Debates of Dec. 12th, 2002

Question No. 40

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Can the government indicate: ( a ) what studies, reports and analyses have been carried out or ordered since January 1, 2001, by the Department of Finance or the Queen’s Privy Council, on the issue of fiscal imbalance and/or on the Quebec government’s “Commission sur le déséquilibre fiscal”, whose report was released on March 7, 2002 and; ( b ) what long-term (two years or more) forecasts have been made or ordered since January 1, 2000, by the Department of Finance or the Queen’s Privy Council, on Canada’s financial situation?

Return tabled.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

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

[The Speaker]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Speaker]

I wish to inform the House that because of the ministerial statement, government orders will be extended by 24 minutes. Hon. members can be thankful that they are not extended because of Speaker's ruling because I am about to give one of those.

Privilege

[The Speaker]

I am now prepared to rule on the matter raised by the hon. member for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast on December 9 concerning the alleged failure of the government to report on cases of fraud related to the goods and services tax. The hon. member charged that the Minister of National Revenue should be found in contempt for failing to table a full accounting of cases of theft, fraud and losses of tax revenue in the Public Accounts of Canada as required by the Financial Administration Act.

I would like to thank the hon. member for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast for raising the question and the hon. government House leader for his contribution on this matter.

Referring to Sections 23 and 24 of the Financial Administration Act relating to the remission of taxes, the hon. member for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast cites Section 24(2) which states:

Remissions granted under this or any other act of Parliament during a fiscal year shall be reported in the Public Accounts for that year in such form as the Treasury Board may direct.

While it is a longstanding practice that the Speaker does not interpret matters of law, I suppose one could question whether the funds paid out by the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency in response to fraudulent applications qualify as “remissions” under this section. In this respect, I must note for the sake of precision that a “remission” is not the same as a loss.

The Chair finds more enlightenment by considering the issues raised by the hon. member for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast in the context of the provisions of Section 79 of the Financial Administration Act. I will return to this in a moment.

The hon. member also cited a National Post article on Saturday, December 7, 2002 alleging that, since 1995, the government has failed to report on the loss of public money due to fraudulent claims for GST refunds

Through a written submission to the Chair, the hon. Minister of National Revenue has confirmed that following a 1995 agreement reached between the Department of National Revenue and the Treasury Board, her department ceased reporting fraudulent losses in the Public Accounts on a year by year basis. According to the hon. minister, virtually all such confirmed losses were the result of court decisions rendered some months of years after the original losses were detected.

Explaining that items included in the Public Accounts of a given year must have occurred in that year, the hon. minister argues that the time delay between the discovery of a loss and its confirmation by the courts made the timely inclusion of the losses in the public accounts impossible. The minister notes that her department, now an agency, addressed this quandary by addressing the Treasury Board. She reports their conclusion that the requirements of the Financial Administration Act could be met through the aggregate information on tax write-offs included in the Public Accounts, and through media bulletins issued at the time any “loss” was confirmed by a court decision.

In short, the minister contends that the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency is in full compliance with the Act, by virtue of the Treasury Board having agreed to this manner of reporting.

It is not of course for the Speaker to decide if the agency is acting in compliance with the law. As I have had occasion to mention in several recent rulings, it is a long-accepted principle that the Speaker does not pronounce on points of law.

There is clearly a difference of opinion between the hon. opposition House leader and the hon. minister concerning interpretation of the legalities flowing from the facts of this case. That is a matter for debate and a variety of different opportunities are available by which the matter can be raised in this chamber or in committee. There is no procedural issue here and so I need not elaborate on that further.

However, there is another aspect of this case that gives me pause and that will, I think, pose difficulties for members on both sides of the House. We are all aware that hon. members cannot carry out the important task of holding the government to account unless they are provided with complete, accurate information in a timely fashion. For much of this information they must depend upon the government through such documents as the public accounts.

The Chair is troubled that although Revenue Canada recognized that it had a reporting difficulty and rightly sought the advice and approval of the Treasury Board as to how best to rectify the situation, no effort was made to consult Parliament.

As the minister herself points out in her written submission:

Section 79 of the Financial Administration Act (FAA) provides regulation-making authority to prescribe, amongst other things, the manner by which losses of public funds should be reported in the Public Accounts. The Treasury Board has chosen to prescribe these requirements by way of policy rather than regulation.

There is little doubt that the Treasury Board's decision to proceed by policy rather than by regulation grants it greater flexibility in dealing with the cases that arise, but that decision does not obviate the responsibility for remaining accountable to Parliament. Put another way, had the Treasury Board chosen to avail itself of its authority to make regulations in this regard, at least the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations might have detected any changes in approach by the government with regard to the reporting of such losses.

As it stands, not only was the advice or agreement of members not sought to the reporting solution agreed to by the department and the Treasury Board, no indication that the change had been made was included in the public accounts or in any public accounts document.

Information that was available in one year simply vanished the next without explanation. It is surely disingenuous to suggest, as does the minister in her submission, that aggregate information on tax write-offs in the public accounts and media bulletins on court decisions are adequate or sufficiently evident for parliamentary requirements.

As I said, this is not, strictly speaking a procedural issue but it is an issue that directly affects the rights of hon. members to timely and accurate information. It is a matter that members may wish to pursue in a more appropriate forum, possibly in the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, whose chair, an opposition member, is very competent.

I thank the hon. House leader of the official opposition for having raised this matter. While there is no basis for finding a procedural irregularity here in the strict sense, it does raise an issue of concern to all hon. members.

The House resumed from December 10 consideration of the motion.

Prebudget Consultations

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre.

This is a very important debate. I had a chance to participate in some of the prebudget hearings in Toronto. Submissions were made by a number of different witnesses. There were discussions among members as well as discussions in general about how to go about financing the nation's business plan in terms of spending and more important, in terms of developing our nation's resources.

It is important to look at the opportunities that the nation has, the resources and income coming in, what will be used and how it will be used and managed. Unfortunately, we have seen recently some terrible situations with regard to the use of tax dollars which have given Canadians a sour taste and which really affect our prebudget considerations and our budget process.

I have been in the House for several months now. I am very disappointed with the lack of accountability of where our tax dollars go. The actions of the government, its different departments and that which drives public policy should be transparent. That is important to note because there have been situations.

For example, over the last 10 years there has been an $80 billion surplus in the employment insurance fund. It might be okay for Arthur Andersen or Enron to be out $80 billion but the government says it is a great thing that it has been off in its financial forecasting. Canadians cannot make educated decisions about where they want their money to go. The government says that it is the government's money and it will put it toward the debt or whatever projects it wants and that should be good enough for Canadians to accept. Well, it is not because employment insurance premiums cannot be used as a slush fund. Canadians need to make educated decisions.

It is also very important to recognize that the government is robbing workers and employers. It becomes particularly problematic when there are some businesses that do not even report their taxes. When there are businesses that do not contribute their fair share, it means the rest of the population is picking up that cost. More important, those businesses in effect are getting a subsidy and honest businesses cannot compete. It is pretty easy to have a competitive advantage when a business is not paying its taxes but its next door neighbour is. It is no wonder that business has lower costs, greater profits, all those things, if it is not contributing to the economic well-being of our country.

A number of different issues were raised regarding the taxation process and the budget, where the money is being spent, and more important, what we can do for Canadians.

One piece of legislation that has caused concern in my riding is with regard to the taxation of U.S. social security benefits. The government has been on the record to study and to get rid of the terrible regressive policy that punishes retirees who have worked hard for their income and have planned for their retirement. The government has usurped their income from them through additional taxes. That shameful practice has to end.

The government could change it through treaty negotiations. It is a simple process. The government has talked about it in the past. The former finance minister has talked about it. Former members of Parliament have talked about it. The government continues to say it is studying it. I do not know how long it needs to study the issue, but it should come up with something.

The treatment of those citizens has been absolutely abominable. They have worked hard for their income and have planned for their retirement. They are not getting the services nor are they living out their retirement as they had planned because the government has moved in with regressive actions.

We heard from many different delegations with regard to specific issues. It is hard to comprehend the logic of some of the members opposite on certain issues. It was good to see the whole House finally agree on the disability tax credit, except for the Minister of Finance, had to leave to be somewhere else. During the debate he was not present and during the vote on the disability tax credit in terms of the NDP's subcommittee amendment addressing that issue, he got up and left. We are talking about $960. The government was moving to cut off the ability for people to use the resources that are necessary for them and to offset some of their increased costs.

It is important to note that Community Living identified persons it supports and what the tax credit means to them and their families. The minister still could not stay to vote and after that, he ignored the vote. I had to continue to press the issue and I am still waiting to see some final results. It is shameful conduct. I hope that other members from all parties who are participating in this debate address that because it is one of the things in the budget.

The government claims it cannot afford to give persons with disabilities a $960 tax credit. That is absolute nonsense and it is unacceptable. The government had $1 billion for gun control and it did not even bring the issue back to the House so members could understand what was happening with regard to the expenditures. At the same time the government hammered down on persons with disabilities and claimed it could not afford to help them. That is unbelievable and shameful and it is wrong.

I would like to note a couple of points with regard to the Auditor General's report. We are talking about having funds to move forward on progressive issues.

We heard about the concern of the universities regarding innovation and research and their ability to work with the government to plan some changes but at the same time the government is not addressing the accessibility of education in our country.

Students are coming out of universities with larger debts. They have a delayed entry into the workforce; they are entering later in their life. They also switch careers more often. All of those things lead to concerns about long term employment stability.

One of the interesting things to note is the millennium scholarship fund. Education costs have skyrocketed by up to 140% in terms of actual tuition. The cost of living has gone up as well. The millennium scholarship fund has $2.5 billion to hand out to students but has given away only $282 million. What is the government waiting for? There are students who need support now. What is the problem? We have paid for it with our tax money. The government created an agenda. What is it waiting for? The government could release those funds to students and be a little more progressive with it thus ensuring that people get the support they need right now.

The Auditor General said that employment insurance premiums are more than double the amount that is needed. If it continues like that, it will not be able to provide the other relief necessary for growth. Taxing people through a regressive tax will not lead to transparency in the budget process. The problem is that people do not understand where their money is going. They do not understand how employment insurance premiums can be used for different things when it should be going to a specific program.

People are asking for transparency. We have heard that transparency is supposed to be coming with the gun control registry. What is transparent about it is that it is basically a sieve for money. It may shuffle right through the whole thing and it is not going to a clear objective.

There are many wonderful opportunities to work on as a country. There are particular assets that can be used to achieve some of our objectives.

The government has introduced an urban task force initiative but it does not have any resources available for it. It has some suggestions and some summaries with regard to municipalities, but it does not have any practical ability to fund them. That has to happen. There cannot be any more reports. There are some reports like the first nations report where they have to go through a reporting process. These reports are not read. This is yet another report. If some resources were put toward it, we could achieve some beneficial objectives for municipalities, urban infrastructure, all of those things.

There is wanton waste which must be stopped and plugged and the money used toward something. With regard to the Canada pension plan, in the last six months there has been a loss of $4 billion, a negative 20.5%. It is interesting to note that John McNaughton, the chief executive officer, said that these wide swings in performance in terms of the stock market are expected to continue. Why not use that money right now? Since the government has lost billions of dollars already, why not use that money for infrastructure in the meantime? The government could get a lower rate of return from municipalities, perhaps 2% or 3%, so some revenue could be guaranteed for the Canada pension plan but at the same time use the difference to build the nation's infrastructure.

Things can be done. We do not have to put it through the process where we lose billions of dollars. How much more do we have to lose before we get it straight? We have some incredible opportunities but the government continues to squander them.

Conservation Ontario has put forth a wonderful program that will cost about $100 million. The program could actually be a great legacy for Ontario but if we continue to waste billions of dollars it makes that $100 million unattainable. This has to change because Canadians want transparency. They do not want games being played with their money.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the gentleman across the way and I want to clarify, in particular, the issue of the disability tax credit. It is a tax credit that since 1996 has provided more than $1 billion in assistance and $4 billion in programs.

The member more than suggested that the minister did not listen to the House in terms of the New Democratic Party's motion with regard to the disability tax credit. That is utter nonsense.

I want to refer the hon. member to a November 29 press release from the minister in which he clearly said that the issue was off the table in terms of the proposals of August 30. The minister has now instructed the department to go back for further consultations with the affected groups. I want to make it very clear to the member that in fact the minister has been very supportive and did in fact support it by taking it off the table. I responded to that at an earlier time in the House.

The member talked about urban issues. As he knows, this government was the first, 10 years after the national infrastructure program sat and languished, to endorse it in 1993, a proposal that the parties on the other side did not support. I would like his comments on the funding issue.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to correct the hon. member with regard to the disability tax credit. The motion was to go back to the actual subcommittee recommendations. It was not just about a repeal. It was a specific motion that was not followed by the minister in subsequent discussions, and debate ensued on it in the House. It was not until after continued debate that we were able to get at least some acknowledgement that it was going in the wrong direction.

I can tell the House that there are still many persons in the disabled community who are concerned about this. If we are talking about 1996 and all the programming for a billion dollars, I would suggest that the former finance minister changed the capital gains tax for last year. There was a billion dollars in terms of capital gains difference.

The member can throw out all kinds of numbers and use semantics but we need to go back and stick to the recommendations of the subcommittee.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, since this may be my last opportunity to speak in the House before rising for the Christmas break, I want to give you my best wishes for the holiday season. I also want to say a special thank you to everyone who has made our jobs easier this past session: the table officers, the pages, the interpreters, the security personnel, the messengers, the food providers and everyone who made it possible for us to do our jobs.

Those thanks are particularly in order since this has been such a raucous session, with so many uncertainties about the legislative agenda of the government and with so much division and conflict around deepening scandals and information about fiscal mismanagement.

We have expressed in the past and we will again today our concern with the government's ability to manage fiscally and to provide a meaningful legislative agenda for Parliament and for the country. To use an old expression, I think it can be said that the debates this session have been a bit like the mating of pandas. There has been a lot of commotion but not much has happened.

It is very important, in this period of prebudgetary consultations, that we discuss the question of accountability and transparency. It is very hard to give concrete suggestions around budgetary alternatives if we know before we even start that so many of our recommendations will be disregarded, and where there are so many questions and doubts about how the government is actually spending the money that we authorized in the Chamber in the past.

In the last few weeks we have had ample evidence from the Auditor General, through the media and from other sources indicating that the government is suffering from three phenomena that are very worrisome.

First, there is clearly a culture of secrecy that runs rampant through the government.

Second, there is an arrogance of power that makes the government believe it can keep important decisions away from Parliament.

Third, there also is evidence of rotten management of public funds, of taxpayer dollars, whether we are talking about the Auditor General's revelations with respect to the billion dollar gun registry; or we are talking about the billion dollars plus in terms of GST fraud; or we are talking about the Auditor General's revelations pertaining to the corporate use of tax havens, which has cost millions of dollars; or we are talking about the recent news of a $20 million expenditure to build a refugee jail or a fortress for people coming into Canada seeking immigration status or refugee asylum.

Example after example reveal that the government is secretive, unaccountable to the public and disrespectful of Parliament.

I hope, as we lead up to the process of the next budget, the government will take those concerns very seriously, start acting on those concerns and will truly try to find ways to become accountable to Parliament and transparent with the public.

The Auditor General made a suggestion that the problems were not all a result of government mismanagement, that MPs themselves were derelict in their duties in terms of active scrutiny of government expenditures. I think the Auditor General has a point but only to a certain extent. That argument only holds true if members of Parliament and the committees of the House are given the opportunity and the information to adequately scrutinize government expenditures.

I know of numerous standing committees of the House that were not given the opportunity to scrutinize the supplementary estimates. As per our rules, those estimates were deemed accepted and approved even though there was no debate and no scrutiny by the many committees.

That is not a problem of individual members of Parliament. That is a result of a government that wields authority throughout this place and which has very cleverly managed to ensure that by controlling the membership and the actions of its own members on committees it makes it impossible for us to do our jobs.

I want to say that was absolutely the case in terms of both the health committee and the immigration committee, two committees of which I am a part. Neither of those committees studied the supplementary estimates and therefore no recommendations are coming forward, even though we are talking about two large areas of government expenditure and two areas where there are questionable practices on the part of government.

I will reference the health committee. This is a committee that ought to be having a say in this prebudgetary period and ought to be discussing the implications of the royal commission by Roy Romanow on the future of health care, and yet our committee adjourned yesterday immediately upon completing the study of Bill C-13. No attempt was made to schedule meetings pertaining to Romanow, despite a motion being passed at that committee to do just that.

We did not have a chance to scrutinize the department's budgets, even though we heard, through media sources and community activists, that the government was up to some dubious practices. I want to reference for the benefit of the House some evidence suggesting that the Minister of Health is planning to raid tobacco control funding to pay for other health initiatives. It would appear that the Minister of Health is preparing to take $13 million out of the anti-smoking initiative and putting it, as we understand it, into her study on obesity to meet her requirements to study the issue of obesity in Canada today.

No scrutiny in this place occurred around those initiatives. I would suggest that the problem rests with the secrecy and manipulation of the government and not with the integrity and hard work of individual members of Parliament on all sides of the House.

I also want to reference the immigration committee where we also did not deal with the supplementary estimates. We learned through the media that the government has proceeded with tendering for a contract worth $20 million to build a detention centre in the vicinity of Pearson airport. The detention centre has specifications that appear to make it a fortress and a jail for refugees, not a low risk security centre.

At the same time that we hear of the government proceeding with that with no accountability to our committee, we know the minister of immigration is saying that he does not have the money, the courage or whatever to implement the refugee appeal division aspects of the immigration and refugee legislation passed by the House. We have legislation passed by the House and the minister says that he cannot proclaim parts of the bill to ensure due process and rights for refugees because he does not have the money, yet he has the money for a prison for refugees.

It also should be noted that there are many areas where the immigration minister should be spending money to ensure family reunification in this country but he has failed to do that. I want to reference in particular the fact that the immigration department has tremendous backlogs in many areas, particularly in terms of family reunification and sponsorship of spouses. We know that the waiting time for just basic acknowledgment and initial approval used to be 90 days. It is now well over eight months or even up to a year.

Here we are talking about prebudgetary consultations when the government is not prepared to be forthcoming. It is ignoring the wishes of Parliament.

Finally, with respect to health care, it is clear that the government has the resources, the latitude and the will of Canadians to move forward with the expenditures recommended by Roy Romanow. We are talking about a reasonable proposal that will ensure stability in our system. It will give the kind of involvement by the federal government to ensure that the provinces and the federal government can participate on a cooperative basis for the future.

I would suggest that the government has no legitimacy in suggesting that the cupboard is bare and that it cannot address the number one priority of Canadians. I would suggest to the government that it commit today to including in the next budget the expenditures recommended by Romanow so we can ensure a sustainable future for medicare.

[Charles Caccia, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in this prebudget debate one cannot help mentioning the massive yes vote in the House the other day on the Kyoto protocol and the decision, therefore, of Parliament to support that initiative. With that vote, parliamentarians have indicated that the vast majority in the House understands an issue of global governance, supports an issue of global security and sees, through energy efficiency and conservation, an important solution in order to achieve that goal.

There are two ministers who will have to play a key role in the implementation of Kyoto. One is the Minister of Industry and the other is the Minister of Finance. I will briefly outline in my intervention what they could do.

First, it seems to me that the Minister of Finance has an important role to play in determining the Kyoto orientation of the next budget. One could even call it the Kyoto budget because of the vote we just had and because of the long term commitments Canada is making in order to achieve specific greenhouse gas emission reductions.

The first step that the Minister of Finance could examine is that of the elimination of counterproductive subsidies, which one could even call perverse, which actually increase Canada's greenhouse gas emissions. It requires the gradual elimination of the preferential tax treatment given to the fossil fuel industry and in particular the oil sands industry, specifically the elimination of the current exploration, development and operating write-off provisions of the Income Tax Act accorded to the fossil fuel sector.

Second, the Income Tax Act provisions for the mining write-off assets used for in situ projects for oil sands development need to be dealt with.

Third, the tax expenditures resulting from these subsidies, I would like to bring to the House's attention, could amount to anywhere from $75 million to $600 million, as estimated by Don Drummond, the then senior assistant deputy minister of the finance department , when he testified before the environment committee on November 27, 1997. That estimate by now may be larger.

I will indicate that I am sharing my time with the member for London West.

The second area for the Minister of Finance to examine is the establishment an investment environment and preferential tax treatment to strongly encourage the renewable energy sector. It is still handicapped because it does not have the general exploration, development and operating write-offs currently available to the non-renewable energy sector.

With the removal of the perverse subsidies I mentioned earlier and of the preferential tax treatment to the fossil fuel industry currently available, it is necessary to take a concurrent step to establish a preferential tax treatment for the renewable energy sector, which would include the an increase in the 1.2¢ per kilowatt hour current incentive for wind power production. This increase has been recommended by Benign Energy Canada, a member of the CARE Coalition and the e-mission 55 group.

A major shift in government support, an estimated $2.9 billion to $3 billion over five years, from the fossil fuel and nuclear energy industries to the renewable energy sector is desirable, so as to provide a foundation for a strong Canadian renewable energy industry.

Furthermore, an accelerated tax write-off regime is desirable for investments in the renewable energy sector, coupled with a preferential tax treatment for renewables other than wind, such as landfill gas, solar, biogas, et cetera.

Finally, a program to encourage and increase the use of ethanol and other less polluting fuels is desirable, as outlined in the report of the member for Halton, which is entitled, “Unlimited Potential: Capitalizing on Canada's Untapped Renewable Energy Resources”, a fine report with which I am sure, Mr. Speaker, you are very familiar.

Next, we recommend to the Minister of Finance to launch a strong public education program to promote energy conservation, energy efficiency and careful consumption.

The next area is a measure that would also highlight a paragraph in the Canadian plan on Kyoto, which does call on individual citizens, consumers, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Time does not allow me to go into greater detail on this, but one should mention the desirability of a considerably improved fleet performance in the automotive industry and a taxation of gas guzzlers.

This brings me now to the other minister I mentioned earlier in my preface, namely, the important role to be played by the Minister of Industry since it is desirable that the next budget ensure the investment in innovation to meet the Kyoto target.

I submit that innovation is one of the most fundamental determinants of economic growth and competitiveness, and energy innovation will play a central role. The Technology Partnerships Canada annual report that was tabled in the House last month, entitled “Investing in Innovation”, recommends advancing environmental solutions, which I would love to outline for members were it not for the time limitation.

Second, there is the $3 billion invested by the government, and quite rightly so, in the Foundation for Innovation, which is a tremendous source of funds to implement environmental initiatives that will help to meet the Kyoto target.

In conclusion, I would say that the Prime Minister, in Chicoutimi, made a very strong commitment to the Kyoto accord. His statement was followed by his announcement in Johannesburg on the ratification of the Kyoto accord, as ratified by a vote the other day. One can only express the following thought: that the Minister of Finance is likely to be swamped with demands and requests for funds from a number of very legitimate demanders, so to say. They could be in development aid, in human resources, in social programs, in agriculture, in immigration services and so on. Thus, the task of rearranging priorities may be a very difficult one for the Minister of Finance so as to produce the funds requested from him.

I submit that there is a solution to this problem and that would be to rescind the tax cut announced in the last budget. Canadians, I submit, are likely to accept such a decision as a necessary one in order to meet far-reaching obligations, to improve the quality of life and to strengthen government services at home and abroad.

[James Lunney, Canadian Alliance, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member in addressing the prebudget debate has chosen to talk about Kyoto. We certainly respect his concern for the environment and we share many of his concerns. I wonder if we might ask him about his estimates of what this program will cost to implement.

There are no estimates on the cost to industry. There are no estimates on the cost to consumers. Some of the estimates say that it could cost consumers up to $2,700 a home to comply, and my riding in British Columbia has been very hard hit by a downturn in the economy. We do not know what the costs will be.

My concern is with job losses, because of the huge border we share with the United States and because 85% of our trade is going south of the border. The estimates are that maybe it will be $10 a tonne for carbon reductions, but the government admits it could be $15 or $30 a tonne. What will the costs be in agriculture and in human resources? What are the costs going to be in jobs lost to the United States? I wonder if the hon. member would like to comment.

[Charles Caccia, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, a debate on costs would be meaningless unless accompanied by a debate on benefits or unless accompanied by a debate on the cost of inaction.

I can fully understand the concerns of the member from Nanaimo. Nevertheless, I would urge him also to look at both sides of the ledger. We cannot continue to express just one side of that ledger, hoping that we can arrive at a satisfactory conclusion, unless we also examine very carefully the benefits to be derived by any action on Kyoto.

We have seen already the damage that has been caused to the agricultural industry, for instance, as a result of climate change. Nobody knows exactly what amount is to be attached to that. We are told by those in the fisheries that the patterns of movement of salmon and cod have changed because of the changes in temperature of the water.

We have signals from the insurance industry, which is very much under pressure because of rising insurance rates caused by weather extremes. We also have signals from the shipping industry about lower water levels that preclude heavier liners from entering the Great Lakes, and so on. We can see that this debate is a complex one.

The hon. member made a reference to job losses. There may be, but there also may be job increases in the renewable sector. Of course we will have to manage properly the transition from the fossil fuel era to another era, and of course the workers engaged in the fossil fuel industry will require assistance from society in that transition, as we have done for the fishermen who have been cut off from cod on the east coast and who have received assistance in order to remain in their villages.

These are very complex and difficult issues. I welcome the member's question.

[Charlie Penson, Canadian Alliance, Peace River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the hon. member and I know that he has concerns about the environment. When he talks about the difficulties in agriculture, though, I suggest to him that he is over his head in this area.

When a great explorer in Canada, Mr. Palliser, explored the Canadian west in about 1860, he found a tremendous drought. He said that there should never be agriculture in part of that area. In the 1930s that same area went through 10 years of drought and the same thing is occurring now.

The member suggests that global warming is causing this. There were not many CO

2

emissions in the 1930s to cause 10 years of drought on the prairies. I think he had better check things a little further. He may be well meaning but he is very misguided in this area.

[Charles Caccia, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the hon. member's comments. It may not be the first time in my life that I have been misguided, so a reminder like that is always very healthy.

I would, however, indicate to him that meteorologists have told us that in the last 10 years we have had weather performances of a nature whereby we have had less precipitation and higher than average temperatures than ever before.

Second, I must draw to the member's attention that I draw my guidance from a Swedish scientist, Mr. Arrhenius, who 100 years ago had already detected the impact of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions on the atmosphere. Therefore, this phenomenon is not something that can be attributed to a just few years ago.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased and honoured to rise in this debate. I was also honoured to table earlier this month the report from the Standing Committee on Finance, as its chair, called “Canada: People, Places and Priorities”.

The report gained its substance from Canadians from coast to coast to coast who submitted evidence before the committee as it travelled. I would like to thank the 18 committee members from the five parties of the House who worked very hard and other members of Parliament who participated in our hearings throughout the country, as well as those who held prebudget consultations in their home ridings. All that information helped us build a report. The report is reflective of the ideas, the concerns and the input by Canadians as the committee did its work.

We heard from 437 witnesses, which included 279 national organizations. We sat many hours and worked in a very tight timeframe at the end to put the report together. I am very proud of the work members of the House did together. We hope it impacts on the budget. That is important. These are the words but the ideas must come to fruition in the budget document that will be tabled in the House, hopefully late February or early March. That is where we want to see the results of this type of input because just writing about it is not enough.

Canadians come before us year after year. The Standing Orders of the House demand that the finance committee table the report before the end of the Christmas hearings, before we go home for our Christmas break. We have done our job. What we ask, and why we have these types of consultations, that the actions be followed through.

In the report there are six priority areas about which Canadians are very concerned. They want prosperity and growth, tax reduction, healthy, sustainable communities, health care priorities, assistance to vulnerable people and productivity and innovation.

These are not disparate areas. In fact, social and economic policy merge. This is a discussion of the people's wishes and the people come from very disparate regions. The concerns of rural Canada are different than the urban economic engines of the country. We can have economic development in our northern and remote communities but the government has to focus the priorities and the investments. They have to be strategic. They cannot be sprinkled little sums all over the country.

At the same time, we are not a bottom line business, we are a government concerned with people. That is why we have a priority to help vulnerable Canadians. We have segments of our population, whether it be recent immigrants to Canada or aboriginal communities, that need different types infrastructure and levels of assistance to catch up to a quality of life enjoyed others.

We want a Canada that is prosperous but we want that prosperity shared. We want an inclusive Canada that speaks to the aspirations of not only the newcomer but the founding peoples and to all age groups.

All of us want to make a contribution to society. All people share the desire to be productive in their lives. This includes people with disabilities and those who have greater challenges. When new immigrants comes to Canada, they will need education and second language training. Our students and young people need access to higher education. For our economy to be as productive as it must be, we need increased research and development.

On that point, I come from London, Ontario, where we have medical and industrial research. It is about time our granting councils not only get further increases to their research budgets. The indirect costs of research, which were made as part of a one-time allocation last year in the budget, need to be a permanent part of our assistance. This would allow our granting councils and researchers to do the work that would help our economy to grow. They would not have to steal from undergraduate students who suffer when the infrastructure at our universities or hospitals have to share those soft costs.

It is important that we be responsible in the way that we manage our finances. We cannot go back into deficit. We have worked too hard, individual Canadians, corporate Canada and everyone, to get to where we are now. We are very pleased that we have the contingency reserve and that $3 billion per annum will be used to pay down the market debt.

Paying down the debt is an aggressive policy recommendation in this document. There are 49 recommendations. Not all of them are monetary. Some of them cannot be accomplished tomorrow. Some of them may take a couple of budgets to accommodate them. However we have to be strategic with our dollar investments.

We cannot build up increased spending. One recommendation suggest that we should look at increasing our spending as a combination of population growth and inflation which is roughly 3%. In the past couple of years spending increases have gone up, even though overall expenditures have gone down as a percentage.

It is important that we have debt reduction, tax reduction and expenditures in balanced budgets over time with a continuing decrease on the debt to GDP. When we started we were at 70% debt to GDP. Now we are 49.1%. That is wonderful. However the members of the committee believe that we should even be more aggressive. We even looked as far ahead as 2011 and thought a debt to GDP of 30% would be attainable.

Members of the committee brought forward this idea, debated it and we included it with our discussion in the report because we felt that it would be attainable through a reallocation of resources that would be available to the government. As we know, just under $170 billion worth of spending goes on by all the various departments.

Health care is a huge priority, let there be no mistake on that. Time and time again Canadians came to us with their vision. As we held our consultations, we were very conscious of the fact that the Romanow consultations were also being held. We were also conscious of the urban agenda and the needs of infrastructure in our urban and rural landscapes. We were also very conscious that those processes had to be put in place. Sometimes they were very small suggestions like establishing a commercialization group inside Industry Canada so the research being done would make it to market, that people would not spend a lot of time going through the wrong channels and that we could help, whether it be in patent areas or by smart regulation.

The government has to work in a number of fields. Even though the actual spending will be done in an incremental manner over time, we have to know where we are going. We should not just spend for spending's sake. We know we will have greenhouse gases and we know that there are alternate sources of energy. However we also know we have productive current sources of energy which help for instance with the capital cost allowance in many of our industries.

That was an important recommendation. It is something that has to be looked at by the Department of Finance. The capital cost allowance regime is out of date because of the increase and rampant change, whether in information technology, or in machinery or in the needs of our railways.

I encourage Canadians to either go on the finance committee's website or to get a copy of the report entitled “Canada: People, Places and Priorities”. I was honoured to work with the colleagues in the House who worked hard to bring these ideas before Parliament.

[Rick Casson, Canadian Alliance, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I compliment the member for London West on her chairing of the finance committee. I was at some of the hearings across the country. I know at one particular meeting she had some family issues to deal with but did her job before she left and we appreciated that.

However the committee has made some recommendations to the government that have been recommended in the past. One is the issue about the capital gains tax. We certainly applaud the recommendation that government spending be tied to the size of the economy, the size of inflation and the growth of Canada. That is important.

Most people who appeared at the committee asked for more money. It was quite unusual for me to see. No one came forward with suggestions on how to pay for it. There was no suggestion about what could be done here or there to loosen up some funds but everybody wanted more. That is the challenge we face.

My question to the chairman of the finance committee is this. One thing the Canadian Alliance would like to see is a re-evaluation of all existing programs to ensure that they are still on target and that the dollars are being spent wisely. We have seen in recent days that some of this has not happened. How much emphasis will be placed on that aspect in her report?

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's attendance and work at the committee. I point out recommendation 2 of the 49 recommendations in our report. I will read directly from the report because it is exactly on the point on which he has spoken. It says:

The federal government continue to focus on a balanced budget, with any surplus used to pay down its market debt. The government should consider the extent to which savings realized as a consequence of lower debt-interest costs should be spent on existing or new programs that have been identified as priorities for Canadians. Moreover, the government should undertake an ongoing review of federal expenditures with a view to monitoring continuously the activities that are priorities for Canadians in order that appropriate reallocation of spending occurs. Finally, spending increases should be limited to the rate of inflation and population growth.

Various departments have budgets and they spend. They hold onto programs that maybe are not as efficient. There needs to be new areas of spending because the priorities of Canadians have shifted.

Right now I would think that money gets taken away if they do not utilize it. We have to change that philosophy. If it is not efficient, if it is not producing results or if it is a lower priority and we have higher priorities, then we have to change that. We have to spend smartly. We do not just get to add and top up.

Two of the chapters at the beginning of the report did not contain recommendations. The first one was on the demographics of the country. With an aging population and looking forward into the future, we were trying to make short term and long term recommendations for the government because we will need either productivity gains or get resources in a smarter way, for instance, maybe encouraging Canadians to help save today for their retirements.

We know we will have health care for older populations down the way. The only way we will get the resources to pay for that is if we prioritize spending now and we start paying down debt so that when we do not have the $37 billion a year interest payment, we will be able to finance some of these very needed social programs.

[Greg Thompson, Progressive Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I know the finance committee has given some thought to health care spending in the future and obviously committee members examined Kirby and Romanow, maybe not at the committee level but I know that as individual members they have.

Let us put the Kirby and Romanow reports in perspective and remember some of the commitments we made to health care back in the seventies. We were caught up in slow growth in the economy. There was stagflation. We had rising costs, inflation out of control, unemployment at very high levels, no growth in the economy and some of the predictions of growth in the economy simply did not materialize.

Has the committee, and has she as committee chairman, considered some of the options that the government must consider when we examine health care in the future? It is one thing to suggest--

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

Order, please. I am sorry to interrupt but there is no more time on the clock. I will allow the member for London West answer the question.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I should state for the record that the Romanow report was tabled the day before we tabled our own report. We did not have access to the Kirby and Romanow reports during our deliberations.

We certainly received evidence from people across the country that this was a high priority. What we did glean and put out was that the Canadian Institutes of Health Research was supported by Canadians. We also felt in our recommendations that it was important to support the program. I will direct the member opposite to the recommendations in this chapter that is specifically focused on health care.

[Monte Solberg, Canadian Alliance, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today to join in the prebudget debate.

I would like to wish my colleagues in the House a Merry Christmas and all the best in the new year. Sometimes we cross swords in this place, but at the end of the day we can still all be friendly, if not friends. At any rate, a Merry Christmas to all.

I want to address my remarks primarily to the Auditor General's report and how it relates to the prebudget report produced by the finance committee. In particular I want to talk about the employment insurance program and especially I want to talk about the employment insurance fund.

Over the last number of years there has been a lot of concerns raised about how money that comes into the EI fund is used. Right now the actuary of the fund tells us that we have a surplus in the employment insurance account of about $40 billion.

We are told that even in the most difficult recession we would only need a surplus of about $15 billion. Many people are rightfully asking why we are running a $25 billion surplus over and above what we would need in the event of a recession. It is a very good question. In order to address it we must go back in time and ask ourselves how did this come to pass? What is the purpose of this account and therefore what are some of the solutions?

If we were to go back and revisit some of our history, we would remember that the employment insurance account was set up to provide insurance for people who lost their jobs through no fault of their own. If a company closed down and people were thrown out of work, employment insurance was there to provide a safety net for them. The way that was funded was that people paid premiums out of their paycheques as did employers. Employers also kicked in premiums.

That system worked quite well up until about 1996. At that point the former finance minister, the member for LaSalle—Émard, disconnected the premiums from the payouts. In other words, up to that point the premiums were established based on the expectation of the payouts, so if we had just gone through a recession and perhaps we had a deficit in the account, the premiums would have been a little bit higher. If we had a period of low unemployment, the premiums could go down. That system worked very well.

However in 1996 the finance minister at the time decided that he wanted to change the purpose of the employment insurance fund so that it was no longer just an insurance fund for workers. He turned it into an account that became essentially an insurance fund for the government. Year after year the government used the excess that was paid into the employment insurance fund to fund other programs, things for which the account was never intended.

Now we are in a situation where this year alone the government will take about $4 billion extra out of the employment insurance account and put it into general revenues to pay for all kinds of things for which the money was never intended initially.

Over the years this has become a real problem. It undermines the credibility of the government. This is not the first time we have seen funds misallocated from an account and used for purposes other than for which they were originally intended.

I will give many examples. The Canada pension plan, way back when it was brought into being, was set up to provide pensions for people upon their retirement. The idea was that people would pay in premiums, the government would invest the money and get the best possible return. It turns out that it did not do that.

The government used that money to curry favour with the provinces and lent it to them at below market rates of interest. It ended up running a deficit where we now have a huge unfunded liability in CPP. The government then had to hike the premiums through the roof. That is one example of how governments can misallocate funds that have a specific purpose and then use the money for some political reason that has nothing to do with the original intent.

Another example which we referred to yesterday was the GST. People were paying the GST with the understanding that it would go toward paying down the debt. Rather obviously, if it had gone toward paying down the debt, we would not have much of a debt today instead of the $540 billion debt that we do have.

My point is that often governments covetously eye these big pots of money and start using them for things other than what they are intended for and always with an eye toward currying some kind of political favour. There are many other examples.

About a year ago the government raided the public service pension plan which was running a surplus. It does not matter what government is in office, but whenever there is a pool of money it starts to look at that money trying to figure out how it can get its hands on it and use it for things other than what those funds are intended for. In the end the federal government took about $10 billion out of the public service pension plan fund.

In the private sector, whenever there is a surplus in pension funds, a judge would determine how much money workers had put into the fund, how much the employer had put in, how much interest was earned, and then he would come up with a formula for dividing it up. Usually it would be a fifty-fifty split. In this case the government took $10 billion and used it for whatever it wanted to.

The excise tax on fuel is another example. People rightfully expect that when they pay excise tax on gasoline it should go into repairing infrastructure and repairing roads for instance. However it does not. The government puts it into general revenues and uses that money for whatever it wants. People are concerned about that because they believe that if they pay for a particular thing then that is what that money should be used for. In not doing that trust is undermined. We see that over and over again. It is a real problem.

I want to talk about what we can do to fix this problem. The first thing we can do is start listening to the actuary of the fund. The chief actuary of the employment insurance fund said that premiums could be reduced by about 40¢ per hundred to bring the fund into balance. Right now we are running a surplus of about $4 billion a year. The overall surplus is $40 billion. That is about $25 billion more than we would need in the event of a recession.

Not only does the chief actuary say this but the Auditor General herself drew attention to this in her last report. The finance committee also drew attention to it. They are arguing that we should balance the fund over the course of a business cycle. That would suggest that we need to start lowering those premiums more dramatically than the government is doing. When we raise the issue the government says it is lowering the premiums, but it is missing the point and missing it on purpose I am afraid.

We are arguing that if we do not give back all of the money we owe it is like bank robbers telling the judge they are pleading not guilty because they did not take all the money. That is exactly what the government is doing. It says it is lowering premiums although it is not giving all the money back. It should be giving all the money back. It is time for the government to be straight with Canadians and acknowledge the fact that it is using the employment insurance account for purposes other than for what it was originally intended.

I have another interesting point about the EI fund because we do not actually have the money in the fund. If a recession were to happen tomorrow as a result of a terrorist attack somewhere which shook the U.S. economy and our economy, what would happen? Obviously people would be laid off. They would seek their benefits. We would have to pay those benefits by borrowing the money because the EI fund is a notional account. In other words it is a bookkeeping entry and the money is in general revenues, which as we know is quickly spent.

If we went into a recession, we would have to go out and borrow perhaps as much as $15 billion just to pay for employment insurance benefits. There are many problems with the EI fund as it is structured today. We need to make some real changes to how it works.

I will say one more thing with respect to employment insurance. I think there is a real desire among people who have a vested interest in the employment insurance fund to see it returned to its original purpose.

Tonight we will be debating a private member's bill that has to do with using the employment insurance account to provide up to 52 weeks of leave for someone who wants to look after an ill relative. That is a noble idea, but the problem is the employment insurance account is becoming another form of social program for the government. I should say that it is becoming several forms of social programs. We have maternity benefits out of it now. We have all kinds of training. We have the employment insurance account itself used for people who are laid off. Now a member from Nova Scotia is proposing that we use it for something yet again, sort of a home care program.

I think a lot of people would like to see it returned to its original purpose, which is to make it an insurance account for people who are thrown out of work through no fault of their own. If we did that, and the premiums paid for the benefits and it was strictly monitored, perhaps even had the fund run by employers and employees themselves, I think people would have confidence in that fund again. It would not be a political football like it is every election, especially now when the government is in the habit of running out and changing benefits, either increasing them or decreasing them depending on the political situation in the country. That is all I am going to say for the moment about employment insurance.

I want to talk about other things that relate to the economy and some of the things that came up during the debate yesterday after my friend from St. Albert stood up and asked for concurrence in his public accounts report. There were a number of comments during that debate that had to do with employment insurance specifically, but in general with respect to the economy.

The member for Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot argued that EI premiums are a tax that benefits the economy. That is what he said. I wish he were here because I want to explain this to him. Taxes are a price that is levied on particular types of activity. When there is a tax on work, which is what an EI premium is, it tends to decrease the amount of the quantity, in this case of people who can be employed.

Someone once gave me this example and it is a very good one. Say that someone has $200 to spend on a microwave oven and the seller is willing to sell a microwave oven for $200. In that situation, obviously a sale can be made. If all of a sudden the government comes along and levies 7% GST, then there is a situation where the person still has $200 to spend, but the microwave oven now costs $214. In that case the sale can no longer be made because now the microwave oven is beyond the reach of the person who has the money.

In a situation where an employer wants to hire someone and has a budget of $30,000 to do so, and all of a sudden the government comes along and places some kind of tax on that employment, whether it is an EI premium or whatever, in some cases that extra cost will mean that the employer can no longer afford to hire someone. When there are these premiums and taxes of various kinds, what we have is a price increase on a particular kind of activity that will ensure that the activity does not occur as frequently. In this case it would be the activity of hiring people.

When my friend says that employment insurance is a good tax, he is sadly mistaken. When there are high premiums it effectively ensures that some people will not be hired. People who would have been hired otherwise will not be hired.

I just wanted to make that point for the benefit of my friend from Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot who made that crazy statement yesterday that it is a tax that benefits the economy.

He also said that Canada is leading the United States in economic prosperity. I want to throw cold water on that idea. Right now, between Canada and the United States there is a 19% productivity gap. It was 14% in 1993. That is important because productivity is the key to rising standards of living.

A generation ago Canada and the United States had very much the same standard of living. We had virtually equal dollars. We could move back and forth between Canada and the United States. There was really no noticeable difference in standards of living. It could even be argued that Canada may have had a higher standard of living.

Because of a lacklustre economic performance in Canada over the last generation and poor public policy that contributed to that, we now have a situation where that 19% productivity gap between Canada and the United States has led to a 29% standard of living gap according to the government's own statistics. Canada now has a standard of living that is only 71% of that of the United States.

Again, I point out that at one time this country had the same standard of living as the U.S., perhaps even greater. When we think about the great resources that Canada has, to me it is very disturbing that we would allow our country to slide into that kind of situation where our country has become poorer and poorer relative to the United States.

We see it reflected in the falling Canadian dollar. Our dollar is now about 36¢ or 37¢ lower than the United States dollar. We could consider the dollar to be a pretty good barometer of the health of the economy.

My friend from Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot was wrong on that count as well. Even this last year where our economy has done mildly better than that of the United States, the productivity performance of the United States was superior, which means that over the long run the U.S. continues to outpace us with respect to standard of living.

I want to prescribe some possible solutions to get us out of the situation that we are in today in Canada. The first thing the government must do is make the economic performance of Canada its top priority. I do not believe the government has done that. The reason I say that is we have seen example after example of how wasteful the government is with taxpayers' money, money that could be used to lower taxes, pay down debt, or put into education, things that actually improve the performance of the economy. Instead, we see it being extraordinarily wasteful when it comes to things like the firearms registry, that $1 billion boondoggle.

We see the government engaging in awful economic planning with respect to Kyoto, a situation where it has come to the people of Canada, said it is going to ratify Kyoto but it has no plan. Already there is an investment chill simply because of the ratification. We see it in my province.

Right now in the oil sands, we see all kinds of companies cancelling projects even in the little town I live in. I live in a group of 13 acreages and six of the families in those acreages get their employment directly from the oil and gas industry. There is a chill running through my community because of Kyoto. People are very concerned about what it will mean. They are sitting on their wallets and not spending their money. They are concerned that if they spend their money they may lose it because of Kyoto and of how it is implemented.

I am arguing that the government has not made the economy a priority. It has not made increasing the standard of living a priority. It has not made improving productivity a priority. It has to do that. It cannot continue to wander down the middle of the road left, right, left, right. It needs to be single minded and focus on improving our economic performance. There are a number of ways to do that. I do not have time to get into them all, but suffice it to say that it has to make lowering taxes a priority. It has to make paying down the debt a priority. It cannot continue to engage in this frivolous spending.

I will simply wrap up by saying merry Christmas to my colleagues across the way and on all sides of the House. I wish everyone a very safe holiday season. I look forward to seeing everyone in the new year.

[Rick Casson, Canadian Alliance, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments. He mentioned that because of the ratification of the Kyoto protocol there already has been a chill on investment in parts of the country. Just the other day I was talking to a friend of mine who works in the oil patch. He told me the same thing, that things are on hold because of that. That was at a time when it had not been ratified. Now that it has it certainly will have some effect.

With some of the promises in the throne speech and some of the things we have heard since then, people have projected over the next five to eight years that it will cost the government $37 billion to implement some of those issues. That is not counting Kyoto and that is not counting what we have heard recently from the Romanow report on health care.

How does my colleague feel that some of these issues should be handled? How will we ever stay with a balanced budget, pay down our debt and do all the things that need to be done when some of these things are looming over the taxpayers of this country?

[Monte Solberg, Canadian Alliance, Medicine Hat, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the first answer is we could afford a lot more things if we had a stronger economy. If we had a broad tax base we could have much lower taxes and still have more revenue than we would have if we had a narrower tax base and higher taxes. The government has to focus on productivity and have a more productive economy. Even if we did that, it would not excuse sloppy spending and going out and spending away every bit of the surplus on every imaginable thing.

As my friend has pointed out, the government has planned to spend tens of billions of dollars over the next number of years. We are projecting a surplus of only about $14 billion over the next couple of years, but the government's plans go well beyond that. That does not include Romanow, which will cost about $15 billion to enact. It does not include Kyoto, as the member mentioned, and who knows how much that will cost not just directly in the form of expense to the government but also in the form of lower performance in the economy? We are quite concerned about all of these things.

The answer is to focus on getting the economy moving and to focus on looking after the core issues. The government must do the things that only government can do and do them well. It must ensure that all the other things are left to the private sector to the greatest degree that we can and also to the other levels of government which may have more competence in running some of these programs than the federal government does.