Bill Blaikie

[Income Tax, September 27th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, it has been said that the only things certain in life are death and taxes. True for most of us, but not for Canadians wealthy enough to hire lawyers to concoct a tax free non-residency under the Income Tax Act, aided and abetted by the way Canadian tax law mollycoddles such tax avoidance.

By taking up residence in tax havens, wealthy tax refugees are not legally required to file tax returns or pay Canadian income tax on the wealth they have taken out of the country, and pay a much lower rate of tax on any remaining Canadian investment income. Meanwhile, they can and do spend a lot of time in Canada with family and friends and attending to business. After years of such behaviour, they can easily decide to take up residence again and benefit from things like medicare for which they have not paid.

Canadian tax refugees, like Americans, should be obliged to continue to file tax returns and pay Canadian tax while residing abroad. We should say to tax avoiders: Hasta la vista baby, but pay your taxes first. Republicans in the U.S. call such tax avoiders traitors. Let the record show that the NDP can agree with the Republicans on at least one thing.

[Employment, September 26th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, it appears from a presentation made to the program review committee on the human resources investment fund by the Minister of Human Resources Development that the government strategy is to prepare Canadians for the transition to a low wage economy.

The government is now talking about making targeted earnings supplements of a few thousand dollars for a year or so to encourage or coerce, as the case may be, unemployed high wage earners into accepting lower paid jobs.

The Liberals say they want to help workers adjust financially and psychologically to the new situation. What the Liberals are really saying to a lot of Canadians is: "Welcome to the post-NAFTA low wage economy where your children, no matter how much education they receive, should not expect to have the same standard of living as you".

Canadian wages are being driven to the bottom as part of the multinational corporate agenda which the Liberals are capitulating to at the same time as they attack the social wage of these same Canadians. This is not what the Liberals promised in 1993. They lied about free trade and now they are preparing Canadians to adjust to the way free trade-

[Tobacco, September 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the Supreme Court ruling on tobacco advertising is a wake-up call to Canadians concerned about the state of our democracy.

The court's ruling adds to a jurisprudence that the advertising of large corporations enjoys the same protection as the free speech of individual citizens. The courts are transforming the charter from an instrument that protects the human rights of citizens from an arbitrary state into one that protects powerful corporations from the actions taken by citizens through Parliament to establish the social boundaries of commercial activity.

The court is wrong in determining that corporations have a right to peddle an addictive and deadly substance, a right that overrides the democratic right of citizens to take measures to improve public health by regulating the promotion of dangerous tobacco products.

The government and Parliament, all of us here, should find a way to stand up to the court by invoking the notwithstanding clause to regulate the marketing of tobacco. This is a good example of why the notwithstanding clause was put in the charter in the first place.

[Canadian National Railways, September 21st, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday CN laid off 266 people at the CN shops in my riding. How hollow the 1993 promises of the Liberals now ring about jobs and preserving Winnipeg as a rail centre.

Workers are being let go to improve the books for privatization purposes. The government now says it will not be trying to sell CN until after the referendum. Where I come from, we still say there is no need to sell it at all.

I can tell you what else is being said, Mr. Speaker. People wonder why Montreal is being guaranteed the headquarters of a privatized CN when all we seem to be guaranteed in Winnipeg is

more and more layoffs. In their view, CN headquarters should be in western Canada, where most of the traffic is.

At the very least, the government should indicate that it will reconsider the way it has bound privatized crown corporations like Air Canada and soon CN to keep their headquarters in Montreal, especially if the vote goes the wrong way on October 30. I am sure that Canadians want privatized Canadian crown corporations to be headquartered in Canada.

[The Late Jean-Luc Pepin, September 18th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the NDP caucus, I join with others in the House of Commons in expressing condolences to the family of Jean-Luc Pepin and say a few words about him by way of recollection on the basis of my own experience in this House between 1979 and 1984.

One should be honest and say that what I remember of Jean-Luc Pepin is fighting him on all fronts with respect to the Crow rate and VIA Rail cuts. He had the misfortune, I would suggest, of being assigned these tasks by the then Liberal government.

I suspected at the time that he was not always completely happy in the role he was assigned, especially when it came to the VIA Rail cuts, because I know that his father worked for CN and he had a railway background. He sometimes looked a bit uncomfortable, but he handled everything. He handled those issues as he handled everything, with a great deal of grace, a great deal of generosity, a great deal of humour, and with a kind of philosophical touch that one does not see all that often here in the House of Commons.

The thing I remember most about him was the sort of intellectual delight he took in argumentation and debate. He was one of the few members of Parliament I can remember who sprinkled his debates on the Crow rate and other more seemingly practical issues with

quotations or allusions to Sarte and Camus and Nietzche and various other philosophers whose works he was obviously familiar with.

I remember him as a great parliamentarian, a great Canadian, someone committed, as so many have said, to Canadian unity. It is unfortunate that at this very critical time in our history we will not have the voice of Jean-Luc Pepin being able to contribute to the debate that is upon us about Canada's future.

[Right Hon. John Diefenbaker, September 18th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to join my colleagues from other parties in the House today in marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Prime Minister John George Diefenbaker.

When John George Diefenbaker was elected Prime Minister of Canada I was six years old. Mr. Diefenbaker was 62 years old and had already been in Parliament for 17 years. Yet I had the honour, however briefly, of being a colleague of his when I like him was elected to the 31st Parliament of Canada on May 22, 1979.

I remember walking into the parliamentary dining room and seeing Dief in the alcove to the left where Prime Ministers like to eat and feeling like I was now in authentic parliamentary company.

It should be repeated of John Diefenbaker often that not unlike other parliamentary legends, some of whom are still with us today such as Mr. Knowles, he loved Parliament and all that it stood for. He understood Parliament. He knew it to be a place where different ideas and different idealists clash with each other and have it out with each other. The sanitized corporate boardroom view of Parliament which we see encouraged in some quarters today was not for John Diefenbaker.

While we are talking about corporate boardrooms it is also appropriate to note that in my judgment John Diefenbaker was probably one of the last Prime Ministers of the country who served for any length of time, who was not at home in the company of the Canadian corporate elite. His politics though not socialist were populist and he was certainly more at home on Main Street than on Bay Street. That is why he was able, much to the distress of my party on occasion, to win ridings that otherwise should have been NDP.

He was progressive for his time and for his party on human rights issues, on the equality of women, on social programs, on aboriginal issues, on South Africa and on other such issues. One recalls with fondness his opposition to capital punishment, for instance. Most of all, though I concur with many of the critical analyses offered of his prime ministership, I remember Mr. Diefenbaker as a Canadian, an unhyphenated Canadian, who had a vision of Canada that far exceeded the banal images of the marketplace so commonplace in our way of speaking today.

It was a vision of an independent Canada, a Canada that did not take its orders or its agenda from Washington, a Canada that determined its own way in the world and its own way of doing things. It was this independence that George Grant lamented the loss of when he wrote a "Lament for a Nation" after the fall of the Diefenbaker government and the acceptance of nuclear weapons by the government that followed.

John Diefenbaker struck a chord in the hearts of many Canadians. It was not long after the election of 1979-three months actually-that his funeral train wound its way across the Canadian landscape. It was the last trip on the hustings for a man who loved politics, who loved Canada, who loved political life and who always said that next to the ministry he regarded politics as the highest calling.

Finally, on a personal note, my exposure to John Diefenbaker came long before my election to Parliament or the few occasions on which I had an opportunity to discuss issues with him as a young person interested in politics, because I did have that opportunity. Some members may also know that I play the pipes. As a piper I had the task of piping him into the hall at a number of events in Winnipeg over the years. I remember one in particular at the Rossmere Curling Club when I could barely make it through the crowd to the front for the crush of people reaching out to shake hands with their Chief.

Dief was fond of the phrase "in my day and generation". I am grateful that in my day and generation, however briefly, I had the opportunity to see that great Canadian in action. We should all hope when our day and generation are judged we will be able to say, however differently and however varied our ways of doing so might be, that we too served Canada with the loyalty and the love of this great country that John Diefenbaker demonstrated. May it always be said of us, as he said of himself, that though we might be on the wrong side from time to time, may we never find ourselves on the side of wrong.

[Business Of The House, June 22nd, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the NDP caucus I join in congratulating the pages, giving our thanks to them and to all servants of the House including you, Mr. Speaker, and others who have occupied the chair over the course of this Parliament and wish everyone a good summer.

[Human Rights, June 22nd, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister for International Trade will be aware of the conflict between the Pinochet led army and Chile's democratic government over the arrest of two army officers convicted of murder.

Pinochet's action in Chile reminds us that unless there is a level playing field when it comes to political rights and human rights, free trade is a moral hoax.

Is the government now considering supporting the proposal endorsed by the International Democratic Union, the Liberal International and the Socialist International to create a UN based international court of human rights to bring those who have violated international human rights to justice?

Will the government indicate its intentions to work for a social and human rights clause in NAFTA and in the WTO so we can have a genuine playing field, not just with respect to tariffs but with respect to human rights?

[House Of Commons Security Services, June 22nd, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to offer my sincere congratulations to the men and women of the House of Commons security services who are celebrating their 75th anniversary this year.

In 1920 the House of Commons passed a bill which brought about the creation of the protective service. This service was given responsibility for the protection of members of the House, of visiting dignitaries and of the countless visitors and tourists who come to see the Parliament buildings every year.

I am now in my 17th year as a member of Parliament and I can say that I have never once had a complaint about the very professional service provided by these very dedicated men and women.

On behalf of the NDP caucus, and I am sure all members present, I commend them for a job well done. May we never see the day when anybody entertains the idea of contracting out this service. We have lost too many good public servants that way already.

[Petitions, June 22nd, 1995]

Madam Speaker, the third petition is very large, collected by the UTU, and calls on Parliament to be fully aware that they are strongly opposed to any initiatives to sell or merge CN or CP Rail or to dismantle CN Rail by way of the disguise of the commercialization of CN Rail.