth in the future is reflected in a concrete plan to tackle and reduce the crushing federal debt.

Our plan has three features. The first is a commitment to devote 50% of future budget surpluses to debt retirement, to reduce the mortgage on our young people's future.

Second is a commitment to set debt reduction targets and to stick to them and not the pale targets contained in this budget which no financier in the world would even recognize as a target. We propose concrete targets of reducing federal debt from 70% of GDP to 50% by the year 2003 and 20% by the year 2016; in other words to cut that second mortgage on every family in this country from $77,000 to $36,900 over the next 20 years. This achieves savings of some $20 billion in interest per year which are then available either for tax relief or for social investment.

Third, we back up these commitments with balanced budget legislation: a legal definition of surplus so that the games playing that has gone on around here over the last three months cannot go on, a commitment to accounting principles for calculating the surplus that will prevent finance ministers from playing with the books; a legal requirement to keep the budget balanced over a four year cycle; a legal requirement to put 50% of defined surplus into a national debt retirement fund; and penalties on ministers and MPs for violation of those guidelines.

Six provinces of this country have balanced budget laws. If the federal government were really serious about debt retirement or removing this enormous burden from future generations, this budget should have been accompanied by a federal law making a repeat of the Liberal-Tory deficit and debt accumulation illegal.

I want to direct a word to that other vast group of Canadians whose needs will never be met by the budget. This is a group whose hopes have been mocked by budget after budget and throne speech after throne speech produced by the Liberal government. This is a group to which the federal government addresses more words than any other and does less than it does for any other group.

I refer to the 1.4 million Canadians who are without work today, the 2 million to 3 million Canadians who are underemployed, and the hundreds of thousands of unemployed or underemployed young people which give us the highest youth unemployment record in the western world.

From jobs, jobs, jobs and employment is the number one priority in its first budget in 1994, the government has fallen into the pallid and token provisions for job creation and youth employment contained in the budget.

Even if we believed that government spending and government policy could somehow lead to jobs in the numbers that are required by the unemployed, who would ever believe that the government, after five years in office and a record of failure in this area, has any new answers? In contrast, the official opposition has a job creation strategy for the 21st century worthy of the name, large enough to match the problem and particularly capable of offering help to youth.

The government has relied on a one cylinder engine of government spending to drive its job creation engine. The official opposition wants to harness a bigger, stronger four cylinder engine to that task.

The other three cylinders are business investment, consumer spending and international trade. To stimulate business investment and consumer spending we advocate the broad based tax relief discussed a moment ago. That includes a $3.3 billion reduction in payroll taxes paid by job creating employers.

Of course there needs to be more investment in job creation and human resources, in training and technology, but does anyone in their right mind believe that the federal government is the best one to lead or to make that investment?

The federal government cannot even train its senators to come to work, let alone do something useful when they get there. The federal government cannot even apply technology like electronic voting to the House. I hope someone writes that little story up one of these days, if they think the federal government has a grasp on how to attach modern technology to a current operation.

Let those investments be primarily made by individuals and families in their own education and by institutions and companies in training and technology, by leaving more of their own dollars in their own pockets through tax relief. Until that stimulus is provided we are absolutely convinced there will be no significant improvement in job creation numbers over the present levels. While the present employment levels may be good enough for Liberals, they are not good enough for the official opposition and they are not good enough for Canadians.

I have something to say to every unemployed person, particularly those who have become weary and discouraged because they feel there is no hope. I have something to say to every underemployed person. I meet lots of them: the university graduate who is working in the fast food joint, the engineering graduate who is driving a cab. Whoever they are and wherever they are, I want to say to the hundreds of thousands of young people who are worried about finding a summer job, let alone finding a good paying permanent job, that the key to more jobs is tax relief.

The key to more jobs is not more government programs. It is not more rhetoric like we saw in the budget speech. That has not worked. For the past 10 years it has not worked. The key is more dollars in the pockets of consumers to spend and in the pockets of investors.

It is time the great army of the unemployed and underemployed made common cause with the oppressed and angry taxpayers to demand the tax relief which is the key to firing up the job creation engine.

The country needs to further stimulate the fourth great cylinder of the job creation engine. We need to stimulate greater international trade, a stronger export sector and a bigger and better strategy than trade junkets to prospective trading countries led by the Prime Minister.

The country needs tax relief to make our exporters more competitive. We need an MAI that works for Canada, that will allow responsible Canadian based multinationals to function freely and securely anywhere in the world. We need an enlargement of our trading sphere.

On this latter point I am proposing today that Canada and the United States invite the United Kingdom to join the North American free trade area. Expansion of the North American free trade area means more jobs and higher incomes for Canadians. The country's trade alliances should reinforce and complement our historic foreign policy and defence alliances. The United Kingdom has more in common with Canada and the United States with respect to foreign policy and defence issues than it has with France or Germany.

Getting the United Kingdom into NAFTA would be particularly beneficial to Atlantic Canada, which could then promote itself as Europe's great trade gateway to North America, just as the U.K. could promote itself as America's gateway to European trade.

The official opposition calls upon Canada's Prime Minister to do something strategic and far sighted for once to increase and enlarge our trading sphere, to actively pursue with U.S. President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair the idea of Britain joining the North American free trade area.

Even if in the end this idea is resisted, Canada and the Prime Minister should at least be more vigorously pursuing freer trade with Europe and doing so in association and co-operation with our oldest Atlantic partner.

We came to the budget debate today, half hoping that this could be a day of unbridled celebration of our 10 year advocacy of a balanced budget. Instead, we find ourselves forced to hold the government accountable for a broken promise. It is a great betrayal of the Canadian taxpayers and a great betrayal of Canada's youth and unemployed.

To counter these dark blotches on the government's budget, we offer the alternative of, first, a commitment of 50% of any future surplus to debt reduction; second, a commitment of 50% of any future surplus to tax relief; and, third, a job creation strategy based on a broader foundation and a broader vision than anything contained in the budget.

In the meantime, while Canada awaits new and better leadership than that offered by the authors of the budget, I move:

That the motion be amended by replacing all the words after the word “that” with the following:

The House of Commons reject the budget statement by the Minister of Finance because it denies Canadians debt and tax relief by spending away the federal budget surplus, thus killing opportunities for job creation and economic growth; it leaves Canadians saddled with the highest personal income tax rates in the G-7 countries resulting in a systematic brain drain to jurisdictions with lower taxation levels; it allows interest charges on the national debt to consume one-third of every tax dollar collected by the federal government and to exceed spending on health care, education and old age security combined; it continues the steady decrease in real disposable income for the average Canadian through tax hikes; and it does not keep the government's promise of committing 50% of the surplus to new spending and the remaining 50% to some combination of debt reduction and tax relief.

The BudgetGovernment Orders

4:05 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

Resuming debate on the amendment.