Ted White

[Canada Elections Act, November 17th, 1997]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-280, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act (registration of political parties).

Mr. Speaker, this bill, when passed, will correct an appalling anomaly in the elections act which permits the government to confiscate the assets of a party incapable of running 50 candidates in a general election.

The amendment to the act was passed by the Mulroney government just prior to the 1993 election. It was aimed at Reform but it caught the Communist Party and it had its assets seized and sold by this government.

We may not support the Communist Party but this is an anti-democratic law and has to be fixed. My private member's bill would remove that terrible part of the elections act.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Telecommunications Act, November 4th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to say that unlike my other colleague in the Reform Party, I do not really have any PCs running around writing letters to the newspaper and so on in my riding, not to say that there might not be at some stage but there is certainly not right now.

I am pleased to see that at least those PCs who are here in this House are talking more and more about taking away these monopolies.

I mentioned earlier that I was in the telecommunications industry prior to becoming a member of Parliament and was directly involved with the CRTC and Teleglobe. Anyone who was directly involved in that industry can see the tremendous benefits that have occurred from deregulation.

The prices of telephone calls for example. We see advertisements now on television where calls can be made to anywhere in the country on Sunday for 10¢ or 5¢, or whatever it is. Certainly in the early 1980s it would be something like $1.60 a minute. When we go back those 15 years or more we can see that it was really a tremendously expensive exercise.

These deregulations benefit ordinary people, the average wage earner tremendously. I was very pleased to hear from the content of the speech that at least the Tories are starting to see that taking monopolies out of existence is a good idea.

[Telecommunications Act, November 4th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, it is obvious to anybody who has any understanding at all about how jobs are created or who has had any contact with business that deregulating these government monopolies contributes to tremendous levels of employment and helps people get jobs.

I was in the telecommunications industry prior to becoming a member of Parliament and experienced the deregulation of the telephone and telex systems which were partially under the CRTC and Teleglobe in the early 1980s. The expansion of the telecommunications industry as a result is phenomenal. Northern Telecom expanded dramatically and the telecommunications industry worldwide has grown and created huge numbers of jobs as a result of deregulation and of NAFTA.

In addition to that, anyone who has been in business or understands how jobs are created knows it is high taxation that causes unemployment, that has caused our 83 months of unemployment, not deregulation of government monopolies. It is high taxation, over-government regulation and government overspending.

If government spending could create jobs—it has already overspent by $600 billion—we should have three jobs each by now. It is totally ludicrous to blame deregulation for high unemployment. It does not make sense to anybody who really thinks about the situation.

If the member thinks that NAFTA is a disaster, what could she say to the people in my riding like Mr. Hans Gawenda or Mr. Peter Belding? Like dozens of other small businesspeople, they have expanded their businesses up to 50 employees and more from just one or two because NAFTA allowed them to do business in the United States, to get rid of all the tariffs that prevented them from assembling products in Canada?

Some old, worn out, tired, oversubsidized industries went out of action, such as the shipbuilding industry in my riding that never could compete, but in its place are thousands of new jobs in these deregulated industries, in these new industries available through NAFTA.

How does the hon. member rationalize her position with the facts?

[Questions On The Order Paper, November 4th, 1997]

What percentage of those who claim to be self-employed did not pay any taxes, or declared losses, during the 1996 taxation year, and what percentage of those people who claim to be self-employed did not pay taxes, or declared losses, for every year from 1993 to 1995 inclusive?

[Canada Elections Act, November 4th, 1997]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-274, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act (electronic voting).

Mr. Speaker, back in 1994 I ran an electronic referendum in my riding using electronic touch tone voting. It came in for a lot of criticism at the time. However, in 1996 the Harris government wrote electronic voting into the elections act for Ontario and subsequently the city of North York carried out an electronic referendum in March of this year in which 152,000 people voted by touch tone telephone in five languages.

The time has come to amend the Canada Elections Act to permit Elections Canada to carry out some experiments with electronic voting.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Income Tax Act, November 4th, 1997]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-273, an act to amend the Income Tax Act (political activities by charities receiving public funds).

Mr. Speaker, passage of this bill would ensure that charities that have charitable status and therefore are able to issue tax receipts would have their charitable status revoked if they use any of the money for political activities, since the act concerned with charitable status specifically prohibits those charities from so doing. It is time to put some teeth into the act.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Employment Equity Act, October 22nd, 1997]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-257, an act to amend the Employment Equity Act (elimination of designated groups and numerical goals) and the Canadian Human Rights Act.

Mr. Speaker, this bill amends the Employment Equity Act, chapter 44 of 1995, to do as proposition 209 did recently in California; that is, to remove the misguided Liberal concept of state sanctioned and enforced employment based on race or gender instead of qualifications for the job.

The people of Canada are way ahead of the House in recognizing that the Employment Equity Act is undesirable and they want rid of it.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Statutory Instruments Act, October 22nd, 1997]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-256, an act to amend the Statutory Instruments Act (disallowance procedure for statutory instruments).

Mr. Speaker, this bill would establish a statutory disallowance procedure which does not exist at the moment. It would allow for instruments subject to review and scrutiny by the joint Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations to be subject to legislative disallowance if the committee rules that they should be disallowed.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Supply, October 21st, 1997]

Madam Speaker, I listened to the hon. member with interest. She included a lot of information from in her previous speech.

The hon. member mentioned the $17 billion in deferred taxes and tens of thousands of profitable companies that pay no taxes at all. The Ontario NDP government carried out a survey when it first came to power. It found that the principle reason why tens of thousands of profitable companies did not pay taxes in a particular year was they were carrying forward losses from previous years.

If the hon. member wants to remove the ability of companies to carry forward their losses, losses they incur to keep people in jobs when the company is not doing well, can she not see that will kill jobs?

How do these companies avoid paying taxes? Could the hon. member give me the list or give the House a list of reasons why companies do not pay taxes, especially profitable companies?

[Supply, October 21st, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure if the member thought he was asking a question of the NDP, but it was my speaking time and my chance to respond.

I agree with him that the NDP fatal flaw is that it thinks that we have to increase spending by massive amounts to create jobs when all the evidence is that type of spending does not create long term jobs. It creates unemployment instead.

I agree with the member's observation that massive spending is not the way to prosperity or to lower unemployment levels. On the other hand, I see no harm and I think Reform sees no harm in setting a general wish to move the unemployment levels down, not a specific target I agree. We cannot pick a number out of the air like 3% but we want to move it down. We have seen other jurisdictions get below 4% and 5% where they have these low tax, low deficit or surplus regimes and we should be aiming for the same sorts of achievements.