Darrel Stinson

[Regulations Act, October 2nd, 1995]

You missed more than that.

[Regulations Act, October 2nd, 1995]

At least we're full barrels, not empty like the government.

[Petitions, October 2nd, 1995]

Madam Speaker, it is my sad duty to present a petition duly certified by the clerk of petitions from the residents trapped on the far side of Adams Lake where they can no longer have access to their homes safely and reliably due to government mismanagement.

[Petitions, October 2nd, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I have two petitions to present today.

The first petition, duly certified by the clerk of petitions, is from a group of B.C. citizens, including many in my riding of Okanagan-Shuswap, asking Parliament to stop the native land claim negotiations and to start treating native Indians exactly the same as all other Canadians.

[Adams River Bridge, October 2nd, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, three weeks ago the Adams River bridge was torched by an arsonist during the Gustafsen Lake confrontation, also with Shuswap Indians, forcing some 90 residents previously blockaded by the Adams Lake Indian Band to use a temporary ferry as their sole access to every service from medical health to the mail.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has said the salmon resource will prevent bridge demolition and reconstruction until mid-August 1996. Because the court ruled the private road belongs to the Adams Lake Indian Band, nobody knows who owns the bridge and therefore who has the responsibility to rebuild it.

I will present a petition today from Indian Point residents that the government buy out their homes at the assessed value.

On behalf of Adams Lake residents, mostly seniors seeking peaceful retirement, whose lives have been so terribly disrupted by federal and provincial government mismanagement, I urge the minister to buy out their homes now.

[Canada Transportation Act, October 2nd, 1995]

No.

[The Economy, September 29th, 1995]

Only you would know.

[Excise Tax Act, September 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, on April 26, 1994 I put a question on the Order Paper which the government still has not answered.

I asked as follows:

With respect to the $3.3 billion in 1994-95 and the $3.1 billion in 1995-96 the government will spend for grants to business, (a) what agency dispenses these grants, (b) what criteria does the government apply to determine which businesses receive grants and (c) how do these criteria differ from those used by the previous government?

I did not ask the government to provide me with a list of grants to businesses. Instead I merely asked the government to explain how

it decides who will receive these generous payouts of taxpayers' dollars, who does the paying out and how the Liberals' actions differ from practices followed by their predecessors.

These are questions which Canadian taxpayers have every right to expect their government to tell them. What possible reason could there be for the government to take 17 months and still not supply an answer? Could it be that the government does not know what standards it applies in deciding what businesses (a) or (b) should be given a grant? Somehow that does not really seem likely. However if the government did know what standard it uses, why would the government not simply have answered my question?

The conclusion most taxpayers will probably draw from the government's refusal to reply is that the standards it uses dare not be exposed to the light of day, that it would expect more trouble from supplying the answer than it could get from simply not answering.

This conclusion will probably lead many people to assume that Liberal Party patronage is one very big criterion for receiving money from the current Liberal government, just as it has been so often charged that Conservative Party patronage was one very big criterion for receiving money under the Mulroney Tories. Liberal-Tory, same old story.

I raise this question after listening to many discussions in the Standing Committee on Industry. Since that time I have moved over to the natural resource committee, serving as the the Reform forestry critic. I attended meetings with representatives of the forest industry all across Canada.

A question I often asked these members of the forest industry was: What can we do to get the federal government out of the natural resource area which according to the Constitution should fall under provincial jurisdiction? One of the answers I often heard was to put an end to federal grants to the forest industry. The forest industry may apply for those grants but they apply only because their competitors do so. If one business in the field gets a federal grant and another business in the same field does not, it gives the first one an unfair competitive advantage over the other.

Nobody is more competitive than a logger. I feel certain that the same is true of Canadian business and industry across this great country. Individual business owners want to be free of government. They want to be free of the red tape required to complete the application forms. However, if their competitor is applying for and likely getting a grant, then businesses needing to compete must do the same.

In conclusion, I want to emphasize that grants to businesses and industry must end. They must end for several reasons. They are a needless burden on the taxpayers at a time when government is struggling to find money for essential services like health care and education. They must end because they are like the apple in the Garden of Eden as a temptation to politicians to favour their old friends and their party supporters in a system of pork barrelling and patronage which is a disgrace to honour and integrity in government.

Grants to businesses and industry must end because they subsidize those less able and least trustworthy to succeed at the expense of those most able and most worthy to succeed. In short, grants to businesses and industry are readily used to reward failure and to penalize success. Canadian businesses and industry deserve better.

As I conclude my remarks I ask hon. members: When will I get an answer to the question I raised 17 months ago?

[Cultural Property Export And Import Act, September 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I can well tell him who worked toward getting the $100,000. It was the person who invested in the nickel and penny shares in the stock exchange who tried to keep the exploration companies going. It was the person who tried to put something away so they could claim it to further their children's education.

The hon. member maybe has never dealt with the small business people in Canada. If he had problems helping people to do their tax returns maybe he should look at changing the policies he is so hard set on keeping so he can keep people like that working.

Maybe that is a question the hon. member might like to answer. Why has he not come up with some kind of a change in the program? Why is it always a Conservative-Liberal program or a Con-Lib policy that we go along with? We have bunk beds, Bloc beds and now Con-Lib beds.

[Cultural Property Export And Import Act, September 25th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I know it is hard for the hon. member to understand that under capital gains the $100,000 is for the small investor, the person who tries to put a little aside to get ahead because they know darn well with what is happening underneath the government there will be nothing there for their old age unless they look after themselves. The government will take it all away from them anyway while its members make sure their pensions are well kept and they are well fed before they think about the poor average working class person. It is a shame.

When the member asks about capital gains at the $100,000 level it creates investments. It gives the Canadian working people a chance to get ahead where the government cannot weave and sneak in between and take it from their bank accounts, which this government is so very good at.