Randy White

[Members Of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, April 25th, 1994]

The Liberals are heckling me. For those who are watching this debate on camera, they are heckling me. Quite recently we had three patronage appointments, and there is no reason to think that party is going to change that.

We want to end full indexing, to ensure all contribution criteria meet provisions of the Income Tax Act, which is not in here, and to allow an adequate sharing arrangement between government and the member. The current arrangement sees the taxpayer contributing about $5.97 for every $1 by the MP. We ought to ensure that pension benefits for MPs are brought in line with private sector standards.

There is sometimes talk that one of our members is double dipping. The definition of double dipping is an MP who is unelected or chooses not to run and gets a patronage appointment somewhere else. That is where the heckling comes in because they just love patronage over there.

When I signed my papers as an MP I refused to sign the pension papers because I did not want to participate in it. I got this letter back from the government: "However, pursuant to the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, members are required to make pension contributions based on the amounts payable by way of sessional allowance". The fact is that we cannot even stop getting this kind of stuff. Government parties have made it so difficult over the years that they get in the trough and cannot help but stay in the trough. No wonder people in the country are upset.

In conclusion we have to look at whether or not the real intent will be there, whether or not the Liberal government will actually take the steps forward to provide a reasonable pension plan that is in line with the private industry, matches the Income Tax Act, and so on and so forth. We have already seen that it is a party that will not accept the function of recall. It is into patronage. It has moved the NAFTA centre to Montreal and so on. I say it will not do so. If we want real reform in the pension we will have to look to Reformers.

[Members Of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, April 25th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, after years of abusing the trust of the taxpayer with a pension plan only King Midas could have matched, we have a private member's bill from a Conservative MP.

Although I favour the two issues that are addressed in this private member's bill, as has already been mentioned there are some flaws in it. The best way to evaluate whether the bill is successful is to compare the Liberal approach, the Reform approach and the approach of the private member's bill. I leave it to you, my colleagues, and those watching today to decide which approach is best.

Before I begin this comparison I would like to look briefly at who seriously advocated pension reform in Canada in the past and why all of a sudden here we are in 1994 looking at a very small private member's bill.

To date no action has been taken by the Liberals other than after the recent election five Liberal MPs have been added to the long list of those collecting pensions. The Conservatives have taken no action to date either but if you look at the last election again there were 111 members of Parliament picking up a pension. Then we have the Conservative's private member's bill today. The Reform Party has had a policy in place for a number of years which I will describe a little later.

Let us look at the approach to MPs' pensions that has been taken by the major parties. I would like to go through the government first, the Liberal Party. As I said, five Liberal MPs have recently been put on to this pension plan and are now safely living on government pensions for the rest of their lives along with many other colleagues. In fact there are 397 individuals today on MPs' pensions.

The pensions range from about $28,000 to $84,000. The infamous red book suggests that the Liberals believe reform is necessary. I am not sure whether they are speaking about our party or the reform of the pension plan, probably a little bit of both. They suggest the pension regime of members of Parliament has been the focus of considerable controversy and is now the subject of an independent review which was mentioned here just briefly. The book also talks about the end to double dipping which this private member's bill actually does address. After all these years of milking the system the Liberal Party is now suggesting that it believes that reform of the pension plan is necessary.

The Liberal Party has recently paid for a study on parliamentarians' compensation although it has suggested that the Conservative Party implemented this study and it could do nothing about it. That was incorrect.

The original study was around $150,000. It could have been stopped once the election was over but it was not. Now the cost of this report is approximately $200,000-plus and the commission which was just talked about will cost about $300,000. The report contained some recommendations.

It is important to note that the report stated that MPs actually should get a 37 per cent pay increase. Liberals say it is not going to happen because we have deferred that for two years but it is in there.

The study suggests that MPs should get severance pay and that Senators should get an increase in pay. It also suggests a number of changes to the pension plan. One in particular suggests that the pension plan should be indexed annually to the excess of inflation over 3 per cent which is actually one of the most expensive parts of the pension plan.

This study is going to a commission. Where it goes from there we do not know but I suspect that we will see bits of it in the commission's report.

We have already established that the Liberal government closely mirrors the previous Conservative government in many things, so let us not expect too much. If we look at the Conservative approach we do not need to talk too much about the performance of that group of politicians and their pension reform policy. The Canadian electorate said all there was to say about that in the last election. Since the last election, as I have said, we have 111 Conservative members of Parliament picking up pensions ranging from about $26,000 to $82,000.

This private member's bill addresses double dipping which is now defined as a former member of Parliament who is employed by the Government of Canada, an agency of the Government of Canada or a crown corporation. I am happy to see that defined because there was some question from time to time about what double dipping actually was.

It also covers vesting or collecting the payoff at age 60. There were some problems with that. What is not addressed here is that there are people in the country who could get elected at age 55 and under this private member's bill could get a pension at age 60. They would get it in five years, not six as it is today. We have to look at both these combinations.

This private member's bill reflects a modest attempt to correct the outrageous self-indulgence both Liberals and Conservatives have provided themselves over the years at the expense of the taxpayer. It is ironic after the last two decades when we have been going into debt year after year after year and overspending in our budgets that we are sitting here looking at a private member's bill. These kinds of things should have been looked at some time ago. It is a little bit but it is a little bit too late.

Since the beginning the Reform Party's policy has been to ensure that politicians could not collect a pension until age 60. We wanted to ensure that double dipping could not occur by two means. The first is no vesting of benefits, should a past MP obtain a position with the government or any of its agencies or corporations. The second most important aspect of double dipping is to eliminate all the patronage that is going on in the first place. The only way double dipping occurs is after an MP leaves his or her seat and gets appointed to this board, that board, this corporation and so on.

[Justice, April 15th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring to the attention of the House a deplorable excuse that is being used by murderers in our country in order to receive lighter sentences. It is called cocaine psychosis and has affected yet another court case in British Columbia.

Dale Hicks was convicted for manslaughter, not murder, in the brutal killings of two women in their home. One of his victims was pregnant and was stabbed 17 times.

The judge ruled that the deaths are considered manslaughter because Hicks, who was high on cocaine at the time, was afflicted with cocaine psychosis and was unaware of his actions.

He was sentenced to 10 years but could be out in three and half years if he behaves in prison; three and a half years for taking the lives of two innocent people. To top it off, his lawyers have appealed the sentence, calling it excessive.

By taking an illegal drug this killer has been allowed to get away with murder. It is time justice is served by making criminals accountable for their actions-no excuses any more.

[Budget Implementation Act, 1994, April 14th, 1994]

The Liberals have made no changes to the budget. In fact they have increased it, so this is the track we are going on.

I will just run by a couple more because there are so many of them. Let me give members the one that might interest a lot of people. There is $21,566 to examine experimental studies of interactive gestures. Let members' minds roll a bit on that one.

I am sorry I am going to run out of time because I do have a bunch of other things to talk about. If members want to look on the bigger scale of things, here is a government that is talking about spending $6 billion of taxpayers' money on infrastructure, another $1.5 billion on child care seats and so on. It is all taxpayers' money. There have been no cuts to the budget. It is a disgrace to put this in front of the people of Canada.

[Budget Implementation Act, 1994, April 14th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, once again it is a pleasure to speak on a bill in the House of Commons but it is not such a pleasure to talk about Bill C-17.

In question period today I mentioned the simile of bailing out a ship with a thimble. That is what we have here, the government trying to deal with the large problem of $40 billion and we are playing around the edges with some of the cuts. Most people in Canada know that just will not work.

I spent some time in Halifax during the spring recess with a number of business groups and a model parliament. It was with enthusiasm that I watched the prime minister of that model parliament and his elected members from the school expressing their views and frustrations about things that are happening in the country; the criminal justice system, parliamentary reform and so on, but expressing long term views of the problems that exist in our economy. I do not think we should take this so lightly. These young people have reason to be concerned.

A lot of people talk about our younger generation today and refer to them as generation x , a generation some say that does not have its own identity as far as music and other things. My impression of generation x is one of young concerned Canadians, a group that probably will have, very rightly so, very little tolerance with us baby boomers who have managed to spend ourselves into oblivion.

When it comes time for us to have a pension in the next 15, 20, 25 years I somehow think that generation x will be very dissatisfied with us and our spending and will have no sympathy

whatsoever. Perhaps it is well deserved by us. The frustration is across the country. I see it in my riding every day in Langley, Aldergrove, and Max Lake.

The budget has created some serious concerns for Canadians and as I travel and talk to people in this fair city of Ottawa you can hear it every day. It is on their minds. The government has not addressed the concerns of the economy.

I sense there are some members on the government side who want to deal with it. I do not know what the problem is. Maybe the cabinet ministers wish to hold them back but I sincerely hope those members will convince their leaders that something more serious has to take place.

I have talked to bankers in the maritimes. They expressed the same concerns as bankers in Fraser Valley West. It is no different. It is not regional. How can any rational person support Bill C-17 which will provide for $3 billion more in expenditures next year than the previous year?

The Liberal government has provided what I referred to some time ago as a flaccid approach to managing Canada. The dictionary definition of flaccid is limp-wristed, lacking vigour and feeble. At the time when I talked about that I put my own definition of the word flaccid. I made it an acronym. Flaccid to me really means the federal Liberals are crafty Conservatives in disguise. I do not see a lot of difference. Now I am getting a rise from the members on the other side of the House so I am starting to hit a few buttons here. I expect that will happen over the next few years.

However, they should not take it so badly because I am going to do my very best in the next 10 minutes to explain why Canadians coast to coast feel this way and are disappointed in the selection of the government in the last election.

Let us compare the short record of this Liberal Party with that of the Conservatives who were annihilated in the last election. It is necessary to make this comparison throughout this speech to understand why we cannot support the Liberal budget and why I predict that party will fail dismally in the next election. That is a pity really but that is the way it is going to go.

I can remember back in 1984 when the Liberals were thrown out and we brought in the Conservatives. Canada had so much hope. What happened? They spent their way into oblivion. Now we are just continuing on with the next generation of traditional politics.

The budget is going to see Liberal spending increase by $3 billion at a time when our national debt is $40 billion.

The financial markets are reacting to it and businessmen have reacted to it for the last 10 years. They are concerned. The only group that is not reacting to it is the government itself. It is ironic.

The government does not have the intestinal fortitude to deal with reality. It indicates also that the government cannot take a tough stand on the big issues and will not. This Liberal government really is a Liberal government. It is not Conservative in nature and it is definitely not Reform in nature. Some of the members are suggesting that is a good idea but we will see in the next election.

Let me take you into some detail that will astound you, Madam Speaker. I want to talk a little bit about just why we get frustrated here and why the people out in all of the communities in Canada get frustrated. I want to talk about a little organization called the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

This council has existed for some years now. I do not know how far back, but it existed in the Conservative reign and it exists here today. I will just run by a couple of bottom line budgets of this organization. In 1991-92 its budget was $90 million. In the next year, 1992-93, its budget was $101 million. The budget has gone up and at one point it was $97.7 million.

One might say: "Well what is wrong with that? It must be a good organization and it must do a lot of good things". I do not doubt that. However, in this budget when we were looking for some cuts there were no cuts to the organization. In fact its budget increased.

Let me give you an idea of some of the expenditures coming from that organization that have not been questioned at all. In fact its budget has been increased. After I read these I think the people watching and listening this afternoon and my colleagues next will ask themselves the question: Why did we not look a little harder at this in the budget? Why did we not take some money out of this budget?

Payments: $15,435 to study eunuchs in Imperial China. Now I ask: Do we have a better way to spend $15,000? The amount of $147,827 was spent to examine lullabies, form and function in infant directed music.

While that may be interesting to some, I doubt very much whether there are many people in this country who have a lot of interest in their tax dollars going this way.

[Government Expenditures, April 14th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister and his colleagues should know you cannot bail out a sinking ship with a thimble.

Will the Prime Minister identify in the House today how many millions or billions he has in mind for these additional expenditure cuts or is this just a stall in the hope that the problem will go away?

[Government Expenditures, April 14th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday of this week the Reform Party forced the Prime Minister to admit that further spending cuts are necessary.

The Minister of Finance talks about deep and severe cuts but the Prime Minister talks of millions and not billions. Could the Prime Minister tell the House how cuts as small as millions will resolve a deficit of $40 billion?

[Halifax West High School, April 13th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, last week I had the ultimate privilege of seeing into the future. I attended a model parliament and read the speech from the throne at Halifax West High School.

Andrew Cook was elected prime minister with a majority government and it represented the concerns and aspirations of young people today. Its speeches emphasized the need to reform the economy, the criminal justice system and the parliamentary system.

Mr. Cook and his government represented the Reform Party of Canada in Halifax West.

Apparently in some parts of the maritimes the youth of today and the voters of tomorrow are no longer happy with the old style of politics. The old solutions do not work any more and the young people of this country are more aware of that fact than anyone.

[Official Languages, April 12th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, that is what we have been saying all along. The fact is that the true costs, the full costs, the direct and the indirect costs are not known. We have been asking in this House for a debate on that very issue. Will the minister commit to a debate on that very issue?

[Official Languages, April 12th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I wish the answers we got to our questions were as good as the ones the Liberal members get from their ministers. Talk about mixed signals.

My question is for the minister of heritage. The minister of heritage released a 40-page book during the spring break telling Canadians that any and all questions about out of control costs of the Official Languages Act are based on misconceptions. He says it is a myth that the costs are in the billions and that the true cost of providing services in both official languages in 1992-93 was $319 million.

Can the minister tell this House why his number is dramatically lower than even the number of the Commissioner of Official Languages, which was $654 million?