Werner Schmidt

[Petitions, June 2nd, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the third petition has to do with gun control. It calls on Parliament to reject this legislative proposal, Bill C-68, and to direct the Minister of Justice to reconsider his approach to this entire issue.

[Petitions, June 2nd, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition contains 112 signatures and calls on Parliament not to enact any legislation that would allow doctor-assisted suicide.

[Petitions, June 2nd, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I have four petitions, three of which I will present orally.

The first petition deals with violence on television. The undersigned petitioners humbly pray and call on Parliament to ensure that the CRTC recognizes that Canadians do not need to be shocked to be entertained. Foul language, excessive violence, and explicit sex are not necessary to provide quality entertainment.

[Business Development Bank Of Canada Act, May 29th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, we are debating whether Bill C-91 should be referred to the committee before second reading. In many ways that is positive in the sense that it opens up the debate and allows elements to be raised which would otherwise be restricted because of the conventions of the House. I hope that will be the case and that it will not be a way to circumscribe or limit certain amendments or debate which might otherwise receive the light of day in the House.

I have concerns about Bill C-91 which we ought to look at before we submit it to committee. Changing the name of this bank I do not think will change anything at all. It will cost a lot of money to print new stationery, to put up all the new signs and all those things. What will changing the name do to the actual purpose, function and operation of the bank? I submit it will do nothing.

It sets up a crown corporation which has as its capitalization part a number of instruments which are being used. It has common shares which have a par value of $100. It has preferred shares which are unlimited in number, as are the common shares. The preferred shares have no par value. Hybrid capital instruments will be part of the capitalization. These will be paid in capital by the Parliament of Canada by a parliamentary appropriation but there will be no indication as to how much. There will be retained earnings and contributed surplus to a maximum of $1.5 billion.

There are other provisions which I will draw to the attention of the House, particularly sections 21 and 22, specifically section 22(e). Section 22 includes the ancillary powers but section 22(e) is particularly interesting. The bank may acquire, hold, exchange, lease, sell or otherwise dispose of any interest in real or personal property and retain and use the proceeds of disposition. That kind of provision raises some very interesting questions. How much real estate will the new business development bank of Canada be prepared to buy? What will it do with that real estate? Will it deviate from its traditional role, which

has been to lease real property in which it carries on its business, or will it develop a series of branches throughout the country?

Other sections of the bill also give to the board, to the Minister of Finance and to the cabinet powers which rightfully belong to the Parliament of Canada.

Section 27 gives some very specific powers to the board:

Subject to the approval of the governor in council on the recommendation of the Minister of Finance, the board may make bylaws

(a) setting out the rights, privileges, restrictions and conditions attaching to preferred shares, creating one or more additional classes of preferred shares and generally determining the rights and obligations of the holders of preferred shares, including

(i) limiting the right of the shareholders to specific dividends or repayments, whether fixed or variable,

(ii) authorizing the purchase or redemption of the shares by the bank, either at the bank's option or at the shareholder's request, and

(iii) limiting or extending the rights of the shareholders in any other way;

That is the second class of shares which makes up the capital of this bank, which really gives to the board the authority to determine how the bank shall be structured. That kind of power ought not to be given to a cabinet. It ought to exist with Parliament because this bank through the Minister of Finance and the cabinet, given this provision, allows that group to create a liability of $18 billion for the Canadian taxpayer.

Who is the shareholder talked about in section 27? The shareholder is the Government of Canada. The Government of Canada now will be told it may or may not own these preferred shares. It may or may not be paid a dividend. It may be paid this much of a dividend or this little of a dividend. That becomes the issue.

Other provisions of the bill ought to be of direct interest to each of us. In particular, I would like to look at subsections 18(4) and (6).

Subsection 18(4) states that the bank may enter into any transactions for the financial management of the bank, including any financial instrument of financial risk such as interest rate or currency exchange agreements, options, futures contracts and any other similar agreements.

Another way of looking at this is that these are derivatives. It permits the personnel of the bank to enter into futures contracts, options, purchasing and selling of options with public money which should be considered a sacred trust. If we look at the way the options market operates and the futures contracts work it means the bank is speculating with Canadian money or has the opportunity to do so.

I am sure the argument will be presented that it will use this only for purposes of hedging interest rate and currency fluctuations. If the bill specified that there were limitations one might not have such grave concern. Because there are no limitations it does not prevent the manager or the president or whoever is in charge from getting into the market directly. It should be a major concern to all of us. Just remember what happened in the Barings bank.

Other sections of the bill should give us grave concern. The designated minister is identified in section 21. Who is the designated minister? At the moment it is the Minister of Industry. It is possible that cabinet could designate any other minister. For example, FORD-Q is one of the regional development portfolios. We heard the Minister of Industry say this morning that one of the purposes of the new mandate is to expand it so that it would include regional development and things of that sort.

Would it not be interesting if for certain matters the Minister of Human Resources Development were designated as the minister of the bank and could direct the bank? In another instance it could be the minister of FORD-Q and in a third instance it could be the Minister of Industry and so on down the line. There is nothing in the bill to prevent that sort of thing from happening.

The obvious questions we have to ask is what can this bank do that the other banks cannot do. What can the other banks do that the this bank cannot do? If it is none of those things and this bank is doing nothing more or less than what the other banks are doing, what in the world are we doing this for?

Some specific arguments ought to be addressed as well. The indication is that this bank shall be complementary to the existing financial institutions, particularly the banks. Then the bill does not define the word "complementary". The only reference in the proposed bill that deals with the previous act is that complementary is taken as that section which deals with the previous section saying that it must be the bank of last resort. In other words, the applicant has to be refused by some other institution before he can apply for money here.

Does complementary mean that it will make loans of an operational capital requirement? Does it mean that it will become a deposit taking institution? What will the Business Development Bank of Canada do that other banks do not? I submit that it will do nothing more or less than is currently available in the marketplace and it is not required.

I want to throw out two more questions. First, will the bank be able to expand its network of offices? Second, which is more important, is: What is a hybrid capital instrument? It is not defined in the bill. When asked what this means certain officials were unable to answer that question but more significantly than that hybrid financial instruments are different from any other capitalization that is provided for in the other sections of the bill.

The other one says that common shares, preferred shares and hybrid capital instruments are not given to the government but may be given to private individuals or persons other than the government. What does it mean?

We must answer these questions before the bill is presented seriously to the House.

[Canada Elections Act, May 16th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased and happy today to be able to support my colleague from Edmonton Southwest and his bill to amend the Canada Elections Act.

Canadians are a people with a profound respect for democracy. Look around at the make-up of the House. We know by the change that took place from the last election to this one how democracy is respected in our country.

We understand representation very well. We respect it even when we do not necessarily agree with everything our representatives say. One of the things that brings this home most clearly is the structure of our electoral system.

We conduct open, free and fair elections in Canada. We give political parties tools to raise funds and to run candidates. We place limits and restrictions on their activities during and between writs to ensure fairness, even in dealing with each other and with the public. We have disclosure rules to make the system transparent. But our system also has some flaws. The bill put forward by my hon. colleague is all about addressing one of those flaws.

Bill C-319 seeks to limit the reimbursement of election expenses to those parties that have spent more than 10 per cent of their allotted expense amount as described in section 46 of the Canada Elections Act if and only if they receive more than 2 per cent of the vote nationally. What this would do is limit expense reimbursement to only those parties that have received a significant number of votes in the election, those parties that have a reasonable level of public support among Canadian voters.

In the most recent election, Elections Canada reports that there were 19,906,796 registered voters. This means that with this bill a party would have to have received 398,136 votes nationally to be eligible for reimbursement of election expenses. I do not think it is unreasonable for Canadians to expect a party to give a reasonable showing in an election before hard earned tax dollars are handed over to help it pay its bills.

What this bill seeks to prevent is the situation that arose in the last election. During that election certain parties were either well financed or had policies that were way out of touch with reality but were still well financed. These parties managed to field a large number of candidates and spent considerable sums on their campaigns. The taxpayer reimbursed them for a sizeable chunk of those expenses, even though they received only a very tiny portion of the overall national vote.

It does not sit well with me nor with many other Canadians that we are reimbursing expenses to parties that do not get more than a handful of the overall votes. I am not advocating the restriction of the electoral system here, far from it. I am only suggesting that it is about time we started to apply some fiscal restraint to our electoral system just as we are to the rest of the functions of government.

Parties should in no way be limited from forming or running as many candidates as they can muster. Parties should be allowed to spend as they see fit within the current rules set out by Elections Canada. Parties that do not command a significant share of the vote should not expect the Canadian taxpayer to cough up money to pay their bills.

I need to correct myself. We want 2 per cent of the total votes cast which in the last election would have worked out to 270,000 votes or thereabouts. The earlier figure I used was a theoretical

number based on the actual number of people who could have cast a ballot.

The reimbursement of election expenses should be a privilege enjoyed by those parties that have demonstrated they have the support of a significant proportion of Canadians. It is that simple.

What Bill C-319 seeks to introduce is fairness and fiscal restraint in the electoral system. We all know that fiscal restraint is absolutely essential in Canada today. We want political parties to demonstrate that they are deserving of any benefits they might derive from the taxpayer. We want them to show that they have support at the ballot box before they get the support from tax dollars. It is really all about fairness.

If a party deserves to be reimbursed because it has support among the people, it will be. If, however, a party is using the electoral system in this country as a soapbox for personal or questionable exposure and the people ignore it, then it should pay its own bills.

Again, I am not suggesting that we limit participation in any way. It is just that parties that do not command a certain level of support from the voters should not expect those same voters to bail them out with tax dollars. It is about being fair, responsible and accountable to the taxpayer for the dollar spent.

I am pleased to offer my support to my colleague from Edmonton-Southwest in this Bill C-319.

[Committees Of The House, May 16th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member certainly knows how to ask complicated questions, but they are very significant questions.

The important thing is that one of the greatest hindrances to small businesses developing is the existence of trade barriers across Canada. They are a multitude in number. I believe at the last count there were somewhere between 500 and 750 of these trade barriers.

Estimates vary as to how much they actually cost. In some cases people argue that it is about $5 billion a year to the Canadian economy, in other cases they will say that it is $7 billion, depending on which set of figures is used. That means the average family in Canada spends $1,000 or $3,500 per year more than it would pay for the same goods and services if the trade barriers did not exist.

One of the embarrassing things for us as Canadians and parliamentarians is that it is often easier to trade with other countries, in particular our neighbour to the south, than it is to trade across Canada. How do we bring these kinds of things together? It seems so stupid to tell someone it is easier to trade, for example, between Vancouver and Spokane. It is wide open. There is an organization called Cascadia, which promotes this kind of economic development. It is so easy to do, because the trade barriers between Canada and the United States have virtually been eliminated. And now with NAFTA that goes all over the place.

There was a principle announced in the red book that states that Canada should be unified. By not dealing with the internal trade barriers we are in fact disunifying Canada and creating a situation where trade is now north and south but not east and west.

That is one of the great barriers for small business. We would like to be strong at home first before we go abroad, but that is not an opportunity today. We have to become strong internationally and then we can perhaps afford to go over these trade barriers within Canada. It is a reverse, backwards kind of thing. It hurts our feelings of patriotism. It frustrates our feelings of economic unity as well as political unity. It is those kinds of things that we have to tear down so that we can help each other and feel important as Canadians-as important in Nova Scotia as we are in British Columbia, as we are in Ontario, as we are in Quebec, as we are in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and so on across Canada.

The hon. member asked a very good question with regard to those things. Does the federal trade agreement that is now before the House and is supposed to be implemented through Bill C-88 do that? It does not.

We will hear from various members on this side of the House who will say clearly where this trade agreement falls short. It does not deal with the very basic issues.

The idea is a very good one. Let us recognize this right off the top. Recognizing that internal trade barriers in Canada are a significant problem is very important. All our premiers have now recognized that is a problem. The issue, however, is that although they have recognized there is a problem they have not solved the problem. When we get to the dispute resolution mechanism, what do we get? We get the opportunity that if they cannot resolve the conflict then they can retaliate. That is exactly where we are today. What have we achieved?

The agreement has to have some teeth in it. I submit that it does not have those teeth.

In answer to my hon. colleague's question of whether the trade agreement does those things, it moves in the right direction but it does not go anywhere near far enough. Does it help build the unity of Canada? No, it does not. Does it hurt small business? Yes, it does. It is an embarrassment to many of us because we can trade more easily north and south than we can east and west.

[Committees Of The House, May 16th, 1995]

The whole concept behind regional development has evolved to some degree. We need to recognize that the implementation of the regional economic development agencies has subsidized businesses that could not make it on their own. It has created artificial competition between businesses that were in existence and new ones created across the street so that neither of them could succeed profitably. It has given industries an artificial cushion, because it has not required that the money that was given to them be paid back.

If we are to have regional development it should be done in a fair and open marketplace with competition. It ought to be done in manner such that all businesses know what is going on and they are all on a level playing field and competing fairly with one another and whatever money is given ought to be paid back with a reasonable rate of return.

These are precisely the kinds of things the Federal Business Development Bank was supposed to be doing in the past when it was the lender of last resort. If that kind of thing continues, if regional development agencies develop a flat playing field, create competition, and require the money to be paid back, then there is no reason they could not be rolled into one. The bankers' criteria of lending money could be applied and the whole business would run a lot better than it does at the present time. I suppose the end result of that statement is they could be rolled into one, but under certain conditions.

[Committees Of The House, May 16th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I move that the second report of the Standing Committee on Industry presented to the House on Tuesday, October 18, 1994 be concurred in.

It is with considerable pleasure that I rise to debate this motion. The committee had a very successful time in debating various parts of the access to capital for small business. Many of the things we talked about had to do with the lending institutions, in particular the chartered banks, trust companies, credit unions and groups of that sort.

The committee came up with 22 distinct recommendations. This is what we are talking about. The recommendations that the committee came forth with are the ones that ought to be concurred in. It is a pleasure for me to say that the banks have already moved in some of those directions.

Take for example recommendation No. 3. The committee recommends that the joint Industry Canada committee in consultation with the Canadian Bankers Association draft a code of conduct. It would explain to customers in plain language the information a loan applicant must disclose. There would be a clear explanation of reasons for refusing a loan, a commitment to guide customers to alternative sources of financing, and a commitment to provide an internal complaints handling mechanism.

The Canadian Bankers Association met with the committee in the earlier part of this year. It indicated clearly to us that it had established that kind of code of conduct. At first the association said it would be very difficult if not impossible to bring about some kind of standard of behaviour as far as treating the customers and the banks were concerned.

A lot of information is available now. It has been exchanged among the various branches of the banks. In addition to that, what is called an ADR which is a dispute resolution mechanism has been brought into being. It is an alternate dispute resolution mechanism that has been brought into being.

The committee also suggested that perhaps this was not good enough. It thought that probably there ought to be an independent ombudsman established. Recommendation No. 5 reads as follows:

The committee recommends that the government establish an independent office of the bank ombudsman to investigate complaints of breach of duty or maladministration by the banks. As in the United Kingdom, the ombudsman should have the power to require banks to pay compensation to complainants for financial loss, inconvenience and stress.

The experience of the banks in Britain where this independent ombudsman has been operating for a number of years has been very salutary. It has helped small business people. It has helped various other people in the business world to deal with their

banks more successfully. It has also made the banks a little more humane in the way they deal with their customers.

When we brought this to the attention of the Canadian Bankers Association, it thought that perhaps there should not be an independent ombudsman who is outside the banking community but rather it should appoint its own ombudsman.

The Toronto-Dominion Bank has one of those people who was the leader in the Canadian chartered banking industry to do just that. It is apparently working very well.

It is interesting to note that the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce now has this kind of person on a full salary at the senior vice-president level. This person deals with complaints that various business people have with regard to their loans or other operations with regard to the bank.

There are other recommendations from the committee as well. We need to recognize that the committee proposes to continue monitoring small business access to capital by calling one or more banks as witnesses every quarter to review their performance in lending to small businesses. That process has begun.

The banks have indicated that indeed their performance with regard to lending money to small businesses has improved. At least they are prepared to tell the committee what exactly their operation is with regard to these activities.

We go beyond that. We have asked the superintendent of financial institutions together with Statistics Canada and the Bank of Canada to develop a new format for the collection, compilation and publication of statistics on bank lending to small business. These statistics should be based not only on the size and type of loan but also on the nature of the borrower, including gender, employment, sales, major sector of operations and municipality. These statistics should be reported quarterly.

It was very interesting to watch the reaction of the banks to this recommendation. They first said: "That is impossible. We cannot give you those kinds of numbers. We do not have those kinds of numbers. It would be a horrendous expenditure in order to give you these kinds of numbers. It cannot be done".

It is a great pleasure for me to report that in the quarterly review at the end of April the banks not only said they have the information, they are prepared to give it to the office of the superintendent of financial institutions and to the committee. That is a great move forward. It shows the kind of concurrence that we see in the industry which the committee had in mind in the first place.

It is not so much what the government does, it is what industry does which makes business run better. In the final analysis business makes this country run. Government provides the opportunity, the environment and the parameters within which business can operate more easily, more fluidly, more efficiently, more effectively and more successfully.

We need to recognize it is not government that creates employment, it is not government that makes the economy grow, it is business that makes the economy grow. In particular, it is small business that makes the economy grow. In the last five years 85 per cent of new jobs created in Canada were created by small business. Let us recognize the significance that small business has in the Canadian economy.

The committee goes on to suggest leasing should be encouraged. It urges the government to ensure that tax measures and other programs do not discriminate against this method of financing. There are situations in which the government through its income tax policy has discouraged this form of financing small business.

Often small businesses do not have the capital resources to expend huge amounts of money for the financing of capital expenditures. Very often, if they can lease the equipment, it is far more salutary and allows them to get on with their business. The money would be available for the operation, rather than having it tied up in capital expenditures or equity.

The committee goes on to recommend that the federal government establish a limited working capital guarantee for small and medium sized business exporters. Such a program should be self-financing and priced in a manner that is commensurate with the risk. Too often it seems to have been the philosophy or the modus operandi of governments that in order to help business they should give them something.

The committee does not agree that is what should happen. The government should create the environment which we talked about a moment ago and allow them to finance their businesses. If businesses need seed capital, that should be returned at a rate of interest which is commensurate with the risk involved in that particular situation.

We also need to recognize that the reference is to exporters, particularly small business exporters. Today most exports are by a very small number of businesses. I believe that approximately 100 businesses control 85 per cent of the export market. In other words, small business has not had as large a portion of the export market as it should have. If it did it would help the Canadian economy to grow. It would increase the global participation and competition of Canadian business in the world marketplace.

The report goes on to suggest that the government review the Small Businesses Loans Act. To the credit of the government, that is exactly what it has done. It ought to be commended for that. It has begun to concur with the recommendations of the report. If I remember correctly, the Small Businesses Loans Act ceiling was moved from $3 billion to $12 billion. The only difficulty is that in the past the government has had to write off about $100 million in bad loans. Does that mean that with a ceiling of $12 billion the bad loans will increase to four times that amount?

There have been, from the small business associations and also from the bankers, some concern that some of the provisions of the new small loans act amendments create an additional charge which may discourage some of the small businesses from taking advantage of the provisions of the small loans act as it has been amended.

Therefore we need to be very careful that when one moves to concur in these kinds of recommendations that one not move in such a way that the operation of implementing that recommendation mitigates against the purpose, intent and spirit of that recommendation.

The committee recommends further that the mandate of the Federal Business Development Bank be confirmed and refocused as a complementary lender to small and medium sized businesses and that it be authorized to use new financial instruments to fulfil its mandate.

I am sure members of the House noticed that yesterday the Minister of Industry introduced Bill C-91. The effect of that bill is to do precisely what this recommendation suggests be done. That makes a committee feel its work is very significant and has not been ignored. The government has recognized the hard work of the committee.

We need to recognize in detail exactly how the business development bank, under the new name of the business development bank of Canada, will operate. Will the operations of that bank become an extension of the Canadian federal treasury or, as the minister implied yesterday, will the capital used for loans come from private sources of one kind or another.

The new sources of capital that the Business Development Bank of Canada needs to look at is that money that exists in the private sector today and money that can be patient, particularly for new, innovative ventures. It should also include the high tech areas where the science and technology involved in those businesses is very far reaching, very expensive and does not create an immediate return. It requires a lot of seed capital for the intellectual background, the experimentation, the building of prototypes and things of that sort before it actually goes into active and profitable production.

The Federal Business Development Bank, or under the new name of the business development bank of Canada, could form and fill a particular niche in our economy.

The difficulty we need to guard against is it not becoming another crown corporation that is a drain on the taxpayer. It should be a self-sufficient, self-financing organization. To date, the operation of the Federal Business Development Bank has been a profitable venture and that needs to be continued in the future. I hope that the kinds of things that Bill C-91 envisages will indeed take place in that regard.

However, we are not done yet. This committee did a lot of very hard work. It dealt not only with the chartered banks which it said are doing a reasonably good job. It could do a lot better in some places but is that not true of all of us? We can all improve. We would like to get the banks to take their responsibilities and carry out their mandates a little bit better.

I now want to move outside the banks and into the trust and loan companies. The committee recommends that the trust and loan companies act be amended to remove the arbitrary capital requirements for the establishment of a trust company and the acquisition of full commercial lending powers. The superintendent of financial institutions should instead establish guidelines setting out conditions for the establishment of new federally chartered trust companies and for the acquisition of full commercial lending powers. Institutions meeting these guidelines would be able to operate in Canada and make commercial loans using the prudent portfolio approach.

It is precisely on the last phrase "using the prudent portfolio approach" that I wish to spend a few moments. In the last number of years we have seen the collapse of some very major financial institutions, one of which was Confederation Life, that probably everyone in the House remembers only too well.

I remember the appearance before the committee of the superintendent of financial institutions and the questions the committee members asked this individual. How was it possible that a major financial institution like this could collapse in Canada? It is very serious when such an institution collapses.

The superintendent of financial institutions has come under the scrutiny of the auditor general. On Friday of this week he was reported as saying in the Financial Post : ``The auditor general and Ottawa's financial institutions watchdog are at odds''. We have the auditor general on the one hand and the superintendent of financial institutions on the other at odds over when federal regulators should intervene to deal with troubled Canadian trust and insurance companies.

The superintendent of financial institutions has been given the responsibility by Parliament on behalf of the people of

Canada to assure the financial soundness of banking institutions, insurance companies, credit unions and various other financial institutions.

The auditor general has been given the responsibility to investigate how successfully the office of the superintendent is doing its job. The superintendent specifically says: "I and the auditor general do not agree what my job is". Who is going to do the job, the auditor general or the superintendent of financial institutions?

The article goes on to explain what some of the issues might be. For example, the auditor general portrayed OSFI as sometimes being too slow to intervene with financial companies in trouble. The superintendent of financial institutions, John Palmer, who assumed the post last September, disputed the regulatory approach and said: "Your officials appear to favour a more mechanical system in which specific regulatory intervention would be required when specific numerical thresholds are violated. In our view it is essential to preserve the role of judgment in determining how and when to intervene".

If the Superintendent of Financial Institutions is to exercise judgment without looking at the numbers, there is no question that can put us into a lot of potential difficulty. This is a good example of where an individual needs a very hard head to understand the numbers and to make sure that the balance statements, the equity position and the financial situation of financial institutions are sound.

However, he needs to show a compassion that recognizes when situations have developed, when conditions have changed. He needs to be somewhat kind and give them some time to balance the sheet again if there is an indication a change can take place and the institution can become financially solvent if he had a little patience. It should never be done without a very hard headed look at the dollars and cents and to make sure the institution is sound and that management is capable of turning the institution around.

In the last little while we have seen financial institutions which were on the brink of bankruptcy long before anything was done to call them to account.

It is to the credit of some of the other people who are coming back now and saying that the confederation life policy holders are to get back 70 cents on the dollar and that perhaps in some cases they will get back substantially more. It is absolutely tremendous that this can happen in Canada. The critical situation is that this should never have been be allowed to happen in the first place. That is why we need to concur in the recommendations this committee has brought forward.

[Old Age Security Act, May 15th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, it is with considerable amount of trepidation and at the same time a certain sense of responsibility that I rise in the debate on the bill.

What is operating here is a plea for accountability, compassion and responsibility, efficiency and businesslike operation of the affairs of the House.

In particular I draw the attention of the House to Motion No. 7, the Reform Party motion calling for the minister to make a report to the House on where overpayments of CPP and OAS were made and at what cost to the Canadian taxpayer.

I am sure members of the House recognize only too well the largest group of people in Canada that deserves compassion today are the taxpayers. All taxpayers are burdened, be they young or old. They are paying taxes to a point at which they believe it has become excessive. They find themselves unable to do many of the things they want to do. They want to get into some of the larger purchases. They want to buy houses, cars, appliances and they find their discretionary income is getting lower and lower even though their gross salary is increasing.

We need to exercise some compassion. One of the greatest examples of compassion the House could demonstrate is that the money given to us by taxpayers be treated as money given to us in trust, money not to be spent willy-nilly at whatever whim or fancy might strike us at a particular time.

What is being called upon here is for the minister to say to all of his servants, the servants to the House and to the people of Canada: "Do your administration honestly, do it fairly and do it consistent with the legislation".

To the credit of most of our civil servants I must admit to the House that my association with our civil servants has been exemplary. They have done what they could and they do make mistakes, just as all of us make mistakes from time to time. When they make a mistake who is responsible? If the servant to the minister makes a mistake that servant is responsible to the minister but it is the minister who is responsible for the action of the people he has employed who report to him. The minister is responsible to the House for the actions taken by him and under his direction the staff he has appointed.

Therefore we ask that if there is an overpayment a committee do study these issues and they be reported to the House so that the responsibility can come back to the House. This is the Parliament of Canada. Here the legislation is enacted; here the responsibility ought to be demonstrated to all of the people of Canada.

It is with pride that we sit here. It is with the responsibility of knowing we are managing the people's money that we should approach the various aspects of the administration. It is with this intent that I come before the House to say the time has come to be accountable, to be responsible and to recognize it is not just the response we make to a stimulus but that we exercise the ability and the skill we have developed in the background we have so the right decision is made to emphasize that it helps the people who need the help the most.

Another group of people needs compassion. Those are the people who need to be helped by our social safety nets. There are many of them. There are those in our society, sad to say, who abuse the system, who use fraudulent means to apply for these benefits, who are dishonest in the information they include. They are responsible for the actions they have taken and they should be called to account. That is why this recommendation in this particular bill, to amend the bill, so that those overpayments do indeed become a debt to the crown. These are necessary and they ought to be enforced.

Then there is that other group that may well have received through administrative error or something else additional funds. Those people may through no fault of their own have spent more money than they probably should have are now unable to repay even though they may have received the amounts in error. Then a judgment call needs to be made. At that point the minister should exercise his responsibility. If he can defend that decision in the House, I am sure there are enough compassionate people in the House who would say there are those who ought to be forgiven.

We as a nation and as individuals would be the most despairing people and the most despicable people if we could not learn to forgive. Where there are honest mistakes made we ought to forgive; where people demand compassion, we must be able to give them that forgiveness. It can be done; it should be done.

Let us be accountable. Let us be compassionate to our taxpayers so we do not spend more money than we have to and recognize they are already overburdened in the taxes they are paying. Then let us call those to account who are responsible for the administration. They report to the House, they report to one another and they do these things honestly, credibly and efficiently. Let us all forgive where that needs to be done, where there are good reasons to forgive.

[Citizens Against Child Exploitation, April 6th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, today Monica Rainey, executive director of Citizens against Child Exploitation will present the Minister of Justice with the signatures of 42,000 people. Each signature represents a child who has been sexually abused in Canada.

The message is loud and clear. Elimination of sexual exploitation of our children must become a priority.

However the government continues to choose political issues like gun control over critical issues like child sexual abuse, making this House merely a House of partisan politics. Unspeakable criminal acts are being committed every day in the places our children play, learn and most devastatingly, call home.

I challenge the Liberal government to enact legislation which will protect our children. Stop the legal system from betraying them. I ask the Minister of Justice to prove to us that Ottawa is not merely a place of political opportunism but a place where justice prevails, where meaningful issues take priority and true humanitarian acts of government are born.