Monte Solberg

[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, September 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, every day CBC's ratings drop. It spends more money. The CBC president is pleading with the minister to bring in a mandate now so that he has the latitude to make the cuts he needs to make.

When will the minister show some leadership and bring in that new mandate?

[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, September 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, despite all the rhetoric from the government about the need to cut spending at CBC, the auditor general's report in July revealed it is very fat and that there is all kinds of waste going on.

On Monday when a document was circulated around, the CBC annual report indicated discretionary spending had gone up $50 million last year, we can imagine how taxpayers must feel ripped off.

What is the minister doing about this matter?

[Cultural Property Export And Import Act, September 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, we were talking a little while ago about the acquisitions government has made and just how credible it is when it comes to making these acquisitions.

I wonder if the hon. member is aware of the current display at the National Gallery by the artist Paul Wong entitled: "On Becoming a Man". It depicts a man and a woman laying buck naked in a bed with a couple of blow up dolls. I am certain there are all kinds of wonderful reasons to acquire this kind of art and probably no price is too high to pay for this wonderful art, but I am wondering if the hon. member from Simcoe has seen this. If so, can he tell us whether or not this is a worthy acquisition and an appropriate role for our federal government to be playing?

[Cultural Property Export And Import Act, September 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed hearing the hon. member's intervention. He talked about the Beaverbrook museum in Fredericton. I have not been there but I have been to the National Gallery. I have seen what has purchased, either through tax credits or directly with cash, which is the way I would prefer to see it done because it is a lot more transparent and you can hold people accountable that way.

One of the things my hon. friend from Wetaskiwin pointed out was a display that hangs from the ceiling there. It is a toilet hanging from the ceiling of the National Gallery. Is that not a wonderful purchase by the people of Canada? I wonder how many tax credits we handed out for that? Perfect. Does that not speak volumes about state funded art? It speaks volumes, Mr. Speaker.

I walked into a room at the National Gallery where in one corner are Brillo pads stacked to the ceiling. That is art. That is unbelievable.

I walked into another room where I thought they were undergoing renovations because there was a bunch of underlay lying on the floor. Do you know what, that was the display. Two hundred and fifty-six pieces of felt is what it is called.

I have a picture sitting on my desk of a display at the National Gallery. It is a large woman reading a newspaper and she has got a wig on and all of that sort of thing. According to the people at the National Gallery who were telling people about these displays, someone was paid $750,000 for what in my judgment is an absolutely ridiculous piece of junk.

When we talk about the government's prescient ability to choose art with other people's money let us go and take a wander through the National Gallery and find out just how good it is at this.

The hon. member from Glengarry-Prescott-Russell pointed to Reform's policy on culture. Let me address that. Our party feels very strongly that the federal government does have a role, but we also feel that these institutions have to be accountable. I also remind the hon. member that these things have to be put in context. Reformers also believe in a flat tax system. We believe that we cannot be going around giving wealthy people a special privilege. That is ridiculous. It is even more pronounced, more ridiculous in this day and age when middle income Canadians are being squeezed so dramatically.

I would ask the hon. member to put these things in context. I would much rather see private individuals, private groups, lower levels of government like municipalities and provinces run the museums and galleries to the greatest degree possible because they are a lot more accountable. When it is all funded through the federal government and people who are appointed by the federal government make the selections, they are absolutely unaccountable.

Has the hon. member gone through the National Gallery at any time in the recent past and seen some of these ridiculous, what can only be described as abuses, this mocking of taxpayers which is exactly what it is. Somehow we feel we have to support this counter culture, the people who mock a lot of the ideals that really enabled them to have freedom of expression. They mock us and we still give them money.

Has the hon. member seen this lately and how he can justify the government being involved in purchasing that kind of garbage?

[Cultural Property Export And Import Act, September 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, as the hon. parliamentary secretary knows, there is a warehouse full of alleged art which used to belong to the art bank. This art is going to sit there in storage probably for years upon years upon years. The fact is that every year the amount of tax credits that are requested and granted goes up, not down as both the minister and the parliamentary secretary have suggested.

Given this, does it not make sense that there should be some kind of a limit placed upon the amount of available tax credits? We would then not ding people so strongly in the middle class because we are having to pay for the wealthiest Canadians. Also, where are we going to store all this stuff? We already have one warehouse full. I am wondering what the parliamentary secretary is proposing to do with the rest of it.

[Cultural Property Export And Import Act, September 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, we certainly appreciate the fine edge of wit spewing forth from the other side.

The third party, as the hon. member has put it, has raised some serious issues, not the least of which is the fact that it is the wealthiest of the wealthy Canadians who are taking advantage of this. This is not something that is available to everybody. She has continually skated around that issue.

I would ask her to address this very specifically and tell us how she can reconcile this piece of legislation with all the rhetoric of the last budget about the need to have tax fairness.

[Cultural Property Export And Import Act, September 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, would the hon. parliamentary secretary acknowledge that this tax legislation also applies to works of art that are not Canadian, that it applies for instance to American works of art as well as Canadian works of art?

[Cultural Property Export And Import Act, September 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize. The hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood has campaigned long and hard in the Liberal Party for a flat tax system that gets rid of the very type of loopholes that wealthy Canadians are taking advantage of today through this legislation.

Lately the Reform Party has talked long and hard about the need to have legislation that treats everybody fairly. Reformers believe in equity and this is very inequitable legislation. I really do have a tremendous problem with its essence which is special treatment for people who donate these objects of art. That is of great concerns.

I challenge the government to review this matter and to ask itself, in its heart of hearts, if this is really fair. I am sure on reflection members across the way who in good conscience stand in the House and tell us that they do not like to see privilege go to wealthy Canadians, if they understood the essence of this bill they would have a tremendous problem with it. That is one of the things that concerns me greatly about this legislation.

Our party views this as Robin Hood in reverse. It is not only that wealthy Canadians are getting a tremendous tax advantage here. It is the lack of revenue that is created by the $60 million in tax credits. It means that when taxpayers have to pay for things the government views as priorities, average Canadians have to be taxed to a greater extent in order to bring that revenue in. In a day and age when the talk is about cutting social programs, reforming UI

and possibly looking at pensions for seniors, that $60 million would be extremely valuable.

I will be moving a motion in just a moment on the need to bring this type of legislation in line with what currently exists in the income tax system. Ultimately Reformers would like to see a flat tax implemented which would get rid of these types of abuses and privileges for the wealthiest of wealthy Canadians.

I conclude by saying that I recognize that wealthy people are discriminated against in this country. Being wealthy is quite a burden. People are not protected in the Canadian Human Rights Act for being wealthy. Wealthy people are not protected under Bill C-41, the legislation that extended protection in the justice system to people based on certain categories. I do not believe wealthy people are protected in employment equity legislation either.

I appreciate that wealthy people have a tremendous burden to bear. I appreciate that sometimes people say snide things about them behind their backs and talk about them as though they are better than rest of us. I can see that is a large concern, but I do not know that we have to go so far to correct that abuse and that inequity as to give them the $60 million in tax credits every year.

I am going to conclude by moving a motion. I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word "that" and substituting the following therefor:

This House declines to give second reading to Bill C-93, an act to amend the Cultural Property Export and Import Act, the Income Tax Act and the Tax Court of Canada Act, since it fails to address the issue of the burden the tax credit system places on middle class taxpayers who are asked to pay for a potentially endless stream of donations of questionable cultural and artistic value claimed by wealthy Canadians.

[Cultural Property Export And Import Act, September 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to address Bill C-93. When addressing an amendment it is important when doing research to look at the actual act and make some judgments about whether or not the act in itself is a good piece of legislation and whether or not it is appropriate for a political party such as ours to support the act overall. I will touch on the amendment and speak a little more broadly about the overall act.

Both the minister and the hon. member who just spoke talked about the appeal process. Previously there was an appeal process which permitted people to go to Revenue Canada and ultimately to the tax court to get a ruling on the value of a piece of art being donated to a recognized Canadian cultural institution. We do not have problems with that. One big concern we have with respect to the whole issue is the potential for bureaucracy and the potential for abuse. I want to talk about that in a little more detail.

One concern we have is that there is a potential for a board which has been appointed by a government to be very cosy with people in the arts community. Very often they come from the arts community. I am very concerned that we will have a situation similar to what we have in the Canada Council today where artists sit in judgment of other artists. It is a "you scratch my back and I will scratch your back" situation. I can see some real potential for abuse.

To be a little more specific, when appointees are passing judgment on the historical value of papers belonging to former prime ministers who may have appointed them to the board, there is some real concern in my judgment about those types of things. We have to be mindful of this and ensure there are processes in place so that people are not caught in a conflict of interest position.

I know my hon. friend from Okanagan will be talking about that a little bit later.

Another concern is that a lot of these things are going to end up being appealed to the tax court. In my judgment there is very little doubt about that. People will say: "I am getting a raw deal" when they bring their work of art forward and ultimately say: "We want to take this on to the tax court".

This was not something told us officially, but when we were researching this, someone in the department told us there are 22 tax court judges across the country but something like 6,000 cases before the court, an astonishing number. That is a tremendous backlog of cases for determination about the value of these various articles. Given that backlog it may be advisable to allow this to remain in the hands of people who are experts in this field.

I want to talk a little bit more about the actual tax credit system itself. This is an area in which I have grave concerns. This is a tax loophole that definitely benefits wealthy Canadians more than anyone else. In the last budget the government talked very enthusiastically about the need for tax fairness.

I would argue very few ordinary Canadians are going to be able to take advantage of this legislation. Somebody who is a subsistence hunter in northern Canada, a wheat farmer in Saskatchewan or somebody who works in the coal mines in Glace Bay is not going to be able to take advantage of this loophole. The people who are going to take advantage of it are going to be the crème de la crème, the top 1 per cent of income earners. If anyone does not need a tax loophole it is them.

I would encourage the government, when it is engaging in this rhetoric about the need for tax fairness, to think about that for a little while. Not only does this legislation reward them in so far as they are the ones who are most likely to have the important pieces of art that institutions want, but it rewards them in how it has skewed the tax system for them.

Let me give some detail on that. It is amazing. In fact when I read it I could not believe it. Right now the department issues about $60 million in tax credits every year through this legislation. It works like this. If something is donated to one of these institutions the tax credit is far greater than is available for any other type of charity in the country. In fact, normally if you donate to the food bank you can get a tax credit up to 20 per cent of your income. That does not apply to people who are making cultural donations. They can get a tax credit for all of their income. They can carry the tax credit forward into years down the road so that it can be applied against income.

It is an amazingly lucrative way of avoiding paying taxes for the wealthiest of Canadians. If one has an income of several hundred thousand dollars and gets a tax credit through the cultural export review board for $300,000 one will pay no tax. To me that is absolutely ridiculous. I wish the hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood was here.

[Excise Tax Act, September 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I can assure the hon. member that our party stands up in favour of a strong Canadian culture. What we disagree with is how to get there.

I would like to pose a question to the hon. member. First, the hon. member talked about economies of scale. I think he would

acknowledge that other industries over the last several years have utilized economies of scale but this has not meant the complete collapse of various Canadian industries. In fact what has happened, which I think he would acknowledge, is that many of those industries have grown stronger and have gone on to compete around the world.

Bill C-103 actually prevents that from happening for the Canadian magazine industry. I will give the member a perfect example of that. Télémédia, a Canadian company, which actually publishes Harrowsmith magazine out of the United States, had to be grandfathered into the bill so that it could continue to publish in Canada as well.

When this legislation is put in place, assuming it will be, in the future Canadian companies will not be allowed to publish out of the United States and then have it come back into Canada. In effect, it stops Canadian companies from expanding. To me, that is absolutely ludicrous. It shows how provincial and inward looking this legislation is.

I challenge the hon. member to defend that particular aspect of this legislation and ask him how that is going to promote Canadian culture around the world.