Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on Bill C-36, the budget implementation act. The reason I will be very resoundingly voting against the bill is that contained within the bill is the fact that the government is not adhering to standard accounting practices.
The words of the auditor general are: “I believe the change will open the door for governments to influence reported results by simply announcing intentions in their budgets and then deciding what to include in the deficit or surplus after the end of the year once preliminary numbers are known”.
This is not an unqualified person. This is the Auditor General of Canada who is expressing severe concern about the way in which this Liberal government is currently administering the finances of Canada.
I stand on behalf of a number of people when I come here in my role as the member of Parliament for Kootenay—Columbia. I would like to refer to an e-mail that I received from one of my constituents on March 2, 1998.
The constituent writes that her husband is employed at a planer mill. His income is over $60,000, which sounds like a lot of money, but she said I should keep reading. She said they have just sent in last year's income tax and, if it is correct, they will have paid $21,552.91 in income tax, Canada pension plan and unemployment insurance premiums.
This works out to almost 31% of the couple's income. If sales taxes, hidden taxes, municipal taxes and the others are added, it means that almost 50% of their income goes to taxes.
The woman goes on to say that there are four of them living on her husband's wages. She worked at B.C. Gas until January 1994. She quit because in 1993 her husband and she paid more in income tax, Canada pension plan and UI premiums than the amount of her take-home pay and she was earning almost $20 an hour.
The couple has a daughter living at home who works part time and a son who is presently attending college. She said that their budget is very tight, to say the least. They are at the point where they pay the bills, buy some groceries and put gas in their vehicle.
The couple has not taken a holiday since 1993. Since the woman quit work, they have had to replace their furnace, hot water tank, washing machine, dishwasher and the fence around their yard.
During the winter of 1996-97 the couple's roof leaked. Therefore, last summer they sold their car so they could afford to replace the roof. They are now driving a 1984 Jimmy that they repaired with the balance of the money they got for their car. They have just one vehicle.
The woman concludes that it is no wonder local businesses are having hard times. She and her husband cannot afford to buy anything that they really do not need and she suspects that many others are in the same boat. Unless they get a break on taxes they will not be spending any more than they have to.
How can this constituent have any confidence in the investment that she, her husband and her family have made in this government when they, one way or the other, turn over 50% of their income to this and other levels of government and when this government is not even adhering to the watchdog, the Auditor General of Canada, who says that the way the government is doing its books is effectively cooking the books?
The letter I referred to is not the only one I have received from constituents who have expressed concern about the way this government so cavalierly mismanages the finances of this country.
During the election I had a rather interesting experience. The Liberal candidate accused me of going into a senior's home in Revelstoke and taking in a bogus financial adviser to tell them what was going on with Liberal government policy. I was told that I had scared those seniors so much the Liberal candidate could not even get the ear of the seniors in this home.
It was rather laughable because, as I pointed out to him in debate during the campaign, the adviser who I had taken in with me was a civil servant in the employ of the government, in the human resources department, who had gone to advise the seniors on the policies of the government. These are the policies that are going to rip off 75% of their income over $24,000. The only thing that Canadians got from the speech of the finance minister was that the government was going to look into it.
That is not adequate. That is not even remotely adequate because Canadians want to be able to look after themselves. Canadians want to know what the rules are going to be. In this piece of legislation the government is walking away from the recommendation of the auditor general who says that the government is doing it wrong, that it is breaking the rules with respect to the $2.5 billion millennium fund, that it cannot do it that way. What did this government do? It said that it will invent new ways.
As a matter of fact, the finance minister said on March 18 in this House “Let us understand that the world evolves, things change and governments must adapt”. What cannot be adapted at a whim by this finance minister, this Prime Minister or this Liberal government are accounting rules. Accounting rules are in place so that the seniors in my constituency, so that this woman in my constituency who has written this heartfelt letter, can have a feeling of confidence that this government is being straight up and straightforward and is putting all of the numbers on the table. It is not doing that according to the auditor general.
This is not anything that was fabricated by the Reform Party. This came from the Auditor General of Canada.
What were my constituents to think when the finance minister stood to say that he was going to remove the 3% surtax, which was imposed by the Tories when they were in power, for 85% of the population? He said this as though he should be getting some great credit. In fact, what he failed to tell us, which we all knew anyway, was that it was a deficit elimination surtax.
What has this government boasted of? This government has boasted that it has eliminated the deficit. So what right does this finance minister have to keep even 15% of Canadians paying the deficit elimination surtax?
It is called honesty in government. It is called full disclosure. This government is not into full disclosure because it knows if it was the people of Canada would take the time to listen and realize that they are being sold a bill of goods.
The government will be successful in passing this budget implementation bill because of its majority. By virtue of its majority it has shut off debate in the House of Commons and we will be voting on it tonight. The government has brought in time allocation to force this thing through. This bill will do nothing more than change the rules in the face of the auditor general who is saying, “No, that is wrong. You can't do it”.
I really do not know what goes through the mind of Canada's naturally governing party. That is the way it visualizes itself. It is here forever. It will assume the centre of the road. It will say anything and do anything to assume the position of being Canada's naturally governing party.
Canadians have to wake up. We have to call on these people to be accountable. If enough of us stand up, if enough of us speak up, sooner or later the government jig will be up.