Lost his last election, in 2011, with 36% of the vote.
The Budget February 19th, 1999
Mr. Speaker, taxpayers deserve a lot of credit for keeping this budget afloat, but sadly interest on the national debt is still the largest single government spending program.
Where in the budget is the long term debt retirement plan that pays for past socialist sins? Why is the minister not sending clear signals about real targets for debt reduction? What is the government plan beyond just some leftovers to pay off the national debt? Where is the target? Where are the plans?
Questions On The Order Paper February 15th, 1999
With respect to contributions made by Heritage Canada and Public Works and Government Services Canada for building restoration, in each of the last five years, 1994 to 1998: ( a ) how many have been made; ( b ) what specifically have they been for; ( c ) what was the geographic location; and ( d ) what was the amount of each contribution, including whether or not it was on a matching basis?
The Budget February 9th, 1999
Mr. Speaker, the House has heard how the finance minister spins a line and says everything is okay while average Canadians are hurting from the tax man.
There is another fact. Since 1993 he has taxed back 155% of wage increases of Canadians. This is not good enough to pay for the increases. He also wants to go after the savings.
I will ask him this simple question again. Will Canadians pay less on the bottom line this year, yes or no?
The Budget February 9th, 1999
Mr. Speaker, the finance minister huffs an awful lot about Reform ideas to deflect from his bad record, but he knows absolutely nothing about economic freedom.
The truth is the finance minister has taken $38 billion extra from Canadians' pockets since he came to power and has greatly hurt health care.
I am ask simply and directly why he is promising some tax relief yet going to give tax hikes? Will Canadians get real tax relief this year?
Finance February 2nd, 1999
Mr. Speaker, typically governments when managing financial affairs would certainly like to minimize the public input so it increases their own discretionary decision power as to the regional grants they want to pursue.
One of the ways of reporting was to cover up their excessive spending in the accounting procedures, backloading so that money spent now really does not appear on the books until later.
When we have had the situation reversed and now have a bit of a surplus, the government to increase its own options has a tendency to backload things so that programs that are not yet spent are already charged against the books for this year. That is a typical government habit when it does not have a philosophical approach basically to have honesty in reporting and accountability to the community about the finances of the country.
One of the other interesting points that the auditor general has criticized the government for is the operational side of government departments. They still do not have modern accounting practices, what is called full cost accounting. Anyone in the private sector certainly tries to develop a business plan according to those modern standards. Governments are still in an old fashioned way reporting and developing their budgets in perhaps an unwise way that from year to year does not really represent the true costs of a particular activity.
Therefore it is very difficult for the average citizen or even an expert in the field to begin to analyse the question of what kind of value we are getting for the dollar spent. Would it have been better that we just not do that activity, contract some of it out, or develop a partnership with the private sector? It has a lot to do with managing vectors as to the efficacy of particular government activity and whether it is wisely spent.
Someone this month said that if regional giveaways and a government trying to pump up a region were possible and if that philosophy worked, and historically we can look at Atlantic Canada, then Atlantic Canada would perhaps be the wealthiest, richest and most prosperous area on the earth because since confederation Atlantic Canada has received many subsidies. But that philosophy does not work.
We must have a position of truth in reporting and proper financial accounting practices. Certainly the Reform plan is prepared to do that.
Finance February 2nd, 1999
Mr. Speaker, I will continue on this theme. Canadians rightly look to government to provide peace and order and to do the collective things in society that we as individuals cannot do for ourselves. It is also accepted that government itself must be a strong and fair referee in the economic game. The difference between richer and poorer nations arises from the kinds of government they have. Politics matters. Governments can bring health or harm, prosperity or despair. It is all in the policy choices they make.
That is why I speak out on behalf of my community against many of the unwise choices that have been made by this government since 1993. Most important, I speak for the positive things that Canada could achieve if we had a more accountable, competent government. I speak of the need for tax relief in this context, especially when the Prime Minister this week agreed with Brian Mulroney about the wisdom of high taxes.
Canada's story is one of not fulfilling our potential when we have every basic advantage. Because we have had abundant natural resources and access to capital to develop infrastructure, we have been able to participate in the various technological revolutions. We have had some measure of success since Confederation despite our poor governments and their many misguided policies.
Successive Liberal and Conservative governments through ignorance and/or perverseness and by being wrongly cheered on by the NDP have left Canada in a plight far below what we are capable of in terms of caring for our people and bringing prosperity and freedom to all rather than just maybe most.
Governments set the climate for the economy and the right mix of policies over time can be very beneficial. But governments can quickly cut down years of steady progress by favouring their friends, violating the basic laws of commerce and unreasonably promoting a party reputation over needed national policy. So it can be said that the Liberals have shown themselves time and again not to be wise managers of the public trust. They continue to mistakenly act as if they can tax and spend Canada into prosperity.
A better mix is needed between those who create and those who reallocate, between those who earn and those who burn the people's money. It could be said that at some point taxation even has a moral component of how right it is for a government to tax and control the financial affairs of Canadians. Although economic considerations can be complex, in our present situation it is all too obvious that Canada now needs significant tax relief.
The current arrangement needlessly hurts Canadians. It is obvious to any worker who knows what the government has done by seeing the deductions on his paycheque or the job that has been lost.
It is time that the average Canadian received a raise in pay this year, not by confiscating as much revenue from the economy and from paycheques. The Reform plan would give all workers in Canada a raise in take home pay this year.
The Liberals have hurt Canadians through unprecedented high tax levels instead of a better mix of spending control on government and a resolve to end economic discrimination. They also unreasonably cut health care instead of other things. We were then able to slowly stumble toward a fiscal surplus. Now we watch as the personal sacrifices that Canadian workers have made, who have spawned the surplus, evaporate under old style Liberal-nomics.
This year's Liberal surprise appears to be the changing in questionable size of the surplus. According to the Department of Finance's most recent pronouncement something unforeseen is occurring that has our $10 billion to $12 billion projected surplus shrinking to $7 billion or less. What they are really trying to tell Canadians in the lead-up to the budget is that most of the money that was promised for tax reliefs in the upcoming budget has vanished from the government books. Over the past two years at the time in the business cycle when government spending historically should be restrained, this government still succumbed to blowing by its spending budget a cost overrun which also the usual habit of the NDP in my province.
The facts are clear. Any further delays in large scale tax relief in the upcoming budget will only be because this government refuses to stop its wasteful spending. The government keeps telling us how great things are while the standard of living continues to fall. An unwise high tax policy is strangling the economy.
The deficit has been reduced by hiking taxes and slashing health care while the government's spending levels remain the same or in some cases rise. An eight cent drop in the value in our dollar is somehow deemed good for business. The auditor general refuses to sign off on the books of Canada for the third year in a row because he believes the government's accounting numbers do not meet required accounting practice. A $16.5 billion cumulative slashing of health and social transfers is called “saving and protecting health care”. The head of government says “it is not the right thing to do in a society like Canada to call for across the board tax cuts”. That was a recent published quote from the Prime Minister.
Under the Liberals Canadians pay personal income taxes 56% higher than the seven leading countries and economies. In 1996 under the Liberals the average Canadian family paid a total tax bill of $21,242 more than it paid for food, shelter and clothing combined. It pays even more now. Since the Liberals came to power in 1993 they have taxed back 155% of average wage increases. Under the Liberal government's watch this collective wealth of our nation has been devalued as our dollar sank to historic lows against the American currency. This result is the international judgment about the government's handling of our economy. Our $580 billion net public debt costs us some $40 billion a year to service and represents enough money to finance current health care payments for about 46 years. Yet this Liberal government still refuses to implement a serious schedule for debt repayment.
I am only allowed two or three minutes to summarize some of the proposals put forth by the official opposition in our 1999 prebudget submission to the Minister of Finance. I am saying that Canadians need tax relief this year. A wise mix of policies is needed that is more just and fair. Canadians need comprehensive tax reform beginning with a $26 billion in total tax relief phased in over three years. We need to continue the simplification of the tax system and reduce the overall burden of taxation on Canadians by eliminating the temporary deficit reduction surtaxes. The 3% and 5% surtaxes were introduced to balance the budget. Now that the budget is balanced they must be phased out.
We should reduce the burden of taxation on low income and elderly Canadians by immediately increasing the tax free threshold basic exemption to $7,900. Forcing low income Canadians to pay taxes and then transferring that money back in programs is really not wise. Leave more money in the hands of low income and elderly Canadians. Begin reducing high marginal tax rates and flattening the personal income tax system. Canadians pay a very high marginal tax rate at relatively low levels of income. We propose to fold the top two marginal rates into a single rate of 24% of income above $29,000.
The reduction makes incentives to earn and invest. We must end bracket creep. Also we must remove the marriage and child care penalties in the tax system.
Currently Canadian families that choose to provide child care in their own home are penalized by a tax system that does not recognize the value of parent provided child care.
We propose to reduce the marriage penalty by increasing the value of the marriage equivalent amount to $7,900. Further we propose the introduction of a refundable child care expense credit to replace the existing child care expense deduction. The credit would be available to all parents, not just those who choose to have their children cared for outside of their own home. It is about ending discrimination.
In the medium term we propose to undertake fundamental tax reform with an objective of moving toward a flatter tax system. However, these changes would require major consultation with Canadians and would be subject to new realities.
Nevertheless we need such long term visions to begin to see what could be done to make economic breakthroughs for the country. We need to introduce a comprehensive debt repayment schedule that would reduce debt by $19 billion over the next three years and by $240 billion over the next 20 years.
The Liberals continue to pursue an ad hoc policy of reducing the debt with whatever happens to be left over at the end of year. This policy does not promote international confidence in the government's commitment to debt reduction.
We propose to introduce legislation that sets a fixed percentage of each year's surplus toward debt reduction with periodic deposits made to a national debt retirement fund.
The government should demonstrate restraint in federal spending by instituting a three year spending freeze in most discretionary spending. It would promote value for dollar audits.
These are some of the measures that would provide predictability for private sector business planning and be a massive stimulus to the economy. There is so much more but I have limited my comments to tax reduction, the economic sense of it and also that it is a moral imperative.
Finance February 2nd, 1999
Mr. Speaker, I was interested in listening to the member. He previously asked questions of the Liberal member opposite. He outlined a philosophical difference which gives rise to the policy choices that are made. The choices that governments make eventually either hurt the population or free the population for prosperity.
Certainly we can see the disparity within Canada is not necessarily related to geography, resources and so on. A lot of the economic disparity between the regions of Canada has historically been related to the kind of provincial governments and the economic choices and incentives or disincentives that have existed.
Would the member further expand on his proposals, outlining from his philosophical view how Canadians would be more prosperous?
Supply February 2nd, 1999
Mr. Speaker, the Liberal member said that while this is an aberration it is just one judge, but this is another example of a series of problems perceived by the community which leads to a basic distrust. A gap develops between what the community expects and the results that are delivered through the judicial system. This is only the latest example of the basic lack of community confidence that judges are reflective of mainstream Canadian values. Part of it is not so much what is being decided but also who is on the bench and who gets to be decidee.
I refer to a time when the chairman of the justice committee agreed with Reform on that issue. I said on that day as a backdrop in a general sense we detect that there is not a lot of public confidence in the judiciary itself. One of the mysteries is that the average public does not know how judges get to be appointed.
The late Shaughnessy Cohen, God bless her, said: “We all know it is the committees that want to keep the process secret. We all know they do not want to face an applicant. They do not want to have someone who is applying for a judicial appointment put his face right in front of them because God forbid they should be accountable for this decision”.
She went on to say: “If this committee wants to continue to keep this secret, perhaps they should reconsider the process and reconsider whether they want to be on the committee or not. Maybe it is turning into a star chamber. There is a big difference. There are politics at play here other than Liberal politics or Tory politics. There is also the politics of the bar which is unaccountable and really nasty. It gets down to who is deciding”.
She also said: “In the final analysis who is on the hook if a judge screws up? It is the Prime Minister and the justice minister”. That opinion was very well considered based on experience. The opinion and the evidence we got in this Chamber today was unaccountability, that we should let the system work, that it is all okay. Our point today is that it is not working and changes have to be made.
Supply February 2nd, 1999
Mr. Speaker, the issue today is the social gap between the workings of the superior courts and the societal norms of what communities expect.
What happens here is not only the technical merits of what is being decided but who is doing the deciding especially when it relates to the Supreme Court of Canada. It applies to the superior courts across the country that are a federal appointment.
When we get to the fine points of splitting a hair, it comes to the social values of who that judge is. The country has nearly no say about who gets there. There is very little accountability for removing someone who is not representative of Canada.
It has to go through a very long process and then come back to this Chamber to remove a judge. We have some problems in this country about the judiciary and appointment.
What will the government do not only to look at this decision but, as this is an example of the problem of the appointment of judges, what will the government do to improve the accountability of who is on the bench and doing the deciding as well as what is being decided?
First Nations Land Management Act February 1st, 1999
Mr. Speaker, we are at the report stage of Bill C-49. Our significant amendment reads as follows:
That Bill C-49, in Clause 45, be amended by replacing line 16 on page 22 with the following:
“so signed, that a land code has been developed and adopted in accordance with this Act and that the governing bodies of neighbouring jurisdictions have confirmed in writing that consultations respecting the land code have been completed in accordance with the laws of the province in which the first nation land, for which the land code has been adopted, is situated”.
That is very important. It has to do with consultation and accountability.
We can say that the bill is well intended but is has holes in it big enough to drive a truck through.
The bill ratifies and brings into effect the framework agreement of first nation land management concluded between first nations and Her Majesty in Right of Canada. It provides for the establishment of an alternative land management regime that gives first nation communities control over the lands and resources within their reserves. It also gives first nations the power to enact laws respecting interest in and licences in relation to first nation land respecting the development, conservation, protection, management, use and possession of that land.
The enactment also provides for a community approval process that enables first nation members to vote on a proposed land code and an individual agreement between the first nation and Her Majesty. The community approval process is monitored by a verifier jointly appointed by the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and the first nation.
I will not speak to the whole bill, but at first blush when one looks at the bill, it gives any reasonable person great concern. If a band or council decides to be malevolent, I think there are insufficient controls and balances to the powers given. In some of the sections there are limits to the federal government but not parallel limits to the bands. There does not appear to be a balance of power between the federal government in the bill and the bands in the bill.
Significantly, there is a problem with section 12 and I will refer to it. In section 12(1) on page 7 of the bill it states:
A proposed land code and an individual agreement that have been submitted for community approval are approved if
(a) a majority of eligible voters participated in the vote and a majority of those voters voted to approve them;
(b) all those eligible who signified, in a manner determined by the first nation, their intention to vote have been registered and a majority of the registered voters voted to approve them; or
(c) they are approved by the community in any other manner agreed on by the first nation and the minister.
Let us describe a typical situation in many bands. We have 100 eligible voter adults and of course the band has total control to decide who is eligible.
In that case 51 votes are needed for the overall vote to be valid and only 26 votes are needed to pass the code. This could then certainly be reasonably within the realm of all the relatives and kin of one family that happens to hold most of the paid positions in the band administration.
Under the theme of accountability I am talking about, the bill talks about a vote and the supervision of the vote but nowhere are there assurances that the votes will be conducted by secret ballot, nor does it refer to a standard set of rules for how votes can be conducted. There are just general rules in the bill that appear completely open to manipulation.
Then the bill grants statutes or status of freedom from judicial review and grants immunity from prosecution in section 35 for error. There are limits on liability and provisions of immunity and freedom from judicial review.
When regular municipalities in a province are in conflict with each other, the provincial government can intervene. In British Columbia, municipalities are governed under the municipal act. It is a creature of the province. The provincial authority is the fallback power.
Who mediates the powers of the band and other regular municipalities in a province? It is not very clear. There is no obligation in this bill to talk, let alone co-operate for mutual benefit between these jurisdictions.
The general intent of the bill is appropriate. It is trying to go in the right direction but the details are an absolute mess. There are reasons why there is cause to worry, for the best predictor of future trustworthiness of how these bands will use these newfound powers is the past. They likely will be used in the same manner as has been in the past on reserves across the country. The track record of band management so far tells us how it will be managed in the future. That is a worry.
In contrast, clear and fair rules and open accountable processes are the best protector of human rights. What we have been trying to stand up to here are especially the rights of status Canadians under the Indian Act. Those are the ones who have been contacting us and they are the individuals for whom we have been trying to stand up.
In conclusion, this bill appears to completely fail on those very important basics.