Monte Solberg

[Bankruptcy Act, October 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today speak to Bill C-237, an act to amend the Bankruptcy Act.

When I review the intent of the bill a couple of things strike me. First, the intention behind it is certainly good. It says something about the person who has moved the bill, that they want to protect the employees of a business that has gone bankrupt. Certainly all Canadians sympathize with people who would be denied their wages because a business has gone

bankrupt and they are not at the top of the list of the secured creditors but are well down the list.

Having said that, I am also struck by another concept that I read about some time ago and recently reread. It just really impressed upon my mind how often we get away from this whole idea in government when we are making important decisions that can affect individuals and businesses across the country.

I remember reading in a book by an economist by the name of Henry Hazlitt about how often one of the greatest failures of economists and people who are making decisions that affect economies is to not foresee the secondary and unseen effects of the measures they are proposing. With respect to my hon. friend in the Bloc I think that is what we have done in Bill C-237, an act to amend the Bankruptcy Act.

One of the unseen effects of the legislation-and other members have referred to it-is the kind of incentive there would be for banks and providers of capital to continue to provide that capital to businesses.

Banks are already very reluctant to provide capital to businesses for a number of reasons. My hon. friend from Kootenay West went through a litany of the things that banks require before they will lend a business money. Now the amendment to Bill C-237 is proposing to put one more impediment in place that would cause banks to think twice about funding a business.

That is a great concern to me. It is a great concern to the government across the way and I believe to the Bloc. As has been referred to many times in the House, the great engine of the economy in Canada is small business. Small business creates 85 per cent of all jobs in the country.

On one hand the bill appears to be protecting employees. On the other hand we do not see all the jobs it would prevent from being created because banks and other providers of capital would be reluctant to lend the money knowing their loan is not secured under the proposal.

That is something we have to be conscious of, particularly in the competitive environment we have today not only within Canada but within North America and certainly around the world. There are all kinds of different advantages that other countries have and will try to use against us to get their share of the market.

We are a relatively wealthy country. We can attribute that to the small and medium sized business to a great degree. We have to be conscious of the types of burdens we impose upon them when we propose to do what seems on the surface to be a very good thing. Canadian businesses, small business in particular, are the creators of jobs and all that wealth out there.

I am not certain the hon. member has really taken that into consideration. Banks and anybody else who provides capital have many options when they think about where they want to invest their money. Capital is very fluid. It flows to where it gets the highest return and where the risk is the least. One thing that may happen if the bill were passed would be that banks would start saying that they do not want to fund small businesses because they are not going to be a secured creditor. Another thing that could happen is that they would fund them but raise interest rates. They would put on a risk premium because they are concerned about losing their money.

We already have a problem in the country where we have some of the highest real interest rates in the world, which again hurts our competitive position. We have to think long and hard about the repercussions. If we are in that position where businesses are forced to pay higher interest rates then we will have a situation where there will be less jobs created.

Those are the things we never see and are never reported in the newspapers: the jobs that are not created and the businesses that are not started because of legislation. It is very easy to point to a plant closing somewhere and say: "Is it not a shame those people did not get their two weeks' pay?"

Is it not also a shame when people do not go into business because they know the bank is going to turn them down? The bank is not confident it will get its money back because it is not at the highest level on the list of claims; it is not a secured claim.

We can take a look at what the government is proposing in many areas. Infrastructure would be a good example. Any time the government prepares to intervene in the economy we have to think about the secondary and unseen effects.

There is another aspect that I would ask hon members in the House to consider. What if a supplier to a business is barely hanging on and has a lot of employees who are trying to keep their jobs? They do not want to end up on the unemployment or welfare rolls, yet all of a sudden the position of the struggling business is not secure any more. The government has extended the misery a little further down the line. The next guy down the line is in a position where he may be forced into bankruptcy and people may be out of a job because of the situation the government has imposed by approving Bill C-237.

There are effects that go beyond the banks and interest rates. There are also the effects on suppliers. Suppliers may be very reluctant to extend supplies or inventory to anybody but the most secure businesses.

In this environment in this day and age we know that no such businesses can be completely guaranteed against failure. Over the last recession we saw businesses fail that were in operation for not only tens of years but in some cases over a hundred years. That speaks volumes about the competitiveness of the environment and perhaps a bit about the instability of the business environment. Even in the best of times businesses cannot be counted upon to survive because they always have more and more competition.

I know members of the Bloc are supporters of free trade. We now have trade deals with the United States and Mexico. I am not aware of any such legislation in either the United States or Mexico that would parallel this legislation. In other words, we would be putting a burden on Canadian businesses, Canadian suppliers and Canadian providers of capital that does not exist in some other countries around the world, in this case particularly the United States and Mexico.

A couple of things could happen. First, businesses in the other countries will have a competitive advantage over Canadian businesses. Entrepreneurs from this country and Quebec can go south of the border. Perhaps they can go to Mexico if they have any type of business idea that will prosper no matter where it starts up. They can go there to escape the type of legislation we are talking about here.

Another thing that can happen is that capital can flow out of this country to more friendly environments where capital is treated with a little more respect. Maybe another way to put it is that the business environment is a lot more friendly. As I pointed out a minute ago, capital always flows to where it can get the best return and where there is the least risk.

In this day and age in this environment in Canada we have a $535 billion debt and we are going into debt at a rate of $40 billion a year or perhaps even more than that. We have some of the highest interest rates in the world. We have some of the highest taxes in the world. We have all kinds of competitive disadvantages. We have hot competition because of free trade with the United States and Mexico. Through GATT we have more trade pressures from around the world. Given all these factors I think it would be foolhardy to support the legislation. Therefore I will be voting against it.

[Reform Party, October 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, one year ago today Reform defied the odds, confounded our critics and thrilled our supporters as 52 of us were elected to the House of Commons.

Canadians saw in Reform the fresh wind of change. They saw men and women just like themselves who believed in what they believe in. Live within your means. Protect honest citizens. Listen to the people. In short, use common sense. That is exactly what they told us.

That is exactly what we intend to do. While the government wrestles with change and fights it every step of the way, we embrace it. While it takes tiny steps and as my hon. friend says, sets the hurdle very low, we stride ahead. While it breathes each other's air, we say: "Crack open the doors and let the fresh breeze of Reform blow in".

[Supply, October 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am curious about a couple of comments made by the hon. member. One was with respect to business subsidies. He said that in many cases subsidies are made to businesses that are uncompetitive.

I guess he is implying that it is okay to make subsidies to businesses that are competitive. In that case, it is kind of redundant in my judgment. I have to wonder whether the member, given his remarks, can justify any subsidies to business at all.

Is the hon. member so committed to deficit reduction that he would give up his MP's pension, should he ever be lucky enough to get that far, given the Bloc's stand? Would he go on record today saying that he is opposed to MPs pensions as they stand now, especially considering his stand on things like family trusts which he would argue confer special privilege?

Obviously that is what MP pensions do. Let us hear what the member has to say on that issue.

[Old Age Security Act, October 20th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize to the hon. member. I missed the first part of what he was saying but he spoke largely on the aspect of confidentiality. There is no question in my mind that is something we have to be careful of.

Obviously this country has a long history of trying to keep records of a personal nature confidential. I point to the problems that can occur when those things get out. In fact if memory serves, in Ontario a provincial minister resigned over that issue. There is no question that is something we have to be cautious of. It is an area I think the hon. member knows more about than I do. Having said those things I will leave it at that.

[Old Age Security Act, October 20th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. parliamentary secretary for his series of questions. He has touched on a number of issues and on this bill in particular. I commend the government if it is trying to improve services. Obviously we have to do that.

However, as the hon. member for Calgary North pointed out it is kind of like polishing the chrome when the transmission is going. The big issue before the country today is social program reform. It is one of the huge issues. Let us not debate whether answering the phone sooner is a good thing. Of course it is. We all know that answering the phone and providing faster service for seniors is important. We understand that.

By pulling out vague references to discussion about social program reform or about minor aspects of social program reform, it does not follow that the government made any kind of commitment in the red book to deal with this problem in a serious way.

The government downplayed the whole issue during the election campaign. It downplayed the seriousness of the debt situation to the point where a year after it came into power it is just now beginning to realize how seriously we are in debt in this country. Not because it wants to but because international investors have told them: "Get your act together or we are going to start to move our money out of the country". It is that simple. It is not because it somehow saw this ahead of time and put together a big task force and went to Canadians.

With all due respect to the parliamentary secretary, if he had referred to our zero and three plan, of which we distributed millions of copies during the election campaign, he would know we talked about our changes to social program reform. They are on the public record. In fact this spring we gave the finance minister a list of $20 billion in proposed cuts for the government to use in its efforts to get the deficit and debt under control. I offer that to the parliamentary secretary for him to look at.

[Old Age Security Act, October 20th, 1994]

The government would not even let them co-chair the proceedings, Mr. Speaker, as my hon. friend points out.

Suffice it to say there are many problems with the green paper. It has been roundly criticized by the media, by the provinces, and by the many special interest groups that were funded by the government to come and appear before them but by Canadians themselves.

Reform's zero-three program really led the way. Lately we have had proposals from Tom Courchene who actually appeared before the committee. The hon. member from Winnipeg across the way was there when he appeared. He made an excellent presentation. I guess he did not find any of his proposals in the green paper so he felt it was necessary to bring out his own. It is now in the arena of public debate. Hopefully the government will see fit to include it in its area of debate as well and will consider some of Mr. Courchene's ideas.

The government has another problem. We are rapidly approaching the end of 1994. It has delayed again the time when it will call for the reporting deadline on this issue to February 6, 1995. We have moved from getting this into legislation this fall. Possibly when we consider the time it takes to draft legislation and for it to pass through various readings in the House and committee, it is quite conceivable that it will be well into 1996 before it actually becomes legislation, if that is what the government decides to do.

It will probably be a year, perhaps a year and a half, before the next election if the government holds an election within four years. That concerns me. It is a well known fact that governments very often fail at the last moment, at the critical point, when they are faced with going before the electorate, particularly when they are talking about making deep cuts to something that Canadians value like social programs.

I am concerned about that. This issue is inextricably intertwined with the whole issue of fiscal responsibility and the huge problems we face because of overspending by this Liberal government and the Conservative governments that went before.

We have a deficit of $40 billion. We have a debt approaching $535 billion. Soon international lenders are going to get fed up. They are going to say that they have had enough and want to find a place where their investment will be safe.

I am concerned the government across the way has not realized that. It does not understand the urgency. While the finance minister may realize it, I think the Prime Minister has failed to grasp it, as has the human resources development minister.

I urge the government to come to grips with the seriousness of the situation, to take another look at its social program reform and to move ahead with serious cuts in the very near future for the sake of all Canadians.

[Old Age Security Act, October 20th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure today to rise and address this bill, but I also wish to address the larger debate that is going on across the country and really the one that has been going on this morning and that is with respect to the social program review that is currently under way.

To have a good understanding of the social program review I think it is very important that we go back and look at the genesis of this idea and the genesis of the debate. Probably the first thing we should do is point out that during the last election campaign the Liberals across the way did not even mention social program reform as an issue. It was as though it did not exist.

There was an interesting article in the Ottawa Citizen from October 14:

During the election, then Prime Minister Kim Campbell stepped on a land mine by declaring a campaign was the "worst possible time" to discuss social policy reform. Jean Chrétien criticized her heavily and tiptoed around the same land mine with the following assurance: "I say that the programs are there and they will remain the same-".

That was a year ago. That is the type of double talk that the Prime Minister used to accuse the Conservatives of using.

The article goes on, quoting the Prime Minister:

"The plan of the party is clear. The social safety net that we have in Canada will remain."

The Liberal's election bible, the red book, made no reference to a major review of social programs or even whether one might be necessary.

I would like to contrast that with how the Reform Party addressed this issue which was to address it head on, recognizing that fiscal problems in this country are directly linked to social policy because social programs eat up almost $80 billion a year and we cannot tackle fiscal problems without making some cuts in social programs.

However, I point out that the approach we took was to start cutting at the top first before we got to social programs. We said that Canadians demand leadership by example. They want to see cuts to the cost of Parliament. They want to see MPs' pensions done away with in the current form. They are concerned with overlap between not only federal and provincial government but also between different departments within the federal government. They want to see subsidies to business and special interest groups trimmed. We would then take a look at social programs in conjunction with the people of Canada.

What we found out in the days and months leading up to the election was that people did believe that there had to be cuts made there in order to achieve a balanced budget which even now the finance minister is beginning to recognize in this country. Hopefully it is not too late.

What we said is that people place a very high priority on maintaining spending for health care in this country and we agreed. We said that health care spending should be maintained. However, we should respect the authority of the provinces and their jurisdiction under the Constitution to have control over health care.

The other thing that people told us was very important to them was maintaining funding for post-secondary education. We proposed various ideas to make that even more effective but maintain the funding.

Some of the other areas where people felt there could be some cuts and changes made were unemployment insurance; a proposal to make unemployment insurance a true insurance program based on the idea that employers and employees who fund the program, who put the money in, should have control over it. In other words, we were proposing to empower individuals to have control over their own lives and create the type of insurance system that would be truly responsive to their needs. They would set the eligibility requirements, the premiums and the benefits. That I will refer to in a little more detail further down the road.

Let us fast forward now to the throne speech of January of 1994, to the budget and to the announcement that there would be a social program review. I think it was January 31 if memory serves. The hon. member from across the way is nodding his head.

On that day it was announced that there would be a social program review and that there would be a final report to the House with recommendations and, I believe, legislation this fall. That has now gone way off track but we will get into that in a moment.

Let us go back to what the budget speech and budget documents were saying about the social program review. On the issue of social security reform, I quote from one of the documents: "The standing committee will seek the views of Canadians on issues and objectives until April. The minister will then table a federal action plan and the standing committee will conduct public hearings on it until September and report in October. As well, federal-provincial territorial activities will take place during this period. The government will table reform legislation in the fall".

It also addressed how it would tackle some of the other social policy areas that are not actually in the social security review right now, things like health care, old age security and Canada pension plan.

For some reason these were not included in a package together and I find that odd because they are inextricably linked and I think we will see if we look at the current green paper that there are contradictions perhaps or at least we are putting the cart before the horse in some cases. For instance, in the green paper there is a reference to unemployed people using RRSPs so that they can get themselves through a period of unemployment.

On the other hand we have not even addressed the issue of Canada's old age security and Canada pension plan yet and what is going to happen with that. Meanwhile the government is floating trial balloons on RRSP taxation and things like that. That is well ahead of any paper that is coming down on the future Canada pension plan and old age security.

Right from the get go the government made a grave error when it did not look at these different areas together.

The idea of the social program reform was to find out what kind of ideas there were out there so we could do two things, make social programs more efficient and save some money.

The government denied that was really the case initially. It wanted to leave us with the impression that this was really an effort to make things more efficient and help people get off unemployment and that kind of thing. Running through this was a growing awareness, certainly from the finance minister if not from the rest of the cabinet, that cuts were going to have to come

in the next federal budget and that we could not go on spending as much money as we have been spending in this country.

Once the social program review was launched there were delays. There were problems right off the bat. There were patronage appointments made to the task force, people being paid big per diems. More delays came along. The thing floundered.

People really wanted to see the social program review succeed. Canadians have been talking about the need for social program review for 10, 12, 15 years and they want this government to succeed. They want it to do well because they know that their interests are at stake. They grew concerned and I would argue that those concerns continue to grow today.

Not only was this program review put on hold continually much to the chagrin of Canadians, but on the eve of the release of the long awaited green paper there was a revelation in the Toronto Star that the social program reform was going to include big cuts, $7.5 billion worth, even though the government had given Canadians the impression that they would be consulted in this before any types of cuts were actually considered.

On the other hand, I am certain there was a printing mistake. When the green paper was released there were no figures at all in it. In other words, Canadians were being asked to choose among all these different programs without knowing how much they would cost and what the costs of the various alternatives were. Obviously that was a mistake, a printing mistake I am certain, because no government would ever put forward a list of proposals without having something so critical in it as the cost of the actual programs.

Every day Canadians make decisions on all kinds of issues. Chief among them I can guarantee is how much they cost, because they know they have to live within their means. Somehow this escapes the government.

Also missing from the various options were many of the options put before the government during the period that led up to the actual presentation of the document in the House. I sat in on some of the HRD meetings and heard some of the presentations that were given. I remember sitting in a committee meeting suggesting that the studies and inquiries from past royal commissions should become part of the official body of information that the government refers to when it is considering the options.

I mentioned specifically the Forget commission report. It talked for instance about unemployment insurance and returning it to the employers and the employees, the people who fund it. That was rejected by the committee because the Liberal majority voted against it for reasons that escape me. There were members who spoke in favour of it. When the whip was cracked they all voted against the proposal. I invite the hon. parliamentary secretary to review the record.

Not all of the various options are in the paper. That is unfortunate because Canadians should have a chance to look at some of the other options that were put before the committee.

Initially this document was put forward as an action plan. That was the wording of the motion. It said-I think on January 31-that the government would be tabling an action plan in the days and weeks to come. Somehow over the course of the last several months the action plan became watered down and diluted to the point where it became a discussion paper.

In other words the minister who has the power to call to heel armies of bureaucrats and all kinds of minions to gather all the wisdom in the country about social policy reform, after all that time, money and the thousands of hours that were spent on it, brought forward a little green pamphlet with scarcely any action at all or any call for action, but merely a few of the options of the many that were discussed. That was a real shame.

We are now in a situation in which other groups around the country have come forward and said: "We have some ideas that the government for some reason did not want to consider".

I point to the Kierans-Robson report from the C.D. Howe Institute in which not only did they come out with options, but they came out with costs. They said: "We will tell you how much money we are going to cut from some of these areas".

These are not what I am suggesting, but they should be in the debate. On the topic of unemployment insurance they suggest that unemployment insurance should be converted into true insurance; there should be a proposal to eliminate regional differences in qualifying periods and benefits and we should eliminate all regional and non-insurance components. The savings from that would be $5.5 billion. They were not ashamed to suggest there would be some savings there.

Under the Canada assistance plan they suggested that we eliminate and divert $2.5 billion to a new child tax credit to low income households. The total savings on that would be $4.9 billion.

They talked about health care, which is something the government has been reluctant to discuss, or at least they are having trouble getting the provinces to come to the table. At this very moment the Prime Minister is delivering a speech to an empty assembly of people called for the health care forum. Not only were the health care ministers from across the country invited and did not show up, but the premiers were invited by the Prime Minister himself. They refused to come for two reasons: first, they know that under the Constitution this is their jurisdiction; second, they resent that although they are the senior partners in this arrangement and they pay the lion's share of the cost for health care-almost double what the federal government pays-the federal government is attempting to set the agenda. It has made a grave error in this. There are other areas including social program reform, GST reform and interprovincial trade barriers where it has made the same errors.

[Department Of Canadian Heritage Act, October 18th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. parliamentary secretary was talking about looking for ways to cut spending in government. I would like to offer one right now.

The department of multiculturalism is redundant. Not only do Canadians not want to see a department of multiculturalism but people in various multicultural communities around the country do not want to see it. I refer to a recent article in Saturday Night magazine wherein noted Canadian writer Neil Bissoondath talked about doing away with the whole idea of multiculturalism. He happens to come from the West Indies, but he is a Canadian writer and that is what he calls himself.

There are people in the Liberal caucus who say we must do away with hyphenated Canadianism. I urge the parliamentary secretary to use her influence on the minister, in conjunction with other members of caucus who feel the same way, to do away with the department of multiculturalism which is absolutely and completely redundant in the eyes of the Reform Party, many Liberals, the Canadian public and the ethnic communities around the country.

[Liberal Government, October 6th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, today marks the tenth anniversary of Marc Garneau's voyage in space. I am sure all parliamentarians join me saluting this Canadian hero and this milestone for the Canadian space program.

I would also like to draw the House's attention to some other Canadian space travellers who will be celebrating an anniversary later this month. The Liberal government has been on another planet for almost a year now. The human resources minister says he wants us to reach for the moon. That is easy for him to say, he is lost in space.

The Canadian public wants to know when this government is going to come down to earth and actually deal with some of this country's social and fiscal problems. How long before the IMF says beam them up?

While I am on this celestial topic I would like to point out that Canada's debt is reaching astronomical levels. This morning at 0800 hours the national debt was $533,210,978,829. 19. That is a disgrace.

[Federal Debt, September 19th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, this morning at 7.44 a.m. our debt was $531,045,850,207.24. With every passing day the federal debt in this country grows by more than $100 million.

Canadians are alarmed. They are concerned not only for themselves and their futures but for their children and their grandchildren. But what of the government? How concerned is it? Not very apparently when it defines success as going in the hole another $100 billion over the next three years. Even if it achieves that goal, it has failed the people.

I say to the government that it has an obligation to preserve and enhance opportunity, not to spend it away. I say to the government that it has an obligation to do what is right, not what is easy.

In the time that I have taken to deliver this statement I point out that our debt has gone up $80,000.