Monte Solberg

[Copyright Act, March 20th, 1997]

The minister is saying that it is in the bill, but it is not in the bill to the point where it is clear to the people involved that they will not suffer consequences if they do not jump through all those hoops. The minister knows that legal action has been taken in the past with respect to these sorts of issues. It leaves broadcasters wide open.

The government must remember-and this is where the government falls down-that it does not place adequate importance on ensuring that broadcasters and the electronic media, the vehicles for the promotion of Canadian heritage, are allowed to do the job they have done so well in the past of promoting the wonderful culture of this country.

Time shifting is one issue. I have spoken to many people at community cable channels. I have spoken to different groups that provide all kinds of great Canadian programming. They will feel a chill run through their organizations because the government has failed to adequately define how this would work. It has failed to make it clear that broadcasters could go ahead and do things like time shift without feeling some kind of repercussion.

Broadcasters have also raised the issue of transfer of format over and over again but it has fallen on deaf ears.

[Copyright Act, March 20th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise once again to speak to Bill C-32. However I must say right from the beginning I am extremely disappointed with the deal that has been made between the Bloc Quebecois and the government to end debate on this issue. Many Canadians still are very concerned about so many aspects of Bill C-32 which simply do not fill the needs of interested parties, not the least of whom are Canadian broadcasters.

I will declare my sympathies off the top as I always do. As I always point out to my colleagues across the way, I come from a background in broadcasting and I think it is important that be known.

We are again seeing collusion between the Bloc Quebecois and the Liberals to end debate on an issue that affects millions and millions of Canadians. People still had all kinds of questions they wanted addressed. Unfortunately the government ignored them just as it ignored the concerns of people on the HST legislation on which the government also moved closure. It is becoming quite a common feature of the government, more so than the previous Mulroney government. That is the first point I wanted to deal with.

Second, I will deal with the legislation specifically. Broadcasters have asked over and over and over again for a number of things. They have asked that the government move amendments to the legislation that would permit them to time shift, which simply means they would have the ability to record a program at one time

and then play it back at a different time without having to seek the permission of people who were playing music on that particular broadcast, without having to go through all the hoops, without having to go through all the paperwork. It is a common sense request, but for reasons that escape me or anybody with a modicum of common sense the government has denied it.

[Employment, March 20th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, the fact is that Reform's plan will give all Canadians better benefits at lower costs than the Liberal plan. The numbers the finance minister was quoting are probably from Liberia or Panama or somewhere else.

The government's jobless record for youth is absolutely pathetic: 16.9 per cent last month, up from 11.9 per cent in 1988, 12.7 per cent in 1990, a 40 per cent increase in joblessness for Canada's youth. As the last hired and the first fired they know the effects of job killing policies.

To quote the finance minister, payroll taxes are a cancer on job creation. Can the finance minister explain again how his $10 billion annual payroll tax hike is going to encourage jobs among our youngest Canadians? Can he explain how his job killing payroll tax is going to encourage businesses to hire more young people? We want an answer.

[Employment, March 20th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, the sad fact is that many Canadians are on the dole.

Let us look at those job growth figures the government loves to boast about. There has been a 25 per cent increase in temporary jobs since 1989. For half of those entering the workforce since December 1995 the only job they could get was a part time job. Fifty-five per cent of the people who did find a job are self-employed and they are the ones the government is going to hit hardest with the massive CPP tax increase.

Can the minister explain how sucking $3,300 out of the pockets of the self-employed creates jobs? Why does he not admit that what he is really doing is killing jobs?

[Employment, March 20th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians are fed up with the revisionist numbers the finance minister uses to put a pretty face on the ugliest job creation record since the dirty thirties.

Here are the facts: There are 1.5 million unemployed Canadians, just like with Mulroney, and 800,000 people are moonlighting just to make ends meet. Our largest trading partner has an unemployment rate half of what ours is. Despite the $6 billion infrastructure program, employment in construction actually has dropped by 40,000 jobs. Canadians have had a $3,000 pay cut because of the 37 separate tax hikes by this government.

When is the light going to go on for the minister? When is he going to understand that taxes, taxes, taxes kill jobs, jobs, jobs?

[Presence In Gallery, March 19th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Reform Party, we feel we could do a lot better than Bill C-32.

[Taxation, March 19th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, it looks like I struck a nerve. You will notice that the finance minister did not try to answer my assertion directly. I said that according to the government's own statistics, personal income taxes have gone up as a percentage of the economy by 15 per cent.

Does the Minister of Finance deny that the government has raised personal income taxes so they have gone up 15 per cent relative to the size of the economy?

[Taxation, March 19th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, on page 50 of the budget plan the finance ministers says the only way you can judge the impact of taxes is to measure them relative to the economy. Let us do that. I think that is a good idea.

Since the government came to office personal income taxes have gone up 15 per cent relative to the size of the economy. That contradicts what the Prime Minister just said. That means more money out of the pockets of every single man, woman and child in

the country to feed a government who spends that money on things life golf carts, sock factories and of course the Hotel D' Shawinigan. We are talking billions of dollars.

Why will the finance minister not admit that he is socking it to Canadian taxpayers?

[Government Expenditures, March 18th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, more Liberal math.

Let us look at some of the essential spending the government cannot bear to cut, such as the $8.1 million announced yesterday by the Minister of Human Resources Development for a sock factory in Montreal. That must be their high tech initiative. Then there is $600,000 for a hotel in Shawinigan. How about this? There will be $120,000 spent by the Department of Canadian Heritage for golf carts in the health minister's riding. All the while the government is closing hospitals around the country.

Why will the finance minister not admit that this pork barrelling is the reason the government has overshot its spending reduction targets by a whopping $8 billion?

[Government Expenditures, March 18th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I want to quote the finance minister in his recent budget speech. "We have always said that our targets were not the most we would do but the least we would do".

It looks like the lowest targets are not the law. In fact, the government is not even close to coming in on target. It has spent $8 billion more than it said it would spend. We wondered how long it would take the Liberal-Tory coalition to go back to its old pattern.

Why did the finance minister fudge his spending figures in this year's budget in order to cover up his failure to meet the spending reduction targets laid out in the 1995 budget?