Charlie Penson

[Multilateral Agreement On Investment, February 11th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, certain interest groups in Canada are having a field day with a huge misinformation campaign about the multilateral agreement on investment or the MAI. Canadians are concerned yet they have not heard from the government what the MAI is or how it would be in their interest.

We noticed the minister found time to go to sunny South America in January but he has not found time to talk about the MAI. Why has the minister allowed the left to dominate the debate? Why is the minister not telling Canadians what this deal is all about?

[Multilateral Agreement On Investment, February 9th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, left-wing groups like the NDP and the Council of Canadians have been having a field day out west with a misinformation campaign about the MAI. They lost the battle on free trade, so now they want to make a bogeyman about liberalized investment.

I know where they are coming from but I wonder why this government has allowed their fearmongering to go unchecked. I challenge the Minister for International Trade to go out to B.C. and deal with these many allegations surrounding the MAI.

If the government is going to be out there negotiating this agreement, it needs to explain it to the people.

Investment is the lifeblood of economic development. Investment leads to trade and trade leads to jobs for Canadians.

Canadian firms investing abroad need the protection that a rules based investment agreement provides through national treatment.

Canadians deserve to know that a good agreement will be good for Canadians.

[Canadian Wheat Board Act, February 9th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take up your challenge and talk about the election of directors to the new Canadian Wheat Board that is being proposed by the minister.

The essence of this whole question is about control. It is about control in that the government wants to retain the ability to appoint five directors, one-third of the directors of the Canadian Wheat Board. It is about control in that the minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board wants to appoint the chief executive officer.

What this debate is about in my constituency, and I believe all of western Canada, is a matter of choice. The debate is about choice but the minister is not listening.

We just heard my colleague from Yorkton—Melville talk about how little support there is for the changes proposed by Bill C-4. This is not the first time the bill has been before parliament. It died as Bill C-72 in the last parliament when the election was called. There was no support for it at that time. The minister has brought it back and has made it even worse. He wants to put new crops under the Canadian Wheat Board.

How will five directors appointed by government have any impact in making changes when we will still have a corporation that is a state enterprise and a monopoly? If that is the best the government can do, it is a total failure. It is a disservice to those people who want to use the Canadian Wheat Board to pool their product and accept an average price.

A percentage of farmers in western Canada want to do exactly that. However a lot of farmers in western Canada do not want to use the Canadian Wheat Board. They want a choice in how they market their grain. That choice is not available. In fact the section of the act which talks about to whom the Canadian Wheat Board is responsible is not dealt with. It says that it is responsible to government, not to producers.

My colleague from Yorkton—Melville asked that a preamble be included which indicates that the objective of the Canadian Wheat Board should be to achieve the maximum benefits for producers, but the government is not listening to that.

At the very time the bill is before parliament the minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board knows that these amendments have not been dealt with. We were in the process of debating some 40 motions when we were interrupted during the Christmas break. At this very time the minister is in Saskatchewan having meetings with producers, asking who should be appointed to the new board of directors. If that is not contempt for parliament I am not sure what is. It takes away my ability to do my job.

At the same time we have one of the biggest past supporters of the Canadian Wheat Board changing horses. The Sask Pool seems to be bailing out. It is jumping ship, realizing that things are changing.

One of the major newspapers farmers get in western Canada is the Western Producer . Its headline on January 29 was “Canadian Wheat Board Supporters March Against Proposed Changes”. A group of demonstrators was outside when the minister was having his clandestine meeting about who should be appointed to the new Canadian Wheat Board. They were chanting “Goodale must go”. These people support orderly marketing. They see changes that are not acceptable. Nothing will destroy the Canadian Wheat Board faster than a minister of agriculture who has the arrogance not to listen to producers.

Who asked for the legislation? The Reform Party suggested some time ago that there should be a choice in how farmers market their grain, that we should keep the Canadian Wheat Board for those people who want to use it but allow choice for those who do not. We also suggested that if we are to have that choice and if the Canadian Wheat Board continues to operate a board of directors consisting of producers and farmers it is a good idea, but it should be elected from producers so there is accountability. It should not be one in which the government of the day decides to appoint one-third of the directors, to have a CEO appointed by government, and continues to have effective control. The board of directors would be controlled by the Minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board and that is simply not good enough in these times.

This is all about accountability. Russia used to have state trading enterprises. We have seen what planned economies did over there. They destroyed the ability to produce enough food to feed even their own countrymen. It is going that way here too. Canada is moving out of step with the entire world.

The other day in the House a question was asked of the Minister for International Trade about his support for the financial services package. Why was that done? The Minister for International Trade is a seatmate of the Minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board. While he was up explaining why the Canadian government was supporting the financial services package signed in Geneva, the Minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board was looking at him and applauding until it got to a part that he did not like.

In response to that question the Minister for International Trade said that the recent crisis in southeast Asia and the APEC meetings in Vancouver pointed out the need for more transparency in how these institutions work. Indeed that is what is needed. The IMF has asked southeast Asian countries, if they are to receive packages to transform their economies, to have more transparency in industries like banking.

At the same time the Minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board was looking up at the Minister for International Trade. People had puzzled looks on their faces. This is the minister who will not allow transparency in the Canadian Wheat Board. He does not want the auditor general to audit the books of the Canadian Wheat Board. He does not want them to come under the Access to Information Act or the Secrecy Act. What kind of a responsible minister is that? I suggest the minister will be the death knell for the Canadian Wheat Board. There are people who would not feel badly if that were to happen, but they are very few and far between.

Western Canadian farmers respect each other's abilities and responsibilities. There are those who want to market their own grain, which I support 100%. I also respect the wish of those who want to use the Canadian Wheat Board as a pooled account to accept average returns. We could have it both ways, but we cannot if the Minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board introduces such idiotic changes to the board that he antagonizes the entire agricultural community in western Canada.

I join with those protesters in Regina that said the Minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board must go to bring about some kind of half decent reform to our entire grain handling system.

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 1997, February 3rd, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I am happy to take part in the debate today on Bill C-28. Essentially Bill C-28 is an act implementing sections of the 1997-98 budget.

In fact the bill is before me here. I see it is 464 pages long. It is a very legal document. Section 1 of the act is probably the easiest part of the whole document. Section 1 might be cited as the Income Tax Amendments Act, 1997, but for the average laymen trying to work their way through the act it would only add to the difficulty that we already have with some 1,500 pages of Income Tax Act.

There was a time when average Canadians could do their own taxes. We have a farm in the Peace River country of Alberta and for a number of years we did our own income taxes. However over the years it became more and more difficult and we found that it was important to hire an accountant.

The accountants I know tell me that it is becoming more and more difficult even for them. They tell me that one accountant in a firm can phone for a ruling on a certain section of the act on a Monday and get one answer from the department of revenue. Another partner might phone on a Friday and get an entirely different interpretation. We have 1,563 pages of income tax which is added to every year by things like these amendments. In addition to that, we have thousands of pages of precedents and rulings.

I would like the prime minister, who says he can write zero with his famous pen, to make an act that is very easy to understand and easy for people to do their own tax. In fact we have talked about the idea of introducing a flat tax. It makes a lot of sense to me. Take the income of an average family, use whatever the tax rate is, 20%, and send that in. The difficulty I guess would be what to do with all the unemployed accountants. That is what I tell my accounting friends. However, even they are having difficulty these days fathoming these kinds of amendments that are coming forward every year.

Today in the House the prime minister said that he is going to start paying down the debt. At the rate that he has suggested it is going to be a very long process. I think he said a billion dollars a year. With a $583 billion debt it is going to be a very long process.

This is a government that has an insatiable appetite for taxpayers' money. Part of the reason why is that we have this massive federal debt that takes debt servicing in the form of interest. The interest on this debt last year was $46 billion. Almost one-third of the taxes that the average family sends to Ottawa every year goes to debt servicing retirement. It simply is not good enough.

I heard a number of people on the other side of the House today say that one of the things that is going to be changed as a result of Bill C-28 is that it is going to allow for transfers to the provinces through the CHST to be increased from $11.5 billion to $12.5 billion. I would ask the question: When will this Liberal government be ready to return the amount of money to the Canadian health and social transfers that it took away in the last Parliament? The funding was $18.5 billion a year. This is the government that reduced it to $11.5 billion and then tells us that by returning $1 billion it is doing a great service to the country.

My home province of Alberta has gone through sizeable downsizing in terms of government operations, including health care. We have all faced it. The local attitude seems to be to blame the provincial governments. What we have to remember is that a sizeable part of the reason that downsizing was necessary was the 35% in cuts in transfers from the federal government to the provinces. Now the government is telling us that it is going to return $1 billion a year. I do not think it is good enough. It has to share in the blame for some of the things that have happened in that area.

We have seen some demonstrations by students in the last few weeks in terms of tuition fees and the high cost of education in this country. That was part of the $7 billion in cuts by this government. I think the government has to do the honourable thing and return this funding to the levels prior to the cuts during the last Parliament.

Yes, we need to get government right in this country but it is all about priorities. We have to get our priorities right.

What do we have in this country? We have the highest rate of income tax among our industrial trading partners in the whole world. We have Canada pension plan rates rising by 73% over the next six years. We have unemployment figures that still hover in the 9% range when our major trading partner just south of the border, which we export some 80% of our product to, is almost half of that.

That has been consistent for 30 years. We could put it on a graph and chart it and that is the way it would go. Good times and bad times, there is a 4% to 5% spread between Canada and the United States in terms of unemployment rates. Why is that?

I suggest it has quite a bit to do with the poor performance of our currency. We are at a 35 year low for the Canadian dollar. We have a third world currency in this country. People looking to invest in Canada have to look at that. Canadians wanting to invest in countries like Chile, how much can they buy with this low Canadian dollar? It simply is not good enough.

What else is happening? Our debt in this country as I mentioned earlier is $583 billion. It is 73% of our total gross domestic product per year. It simply is not good enough.

The foreign affairs and international trade committee in the last Parliament did a study asking small and medium size businesses why they were not in the export market. What they told us was rather startling. There were a number of factors. Too high a cost of doing business in Canada. Too high a cost in payroll taxes and business taxes. They also told us that the amount of regulation was hurting them greatly.

One company from Ontario even suggested that after moving to Michigan it had a much better chance of doing business back in Canada across provincial borders than it did working in Ontario. We have more barriers to trade between our provinces in Canada than all of the European Union combined. That is absolutely absurd.

One of the things I noticed in this bill is that there are amendments made to the act which would allow some provision for a change of status for family farms in terms of income tax. I want to take the opportunity to mention the amount of duress that Canadian farmers are under these days. I know about it personally. My riding is largely agricultural and people are hurting greatly. What can we do about it? First we can get our cost of business down and cost of inputs down, but we can do more than that.

This government has an obligation to go to the next round of the World Trade Organization talks on agriculture and make the case that domestic subsidies in Europe are hurting us greatly. They are hurting us although we are all on a phase down through the last round of the GATT. The starting point for the phase down was 1986, the highest levels of subsidies in the European Union and the United States in the history of the world. When we get a 15% phase down from up here, we still have substantial subsidies that are hurting our Canadian farmers.

People are hurting. They are hurting greatly. This government has an obligation to go to those talks and make that case. Our Canadian farmers in grains, oilseeds and beef are subsidy and tariff free. We are leading the way. That is not the case among our major trading partners. I suspect that this government will not have the courage to do that.

On the other hand we have a supply managed farm industry that has tariffs of over 300% in many areas. Three hundred per cent on one side with a protectionist policy and an absolutely subsidy free, tariff free side on the grains, oilseeds and beef sector that I suggest is going to be traded off in the next trade rounds by our own government.

We might do some tinkering with this bill to make it a little easier to write off something on the farm. The big issue affecting Canadian farmers is low prices that can be greatly enhanced and improved if this government had the courage to go to those trade talks and be honest with the public and say “We have a sector that is subsidy free. We need some help in convincing other countries to do the same”.

In conclusion, there is a lot of tinkering going on with this bill. It is going to add a lot of pages to our Income Tax Act. the real issue is getting the government debt down, getting our businesses competitive and allowing Canadians to keep more money in their pockets.

[Privilege, February 3rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, in my question of privilege I referred to the minister as the minister of agriculture. It is not the minister of agriculture but the Minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board to whom I refer. He was formerly the minister of agriculture.

[Privilege, February 3rd, 1998]

I want to make a correction.

[Privilege, February 3rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to add my voice to those parliamentarians who feel their job here has been jeopardized by the minister of agriculture presupposing that the legislation would pass.

There are 40 some amendments to Bill C-4, all of which have not had the opportunity of debate in the House of Commons at report stage. I represent an agricultural riding. There is significant resistance to the whole move to change the Canadian Wheat Board under Bill C-4. Many of the amendments proposed are a direct result of farmers in my riding asking that these changes not be made.

I submit that I have been unable to do my job as a result of the minister publicly stating that he wants the board of directors in place before the legislation has been debated properly on the floor of the House of Commons and passed.

Therefore it makes a mockery of our system. I believe, Mr. Speaker, that you should investigate this matter because I think there is still ample opportunity to defeat the legislation or have amendments made that would significantly change the legislation. What the minister is doing presupposes what the House will do.

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 1997, February 3rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I specifically asked the parliamentary secretary a question about transfers to provinces and what is their intent—

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 1997, February 3rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary talked about how the government inherited such a problem and did such a good job at managing to bring down the deficit. I remind the parliamentary secretary that a good deal of the so-called good management was as a result of the growth in the economy.

He will recognize that over $25 billion of new revenue came into the government per year over the last several years, largely due to exports and a very rapidly expanding economy in the United States, our major trading partner. When that is coupled with the $6 billion in cuts to transfer payments to the provinces it goes a long way toward contributing to the difference between the current position we have financially and the deficit the Liberals inherited.

The parliamentary secretary talks about how they will restore funding in the areas of health care, advanced education and welfare, the so-called capped block funding to the provinces. They will restore funding from $11.5 billion to $12.5 billion. I remind him that it was his government that cut those transfers to the provinces from $18.5 billion down to $11.5 billion, a cut of some 35%. Now the Liberals will restore funding by $1 billion, bringing the level up to $12.5 billion. There is still a $6 billion difference.

Many people blame the provinces for the difficulties they have had during the last few years with programs such as health care, in particular the cost of health care. They could not deliver services as adequately as they would have liked. Those problems have mostly been associated with the provinces balancing their own budgets. I remind people watching the debate today that a good portion of the pain suffered was due to cuts made by the federal government to transfer payments.

Does the parliamentary secretary recognize there is still only one taxpayer in the country? Provinces have the job of administering health care but the federal government has been steadily reducing its commitment from the time the Canada Health Act came into effect some 30 years ago. The federal government commitment has gone from about 67% down to a low of 18%. The provinces administer the health care system largely on the basis of raising revenue themselves for funding. Several provinces like my home province of Alberta still have premiums.

How are the provinces to handle this problem if the federal government commitment continues to be less and less every year?

[Trade, December 5th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I think Canadians will note that there was no answer in that little presentation. It is important to note that there will be more IMF bailouts for southeast Asia. Canada will be asked to contribute more.

What are we getting out of it? Are we not demanding some tariff reductions on high tariffs against Canadian products? A 30% devaluation in currency in many of those countries makes our exports more expensive and we still have to face 20% tariffs. What is the government doing about it?