Lorne Nystrom

[The Economy, May 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. The widening gap between the rich and the poor has been one of the biggest failures of the Liberal government in the last eight or nine years. Every reputable study in the country shows that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

Why did the Prime Minister not use some of the $15 billion surplus he applied to the national debt toward reindexing transfers to the provinces and municipalities as a way to fight poverty? Why did he not invest in the human deficit instead of paying down the national debt?

[The Economy, May 15th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I guess that is why we are the second worst out of 29 OECD countries. I want to ask the Prime Minister if he will rise to the occasion.

In the last couple of years over $20 billion of the unforeseen surplus was automatically applied to the national debt without a debate in parliament over whether or not spending on the environment and social programs would have been more worth while.

Will the government follow the lead of Saskatchewan and Alberta and establish a fiscal stabilization fund which would, first, receive all the unexpected surplus and, second, allow parliament a full and democratic debate on how the money should be spent, like we should be doing in parliament and not allowing it to be decided by the Minister of Finance?

[The Economy, May 15th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. A University of Victoria study shows that Canada has one of the worst environmental records in the industrialized world. In fact it ranks us 28th out of 29 OECD countries for 25 different environmental indications. Protecting the environment has been one of the biggest failures of the minister across the way and the Prime Minister.

I want to ask the Prime Minister whether or not his government will commit itself to making Thursday's economic statement in reality an ecological budget and back up that ecological budget with a multimillion dollar plan to clean up the environment.

[Finance, May 9th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. Many Canadians cannot drink their water, highways are crumbling, family farms are dying, and health and education are in a crisis in the country. Yet it appears the Minister of Finance is paying off the bondholders by putting about $15 billion of the surplus on the national debt. The costs of the day are the investments of tomorrow.

Why does the minister not align his priorities with those of the Canadian people and invest the surplus in programs for people in order to bring down the human deficit instead of paying off the bondholders of Bay Street? That is what the Canadian people want, not the direction he is going.

[The Environment, May 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the acting Prime Minister. We all know there has been another tragedy with contaminated water, this time in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. In 1997 the government introduced a bill on national water standards, Bill C-14, which died at committee stage at that time.

Why has the government not introduced an updated version of that bill so that the country can have a comprehensive water program as well as a program where we can put more money into national infrastructure specifically targeted for water treatment?

[The Economy, May 3rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, our dollar is a symbol of our sovereignty and our country. It is very important to Canadian people and very important to our existence as a nation. The former Governor of the Bank of Canada, Gordon Thiessen, recognized that when he said categorically that the idea of a common currency should be nipped in the bud.

The current governor is not quite as categorical when he talks about the dollar. If the minister really believes in the future of the Canadian dollar, will he take David Dodge out to the woodshed and nip this in the bud now?

[The Economy, May 3rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. At the finance committee on Tuesday the Governor of the Bank of Canada was musing about dollarization within 10 or 20 years.

The Minister of Finance has now said he is against the idea, despite the fact that David Dodge is his central banker, was his former deputy minister and has come up with this loonie idea, this loonie proposal of dollarization with the United States.

This is not government policy. I would like to know whether or not the Minister of Finance has instructed David Dodge to stop musing about dollarization since it is not government policy.

[Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, May 3rd, 2001]

My Tory friend from Newfoundland said “we are”. In comparison to the Liberals, they certainly are.

We had massive cutbacks in 1995. The Liberals were pushed, prodded and poked by the Reform Party which was basically anti-government and anti-public program in terms of creating any kind of equality of condition. The former Reform Party and now the Alliance Party stood for that and the government has picked up its agenda.

It is time to turn the corner. We must now attack the human deficit, the people deficit, in terms of more social spending and more equality in our taxation system, and we have the capability to do that.

Some Alliance people would lead us to believe that equalization means that the taxes of Alberta go directly to the people of Newfoundland. That is anything but the truth. The equalization payment comes from the consolidated revenue fund of taxes collected across the board by the federal government and then given out to the poorer provinces to create equality of condition. The Alliance objects to this by trying to heckle us on the idea of equality, justice and fairness. It wants a system where the rich get richer and the powerful get more powerful.

The Alliance wants a flat tax, an idea that has been rejected by the Bush republicans in the United States. Those are the kinds of ideas that cater to the wealthy, the rich and the privileged. No wonder the Alliance Party is in trouble with Canadians from one part of Canada to the other.

These archaic ideas from the time of Fred Flintstone have no place in the modern world. Canadians want equality and they want justice. Alliance members should crawl back into their caves. Their ideas are outdated.

It is time in the debate to tell the government across the way not to be spooked by those sitting across from it, to do the right thing, and to do what the provincial ministers of finance have said, including the ministers of finance from Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario. They have all said to increase equalization. They have all said to get rid of the cap, or re-base the cap from $10 billion to $10.8 billion.

The Prime Minister of Canada said that before the election campaign. The four Atlantic provinces have come here asking for it, as well as Manitoba and Saskatchewan. If we do not do it we will have greater inequalities, greater inequities between the regions and more people living in poverty and lining up at food banks.

It seems to me that if we do what we should do as a parliament, we must make sure we have equality of condition for the common good, so that a child in the north, the prairies, Alberta, Newfoundland or Quebec has exactly the same opportunity as a child anywhere else in the country.

I would once again like to plead with the parliamentary secretary across the way to speak with his government and to come back before the House with a ways and means motion to amend the equalization bill before us, or at least, in the financial statement coming down in two weeks where there will be a budgetary surplus of $15 billion to $17 billion, to make sure that as part of that financial statement there will be an increase in equalization payments in order to treat every single Canadian with fairness and justice regardless of where she or he may happen to live.

[Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, May 3rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to say a few words in this debate before the House today as well.

I consider this one of the most fundamental parts of Canadian federalism. We have had fiscal federal-provincial programs going back to the forties and fifties. Back in the days of Pierre Trudeau, 1968-69, we had the department of regional economic expansion and equalization payments being expanded and made part of our law.

The big turning point came in 1981 with the patriation of the Canadian constitution. It was decided then to make equalization payments part of our constitutional make-up. I think that was extremely important because we recognized that in our unique federation, which is one of the most decentralized federations in the world, we needed some way of equalizing conditions between people in all parts of the country. We needed some way of equalizing the fiscal ability to have comparable services for health care, education and farm support programs from one province to the other.

We have great inequities between the provinces and the regions because of our constitution and because of our resources. We also have great disparities. We have three provinces, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, that have been better off historically than the other seven provinces which have historically drawn funds from equalization payments. Saskatchewan, my province, is one of those provinces that has usually drawn equalization payments but, from time to time, has had an economy where the growth rate was high enough that it did not receive those payments.

I think part of the Confederation bargain was to support a program like equalization. However, the government removed the cap on equalization, which was $10 billion for the year 1999-2000. In terms of payments, it went from $10 billion to almost $10.8 billion. That was done, coincidentally, before the last election campaign. What a coincidence. The Prime Minister made the announcement to take off the cap and then dropped the writ. He wanted to win more seats in Atlantic Canada, in Manitoba and in Saskatchewan. What did the government do next? It reinstated the cap. There was no election. The cap went back on again.

When the ministers of finance from Manitoba and the four Atlantic provinces were before committee they told us that they did not want the cap on, or, at the very least, that the base go from $10 billion to $10.8 billion.

It is interesting that the Prime Minister made a commitment to take the cap off. It is also interesting that all 10 provincial finance ministers said to take the cap off. With a surplus predicted to be around $15 billion to $17 billion for the fiscal year, we now have the fiscal flexibility. A minister's statement will be coming out in a couple of weeks. We will be able to handle greater equalization payments to equalize conditions across the country.

Despite all that evidence, when we moved amendments in the finance committee a couple of days ago the parliamentary secretary would not entertain any idea of amendments. Of course the committee itself cannot produce a ways and means motion to amend the act. However, the committee suggested that the minister bring an amendment before the House at report stage to raise the cap from $10 billion to $10.8 billion. Even that timid suggestion was turned down by the parliamentary secretary.

In an irony of ironies—and I think this was reported in some of the Atlantic papers—my friend from the Bloc Quebecois moved an amendment asking the minister to consider the possibility and the wisdom of perhaps some day considering raising the cap. However, even that was turned down by the parliamentary secretary as being too radical.

What we need is some serious parliamentary reform. The committees need to have more independence to suggest what is right for Canadian people. The committee I was talking about was told by all the ministers of finance from the Atlantic provinces and Manitoba that the cap should be gone or that it should at least be rebased at $10.8 billion instead of $10 billion per year.

If the committees are not given independence, we will have growing inequalities between the have and have not regions. We will have growing inequalities in terms of health care services, education and social services. We will have growing inequalities in terms of the taxation burden on Alberta and, for example, New Brunswick and many other provinces.

Because of the constitution, Alberta is very blessed and fortunate to have all kinds of oil and gas. In fact, this will be an interesting problem in terms of fiscal federalism in the future because Alberta, with the development of the tar sands, has more gas and oil than Saudi Arabia. It will be an interesting situation to deal with in the years ahead.

The Fathers of Confederation did not foresee this kind of wealth in gas, oil and many other resources. The rights to these resources have now been turned over to the provinces. I support the provinces' right to have jurisdiction over gas and oil but I also believe it is the fundamental right of the federal government to have an equalization program that redistributes wealth in order to have a greater equality of conditions.

Those are some of the problems we will be facing in the future. Alberta's tremendous oil wealth, which will be more than Saudi Arabia's oil wealth, will be a very difficult issue to deal with because it will create tremendous inequities between two or three of the Atlantic provinces and, indeed, much of the provinces of Quebec, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. One of the ways we could deal with it is through the constitutional idea back in 1981 which called for equalization payments to be enshrined in the constitution.

By implication, that would force the federal government to make generous enough payments, which would be in accordance with our fiscal capabilities, to ensure equality of condition for every Canadian. It would not matter whether one lived in Corner Brook, Newfoundland or Calgary, Alberta, everyone would have the same opportunity to send their kids to school, to get a decent education and to receive decent health care. That is the basic philosophy behind equalization.

I hear the Alliance Party people criticizing the government's involvement in all kinds of different programs and talking about massive cutbacks. The Alliance Party agenda calling for cutbacks and cutbacks, has had a great impact on the country and one that has spooked the Liberal Party. It has spooked the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister, and has made the parliamentary secretary pale with fear.

In 1995, in particular, there were massive cutbacks in government spending like we had never seen from a Conservative government any time in the history of this country, going back to R. B. Bennett in the 1930s. In fact, it makes my Conservative friends over here look like raving socialists in comparison to what we saw across the way.

[Equalization Payments, May 2nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. It deals with the reinstatement of the cap on equalization payments.

Recent information provided by the recipient provinces shows the reinstatement of the cap will cause them great harm. Given the fact that the Prime Minister, right before the election last fall, called for removal of the cap on equalization payments and all the provincial finance ministers now agree with that, will the Prime Minister or the Minister of Finance now lift the ceiling or at least rebase it on 1999-2000 levels, which would be $10.8 billion instead of $10 billion?