Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak on Bill C-32, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in parliament on February 28, 2000. I do not want to go over in detail the whole bill, but there are a couple of areas on which I would like to comment.
When the Minister of Finance stands in this House and tables a budget about how he is going to raise or lower taxes, how he is going to spend on new programs and how he is going to eliminate other programs that are obsolete, one would think as the chief financial officer of the organization that he would have his figures down pat and would know what he was talking about.
Part 4 of the budget implementation act deals with enabling 13 first nations identified in the schedule to impose a 7% value added tax. The rest of the country has the equivalent tax called the GST on fuel, cigarettes and alcohol. Now certain first nations are being given the responsibility to collect 7% as well.
I want to point out a couple of things. The 7% GST goes to the federal government. The 7% that is going to be collected under this act is going to the first nations that will be collecting the money. There are no regulations about how this tax is to be administered. It only stipulates the right to collect it, no doubt because under this Liberal government the first nations have been given in essence sovereign powers to pass legislation in their own right. We have to concern ourselves about the regulations and how this money is going to be split between the federal government collecting GST and the first nations tax.
I had an occasion to stop at a gas station on a first nations reserve. My gas bill was approximately $31. It was before gas prices peaked in the last few weeks.
The guy in front of me paid for his tank of gas, which cost him $12 because he did not have to pay tax. After he had paid his $12 to fill his tank with gas, he bought cigarettes. Lots of people buy cigarettes, but it seemed to me that the typical purchase of cigarettes on the reserve was $130.
Behind the counter they had these little plastic shopping bags full of the standard purchase of cigarettes, so that when somebody was buying cigarettes they would get their $130 worth, which to you and me, Mr. Speaker, or anybody else who would have been buying the cigarettes, might have been worth $300.
I said to myself, other Canadians do not normally buy $130 worth of cigarettes at a time, any time I have seen people buying cigarettes in a store, so why would it be that the standard cigarette purchase would be $130, tax free? I wonder, because I have no proof of this, if it is because it was next to a large city and perhaps these people had a ready market for these cigarettes. Maybe not, but perhaps. It is worth thinking about.
As these cigarettes are purchased on the reserve by status natives, the transaction is legal, according to our laws, but the second transaction, if they sell them on the street at more or less the going price for others, then that is illegal and the Minister of Finance is losing out on his tax collection, if that is happening.
Now that we have instituted this tax we will have the same store collecting 7% in GST from Canadians and 7% on the alternative tax from the natives who have the card which they can produce. It is the exact same amount of tax. How will the Minister of Finance be able to determine whether that tax should be remitted to the Department of Finance or whether it should be kept by the band for its own use? There are no regulations attached to this bill. As I mentioned earlier, because they are largely sovereign, I think they could tell the minister that they will write their own rules as to how they will collect the tax. I am fairly sure we will not see very much GST money. I gave the example of the cigarettes. That disturbs me, because I spend, as chairman of the public accounts committee, a lot of time focused on the area of bribery and corruption.
When there are loose rules that are open to interpretation, open to management, open to subtle bookkeeping and other opportunities, it then starts to dribble down through the holes in the floor and we lose sight of it. That concerns me because it allows people to develop bad attitudes toward paying taxes, being honest, having high morals and ensuring that everything is honest and above board. I am seriously concerned that we are providing these opportunities and challenges. It bothers me immensely.
Continuing in the same vein, with respect to the Minister of Finance collecting the taxes and ensuring that Canadians get value for their money, the auditor general tabled a report this week which had nine chapters. One of them dealt with elementary and secondary education by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. I really want to put the emphasis on the question: Are we getting value for our money?