Jim Pankiw

[Budget Implementation Act, 2000, April 13th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to clarify that. What I was referring to was the fact that the guidelines for that grant program were not adhered to. That is what I meant.

It is rather ironic that the member for Mississauga South would raise this point of order with you, Mr. Speaker, given the fact that he is remarkably silent when it comes to advocating and demonstrating any support for families, despite the fact that he pretends to be an advocate of family values. However, when the measure of that is put to the test, he fails repeatedly. I am referring to the fact that he continues to support the Liberal agenda, the anti-family agenda of overtaxing families, of unfair taxation, of refusing to defend the definition of marriage, and the list goes on.

One area of concern has to do with employment insurance premiums. They are about 18% in excess of the break-even point of the EI fund. The government is taking this excess money, which is in the neighbourhood of $7 billion a year, diverting it to the consolidated revenue fund and spending it on HRDC grants and other scandalous programs.

This is very offensive to hard-working Canadians who pay these employment insurance premiums for the purpose of receiving benefits if they become unemployed. The government is violating the intent and the spirit of the employment insurance program.

Equally important, I would like to point to an issue that really needs to be addressed. Not only is the overpayment unfair in that respect, but municipalities are public employers and, as such, municipalities across Canada pay EI premiums, as well as their workers. All of that money comes from property taxes.

The purpose of property taxes is supposed to be to provide services to properties and projects in the local municipalities. However, by virtue of the fact that there is an overpayment of EI premiums, in effect what is happening is that the property taxes being paid to local municipalities to provide services to those communities are being funnelled into the consolidated revenue fund of the federal government. Property taxes are ending up being spent to support aerospace companies in Montreal, instead of the communities for which they were intended and where they belong.

That is a good illustration of why the EI overpayment is unfair. It is an excessive tax on workers and employers. When the Canadian Alliance forms the government we will immediately lower EI premiums to the break-even point and stop that unfair taxation on property owners and hard-working Canadians.

The Liberal government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on gun registration. That has to be the absolute height of stupidity, making law-abiding, responsible firearms owners register their firearms. What possible benefit do taxpayers get for this massive expenditure of money? Need I remind the government that criminals do not register their guns? Whether a gun is registered will not determine whether it was used in a crime. In fact, it places responsible firearms owners at the risk of potentially being implicated if their firearms are stolen and used in the perpetration of a crime.

The relevance of this is that taxpayers are being forced to shell out very sizeable amounts of money. I think that at last count the cost of the gun registration program was over $300 million, but I stand to be corrected.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2000, April 13th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to enter the debate on the budget implementation act. I commend my colleague from Red Deer on his response to that ridiculous question from the Liberal member opposite. He pointed out that the Canada pension plan is flawed.

One of the reasons I got involved in politics was that I resented the Liberal way of mortgaging the present on the future, making future generations pay for its excesses in the present. That is irresponsible and morally corrupt. On behalf of my children and all other children in Canada, I got involved in politics so that we could stop that type of destructive, irresponsible behaviour by the government.

There are three parts of the budget implementation act I would like to specifically address. One is the portion of the act that amends the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act to implement a $2.5 billion increase in the Canada health and social transfer over four years.

The fact of the matter is that transfers from the federal government to the provinces were $18.5 billion per year when the Liberals came to power in 1993. They were reduced to $11.5 billion and now they have been increased to somewhere in the neighbourhood of $14 billion, still about $4.5 billion a year short of the funding that was in place six and a half years ago.

It is worthwhile to note that if we add up the cost to the health care system over the years of Liberal government there has actually been a shortfall or deficiency of $25 billion compared to the funding levels we had in 1993. That does not even account for inflation or population growth.

Health care has been terribly underfunded by the government in favour of spending the money on wasteful government programs and not in favour of tax cuts. The billion dollar boondoggle in the human resources department, the misappropriation or misallocation of grant money, is a good illustration of irresponsible behaviour and skewed priorities where the Liberals refuse to fund social programs that Canadians care about, such as our health care system, in favour of handing money to their political friends. That is tax money, I might add, paid by hard working Canadian families.

I would also like to address the amendment to the Excise Tax Act to allow the Minister of National Revenue to obtain judicial authorization to immediately assess and take action to collect from a person GST-HST deemed remittable by the minister. Suffice to say, I am opposed to that because it broadens the already coercive tax power of the government by granting even further powers to the Minister of National Revenue. When the Canadian Alliance forms the government we will be looking at measures to protect taxpayers and at having fairer methods of assessment and collection instead of a heavy handed, uncaring and unfeeling Liberal minister.

The Income Tax Act will be amended as of January 1 of this year to reinstate full indexation of the tax code. That is a move we have been urging the government to take ever since it took power in 1993 because of the insidious, sneaky way our taxes were going up year by year as a result of bracket creep. Tax brackets and personal deductions were not indexed to inflation.

Although the government has finally corrected this and finally listened to us after six years, it did not do so in any retroactive fashion. In order to reintroduce indexation it should have calculated the loss to taxpayers over the years by the fact that there was no indexation and then implement provisions whereby taxpayers would be able to receive the benefit of that.

There are numerous parts of the budget which I want to address, but in consideration of some of the debate which took place earlier in the day I will start by covering a brief history to where we are now.

I am referring in particular to a speech made by a Progressive Conservative member. It might have been the House leader. He was trying to justify the massive increase in our national debt that occurred during the Mulroney government, the nine year reign of error by the Conservatives. He was addressing the deficit which grew to enormous levels under their leadership.

When the Conservatives came to power in 1984 the national debt stood somewhere around the $200 billion mark. It was increasing as a result of deficit budgets by the previous Liberal government. The Tories at that time were in a unique position to reverse that trend and bring responsible fiscal management to government. They could have eliminated the deficit very quickly and very easily and began paying down the $200 billion debt. Instead, they embarked on the largest expansion of government in the history of our country.

Over a nine year period they increased taxes 71 times, but government spending far outpaced their tax increases to the point that annual deficits, by the time they left power nine years later, were over $40 billion a year. They added $300 billion to our national debt, more than doubling it. The fact that party is now on the brink of elimination is fitting, considering the fiscal mess it left our country in.

At this point I will discuss the legislative agenda of the Liberal government. The budget implementation act is full of flaws which we are illustrating for the benefit of the House. I want to put that in the context of the legislative agenda of the government. Not only is the budget deficient in many ways, but instead of addressing the areas of concern the government is on a very hollow agenda which lacks vision and is irresponsible.

I am referring to the fact that two days ago we debated in the House an act to extend marital benefits to gay couples. We have a $600 billion national debt. We have unreasonable levels of taxation. Yet the government is preoccupied with redefining marriage.

We have pressured the government for the last six years to reform the Young Offenders Act, to introduce a victims bill of rights into our criminal justice system and to address the problems in our prisons and the problems with parole. Many reforms are needed to the justice system and there was no response from the government.

Another illustration of its lack of vision and lack of responsibility is the child pornography issue. The government refuses to act. Last June the official opposition put forward a supply day motion on that topic urging the government to intervene, invoke the notwithstanding clause and enforce the law which made child pornography illegal, but it refused to do so.

The HRDC billion dollar boondoggle is very telling. We have a taxation system that is in dire need of repair and reform. The government in the budget has increased funding to HRDC. We are going to see more grants, more patronage, more suspicious payoffs and transactions.

I will illustrate a few examples. It is my understanding that the president of the Liberal constituency association in the riding of the minister of Indian affairs received a grant of about $150,000, which actually exceeded the legal limit of grants under the program from which he received it. Not only was there a patronage payoff for his political activity on behalf of the Liberal Party, but under the grant program that it used to administer the patronage payoff the law was even broken with respect to that.

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, April 11th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I could not help but listen to the member describe Joe Clark and it merits examining the facts. Joe Clark was the most senior and influential member of cabinet in the nine years of Brian Mulroney's government. There were 71 tax increases and it more than doubled our national debt, $300 billion. That is extremism.

That is why our country is now in desperate straits. We are the highest taxed nation in the industrialized world and are almost $600 billion in debt which will take decades to pay off. We have an obligation to our children to not sewer the economy any further than what the Conservatives did partially under the leadership of Joe Clark. I am here on behalf of my children and all the children of the country to turn the country around and set it back on a straighter track.

I resent the member saying anything positive about Joe Clark because he and Brian Mulroney were the most negative and destructive forces the country has ever seen.

[Modernization Of Benefits And Obligations Act, April 10th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, it would be best to begin my speech today by taking stock of exactly where we are in Canada. I represent a riding in Saskatchewan that is currently enduring an agriculture crisis of a magnitude similar to what was experienced during the Great Depression. Saskatchewan has generations of farmers who own farms that have been in their families for generations and they face the prospect of losing their farms. The income crisis facing Saskatchewan farmers is that bleak.

For years the Canadian Alliance has laid out proposals, lists and solutions before the government of where it could immediately act to address the problems in our grain transportation system and our grain marketing system and the problems we face on the international market because of unfair trade practices of foreign nations and so on. This week we will be releasing a summary of 65 town hall meetings we held all winter long in farm communities across the prairies bringing forward solutions, most of them proposed by the farmers themselves, but the Liberal government refuses to look at that or address it in any way, shape or form.

This country is currently experiencing one of the greatest scandals in the history of our nation, which is the misappropriation and mismanagement of funds through the human resources development department. It is incompetent and deceitful and Canadians deserve better.

Our health care system is in tatters. Waiting lists are growing every day and, in many cases, people are forced to leave our country and seek health care elsewhere.

We are the highest taxed country of all industrialized nations in the world. Under this Liberal government taxes have been increased 69 times at last count over the last seven years placing families under a tremendous burden. It is such an unreasonable level of taxation that most of our well educated professionals are leaving the country. They are being forced out of their own homes to go elsewhere to earn a living because of the great disparity in taxes, the great differential between filing a tax return in Houston or in Calgary.

Our justice system completely defies logic. We cater to criminals and the victims have no rights. It is a disturbing situation that needs all kinds of repairs, from the prison system to the Young Offenders Act to this conditional sentencing that is going on, all of this judicial activism.

On Friday the Prime Minister appointed a member from Saskatchewan to the Senate. As far as I am concerned, this was a slap in the face to the residents of Saskatchewan because I know most Saskatchewan residents would like to elect our senators so we can have meaningful representation.

Where is Senate reform? What about parliamentary reform? Everyone knows how this place runs. There are no free votes. The government never resorts to the use of referendums. It is a dictatorship.

What are we doing here today? Despite all the problems facing our nation, the government has brought forward a bill to extend benefits depending on whether or not one is having gay sex. Is that the depth to which the government has to sink? What about all the urgent matters facing our nation? No, it is preoccupied with extending benefits to people who have homosexual sex.

Let us go back to June 1999. The Canadian Alliance at that time put forward a motion that read “marriage is and should remain the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others and parliament will take all necessary steps within the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Canada to preserve this definition of marriage in Canada”. That motion passed but it was not a bill and had no statutory effect. What we see now, despite the expressed will of parliament last June, is a bill that will not preserve the definition of marriage but will destroy it. I submit that Bill C-23 is an insult to every member of parliament who voted last June to preserve the definition of marriage.

The government knows full well that the vast majority of Canadians are upset about this bill. They do not agree to extending the benefits that accrue to married couples to homosexual couples. I know from my own experience in my constituency and from talking to my colleagues that there has been a large public outcry. My constituency office has been deluged with phone calls, faxes, letters and e-mails demanding that the government abort this ill-thought out legislation.

In response to this public outcry, the minister put forward an amendment at the beginning of the bill that defines marriage but that has no legal effect. It is meaningless. Any judge looking at any of the acts modified by Bill C-23—and I believe there are 68 of them—will not see that interpretative clause defining marriage. Legal experts have clearly stated that in order to have the effect of retaining the current definition of marriage, the definition of spouse and marriage should be placed in each of the affected statutes modified by Bill C-23.

That is exactly what the Canadian Alliance has done. We have put forth amendments, which will be voted on tonight, that define spouse as either a man or a woman who has entered into a marriage and that define marriage as the lawful union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. That is what the legal experts say will be required to retain the current definition of marriage and that is what Canadian Alliance members are proposing, but that is not how the Liberal government will vote. I believe the reason for that is that their ultimate goal is to destroy the institution of marriage or at least make gay couples the equivalent of what currently are married couples, in other words, gay marriages.

On March 20 of this year delegates to a Liberal convention voted on a resolution to legalize same sex marriages. Although that resolution was defeated, it had a very close margin of 468 to 365. The New Democratic Party already has the policy that it wants same sex marriages.

In addition to urging all members of the House to support the Canadian Alliance amendments, which would replace the definition in each of the affected statutes, I recently submitted a private member's bill, Bill C-460, which was an act to amend the Marriage Act and to include and place the specific definition of marriage in that act.

Unfortunately, because of the undemocratic nature of this institution, that bill will probably never see the light of day. If it ever does, I would certainly hope that all members of the House would see their way clear to support it. I know that will not happen because, as I said, the NDP officially has a policy contrary to that.

At the beginning of my speech I mentioned the urgent matters facing this nation, one of which is taxation. I will briefly outline for the benefit of the House solution 17, which is the Canadian Alliance's proposal for tax reform.

When we form government, we will implement a single rate of taxation of 17%, combined with a spousal and personal deduction of $10,000 plus a $3,000 deduction per child. The net effect of that is that two million low income Canadians who currently pay some tax will pay no tax at all.

I will wrap up by saying that in addition to supporting fair family taxation, the Canadian Alliance would also address issues that the Liberals have been unwilling to tackle, such as child pornography, criminal justice reform, child custody and access issues and many other issues that affect families because we are a pro-family party as opposed to the anti-family policies of the Liberal government.

Let it be known that MPs who vote against the Canadian Alliance amendments in tonight's vote will be voting against the definition of marriage in federal law.

[Division No. 1258, March 30th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. For the benefit of the member opposite, we are the Canadian Alliance.

[Racism, March 23rd, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, March 21 marked the international day for the elimination of racism, but social engineers in Canada continue with their agenda of discriminatory affirmative action programs.

By refusing to eliminate race based employment equity quotas the Liberal government is contributing to the problem of racism. State sanctioned discrimination condoned by the Liberal government and promoted by the NDP is offensive to all Canadians who value the principles of equality and merit.

To people in the target groups it conveys the message that they are inferior and incapable of competing on a level playing field. To those not in the target group it conveys the message that they cannot apply because their skin colour disqualifies them from being considered fairly, regardless of their ability.

My Reform colleagues and I call upon the government to eliminate racial discrimination by scrapping state sanctioned, race based employment equity quotas. If the evils of racism have taught us anything, it is that we cannot discriminate in favour of someone because of their race without unfairly discriminating against someone else because of theirs.

[Statutory Instruments Act, March 23rd, 2000]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-461, an act to amend the Statutory Instruments Act (regulatory accountability).

Mr. Speaker, this bill, an act to amend the Statutory Instruments Act (regulatory accountability), would increase regulatory accountability by causing the government through the designated minister to refer all delegated legislation to a committee for consideration.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Marriage (Prohibited Degrees) Act, March 23rd, 2000]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-460, an act to amend the Marriage (Prohibited Degrees) Act in order to protect the legal definition of marriage by invoking section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to introduce this bill entitled an act to amend the Marriage (Prohibited Degrees) Act in order to protect the legal definition of marriage by invoking section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The purpose of this enactment is to legally define marriage as being a union between one man and one woman as husband and wife and will protect the legal definition of marriage from challenge in the courts under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in section 33.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Income Tax Act, March 23rd, 2000]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-459, an act to amend the Income Tax Act (withholding of tax by employers and others).

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to introduce this bill entitled an act to amend the Income Tax Act (withholding of tax by employers and others).

The purpose of this enactment is to remove as from January 1, 2001, the requirement that employers and all others making payments to a taxpayer that is subject to taxation must withhold from the payment an amount estimated as the taxpayer's tax obligation and remit it to the government.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Minister Of Foreign Affairs, March 16th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, three Canadian children have been illegally held in the state of California for over six months. Yesterday Canadian authorities met with their counterparts in the state of California to obtain custody of these children, but instead of gaining custody they will have to apply to a California judge three weeks from now and hopefully obtain custody then.

They have already been there for six months and three more weeks is entirely unacceptable, especially for young children to whom three weeks is a lifetime.

I would like the Minister of Foreign Affairs to explain to the House why sparing the life of convicted murderer Stanley Faulder in a Texas prison warranted his direct personal intervention but he will not lift a finger to help three Canadian children be returned home where they belong.