Art Hanger

[Excise Tax Act, March 20th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, there may be some that seek it in the business community. I have heard that reflected from my colleagues during the debate. The bottom line is whether consumers want the harmonized tax and how it will impact on them. That is the important issue. The big retailers certainly do not want it.

The member keeps speaking about Ontario businessmen running to him wanting to know when it is coming into Ontario. Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia are not even willing to discuss this federal proposal. They know they will have to pay the shot for the provinces that cannot make up the difference like Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Prince Edward Island. They know they will bear the brunt of the difference when it comes to supporting weaker provinces.

[Excise Tax Act, March 20th, 1997]

It is not totally happy, but I agree that as a result of its pressure some things have been done. That still does not take away from the fact that the tax is hitting a broad base of goods in that region. It will impact directly on the pocketbooks of the consumer.

The Halifax Chamber of Commerce had meetings with the committee. It made predictions. One of its predictions was that the tax would push up new house prices by 5.5 per cent as well as force municipalities to raise property taxes. If the chamber is saying that in Halifax obviously that view will be shared by other regions of Atlantic Canada. It will impact directly on housing costs and lead to increased taxes which will be imposed on the consumer.

As this effort continues to impact on the consumer, where is that going to put him? Is it going to create more jobs if housing goes down? Is it going to encourage those who have finances to go and spend? No, it is not. He will have less money to spend in the first place because his taxes are going up and house prices will definitely impact in that same region.

The Canadian Real Estate Association says that harmonization will increase the cost of a new house by $4,000 in Nova Scotia and in Newfoundland to the tune of $3,374, and in New Brunswick. As any family would desire in terms of its own comfort to have a house, the opportunities will be slim because $4,000 is a lot. It will impact on the down payment. Regardless of how low interest rates are the cost of this is impacting right at the consumer level. It is just as I mentioned earlier. When you pay your utilities you will see that extra hit right there, a broad based tax that did not exist before.

The GST harmonization is responsible for the closure of five Greenberg stores and the loss of 79 jobs in approximately five different locations. There are closures. This will not be the only hit in that region but it is one. Woolworth Canada also estimates that because of the tax inclusive pricing it might consider closing 126 stores in the Atlantic region, which means a loss of approximately 300 jobs.

Another smaller but just as significant retail business, Carleton Cards, predicts that it will close 19 of its 37 stores in the region, throwing approximately 116 people out of work.

It is government's business not to create jobs in the sense that they have to be government jobs. It should certainly create jobs by creating an atmosphere so business in turn can create jobs. The small businessman is the job creator and the engine in society that should be creating the jobs. I do not think this is the mandate of the government. The harmonization aspect of this tax is yielding other concerns. It will certainly impact directly on the whole job market.

Management of Carleton Cards also indicates that there is a 50:50 chance of further store closures and a loss of 71 jobs in eight different cities across Atlantic Canada.

I have a question for the Liberal government. Why have these concerns not been addressed directly? Why have the fears of the

business community not been put at ease by the government saying this is not happening and the information is to the opposite effect?

The bottom line is that consumers will pay more for funeral services. They will pay more for children's clothing. They will pay more for books, auto repairs, electricity, gasoline, home heating fuel, haircuts and myriad other things.

In closing, this tax will certainly impact directly on the consumer. We are now looking at unemployment rates that are unacceptable. They will be a lot higher.

[Excise Tax Act, March 20th, 1997]

Okay, if it is gone, it is gone. These items are very important. They show there is a concern expressed by many. Of course the retail council submitted those submissions and I agree.

[Excise Tax Act, March 20th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, indeed it is a privilege to debate this topic on GST, specifically the harmonization aspect.

It was a very key issue in the last election, the hated GST and what was going to happen to it. Of course there were promises made by the Liberal government to scrap the GST. We heard the government's mandate as to how it would deal with it. It has built up to this point and again, looking toward the next election, it is still an issue. In fact, it is more of an issue now for some. It will directly impact the lives of people in Atlantic Canada.

All kinds of comments have been made and studies done on this particular tax. Is it a good deal or is it a bad deal? I will take the bad deal side because it is a bad deal. I have not heard much good about it. When we consider what business has said and many of the comments made by government leaders, it is a bad deal. The resignation of Premier Savage of Nova Scotia no doubt was partially due to the harmonization fiasco. Many call it the BST or the blended sales tax. That is how it is colloquially known in many areas. It is a bad deal.

The Atlantic premiers were bribed into signing the deal with a $1 billion shot in the arm from Canadian taxpayers. The harmonized version will amount to 15 per cent as opposed to the 18 per cent which the provincial sales tax and the GST amounted to.

The tax will have a broader base. People who pay utility bills or who make any other purchases will now see the tax hit their pockets. It will cost them more. That is how it will impact on the average person. The tax will take away from their income.

We are living in an age of high taxation. In Canada there is one tax after another. The so-called harmonized tax was promoted as a tax which would alleviate problems. However, the base is so broad that it is costing taxpayers even more.

How can one justify adding another tax to the already depressed area of Atlantic Canada? The tax will not bolster its economy, it will do the opposite.

What does business say about the tax? Three major retailers in Atlantic Canada have stated that their net annual retail deficit will total $27 million once harmonization is implemented. Is that not a warning sign?

One private retailer in the Atlantic region was contemplating opening two stores in 1997 but has decided against it as a result of increased costs associated with harmonization. Instead of expanding and looking at the tax as alleviating some of the problems, that retailer is backing off.

If someone is going to invest a dollar into business, they want a return on that dollar. They want to know that the investment will yield a return. That does not seem to be happening. The message that the retailers are getting from harmonization is the opposite. They are being very cautious about expanding their operations. They are being very cautious about investing in business.

There are warning signs, but the government plods along and will impose this tax on a region which wants nothing to do with it.

Both privately owned and publicly owned, traded stores are reluctant to explain the problems they face as a result of harmonization so as not to jeopardize consumer confidence and the value of their stock.

What does that say? It says that this discussion is not as as open and as public as they would like it to be but they fear that people will withhold, that they will not patronize them, that they will not buy their product or that they will look at the operation as struggling or as having some significant problem in their affairs. That will directly impact on their profit line. It is the profit line that we talk about because businesses are only in business to make a profit; let's face it, the bottom line.

The Retail Council of Canada submitted its findings which included this statement: "By forcing stores to bury the new tax in prices, the harmonized tax regime will cost retailers at least $100 million a year".

[Excise Tax Act, March 20th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, I listened enthusiastically to the member's statement. I was in the lobby for part of it. Then I came into the House and listened to the rest here. It is interesting to hear the New Zealand experience. It is important to express that time and time again.

It is really interesting to see how this whole business of harmonization came about. I want to put this to the member for North Vancouver to address. It is a series of defaults on the part of the Liberal government that led up to this point of harmonization.

The Liberal government was put into a corner, if you will. It started out in part by the heritage minister when she was forced to resign and seek re-election at a cost of over $500,000 to the taxpayer. It is all over this GST issue.

The second point is the finance minister publicly begged forgiveness in his statement "we made a mistake for misleading Canadians on the Liberal GST policy".

Then there was another row when the member for York South-Weston resigned. I should say he was banished from the Liberal caucus. Then the member for Broadview-Greenwood temporarily went into self-exile. All this happened over the GST issue.

I would like to put this forward to the member and seek his comments.

[Canadian Census, March 19th, 1997]

No, I am not embarrassed by what I am saying. I think that it is important that Canadians hear it.

These same politicians also create quota systems for public service jobs. It is a quota system that only impacts in areas where the ruling party of the day allows it to take place. It is a form of reverse discrimination. It is contrary to the equality of all citizens. It sullies our reputation as a country which selects people for jobs on the principle of merit rather than socially engineered notions of race and entitlement.

Let us look further into this point of the census. The state is demanding answers that are none of its business. The census also asks Canadians to divulge other information: the marital status and sex of room mates and/or inhabitants of their home; how much money they make; how many books they have read in the past six months; how often they take a vacation without the children; how many windows they have which face north. That sounds like a real valuable piece of information.

The government assures respondents that the information collected from the census is confidential. I have been in the House for about three and a half years. I realize that the information gathered in many of the departments within the government is not confidential. It is like a sieve and it leaks out all over.

The notion that the records will be kept confidential in my opinion is absurd. I believe that a lot of Canadians have the fear that it is not as safe as what the government would lead people to believe.

For the reasons that I have outlined I have to urge that all members of the House carefully examine Motion No. 277 and support it in a vote.

[Canadian Census, March 19th, 1997]

The member across the way said it is ludicrous to say that, but that is exactly what is happening. The Liberal Party has been a master at such manipulation.

[Canadian Census, March 19th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, I too would like to commend the member for Beaver River for bringing this motion forward. In particular, I would like to thank that member for allowing me the opportunity to speak to the motion.

We are in an age where government seems to be intruding into so many areas of our lives. I can name a number of bills recently introduced in the House that do exactly that. One has to ask the question why. For example, think about the Canadian Wheat Board and its impact on many farmers in the country, especially western farmers, in how they sell their product. Some desire to sell their own grain but cannot do so because of the restrictions placed on them by the government.

I look at the gun control bill and see again a very intrusive feature. Some sections in the gun control legislation impact directly on law-abiding people. I do not think that is acceptable to the majority of people in the country.

Some of the more recent broadcasting legislation impinges on those who have businesses in that area. We see control on what can be broadcast, what can be sent out over the airwaves and what cannot. That is not to say that there should not be some legislation or restriction, but here we have restrictions that are going much deeper than what should be.

Coming up to the census, Statistics Canada, under the Department of Industry, claimed that the purpose of the question, in particular question No. 19 on the long form, was to organize population by selected ethnic origins. Those are the reasons it gave for collecting this data. This, irrespective of the politically correct spin bureaucrats and social engineers attempt to put on it, is nothing more than the labelling of people on the basis of race. Most people just want to be called Canadians.

I look at my own riding. I live in a very multicultural riding. I have neighbours who are from India, Jamaica and the Middle East. For the most part, they would like to be considered as Canadians. They came to Canada just for that reason. They do not come here to be hyphenated Canadians, which is what is the official multicultural policy of this Liberal government, which unfortunately was introduced some time back into the House and imposed on the people.

I refer to a statement made by Bruce Petrie, the StatsCan official overseeing the census. He said that question 19 was changed on the 1996 census from other past censuses "because too many minorities born in Canada were listing themselves as Canadian". This upset Mr. Petrie. One would have to ask: Why would this upset Mr. Petrie? I might point out that this quote came from the Fredericton Daily Gleaner newspaper of May 13.

Mr. Petrie goes on to say: "So someone who is black and speaks English and was born in Canada puts Canadian- That gives us no information to estimate the number of black visible minority people. We are not trying to measure race per se. We are purely and simply trying to enumerate visible minorities under existing federal legislation".

Again one would have to ask why. Why would the government want to enumerate visible minorities under the existing legislation? There is no question that it is a divisive form of regulation.

Let us go a little bit deeper. I have had the opportunity to speak to RCMP officials. In fact in the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs this point was brought up. They want to have a quota system on the different visible minority groups in the country. The only way they can do that is to determine the number or percentages of those different visible minorities through the census.

The whole point is being missed if we engineer, for instance, a police force, selecting those according to their race as opposed to choosing the best there is regardless of race.

Canadians know and feel that this is a form of social engineering, and they do not care to hear that kind of spin. Mr. Petrie would certainly fall into that category because it is people such as himself who really drive this kind of a policy, with the blessings of the government, in particular the Liberal government.

Putting a hyphen before Canadian, so people become French-Canadian, Turkish-Canadian, Greek-Canadian, Somali-Canadian, Israeli-Canadian, Hungarian-Canadian or whatever, has to be the most divisive aspect of Canadian society. It puts us all into little boxes and categories. I suggest this undoubtedly is the purpose of the census information. It is going to be used for that very reason.

I am going to speak again of my own riding, a very multicultural riding. I see evidence there of this form of blocking of the community by race or background. That does not enhance unity, nor does it benefit those who come here from different ethnic backgrounds or countries.

Canadians are painfully aware that Liberal politicians use the information gathered from question No. 19 on the Canadian census to appease minority groups to attract votes, so it has another purpose. Vote buying.

[Committees Of The House, March 19th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of privilege. I would like a recorded vote on the motion put to the House by the member for St. Alberta. The House does not know who said yea or nay. It is my right to be able to ask for a recorded vote.

[Government Expenditures, March 18th, 1997]

Put a cork in it.