Monte Solberg

[Copyright Act, June 4th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-32.

I must start by declaring my bias on this piece of legislation. I am a broadcaster by trade and it is important that I say that right away. In declaring that, perhaps I should take a couple of moments to explain why I think it is very important from the perspective of someone who has been in the broadcast industry that this legislation not come into place, not necessarily because it hurts broadcasters, although it does, but because it will hurt Canadian culture in general. I will expand on those remarks over the course of the next several minutes.

I should start by acknowledging the work of the hon. member for Kootenay East who now sits on the Canadian heritage committee, my colleague in the Reform Party, our heritage critic who has done a lot of work on this particular issue. He has many concerns and has provided me with some information.

I certainly was aware of the issue and I think hon. members in all parties were aware of it as well. There was a rather intense lobby from all sides with respect to this legislation and there is a good reason for that. The reason is this legislation will profoundly affect the various industries it touches.

I want to talk for a moment about the broadcast industry. The minister said a few minutes ago that the bill will strengthen Canadian culture. I am going to challenge that assertion. It will strengthen some aspects of Canadian culture but at the expense of other players in Canadian culture. I speak primarily of people in the broadcast industry.

I want to make the argument that hundreds of broadcasters in the big and small radio stations around the country are as much a part of Canadian culture as are the recording artists. Absolutely. I will give my personal perspective on this.

I ran a little radio station in Brooks, Alberta. I did that for 10 years. Prior to that I worked at radio stations throughout western Canada, some quite small, some a little larger in medium size markets. It is important to point out the value these little radio stations have in their communities. They are the glue that hold those communities together in so many ways.

The community of Brooks relied on my radio station for the local weather report which is something we take for granted. If we stop to think about it, it makes absolute sense that if we could not support that radio station because of yet another imposition of some kind of a tax, a levy or in this case, neighbouring rights which cause the radio station to go out of business, people who relied on the local weather report would be lost. We are talking about farmers, ranchers and those types of people. People wait to hear whether or not the school bus will be running because of a storm. They simply would not have that local information.

Another example of how radio stations hold communities together is the local news aspect. Many local communities have weekly newspapers but they do not have daily information. That is very important. I talked about the weather. If my memory serves me, the number one reason people listen to the radio is to hear the weather report. The second most important reason is local news. People want to hear what is going on in their community on a day to day basis. If because of government legislation some radio stations are knocked off the map and people cannot get the local information, the sense of community will be lost in a very real way.

I come from Brooks, Alberta which has a population of 10,000. It is quite far from any other major centre. There are many communities in that type of situation around the country. If those communities lost their local radio station it would be a tremendous loss because there would be no other radio station or TV station to jump in to fill the gap. It would be a terrible loss.

I know many hon. members opposite feel the same way. I hope I am not putting anyone on the spot when I read the following letter. That is certainly not my intent. I have a letter which was signed by the hon. member for Essex-Kent. It was sent to the former heritage minister. The letter states: "Neighbouring rights will add dramatically to this local programming loss across our country. Border communities such as Windsor and Sarnia are in a competitive market with the U.S.A. Added cost to the Canadian broadcasters will place them in a less competitive position. It is truly troubling to me to pass legislation that would place the radio broadcast industry in Canada at a disadvantage to their U.S. counterparts".

It is an excellent letter and the hon. member made some very good points in it. That is one huge reason the legislation is bad. Overall this legislation will cost Canadian broadcasters somewhere in the range of $30 million. That comes at a time when over half of the radio stations in the country are losing money, especially AM radio which is under tremendous strain because of fragmentation in the marketplace and new technologies. Suffice it to say that at the present time there are no technologies which can replace what radio is doing around the country.

This is an extremely important issue. Again I say to the minister that she is proposing legislation which will strengthen one aspect of Canadian culture, but it will greatly weaken another.

Another point is that there is really no reason to bring this legislation forward right now. That really bothers me. I do not understand where the minister is coming from. There is a longstanding historical understanding between the record industry and radio with respect to how record companies are compensated when radio stations play their music. If someone's music is played on the radio, obviously it will have an impact on record sales.

The broadcasters recently had Angus Reid conduct a study. It was discovered that about 45 per cent of music purchasers identified radio as the most important influence in their most recent music purchase. It outranked all other factors by a ratio of three to one. Overall, nearly nine in ten or about 88 per cent of Canadian music buyers rated radio to have been a somewhat to a very influential factor in their music purchase over the last year or two.

I get the sense that the minister is setting out to kill the goose that has laid the golden egg. The Canadian music industry and its artists are doing extremely well around the world. Not only are they popular in Canada but they are popular in the United States and Europe as well. There are many obvious examples. Therefore, the question is: If the present system is working extremely well, why are we engaging on a new course that could potentially undermine

the broadcasting industry, which is precisely the industry that has given many of these artists their start?

Many radio stations in order to help them get their licence tell the CRTC when they apply for their licence that they will commit to spending a portion of their profits on promoting new artists who do not yet have a record. They will help them record a song so that the artists can get some air play. In many instances the group, for example the one I belong to, CHUM Limited, a big chain across the country, would say that they would give the new artists free advertising of their records on their air waves.

This is seen as an important way to help fulfil the 30 per cent Canadian content rule, by ensuring that there are lots of good quality Canadian artists out there. A lot of time is spent coming up with ads to promote Canadian recording artists. What we are doing here is undermining the radio industry and therefore jeopardizing precisely the same artists the minister is intent on promoting.

Those arguments are good enough, but there are many other important arguments against this legislation. I want to make another right now with help from the member for Essex-Kent and his letter.

What we are proposing to do seems insane in many ways. We want to set upon a course that will provide neighbouring rights legislation which in effect will ensure that Canadian artists who receive a lot of air play in the United States will not benefit. In fact, they may be ultimately penalized-and I will get to that in a moment-by virtue of the government bringing in this neighbouring rights legislation. At the same time, we are providing a perverse incentive for Canadian broadcasters to play more American music. Let me explain how this works.

Neighbouring rights legislation will extend the current copyright legislation that applies to the composers of music on to the artists and the record producers. In other words, the producers and artists will enjoy the protection of copyright legislation. They do not enjoy it right now. The radio stations will pay for that. In Canada there will be a monetary incentive to play more American music because it is exempt from the copyright legislation. It is a crazy incentive to put in place if someone wants to promote Canadian music. It does not make any sense at all.

On the other hand, we are treating the Americans differently in Canada. They will not be subject to the new copyright legislation. We are treating American artists differently. That will make us subject to a challenge under NAFTA or under the WTO, which would quite possibly mean that the Americans could challenge us. It could mean that some of our artists will be ultimately denied from receiving air play in the United States.

The point with respect to this issue was extremely well made by the hon. member for Essex-Kent. I will read from the letter he sent to the heritage minister:

On Wednesday, November 1st, the U.S. government passed its Digital Performance Rights Act of 1995. This U.S. legislation excludes current radio stations, as well as future digital radio stations, from any form of neighbouring rights royalty payments. There is grave concern in the industry that any introduction of a neighbouring rights royalty in Canada will be detrimental to the radio industry which is already experiencing financial difficulties. Of equal concern is that Canada would have a different system than in the U.S.

The U.S. obviously is the big market for the majority of Canadian artists and also is our biggest trading partner. The letter goes on to state:

For example, if Canada were to have a neighbouring rights regime, which includes Canadians but excludes U.S. entertainers, it would be challenged under the WTO. The effect of a successful U.S. position is that approximately 70 per cent of the royalties paid by Canadian radio stations would be paid to foreigners, with no such return of revenue from the U.S. due to their exclusion. In any event, the U.S. has indicated that it would consider this system under the national treatment rules. This means that the U.S. will simply demand the same treatment for U.S. performers and record companies as given to Canadian performers and record companies.

In other words, because the Americans are excluded, we are going to send our people down there. They will not receive any royalties from the Americans because the Americans do not have this legislation. Radio is exempt under U.S. copyright rules. However, in Canada we will have the situation of a reverse incentive to actually play more American music because broadcasters will see a monetary benefit from it. It makes absolutely no sense. Not only that, we will possibly be subject to a NAFTA challenge or a WTO challenge. We have no idea of what the consequences of that could be. Suffice it to say the country music channel dispute shows us that the Americans are determined to play hardball when it comes to cultural industries.

One of the other concerns I have is with respect to how certain performers are going to benefit from this legislation while other performers are penalized. In relative terms, neighbouring rights legislation most benefits those Canadian artists who tend to receive more air play in Europe where neighbouring rights apply to private radio than in the U.S. where they do not. In practical terms this means that certain genres of music and music recorded in certain languages will benefit at the expense of others.

What is rather obvious, if I can state the obvious here, is that recording artists from Quebec are going to receive far more benefit from this than Canadian artists outside of Quebec. The reason is that most of the people who have signed on to the Berne convention are from Europe. Therefore, Quebec artists who sing in the French

language for instance are going to be the beneficiaries of this. However people who perform in English and have their primary market in the United States are not going to receive the royalties because, as I mentioned several times before, the U.S. excludes neighbouring rights from applying to private radio.

The legislation provides a benefit to francophone artists in particular, but also to other artists who perform in different languages and receive a lot of air play in Europe. Meanwhile, it does not help and most likely will hurt those Canadian artists who perform in the United States. The real situation is that the minister is pitting one group of artists against another. We are headed for trouble if we do that because it is wrong.

Another point I want to make is a little more complicated. Actually Europeans do much better with this deal than do Canadians overall because of our broadcasting system. In Canada literally hundreds of radio stations across the country broadcast to 30 million people. In Europe a fraction of that number of radio stations broadcast to 300 million people.

By virtue of how the neighbouring rights legislation is designed, what is important is how many spins of the record occur over the course of a year and not how many people it reaches. That is how the legislation is designed. In relative terms we will be sending a lot more money to Europe than Europe will be sending to Canada for our artists because of the way the broadcast system is designed.

We have a situation where European performers will actually do better than Canadian performers. It does not make any sense that our government would be promoting that. To me it is ridiculous and counterintuitive. Nonetheless that is precisely what is being proposed.

I will not belabour this point as there are people who would like to discuss other pieces of legislation. I sum up by saying that there is no support for the legislation across the way, as far as I can determine. There is certainly no support for it in my party or, I would argue, across the country.

I would argue that Canadians are very supportive of their local radio stations. People feel that Canadian performers are doing extremely well today. We see them all the time: Shania Twain and Michelle Wright. Many Quebec artists are doing extremely well around the world. To tinker with the current system is to invite disaster, to invite killing the goose that laid the golden egg. All this occurs at a time when private broadcasters are facing serious financial problems.

I cannot understand the motivation for the legislation given all the arguments against it. I encourage hon. members across the way, members of the Bloc Quebecois and certainly members of my own party, to go after the legislation.

I encourage the minister to justify why she is taking this course. I remind her that for every argument she puts forward in favour of the legislation there are three or four against it. I encourage her to think about that and to remember that the broadcast industry, speaking as someone who comes from it, is a very important part of Canadian culture. Steps should be taken not necessarily to promote it but certainly to stop the erosion of it that the Minister of Canadian Heritage is proposing.

[Taxation, May 30th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I think the minister should explain that to the people who will be paying that much more when they purchase gas in Atlantic Canada once this agreement kicks into place.

The Government of Nova Scotia has pointed out in its budget document that consumers will pay $84 million more once this agreement comes into effect.

Considering there is only one taxpayer in the country, not two for every level of government, will the minister explain to people how this extra $84 million in taxes meets his two-month old promise that there would be no new taxes as he suggested at budget time?

[Taxation, May 30th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, a couple of months ago the finance minister suggested there would be no new taxes in his budget. It was kind of the Canadian equivalent of "read my lips".

Yesterday we pointed out the minister's harmonization agreement would mean a 100 per cent increase in the GST cost on gasoline in Atlantic Canadian provinces that have harmonized. That would work out to an average of $4.30 for a tank of gasoline in Atlantic Canada.

Can the finance minister explain how this 100 per cent increase in the GST on gas meets his promise of revenue neutrality found on page 22 of the red book?

[Supply, May 30th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, the member's comments betray his attitude toward the people. The point that I am making is people will make good judgments about how they treat other individuals. The reason I say that is in the situation the member refers to he forgets there are a complex set of variables involved.

We have a bank industry that is very tightly regulated. There is no competition among banks. We have all kinds of very high tax levels. We have high payroll taxes. There is actually a disincentive to hiring all kinds of people.

We have high unemployment due in large part to the fact that the government has intervened so heavily in the economy that it actually provides a disincentive to hiring.

That means banks and other groups hire people who come best prepared. That is not a surprise to me. It may be to the hon. member. When we look at it at the local level, when people have a choice people are more than willing to help out their neighbour. They are more than willing to help out people down the street who may come from a disadvantaged situation.

The hon. member has forgotten a huge part of this equation. There are all kinds of factors he did not consider such as interventions from the government that provide disincentives to hiring some of the people he talked about.

[Supply, May 30th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I must address some of the assumptions the hon. member was making about the Reform Party. He talked about the radical right and all that kind of nonsense.

There are many people on this side who believe in a very organic way of looking at the world, a conservative way of looking at the world, but we view it a little differently than the member opposite.

We believe good common sense, an organic view of the world and slow growth come from people and not from the government. That is why we reject Liberal government social engineering. I will give a good example that ties in precisely to the example the hon. member used about the subsidy that goes to the banks, the $105,000 I raised in my speech.

The member mentioned that the $105,000 that goes to the banks, which made $5 billion in profits last year, is used to hire aboriginals and people with disabilities. What the member failed to mention is that his own government has put into place social engineering in the form of affirmative action that forces banks and others to hire visible minorities, women, people with disabilities and aboriginals.

Therefore what we have in this situation is legislation that forces the banks to do something. The banks make $5 billion in profits and then the government gives the banks $105,000 to fulfil the legislation they have set out.

Would the member acknowledge that perhaps what the Reform Party really stands for is allowing people to make a lot of the judgments themselves because they are the ones who are truly socially conservative, the ones who create a sense of community, not the government?

[Supply, May 30th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, there are so many issues and so little time.

I smelled the distinct odour of Liberal arrogance when the member was boasting about their standing in the polls. I remind the hon. member that the Conservatives were very high in the polls the summer before the last election and they ended up with two seats.

The member mentioned a number of issues. He pointed out that the deficit has fallen by $25 billion. Will he also acknowledge that revenues for the government have gone up by exactly $25 billion and that $10.5 billion of that has come from new taxes?

When the member was talking about how difficult it was for him and his colleagues to cut social programs, he did not mention how easy it was for them to vote themselves a very fat MP pension. A very fat one. They are cutting seniors benefits and benefits to people in Atlantic Canada, but I note he forgot to mention how much money he had given himself in the form of a huge MP pension. That was noticeable by its absence.

Will the member acknowledge that when the debate was going on about my leader's $30,000 receiptable expense allowance, the newspaper accounts also pointed out that his leader received $400,000 a year from the party, absolutely unreceiptable in the form of an entertainment allowance? Will he acknowledge that the empties from that entertainment allowance would be more than enough to make most people happy?

[Supply, May 30th, 1996]

moved:

That given the Prime Minister's 1993 election commitment "that there will not be a promise I do not keep", and his government's subsequent record in breaking promises on job creation, safer streets, governing with integrity and scrapping the GST-the last of which culminated in the resignation of the former Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps-this House condemns the government for betraying the trust of Canadians and contributing to the overall "cynicism about public institutions, governments, politicians and the political process".

Madam Speaker, I did not hear the entire motion go into the record. The motion we are debating today reads:

That given the Prime Minister's 1993 election commitment "that there will not be a promise I do not keep", and his government's subsequent record in breaking promises on job creation, safer streets, governing with integrity and scrapping the GST-the last of which culminated in the resignation of the former Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps-this House condemns the government for betraying the trust of Canadians and contributing to the overall "cynicism about public institutions, governments, politicians and the political process".

That is the motion. By the way, that last quote came from page 91 of the Liberal red book.

The promise the Prime Minister made during the election campaign was very bold. I think the Prime Minister knew exactly what he was doing. At that time Canadians were very cynical about politics, federal politics in particular given the record of the Mulroney government. When the Prime Minister made the promise that he would not break any promises, he played on the hopes people had for a new government. People were desperate for some integrity in government. They wanted to believe that a new Prime Minister would instil some integrity and that they would be able to believe what the Prime Minister was saying.

How disappointed Canadians must be today. How disappointed they must be after the red book made all kinds of pronouncements about the promises the government would fulfil. Although there are many, the most obvious example is the breaking of the promise with respect to integrity. I point in particular to the recent resignation of Sheila Copps, the former Deputy Prime Minister who is now pursuing re-election in Hamilton East.

I want to talk a bit about the sequence of events which led up to the breaking of that promise. I must underline how important it is as politicians that during an election or at any time when we make statements about what we propose to do, people regard those words very seriously. We need to take these matters seriously. We cannot just hope that people are going to say: "Oh, it is just another

politician making a promise. We do not really take it very seriously anyway so if they break it, it is no big deal". We have to do something to restore the confidence people had at one point in politicians. I will talk about the events which led up to the breaking of the GST promise.

In the three or four years between the time the GST was introduced and the time the present government came to power we heard over and over again from members across the way when they were in opposition that they would scrap the GST. They would kill the GST. The GST would be eliminated. We did not hear it just from the former Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps, although she went on national television and said it. We also heard it from the Prime Minister himself who said: "I hate it. I will kill it". We heard it from the finance minister. We heard it from the current human resources development minister. We heard it from many backbenchers across the way. The promise was made by many people.

Subsequent to that, about a month before the election, the red book came out. It was distributed to about 70,000 people. It certainly did not get the distribution the Deputy Prime Minister's remarks received on national television. That document said that the GST would be harmonized, or would be replaced rather, with something that was equivalent in terms of the revenue it would generate.

Now we have a new broken promise to deal with. Subsequent to that the finance minister introduced a harmonization agreement in Atlantic Canada, along with other sundry rule changes, which will actually increase the amount of revenue that goes to the government. In fact it could increase by as much as a billion dollars a year. Again, that promise is being broken. Again, the government is not living up to its word.

I want to take the point a little further. Two months ago the finance minister said the government was not raising taxes and would not raise taxes. He was talking about personal and corporate taxes but I point out that although he is living up to the letter of his word, he is not living up to the spirit of his word.

Since the government came to power it has raised taxes and increased revenues in various different ways to the tune of $10.5 billion. That is unbelievable. Two months ago the finance minister said they were not raising taxes.

What did the minister do after that? He effectively raised taxes in Atlantic Canada. Before the House broke last week the Government of Nova Scotia revealed that the new harmonized GST in Atlantic Canada was to cost Nova Scotia consumers $84 million. That is another broken promise and a breach of integrity.

The finance minister lived up to the letter of his word but he did not live up to the spirit of his word. The government deceived Canadians in the budget by saying it was not raising taxes. That is absolutely untrue. Nova Scotians will pay more and anybody who deals in used goods will pay more. It is to be a billion dollars a year in extra revenue to the government.

How the government can say it is somehow fulfilling a promise is beyond me. However, we have the Prime Minister who is still to this day saying they have met their GST promise and that it was only the former deputy prime minister who overstepped the bounds and went too far. I cannot believe he truthfully believes that in his heart. The Prime Minister knows that somehow Canadians do not buy this. Even if the finance minister lives up to the letter of his word he is not living up to the spirit.

Deception takes many forms. Sometimes deception is not lying to people. Sometimes deception is withholding the truth, which is what the government has done over and over again.

I wish I could say it ends with the GST promise, but it does not. There are many other instances. I refer to page 95 of the red book:

In particular, a Liberal government will appoint an independent ethics counsellor to advise both public officials and lobbyists in the day to day application of the code of conduct for public officials. The ethics counsellor will be appointed after consultation with the leaders of all parties in the House of Commons and will report directly to Parliament.

Has that promise been fulfilled? The answer of course is no. What do we have today? We have a situation in which the defence minister is embroiled in a controversy. He is alleged, although it goes beyond alleged because he has acknowledged it, to have given $100,000 to a former campaign worker, broken up into small contracts so he could get around the rule that contracts over $30,000 have to be tendered. We have called for the ethics counsellor to be brought in.

What has happened? The ethics counsellor has not been brought in because the government did not fulfil its promise. It broke its promise to make the ethics counsellor accountable to Parliament. The ethics counsellor is a lapdog for the Prime Minister. He answers only to the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister refuses to bring him in to do a proper investigation into this matter. This is another example of a broken promise. I want to talk about another broken promise.

One of the promises in the red book is: "We will examine such programs with the objective of reducing waste and inefficiency and promoting economic growth. Expenditure reductions will be

achieved by cancelling unnecessary programs, streamlining processes and eliminating duplication".

If the government is so efficient at reducing waste, I wonder if members across the way can tell me why last year the Department of Human Resources Development gave $105,000 to the Canadian Bankers Association. That is the organization that promotes the bank industry. If my memory is correct, the banks made about $5 billion in profits last year. I heard yesterday or this morning that the Royal Bank posted a quarterly profit of $324 million.

Why is it that when the banks are making $5 billion and the government says that it will reduce waste, we are giving banks $105,000 of taxpayer money? That somehow defies logic. How does the former deputy prime minister explain that when she is campaigning in Hamilton East?

Hamilton East is a working class neighbourhood. People there are probably wondering about the profits made by the banks. When Sheila Copps comes knocking on their doors, when they hear her government has given $105,000 to the bank industry and they have heard the banks made $5 billion, I wonder how she answers their questions. I wonder how she would answer a question when going door to door about all the money the government gave to the Canadian Bar Association, $277,000. The government promised in the red book it would get rid of all that waste.

The government gave $277,000 to the Canadian Bar Association. Does that not seem odd? The association received $20,000 from its buddies in the justice department and approximately $250,000 from CIDA, of all places. I expect that lawyers, some of the most well paid professionals in the country, would be able to afford to fund their own lobby organization. I would not have thought the Liberal government would have to give them $277,000. Another broken promise.

The government cannot get the message that people do not want it to spend money on organizations like the Canadian Bar Association and the Canadian Bankers Association when we keep going further into debt, when we are cutting social programs and when people are really suffering. Yet the government continues to spend on wasteful projects like those. Another broken promise.

I would think lawyers already benefit enough from the government. We have 36,000 challenges before the tax courts today, which should keep lawyers plenty busy. They do not need any more help from the federal government.

I point to another waste issue. Recently the auditor general reported that a $2 billion family trust had been transferred to the United States from Canada without any Canadian tax being paid. That is odd. The government said it is committed to ensuring there is no waste. That is a waste. There are tens of millions of dollars in taxes that should have been paid on that to the Canadian treasury, but all that money escaped.

The government will argue that was before it was in power, which is very true, but why did it not lift a finger to close the loophole? Why is it waiting for all the horses to get through the barn door before it closes it? Why is it allowing people with big money, people with all kinds of ability to navigate through loopholes and complex regulations to transfer millions and billions of dollars out of the country? By doing that it is ensuring that ordinary people like the steel workers in Hamilton and farmers in my riding, fishermen on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts have to pay taxes to make up for it. Why are the Liberals doing that? It is another promise from the red book blatantly broken.

I wonder how Sheila Copps would answer that? Unfortunately we do not know because Sheila Copps will not come to any all candidate forums. Sheila Copps will not take calls from her constituents when she is on talk shows. I guess we have to talk about it in here. Hopefully when she goes door to door people will ask her some of those questions.

A major promise the government made during the election campaign was jobs, jobs, jobs. I wonder if people remember during the election campaign when the now Prime Minister pounded Kim Campbell for saying she did not think there was any prospect that the job picture would improve before the year 2000. I think a lot people will remember that. It was a fairly prominent headline in the news.

Recently the Prime Minister said in Calgary and in the House "I guess we will have to live with high levels of unemployment". At the time of the election he said Kim Campbell was wrong. He suggested that somehow things were to be much better under the Liberal government.

What is the situation today? Today there are 1.4 million unemployed Canadians. There are approximately 13 million people in the workforce. One third are underemployed. One quarter are nervous about losing their jobs. As a result of all of that the economy suffers because there is so much uncertainty about the future.

The point is the government in many different ways implied that somehow things would be radically better than they were under the Conservatives. As I pointed out before, deceit has many different faces and sometimes it is not a blatant lie, it is a withholding of the truth. The government again has broken its promise of jobs, jobs, jobs.

When we look at the numbers there are actually 4,000 more unemployed young people today than there were in 1993 when this government took power. I cannot help but wonder how the Liberals are saying they are keeping their promises on the job issue, as some members did a moment ago. They have absolutely not done that.

The debt has climbed, interest rates have climbed, taxes have climbed and course unemployment climbs. The people over there have added $120 billion to the debt; $10.5 billion in new taxes and revenue measures since this government came to power. That not only ultimately kills jobs, it prevents jobs from being created because there is much less money in the economy and so people are not able to start businesses.

I have argued on may different fronts that the government has repeatedly broken promises and it does it without even batting an eye. It took overwhelming public opinion to force the deputy prime minister to resign. The Prime Minister denies there are any problems. I put to the House that the government has done a terrible job of fulfilling its promises and should be punished in the byelection in Hamilton East.

[Taxation, May 29th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, $84 million in new taxes for the province of Nova Scotia and a 4 cent per litre increase in the price of gasoline repudiate the minister's promise of the budget just two months ago when he said there were not to be any new taxes.

My question again is will the minister admit today his promise of no new taxes is bogus and that once again Canadians were misled by the government?

[Taxation, May 29th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, for weeks now the government has piously proclaimed it is very concerned about the price of gasoline, so much so that it has struck another committee to look into gas prices.

The government does not really need a committee. What it needs is a calculator. Out of every litre of gasoline 3.5 cents is GST, all of it hidden. Under the minister's new harmonization agreement he is adding another 4 cents per litre to the price of gas.

My question is very simple. Is a 100 per cent increase in the GST charged on gasoline his idea of no new taxes?

[National Unity, May 15th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, we had a non-answer every time.

The separatists are claiming that the federal government is beating Quebecers over the head with the Constitution of Canada and disregarding any democratic vote that they might hold. Because the Prime Minister refuses to set the parameters by which the government would respect a referendum vote or the mechanics for separation, once again he is taking the jellyfish approach and playing into the hands of the separatist.

Will the Prime Minister repair this damage and lay out the terms and conditions as soon as possible.