House of Commons Hansard #188 of the 36th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was money.

Topics

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:10 p.m.

Liberal

Paul Szabo Liberal Mississauga South, ON

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36 I am pleased to present a petition signed by a number of Canadians, including from my own constituency of Mississauga South, on the subject of human rights.

The petitioners would like to draw to the attention of the House that human rights abuses continue to be rampant around the world in countries such as Indonesia. They also point out that Canada continues to be recognized as the champion of human rights around the world. Therefore they call upon parliament to continue to condemn human rights abuses around the world and also to seek to bring to justice those responsible for such abuses.

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:10 p.m.

NDP

Bev Desjarlais NDP Churchill, MB

Mr. Speaker, I too have a petition on behalf of a number of western Canadians who want to voice their dissatisfaction. They desire to see the abolition of the Senate. They consider it an undemocratic institution and it is not doing the job it should be doing for Canadians.

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Liberal

Rose-Marie Ur Liberal Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36 I am honoured to present two petitions signed by residents of the Windsor and Grand Bend area.

They urge parliament to ban the gasoline additive MMT, noting that it is not used in Europe and most American states as it clogs emission control devices in vehicles and is opposed by all major car companies.

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Reform

Rick Casson Reform Lethbridge, AB

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36 I am pleased to present the following petitions which come from concerned citizens in my riding of Lethbridge, Alberta.

The petitioners call upon parliament to enact Bill C-225, an act to amend the Marriage Act in order to define in statute that a marriage can only be entered into by a single male and a single female. It is my pleasure to support them.

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

The hon. member for Lethbridge has been here long enough to know that his support or otherwise of the petition is uncalled for in the presentation of petitions. I know he would want to comply with the rules in every respect.

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Liberal

Susan Whelan Liberal Essex, ON

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36 I am pleased to present a petition signed by constituents of Windsor West.

The petition requests that parliament introduce legislation to publicly acknowledge offenders of violent crimes.

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

NDP

John Solomon NDP Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure on behalf of many constituents in the province of Saskatchewan in communities like Rama, Invermay, Margo and Hazel Dell to present a petition to let the House of Commons know that they are sick and tired of the waste of $50 million a year on the Senate.

They think this is an undemocratic place where only friends of the Prime Minister are appointed and that they are unaccountable. They want the House of Commons to commence action to abolish this terrible waste of taxpayers money on the Senate.

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Liberal

Alex Shepherd Liberal Durham, ON

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition from 55 of my constituents from places like Bowmanville, Orono and Newcastle who were members of our merchant navy during the second world war and Korea.

They call on parliament to act now to compensate merchant navy veterans for their services and hardship after serving on Canadian and allied ships during World War II and Korea.

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Liberal

Eleni Bakopanos Liberal Ahuntsic, QC

Mr. Speaker, I would like to present a petition on behalf of residents of Edmonton and Calgary on pay equity.

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Liberal

John Harvard Liberal Charleswood—Assiniboine, MB

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36 I have the honour to present a petition on behalf of Manitobans, some of whom are my constituents, who are concerned about the possible sale of Candu nuclear reactors to Turkey.

The petitioners point out that the reactors would be located in a seismic area known for frequent earthquakes. The petitioners are concerned about a possible nuclear accident that would affect not only Turkey but neighbouring countries.

They also contend that Turkey is a state that does not respect the human rights of its citizens, represses its minorities and has used force and military aggression against its smaller neighbours, and that giving nuclear technology to such a country will give it the ability to produce nuclear weapons of mass destruction and destabilize the whole region.

The petitioners call upon parliament to oppose this sale and to take all possible measures required to stop it.

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

Liberal

Marlene Catterall Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON

Mr. Speaker, a perfect sequel. This petition reminds parliament that the continuing existence of 30,000 nuclear weapons poses a threat to the health and survival of human civilization in the global environment and calls upon parliament to support the immediate initiation and inclusion by the year 2000 of an international convention setting out a binding timetable for the abolition of all nuclear weapons.

PetitionsRoutine Proceedings

3:15 p.m.

NDP

Judy Wasylycia-Leis NDP Winnipeg North Centre, MB

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to present a petition from hundreds and hundreds of Canadians in all parts of the country expressing their concern about the state of the Canadian health care system.

The petitioners call upon the government to preserve and enforce the Canada Health Act. They also call upon the government to ensure that the principles of universal coverage, accessibility, portability, comprehensive coverage and federal funding are lived up to.

Most important and most appropriate in terms of the state of health care in the country today, they call on the government to ensure that the principles under the Canada Health Act are applied broadly and are there for every citizen as a matter of being part of a civilized country.

Questions On The Order PaperRoutine Proceedings

3:20 p.m.

Peterborough Ontario

Liberal

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

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

Questions On The Order PaperRoutine Proceedings

3:20 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

Is that agreed?

Questions On The Order PaperRoutine Proceedings

3:20 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

Motions For PapersRoutine Proceedings

3:20 p.m.

Peterborough Ontario

Liberal

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

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

Motions For PapersRoutine Proceedings

3:20 p.m.

The Deputy Speaker

Is that agreed?

Motions For PapersRoutine Proceedings

3:20 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

The House resumed from March 2 consideration of the motion that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government.

The BudgetGovernment Orders

3:20 p.m.

Reform

Diane Ablonczy Reform Calgary Nose Hill, AB

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to add my thoughts on the federal budget that was tabled a couple of weeks ago in the House.

A budget sometimes seems like a boring document, but it is really a statement of how much of our earnings the government intends to take. It touches each one of us, the work we do and the money we have in our pockets. It is a statement of how much money the government intends to spend, remembering that the government does not have money of its own. It only has our money. It is also a statement of what the government is to spend our money on.

We have some very strong criticisms of the government in all those three areas in terms of how much it intends to take from our earnings, the way it is managing the spending of our earnings, and what it is spending our earnings on.

We could have reversed the enormous tax hit and the slashing of dollars from medical care, which we were told when the government was elected was necessary to eliminate having to borrow to meet government obligations. We did not want to live on borrowed money. The government said it would have to tax us more and cut support for health care.

We took that, some of us perhaps more willingly than others. Some of us were astonished that it was the Liberals, who had always stood up with their hands on their hearts saying that they would protect the Canada Health Act against the fires of hell if they had to. However, when push came to shove, their words meant nothing as so often happens with Liberals.

Here we are today with no deficit. In fact we have a healthy and growing surplus. Yet there is still extra taxation and there are still cuts to the former support that we had for our health care services. Why do these continue?

Federal revenues are an astonishing $42 billion between March 31, 1994 and March 31, 2000. On average each taxpayer is paying over $2,000 more a year in taxes than they did when these Liberals came to power. The government is taking $2,000 more from each taxpayer's pocket. That is a lot of money to most Canadians.

The Globe and Mail on February 23 made this cogent statement: “A real tax cut doesn't just slow the growth in government's revenue. It leaves the government with less revenue”. We have not really had a tax cut if government is still taking in more this year than it did last year, which the government is doing. There has not been a tax cut at all. There is less of an increase than there might have been. When the Liberals talk about tax cuts they are simply not being accurate with their words.

Since the government is confiscating billions more of the income we worked so hard to earn, what wonderful things is the Liberal government doing for us with our own money? I might add that $1 billion would be like winning a million dollar lottery three times every day for an entire year. That is how much $1 billion is. The government is taking $42 billion out of the economy, out of the pockets of the hardworking people of the country.

In the most critical area of meeting our medical and health care needs, especially as we get older and we know that the population is getting older as the baby boomers retire, very little is being done by the government to meet our health care needs.

For the 10 year period from the time the Liberals were elected in 1993 to 2003, they will have slashed $33.3 billion from support for health care and education. During the same period of time, 1993 to 2003, they will put back $11.5 billion into health care. They slashed over $33 billion in this 10 year period. There was an outcry, which there might well have been, and they grudgingly put one-third of it back.

In other words, the Liberals only made two-thirds of the raid on health care that they intended to make. We are supposed to thank them and feel that they are a wonderful, wonderful governing party because they only raided our health care funds by two-thirds of what they really would like to have done.

In fact each and every Canadian will have nearly $500 less available to care for their medical needs this year than when the government took office, and that is not all.

In addition to the enormous and punishing tax grab Canadians have staggered under with the government, the government uses a sneaky device to ratchet up its tax take year by year called bracket creep. According to the Caledon Institute, this device has pushed 1.9 million taxpayers from the lowest to the middle tax bracket and 600,000 taxpayers from the middle to the top bracket. It has also added more than a million low income people to the tax rolls in the last 10 years.

When the government brags about the few people that its little tax cuts pushed off the tax rolls, hon. members might want to just balance that with all the people who are pushed on to the tax rolls and pushed into paying more taxes because of these sneaky stealth taxes which the Liberals have had over five years and six budgets to fix and have done absolutely nothing about.

In 1980 a single wage earner would be able to keep $10,500 before paying tax. Guess what it is now under the Liberal government. Last year taxes were due after only $7,000 of income. The Liberals in their generosity will now let that taxpayer keep an extra $175 before the tax man comes knocking. Think of the generosity of allowing a single taxpayer to keep $175 more before starting to pay tax. Even that paltry sum will quickly be eroded by the stealth tax that I spoke of before.

Let us look at the child tax benefit. The Liberals make a great deal of this so I think we should spend a minute talking about it. The child tax benefit system is a program which the official opposition supports. It represents the best of co-operation between federal and provincial agreements. It is targeted to those families that have modest incomes from work. It is designed to encourage families and allow families to stay in the workforce. Regrettably it is not as generous as it first appears. The child tax benefit system was subject to this stealth tax, this partial deindexing in 1985, and 14 years later, six of them under a Liberal government, this regressive measure is still in place.

Each year the value of the child tax benefit declines at the rate of inflation and the value of the threshold at which the benefit is clawed back declines by the rate of inflation. A family with an income of between $20,000 and $30,000 a year faces a clawback of up to 27% of the benefit on any additional earnings under the Liberal government. What a nasty and insidious tax burden. It is heaviest on those with low incomes.

Secondly, the government announced increases in this child tax benefit in the 1997 budget. These measures were announced again in the 1998 budget. Some adjustments have been announced in the 1999 budget. However, the full benefits of the program will not be in place until 2000, a delay of over three years. Too many announcements; too little action. It is so typical of this government. Could the government not speed up this program and put money in the hands of families sooner?

The Liberal government would have Canadians believe it is using our tax contributions to ease the load on low income parents to help them. This is simply not the case.

Contrary to the purple prose of the finance minister and other Liberal misrepresentations, we in the Reform Party, the official opposition, support the national child benefit and have repeatedly offered and called for measures to make it a real benefit, not just Liberal lip service.

In addition, although Canada is a wealthy and prosperous country, an increasing number of our citizens appear not to have an opportunity to share in this wealth and prosperity. I refer to the many homeless people, as well as those families on very low incomes for whatever reason. We know much more about the problem of homelessness in our large cities following a major study released by the city of Toronto in January.

Homelessness has many causes and governments at all levels have responsibilities to take action. Homelessness is not a partisan issue, but one on which politicians of all stripes and at all levels must work to solve.

The Reform Party believes and one of our principles is that Canadians have a personal and collective responsibility to care and provide for the basic needs of people who are unable to care and provide for themselves.

I would submit that in this budget the government has failed. Not only is it taking far more from the pockets of hard-working Canadians than is necessary, but it is also putting too much of a burden on those least able to afford it and giving too little and too poorly managed programs in return.

For that reason I will vote against this budget. I urge members of this House to get the government to clean up its act before they support this budget.

The BudgetGovernment Orders

3:30 p.m.

Liberal

Paul Szabo Liberal Mississauga South, ON

Mr. Speaker, the member made a number of statements in which she suggested that somehow taxes have been increased for Canadians.

I quickly looked back over the last two budgets and I saw an increase in the child care expense deduction which went from $5,000 to $7,000. I saw the total elimination of the 3% surtax. I saw the non-refundable tax credit increased by $675 for each and every taxpayer. I saw an investment of $1.7 billion in the national child benefit. There were no increases in tax rates. We introduced the RESP, government grants worth up to $400 a year for parents. There were EI reductions worth $2.8 billion in savings to Canadians.

If those are the facts, I would ask the member directly, could she explain exactly what tax increases she is talking about? If it is bracket creep, and if she wants to index the $6,542 personal exemption by inflation, which is 1% or a $65 increase in the bracket level, at the tax rate of the non-refundable tax credit that would mean $16 a year to a taxpayer. I therefore do not accept bracket creep as the explanation. I want to know the real explanation from the member.

The BudgetGovernment Orders

3:30 p.m.

Reform

Diane Ablonczy Reform Calgary Nose Hill, AB

Mr. Speaker, is this not a little ironic, considering that this is a member of the government which made the budget? Surely if they cannot explain their own budget we are in some pretty big trouble.

I would simply refer the member to his own government's budget where it states very clearly that tax revenue is going up by the amount I mentioned, $42 billion since this government took office. These are the government's own figures, not a figure I pulled out of thin air.

This member, as Liberals so often do, reels off all of these supposed wonderful tax cuts that the government brought in, even though of course, in spite of these cuts, it is still taking in more revenue than when it began. It is taking in more revenue next year than this year. Its own budget figures say that. All we have to do is look at the budget.

I ask the member to listen not just to me, although I know he has a high respect for anything I would tell him. The Business Council of British Columbia said that the tax cuts which the member speaks of will amount to 0.17% of GDP in the first year and perhaps 0.25% of GDP by the year 2000-2001. It concluded that the cuts are like “throwing a golf ball into Lake Superior”.

The BudgetGovernment Orders

3:35 p.m.

NDP

Judy Wasylycia-Leis NDP Winnipeg North Centre, MB

Mr. Speaker, I would like to try once more to see if we can get clarification about where the Reform Party really stands on health care. In the last few days during this debate some members of Reform actually suggested that they truly do believe in a universally accessible, publicly administered health system. However, we know from the past that their health critic has said that core services of health care could be provided outside of medicare. We know from the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca that the party stands for a parallel, private, two tier health care system. We know from the member for North Vancouver that he praises the system in Florida and condemns what he would call socialist medicine in Canada.

At the recent United Alternative conference Reformers had a chance to clarify. A motion was put and there was a debate. There was a chance to add an amendment calling upon delegates to uphold national standards for a health care system. The delegates, which I assume included Reformers who were all present, roundly defeated this amendment, especially after one participant defended the right of the provinces to introduce user fees. Where did the member who is speaking stand on this issue? What is truly the position of the Reform Party on health care?

The BudgetGovernment Orders

3:35 p.m.

Reform

Diane Ablonczy Reform Calgary Nose Hill, AB

Mr. Speaker, this member should be asking questions of her sister governments in B.C. and Saskatchewan which have put a two tier health care system into place in those NDP provinces.

Let me clarify where the Reform Party stands on support for our health care system. First I will discuss 1993. This is verifiable. The member can look at our campaign literature. Even though we had more than a $42 billion deficit in this country and there was overspending, our party campaigned on zero cuts to health care and education. Zero cuts. It is in our literature.

In 1997, after this Liberal government had slashed support for health care, our campaign was on restoring funding to health care to the tune of $4 billion a year.

I do not know where this member gets the idea that there is anything less than the strongest support for health care from this party.

As far as the UA convention is concerned, that was not a Reform exercise. What those people did vote on were some strong principles in support of strong social programs which they said would be fleshed out in policy making sessions later on. I am sure this member would be welcome to participate in those united discussions to make sure good policies come out of them.

The BudgetGovernment Orders

3:35 p.m.

Reform

Gary Lunn Reform Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC

Mr. Speaker, I am not all that happy to talk about this budget because it is about propaganda, not priorities. It is about brainwashing, not budgeting.

Despite all the government spins to the contrary, this budget leaves Canadians paying more in taxes and receiving less in health care. In 1999 the average Canadian will pay over $2,000 more in taxes than they paid in 1993. At the same time total cuts to health care over the last three years amounted to $1,500 per person.

There is no doubt that we had to eliminate the deficit. There is no doubt that Canadians wanted the federal government to balance the books. Before the 1995 budget a wave of protest ran across this country. Rallies were held in over 20 Canadian cities where thousands of overburdened taxpayers demanded an end to the era of chronic deficits. But they were also very clear about one thing: “Don't you dare raise our taxes”. After decades of constant tax hikes the anger of Canadians was growing. The rally cries were around no more taxes and, more importantly, they continued to tell the Canadian government “It's the spending, stupid”. Canadians gave the finance minister clear instructions: Balance the books on the spending side of the ledger, attack waste, inefficiency and lower-priority programs.

The finance minister appeared to hear these concerns. However, appearances can be deceiving. Instead of no more taxes, Canadians were hit with the single largest tax hike in the history of Canada. CPP payroll taxes were increased 73% and bracket creep continues to take a growing bite out of our wallets.

In addition, it seems the finance minister took “It's the spending, stupid” to mean keep up the stupid spending. Instead of cutting waste and inefficiency, the government ravaged transfers for health and education. Instead of funding hip replacement surgery, taxpayers are paying $100,000 in government grants for a book on dumb blond jokes. The government slashes university funding while protecting $4 billion in pork-barrel regional development grants over the last four years. Students get less while there is plenty of money for a very questionable hotel deal in the Prime Minister's very own riding. RCMP services are cut while this government continues to give millions of dollars in illegal trade subsidies to profitable corporations.

The government claims it was forced to cut health care spending. The government claims its hands were tied on real tax relief. It claims it had to make tough decisions so it could balance the budget. The government has no right to claim any credit for balancing the budget because it did nothing.

The credit goes entirely to Canadians—