Yvan Loubier

[Taxation, October 20th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, we have already made seven recommendations to the Minister of Finance. If he wants another one, I will tell him not to raise taxes, as promised by the Prime Minister during the election campaign. He must not do it.

How can the Minister of Finance claim, as he has been doing for four days, that all taxpayers will have to help reduce the deficit when he excludes at the outset the major corporations and the richest families in the country by not taking all appropriate means to ensure that these people pay their fair share of taxes, nothing more but nothing less?

[Taxation, October 20th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. Yesterday, in answer to a question in this House, the Prime Minister left open the possibility that he might renege on his commitment not to increase taxes when he said, and I quote:

-if people do not want us to make cuts, the alternative is to raise taxes.

So, I ask the Minister of Finance: Are we to understand that the Minister of Finance is contemplating a tax increase for the middle class since, except for cutting indiscriminately in social programs, he is unable to cut where it is really necessary, that is in the government's operating expenditures?

[Taxation, October 19th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday we made some very specific suggestions to the Minister of Finance. And I even challenged him to apply them and to attack the problems that are out there: operating expenses and tax breaks for wealthy Canadians. That is where he must cut.

Under these circumstances, how can the Minister of Finance consider going after RRSPs when he refuses to touch family trusts and tax shelters? That is the question and it is outrageous that he is not doing it!

[Taxation, October 19th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. Instead of getting spending under control, the Minister of Finance has clearly announced that he is not giving up the idea of raising taxes. His document proposes a review of tax expenditures that affect mainly middle-income people, such as education tax credits, RRSPs, credits for charitable donations, credits for seniors, credits for married people, compensation for work accident victims-it is all fair game.

After hitting the unemployed and the very poor hard, how can the Minister of Finance now consider taxing the middle class more when he makes no reference in his paper to the scandal of family trusts and of tax shelters which benefit rich Canadians?

[Government Finances, October 18th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, they are putting a purple colour on the Conservatives' blue book, which says that we are in the red. Does the government's inaction in the past year and its inability to attack the deficit not confirm that the federal structure is too cumbersome, paralysed, paralysing and incapable of the downsizing required to reduce the debt crisis?

[Government Finances, October 18th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to reducing the deficit, the government is still turning a deaf ear to the various suggestions it receives from all over, including the Official Opposition. The government's only recipe is massive cuts in social programs, at the expense of the poorest people and the unemployed. To do this dirty work, the Minister of Finance is counting on his colleague in Human Resources Development.

Why does the Prime Minister refuse to admit that his government is going the wrong way by attacking the poorest people and the middle class with cuts to social programs, when he should first reduce his spending, end waste and duplication and fight tax evasion?

[Economic Policy, October 17th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, we agree with making cuts, but these must be targeted at operating expenditures, inefficiencies and overlapping, not at the unemployed and the poor in our society.

How can the public trust the minister and his government when in just one year, they have failed to protect the unemployed and welfare recipients, they have not abolished the GST and they are now talking about increasing taxes, in spite of all the promises made? What kind of trust does the minister think he will instill among Quebecers and Canadians?

[Economic Policy, October 17th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is also for the Minister of Finance.

In a statement made this morning on the state of the economy and government finance, the minister discussed at length the need to make additional budget cuts in order to meet his 1996-97 objective regarding the deficit.

Does the Minister of Finance still deny that, in order to achieve his objective, he will make additional cuts of $7.5 billion in social assistance and post-secondary education, on top of the $7.4 billion cuts already made in his last budget in the UI program and transfers to provinces?

[Family Trusts, October 5th, 1994]

The Minister of Finance does not know how to count.

[Registered Retirement Savings Plans, September 29th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance should read again the newspaper article in which the Prime Minister clearly said that taxes would not be raised in the first two years of a Liberal government. Not the tax burden but taxes themselves.

Does the Minister of Finance not think that he would be acting more responsibly if, instead of penalizing taxpayers by taxing RRSPs, he made a commitment right now in this House to reduce the Liberal government's huge operating expenditures and to make his friends, the friends of the wealthiest Canadians, pay by eliminating the tax loopholes they enjoy?