Werner Schmidt

[Prebudget Consultations, December 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am not an accountant but I know when someone is suffering. This lady had back taxes for which she was liable. They had accumulated over a time period, of which the hon. member is not aware. I do not want to go into that case any further here

However to suggest to me that I was wrong in my case is not true. I am correct. I may be incorrect about the particular amount that they have to pay right now but that is not the point here.

[Prebudget Consultations, December 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, we need to examine ourselves in the question of integrity. I believe there are those who demonstrated that they did not give the House the information that they were under obligation to provide.

Particularly we have the case of the GST fraud. For the first couple of years we were given the information, then all of a sudden it dried up. Why? We do not know for sure and I do not want to attribute motivation. Clearly, it raises the question that maybe it was so bad the government did not want anyone to know.

The firearms business is a much better example. The minister refused to give us information or somehow just did not allow it to take place. It is a very serious thing.

Are there any persons of integrity on that side of the House? Yes, all kinds of people. Do they make mistakes? It is deliberate mistakes I am pointing my finger at. It is not an accident when information the government is obligated to give to the House is withheld.

[Prebudget Consultations, December 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, whenever one talks about a budget, one is talking about probably the most significant policy document that a governing body can present, either to its people or to the members of that particular governing body. The policy document establishes priorities. It establishes priorities of gathering revenues, it establishes priorities of expenditures, and it reflects, probably more significantly and more directly than any other policy document of a government, what the government really thinks, where its value structure really lies and where its basic values and integrity lie.

It is in this context that I wish to address several comments to this consideration of the budget, particularly in the pre-consultation stage.

My hon. colleague from Lethbridge has demonstrated very clearly where we are coming from in terms of corporate tax, capital tax and things of this sort. I am not going to go there at this point because that has been covered amply.

I do want to go into the area of integrity, because when this government came into being, the Prime Minister indicated very clearly at the beginning of this Parliament that “We will demonstrate this time, as never before, that we are a government of integrity”. I remember sending him a note. I said to the Prime Minister, “Mr. Prime Minister, if what you are doing is turning the page, I can support you”. The record since that day has been very sketchy in terms of actually demonstrating integrity.

Let me indicate that there are many members on the government side of the House who agreed that integrity was the big issue. I want to refer in particular to one member, the member for London North Centre. On February 3, 2000, he said:

At the end of the day, a government's...integrity is the best political capital that you have. When you start losing it then obviously all kinds of things can go wrong.

How much has gone wrong? We have had the firearms $1 billion boondoggle. We have had the HRDC $1 billion boondoggle. We have had the GST $1 billion boondoggle. And now we have the Kyoto accord. We do not know whether that will be $1 billion, $2 billion or $40 billion. We do not know, but it is going to be a tremendous expenditure. One asks what kind of government is it that goes to its people and says, “Trust us to develop a sound plan to use your tax dollars in your best interests so that your interests can be managed well and that you can achieve the kinds of things for yourself, for your children and your grandchildren that we all want”, if in the first instance we can demonstrate that the very fact of integrity has come into question with the HRDC boondoggle.

Let me refresh our memories just briefly. What really did happen in that HRDC boondoggle? I want to refer to the Auditor General's comments. These are the things that we discovered. We discovered that while the minister was making statements in the House that everything was okay, she had on her desk a departmental audit, covering some 459 project files, which revealed the following: 72% of the projects reviewed had no cashflow forecast; 46% had no estimate of the number of participants; 25% had no description of the activities to be supported; 25% provided no description of the characteristics of the participants; 11% did not even have a budget proposal; 11% had no description of the expected results; and 15% did not have an application on file for the sponsor. Get a load of that one: 15% did not have an application on file yet they got the money. It continues: 8 out of 10 files reviewed did not show evidence of financial monitoring; 87% of project files reviewed showed no evidence of supervision; and 97% of the files reviewed showed no evidence that anyone had checked to see if the recipient already owed money to the government.

This is overwhelming evidence of gross mismanagement of taxpayers' money. However, the fact that the minister knew these things and continually repeated and reassured the House that all was well is an obvious violation of the minister's obligation to give accurate and truthful information to Parliament. Because the minister has repeatedly violated this principle, the House should express its lack of confidence in the minister by passing the motion that she should resign.

This is also an illustration of a complete breakdown of integrity. We are elected officials, and the people we represent trust us to manage their money, trust us to make good laws and trust us to do the things we said we would do. This kind of thing really bothers me. I take my position as an elected member seriously, and I will do the best I can to be a man of integrity and a person who does what I said I would do. Have I ever made a mistake? Yes, I have. Have I have I made mistakes since I came here? Yes, I have.

The issue, however, is to recognize the mistakes one makes, ask that those mistakes be forgiven and in fact go in the direction of what we know to be best and do so to the best of our ability. Our abilities are circumscribed, I agree, but to do so blatantly is not to be a person of integrity.

Some time ago, in fact not that long ago in reference to the HRDC boondoggle, I made a statement in the House. It indicated that two things had become crystal clear in question period on February 7, 2000. One was that “the Prime Minister does not care about credibility”.

On June 12, 1991, the Prime Minister said:

If there is any bungling in the department, nobody will be singled out. The minister will have to take the responsibility.

Yet the Prime Minister made a spectacle of defending the HRDC minister. All of us in the House know that this is exactly what happened.

Second, as I stated on February 8, 2000, “The Prime Minister has no regard for integrity”. I stated, as I have already illustrated, that:

His minister knew of the bungling of the transitional jobs fund. Yet he defended her when she told the House and Canadians that everything was all right. She now admits that was not true but what she says now is true. Can we believe her? We only know for certain what the auditors have shown us: mismanagement and ineptitude.

We have now had a demonstration of a billion dollar boondoggle. We have had the HRDC one and now we have the firearms one, the GST fraud and the virtual pig in a poke with the cost factors of the Kyoto accord. I believe it is now true to say that when the Liberals get our money, they misuse it and lose it. Those are very serious words. I do not like to say them, but we have ample demonstration that they are true.

We also have had a tremendously large number of people ask when taxes will be cut, because their tax burden is too high. And it is. My heart really goes out to our seniors. In a case I had last week, a lady came into the office crying. She asked me what she could do. She told me that her income was $11,200 and she had to pay income tax.

Mr. Speaker, I do not know how much it costs you to rent your apartment or to pay the taxes on your house, to buy the groceries and to clothe your family, but I do not think you would live too well on $11,000 a year. Here is this lady who is expected to live on $11,000 a year, minus an income tax bill. This lady is 72 years old. This has been going on for the last five years.

The government has increased taxes 37 times. The time has come for us to recognize that not only do we need to cut taxes and allow these seniors to be exempt from taxes, it goes beyond that. We also have these same seniors paying all kinds of other costs, like utility bills. With this Kyoto accord coming up, what will that bill be? We have ample indication that the cost is going to rise. We know that the costs of gasoline and other things have gone up already, without the Kyoto accord.

I would like to go on for another 10 minutes because there are so many other things. In fact, I would like to give some positives of what should happen and how we could build economic freedom and allow prosperity in Canada to flourish. It is possible for us to do that.

[Kyoto Protocol, December 9th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, we are debating the Kyoto accord which is an economic disaster and an environmental fraud. I cannot understand how any government, that respects itself and wants to represent the people, could perpetrate on a trusting group of electors something that is economically unsound and environmentally fraudulent.

I am opposed to the ratification of the Kyoto accord. Someone might say that means I do not want to have the environment cleaned up. Nothing could be further from the truth. We know that the environment must be cleaned up.

I want to pay special tribute to one of the businesses in Kelowna that has done something of its own volition. It did not need the Kyoto accord to have geothermal energy and heating in its building. It built a brand new, high tech building for high tech people coming to Kelowna. All of the heating in that 12 storey building is by geothermal power. It did not have to be told that the Kyoto accord was necessary. It cleaned the environment in its area and did it of its own volition.

It is terrible to think that someone should dare to come forward and say that we must do this. I ask Canadians, what good would it do? Even if we agreed to this thing, what good would it do if Canada approves it but the United States does not? And the United States will not.

It reminds me an awful lot of when the law came in that restaurants needed to have smoking and non-smoking sections on their premises. Guess what? If people went into the non-smoking section of a restaurant, eventually, and it did not take too long, the smoke from the other section came over to the non-smoking part.

The whole idea behind the Kyoto accord is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. That is good. Now we are going to buy some hot air from Russia. What does that do to the total emissions from Canada or anywhere else? It does nothing. The total carbon dioxide emitted is still the same as it was before. The only thing that has happened is that the wealth has shifted from one country to another country. That is the effect of it.

The government, in its wisdom, has said as recently as yesterday or this morning that there would be a $15 a tonne limit on the amount that would be charged to industry. Where would the rest of it go if it goes beyond $15? It would either go to the consumer or to the taxpayer. What is the difference between consumers and taxpayers? Are they not the same people? In many instances they are, so will they get hit twice. They will pay for it either directly as they purchase various items or they will pay for it through taxes. Either way we will be paying for this.

The suggestion has been made that this would clean up the environment. Can we bet on that? Because it does not deal with pollutants, it primarily deals with carbon dioxide. It is really a bad thing to do that.

Something that intrigues me more than anything else is that there seems to be a debate about the number of scientists who are for it and the number of scientists who are against it. If we add up the number of scientists on the one side and the number of scientists on the other side, we would discover that on the pro side there is one more scientist than there is on the nay side. So it must be a good idea. Are the scientists here to tell us what the facts are or what their opinions are?

It reminds me of the kindergarten teacher who had show and tell, and one of the students brought in a little rabbit. One of the bright guys in the back asked, “What sex is the rabbit?” The teacher did not know anything about determining the sex of a rabbit and said, “Let us vote on it”. It is a ludicrous kind of situation to determine the sex of a rabbit on the basis of who thinks it is a male and who thinks it is a female.

This is the kind of nonsense that goes on when we do the same kind of thing here, when we debate science on the basis of how many are on one side and how many are on the other side. It is wrong. We need alternative sources. We need businesses like the one that I mentioned a moment ago. We need sources of energy like wind power and various other things. We have a business going up right now in Winfield, in my constituency, which will be producing ethanol, a beautiful fuel source.

In conclusion, I hope everyone remembers that the Kyoto deal is an economic disaster and an environmental fraud.

[Kyoto Protocol, November 22nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the government knows that it must have the cooperation of the provinces to be successful in reaching its target with the Kyoto plan. This make them pay but no say approach is doomed for failure.

Forget about a plan. The government process already has derailed before the process even began.

I ask the minister, what will it be, provincial cooperation or provincial alienation?

[Queen's Jubilee Medals, November 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it was my privilege and pleasure to participate recently in a moving ceremony which awarded the Queen's Jubilee Medal to members of the community of Kelowna.

The recipients are: Albert Baldeo, Cathy Comben, Herb Comben, Mark Chambers, Kristy Coueffin, Alan Dolman, Shelly Gilbeau, Ben Lee, Lil Moller, Bill Pollard, the late Dudley Pritchard, Alex Recsky, Marion Sallenbach, Lois Serwa, Tim Schroeder, Paul Stapley, Judy Stephens, Dick Stewart, Ursula Surtees and Bren Witt.

I wish to thank them for their exemplary commitment to the well-being of the people of Kelowna.

[Citizenship of Canada Act, November 7th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I have another question for the hon. member. It is all very nice to talk about the rights and freedoms that we have in the charter. It is wonderful. We do have rights and we want fundamental rights. What does the hon. member do with the sense of responsibility? When we have all these rights and freedoms, what happens to responsibility for the actions that we take?

[Citizenship of Canada Act, November 7th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I thought the hon. member was going to deliver a wonderful speech. He was going in the right direction until he got into some interesting sidebars where I had to wonder where he was going with the issue.

It was interesting as he went through the various oaths and held up the Australian oath as a model. I also found it interesting when he talked about the recognition of Canada as a sovereign nation and not a colony. We as citizens pledge our allegiance to this country. That is who we are.

The member made an interesting observation when he said that our laws could be wrong. He also said it was not good enough to simply pledge our allegiance to obey the law. What kind of citizen would actually take on the responsibility of trading his or her own laws which would supercede those of the government that was running the country? I agree with the hon. member that laws could in fact be wrong, but the fact remains that those are the laws of the land. However there is a way to change those laws. Is the member advocating civil disobedience as a way of handling this situation?

[Arts and Culture, November 1st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, every once in a while something extraordinary happens in this place. Such an event occurred Wednesday night of this week.

The rare event was an exciting musical expression of Serbian and Balkan music performed by the Teofilovic Twins. Their rendition of traditional Serbian and Balkan music helped participants to discover some of the mystery of the musical art of the Balkans. The twins have an extraordinary expression of music. They have solved the mystery of the second voice and found long lost harmonies of traditional singing. The twins have made recordings for national radio and television stations and were part of all the great spiritual and secular festivals and music gatherings in Serbia. The twins were the guests of the Speaker and performed in the Hall of Honour in this place.

I wish to take this opportunity to publicly thank the Speaker for his contribution to culture and art for parliamentarians and many other guests.

[Petitions, October 28th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the third petition deals with child pornography. The petitioners call upon Parliament to protect our children by taking all necessary steps to ensure that all materials which promote or glorify pedophilia or sado-masochistic activities involving children are outlawed.

I submit these petitions with all due respect on behalf of these petitioners.