Bob Mills

[House Of Commons, April 22nd, 1996]

You are an embarrassment.

[House Of Commons, April 22nd, 1996]

That government has free votes.

[The Deficit, April 22nd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, this weekend I travelled to three provinces talking to Canadians about building a better future and overcoming the threats to our collective prosperity. We also discussed the cost of Canada's most important social programs. For example, it costs 37 billion federal dollars to keep

our health care and education systems going and to provide benefits for senior citizens.

This year interest payments on the massive federal debt dwarfed the cost of all these vital programs combined. Interest payments are at $48 billion and rising. This is a scandal and the federal government bears full responsibility. The current government has added $100 billion to our children's debt and this has increased our annual interest payments by $10 billion per year since the Liberals took power.

Canadians I talked to realize the biggest threat to our future prosperity is the interest payments being racked up by the current government. This government has set no date to balance the books and is driving Canada into bankruptcy. Shame on the government.

[Foreign Affairs, April 18th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Reform Party and all Canadians, I would like to express my sorrow and shock that a UN base sheltering refugees was shelled by Israeli forces today resulting in many deaths and injuries.

This tragic occurrence must be condemned by everyone. Although Israelis said it was an accident, this does not make it acceptable. Civilians being sheltered by the UN must not only avoid being targeted but combatants must avoid them in all circumstances.

This tragedy points to the futility and destructiveness of the recent violence. I urge Israel, Lebanon and Syria to immediately begin around the clock negotiations to solve this conflict. Humanity demands that they act now to sort out their differences and make sure such tragic events never happen again.

[Bank Act, April 17th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, that was a fairly confused question but I will try to deal with it. First, we are all for grandmothers. We all agree with that so let us clear that away.

With respect to CDIC, we do not expect it to be a bond rating agency. However when problems are found in a financial institution, we do expect that to be transparent. We do not expect to have a situation which occurred in our province with the Principal group. The company went under and the information was known but was not made public. It is not fair to the very grandmothers we are trying to protect. That is what we are talking about. We could have bond rating agencies. We do not expect CDIC to do that. CDIC is an insurance company. It is important to get this back to a transparent and accountable situation.

[Bank Act, April 17th, 1996]

A member mentions the GST. Obviously we had a promise on the GST. A major change was promised, but what is going to happen? The name is going to be changed. It will be called the ABC tax and will be 15 per cent. That certainly sounds like a major change to me. It certainly destroys the accountability we are all talking about. Again I come back to mistrust of politicians and the political system.

Canadians are responsible people and they would make sure they knew about the risks of particular financial institutions if some of their savings and retirement money was on the line. Under the current system though the first $60,000 is 100 per cent covered if a financial institution fails. What incentive is there to find out about these institutions? We must look at the whole area of co-insurance.

With a 100 per cent guarantee it only makes sense for Canadians to put their money where they get the best deal and where they will receive the highest interest rate regardless of the financial health of the institution. It would only be human nature that when most of the members on the other side get their MP pensions they will put them into any kind of institution because of this 100 per cent guarantee. Believe me, we on this side will have to be much more careful because we are not getting the MP pension. We are not at the trough, as are so many others.

With co-insurance we would have a shared risk and it would encourage accountability. It would force people to choose between the higher interest rate or the security. Those of us who have been in business have had to make those choices. We are saying that the bill should reflect this.

It is not greed that causes people to go for the highest interest rate. Much of it is a lack of understanding of the system. Many people risk their life savings. They are not greedy; they are simply following human nature.

Choice is good. Personal responsibility is also a good thing. I know some of my colleagues opposite would disagree but I feel strongly about this. I know the tradition of this place is to legislate away all choice to protect Canadians who were arrogantly assumed to be incapable of looking after themselves.

Many of us came here because we got angry. We would send good people here and they would come back in six months and say: "We know better than you because the party told us that this is how we should think". There is a member opposite who after yesterday I am sure will go back and say: "Well, I voted against my party because I was honourable, because I did what I knew I had to do".

We often hear this message coming from on high, here in Ottawa. It is called Ottawa fever. That is where the party runs the show, not the people; the people do not bring the message this way, it goes in reverse. We are sick and tired of that.

Canadians say: "Be accountable. Put in some legislation. Do some of the real changes we have been demanding". The people are ahead of the politicians. They are way ahead of the politicians. They understand risk. They understand the banking system. They are where it is at.

Let us get back to the bill. Much of what we have been talking about is wound up in complexity, the banking industry, the legal industry, the bureaucracy. We are saying instead of the 136 pages, we can solve the problems much more easily. Bill C-15 should be scrapped and the whole issue should be looked at in a totally new light. The underlying principle for any future legislation should be openness, accountability and choice.

Some members across the floor will say that I am saying competition is not good. I am saying that competition is where it is at but there has to be a level playing field. The problem with banks is they do not have a level playing field. There is no openness. There is no accountability. That is why we have the present problems. That is why the people have such doubts about banks, about insurance companies and about politicians. They have those questions because of the lack of accountability.

It is good to go home and realize the support we have is from the grassroots. It has grown dramatically in terms of membership and in all kinds of ways. It makes us feel really good because we know we have taken the message the right way. The message has come from the people to this place. They are demanding that we put it into a much simpler, understandable way.

In closing, Bill C-15 is too complex. It does not deal with the issues of accountability and transparency which people demand. We are voting against this bill.

[Bank Act, April 17th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the subject of Bill C-15 certainly is not the area of my expertise. I want to approach this from the standpoint of the lay person, talking about the banking system, the insurance system and what they mean to Canadians.

We all recognize the value of a stable banking and insurance system. That is necessary in our society. If we look at the disruption the United States has in its fiscal system, none of us would want to ascribe to it.

When we look at this bill we find that there are a number of key problem areas. The key to monitoring our financial institutions and ensuring their financial health is the question we should be addressing.

Ensuring Canadians do not get conned into putting their money into shaky financial institutions which go on to collapse is of extreme importance to us. Every time one of these financial or insurance institutions goes under we all feel the repercussions. It costs millions of dollars to insure this does not happen, and over the years there have been a great many problems.

The CDIC has often had to step in to cover the $60,000 insured limit on deposited moneys.

I think back to my experience in Alberta. When the Principal Group went under the grandmothers, the farmers and the general public that had put their money into that institution were left not knowing if they would get 10 cents on the dollar or 50 cents on the dollar or what would happen to them.

Many people at that time said that was greed, that those people invested in the Principal Group because it paid one per cent more or one-half per cent more. I would not call that greed, I would call that human nature. People will look at institutions with a view to putting money into them based on what kind of return they can get. Seniors are most affected, as they were in my community by the collapse of the Principal Group. That is what we have to address. We must ask how much information the general public should have on all our financial institutions.

Let us examine Bill C-15. It seeks to improve the rules regarding financial institutions. Unfortunately it does not deliver on this very well. Like so many of the bills we have had before us in the House, it goes part of the way in doing the job but does not go far enough. That is either because of political reasons or because of lack of information. Perhaps there is too much reliance on the bureaucracy and not enough on the hard work of committees and of the minister.

Anyone leafing through the bill will notice it is quite complex. It runs 136 pages. When we take this amount of legal jargon and add it to the existing legislation we get an almost indecipherable collection of material nobody except a few lawyers really understand.

Over the three years I have been here I have noticed that when we do this to bills, we leave things open to interpretation, we leave things open to confusion. Many people will look at it differently. The government has to return to communicating with people in people's language. Lawyers, accountants and bankers have created an industry out of complexity.

Whether our tax system, our banking system or any of these systems, we are looking at getting legislation back to the people so the people can understand it and can deal with it. We should not have to hire experts. When we do that we leave ourselves open to the abuse we so often hear about from our constituents.

The bill is very complex. It is an opaque bill and does not address the fundamental problems surrounding financial institutions. That is why my colleagues and I are not supporting the bill. We do not think Bill C-15 is evil or malicious, but we do not think the government has taken the right approach of putting it in language people can understand. I do not believe it could be that difficult to express the bill in a legalese we could understand and approach.

What is this simple approach we are talking about? It is very important the system be understandable, open and accountable to Canadians. This is the exact opposite of what I see when I try to read Bill C-15.

The current system is so arcane that no ordinary person can make head or tail of it. Even if some brave soul wanted to find the various ins and outs, the information simply is not available. It is confidential, it is off limits, it is out of bounds and it is something individuals should not have. In other words, there is no transparency and no accountability. It is no wonder Canadians do not have much faith in the way things are going and are currently being done.

I come back to the tax laws as an example: 2,100 pages of gobbledegook. I look at our Constitution and see more gobbledegook. We have to relate to clause this and clause that as of this date and that date and so on. Businesses and individuals cannot understand it. Accountants have to take courses every month just to understand the changes that are being made.

Let me relate one of the proposals in Bill C-15 that has some potential. It suggests that risk should be a determining factor in assessing premiums for the CDIC. That seems to be a really good idea. Everyone in this House understands that a high risk company should pay higher premiums. The inverse of this is true as well. The more secure the institution, the less the premium should be. This is common practice when it comes to insurance.

Unfortunately though, the CDIC would not make these risk assessments available to the public. If this were open, transparent and made available, then people could plan their investments accordingly. They would know the level of risk they were taking and it would be totally up front. They would have no one to blame but themselves if they decided to make that riskier investment with the higher premium rates.

There is no transparency. The way it is now is secretive which makes it impossible for Canadians to make informed decisions. I think we hear that no matter what area we talk about. Canadians need things to be transparent and open.

I know many of the hon. members on the government side have a fair amount of money. We have heard that mentioned on occasion. Many of them are even what we might call wealthy. I would like to ask those people, if they were putting their hard earned dollars into a particular bank or trust company and they knew the CDIC had done a risk assessment on that institution, would they not want to know what the assessment said? Does it not make common sense that it would be public information that one institution was riskier than another?

That sort of thing should be public information. That is why the public loses confidence and trust in politicians and in politics itself. We do not seem to open up this information to assessment. The

public has a right to have that assessment and to have it made public. We need to know who is reliable and who is not.

When there is one of these big financial collapses and the taxpayer is left holding the bag, would those people who have made that decision not be angry if they realized that CDIC had known all along the company was a risky bet? Would people not wonder why the CDIC had kept that secret?

I think back to what I talked about earlier, the example in Alberta where the grandmothers, the farmers and so many other people lost their savings. We heard that the experts knew it was risky, but that little grandmother out there sure did not know it was risky. How could she know since that information is confidential? It is secret information. As I pointed out at the start, if nothing else, just to get this into the layman's language so the layman understands it we have to open it up and make it transparent.

I would like to go back to what I earlier called a simple approach to this. It involves a transparent and accountable system. One of the best ways to build accountability into a system is through co-insurance. This has been introduced but has not been followed up on. It is not part of the bill and was rejected.

How can this be? It would seem everyone agrees that we need transparency, accountability and a right to know when a company is a risk and when it is not. What is wrong with co-insurance? Why is it not there? Again it comes back to the fact that we are not going far enough. We are just touching the edges.

Many of the things we do are little political decisions where we said we would do a little bit, so we do a little bit. There is no vision, no long term plan. There is nothing there.

[Bank Act, April 17th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I come back to this concept that Quebec is paying out so much more. In Alberta, for example, we have paid $145 billion more than we have ever received as a province.

Talking about the Crow rate being a subsidy, the Crow rate is an agreement made with the agricultural sector and the farmers now will not receive any transportation subsidy.

The $1.6 billion was a pay-out of this contract negotiated to be worth somewhere in the neighbourhood of $18 billion. Therefore $1.6 billion is simply a one time pay-out. It is gone. They will now

have to compete in the international marketplace in the World Trade Organization.

[Bank Act, April 17th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member about his understanding of the whole area of international trade, exactly what is the reality of our joining the WTO and what that means to us in the world for the future. Obviously our future will be as a trading nation in dealings around the world.

Whenever I hear somebody talk about the need for supply management and actually believe that will be something we could

ever hold on to in the future and still be a world trader, I am very surprised. Does the member not feel the dairy industry in Quebec would not be able to modernize and become a competitive producer in the world market without depending on government subsidy?

I would like him to address that in the context of the World Trade Organization and what that will mean to us as Canadians, particularly if we have 30 million Canadians dealing in an international global market.

[Somalia Inquiry, April 17th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, why will the minister not do the right thing and put Canada's interests higher on his priority list than defending a well connected Liberal appointee and recall Mr. Fowler until these allegations are cleared up?