Ted White

[Citizen-Initiated Referendum Act, October 2nd, 1997]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-229, an act to provide for the holding of citizen initiated referenda on specific questions.

Madam Speaker, in 1987 when the Reform Party was first talking about citizen initiated referenda, hardly anyone else was talking about it. In the early 1990s New Zealand introduced citizen initiated referenda into its parliamentary system. The Harris government is in the process of doing so and the Klein government has already introduced a referendum process for tax increases.

This bill would bring the federal government in line with the trend worldwide for greater democratic input from the people. It is the most important bill I am introducing today.

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

[Plain Language Act, October 2nd, 1997]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-228, an act to promote the use of plain language in federal statutes and regulations.

Madam Speaker, sometimes constituents ask me for copies of legislation that has been passed in the House, bills that we are currently talking about. Then they realize that they cannot understand a word in the bill; they have no idea what it means.

In addition to the fact they are written in such complicated legalese, these bills are always open to legal challenges in the courts.

My bill would force those who write the bills to construct them in plain language.

Other countries that have this type of legislation have found that it greatly simplifies the bill writing process.

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

[Appointment Of A Special Joint Committee, October 1st, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to question the member about one thing in his speech. His wording was something like there was a time when people had to trust their representatives or their officials.

How does the member distinguish the times when he would trust his constituents as opposed to trusting himself? Does it have to do with self-interest or an academic qualification? How does he define his representation of constituents? Does he represent them? Does he represent himself or does he represent his party?

[Points Of Order, October 1st, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, for clarification purposes, the bill is to prevent criminals from making profit from the proceeds of crime from the writing of stories or the making of films having to do with their exploits in crime. I wanted to clarify it for all the members.

[Points Of Order, October 1st, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Yesterday I rose on a point of order during Routine Proceedings after the member for Scarborough Southwest had introduced a private member's bill which in the previous Parliament passed all stages in both the House and the Senate. The process was interrupted by the calling of the election.

Yesterday I asked for the unanimous consent of the House to deem the bill to have passed all stages in the House once again. Consent was given except for one member of the Bloc who indicated that if I brought the matter up again today when there would have been time to study it overnight then we could revisit that unanimous consent.

I might ask, Mr. Speaker, if we might revisit now that unanimous consent to have that member's bill deemed to have passed all stages.

[Supply, September 30th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, I would like to ask the member some questions about the aboriginal funding initiatives that she mentioned were announced in the throne speech. This is the only area in the last budget to receive an increase in funding. Spending on Indian and northern affairs is now more than $6 billion a year which, as someone worked out, is the equivalent to $32,000 per annum for every man, woman and child in the aboriginal community. It is quite a lot of money already.

Yet in Alberta and northern B.C. in polls that were mainly aboriginal the member will probably be surprised to learn that the people in those polls voted Reform in the last election. The reason they did that is in a lot of native communities the structure of the bands is not very democratic. As the auditor general pointed out, about 20 percent of bands are in financial difficulties because they either improperly manage or are incapable of managing the money they get.

Many rank and file band members recognize this as a problem but because there is no democratic structure within the band, it is a hierarchical chief system, they have no way of controlling expenditures or ensuring they get their share. I see that on the Squamish Indian reserve within my riding. I get complaints from band members there who are shut out of the process, who cannot get a home, who are not allowed to open a business, who cannot do things because they are not related to the chief, and there is no way they will ever get the money.

Would the member identify any initiative of this government to first make sure there are democratic processes in place to make sure this money she is talking about will truly get down to the end user instead of being given once again to people who perhaps are incapable of managing or who improperly manage the money?

[Supply, September 30th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, I do apologize to the member for going on ad nauseam about New Zealand, but now he has asked me a whole bunch of questions about it so I guess I will have to do it again.

First of all, I would mention that in New Zealand the type of government he is calling a conservative government which was in power just before the crisis was reached was known as the National Party. However by North American standards, all governments in New Zealand were socialist. When I lived there I thought the National Party was a progressive conservative style of government, but it was not really; it was socialist and I soon learned that.

They were all tax and spend governments. They were the first with a welfare state in the world. They really set the stage for the total collapse of a welfare state.

Yes the Labour Party which took power had to clean up the mess because within a few days of taking power, those investors who had been prepared to buy government bonds deserted en masse. The New Zealand government ran out of international currencies within a few days of the Labour Party taking office. Then the World Bank stepped in and helped them to recover. As a result of that, New Zealand really has found the optimum size of government and taxation. The government is now about 40 percent of the size it was in 1983. The country is functioning better.

Last year New Zealanders were given on average a $200 per month income tax reduction. However, the New Zealand government first began to pay down its debt before giving tax relief. It realized that as soon as it started to pay the debt down, the interest payments would begin to retract very quickly and there would be more money to spend on other programs. It has actually increased spending on social programs by almost $1 billion in the last year.

Now on the GST, of course the Liberals promised to scrap, abolish and get rid of the GST, which they did not do. It is true that the PCs asked New Zealand representatives to come here to give them advice on how to implement the GST. The advice was ignored. New Zealand's GST has no exemptions. It was at a lower rate across the board. There were no exemptions at all and they urged that if there were to be a GST in Canada, it should be that type of GST at a lower rate.

From a personal perspective to members, I am not sure that a GST could ever be successfully introduced when we have a bordering country that does not have such a consumption tax. It makes it very difficult and very competitive. Perhaps more consideration should have been given to that before that style of tax was introduced.

I thank the member for his questions. I am sure he will hear a bit more about New Zealand from me, but that goes with the territory, I guess.

[Supply, September 30th, 1997]

I would remind members today that we are debating a Reform motion which reads:

That this House condemn the government for making their 50/50 election promise on any future surpluses without adequate public debate as to the optimal size of government, taxes and debt, thus threatening to repeat Canada's 27 year old history of irresponsible spending, creating high debt, financed by high taxes, causing high unemployment.

It is not difficult to see the reasons why we would propose such a motion in the House. There is plenty of evidence out there among ordinary average Canadian taxpayers that they are very dissatisfied with any suggestion that government would increase its spending at this point in the cycle.

The Financial Post did a poll of Canadian CEOs and average taxpayers in September. This poll was published in the Financial Post on September 27. I can give members a couple of examples from this poll.

Peggy Witte of Royal Oak Mines stated in answer to questions that Royal Oak Mines left Canada because of the high Canadian taxes which made it difficult to attract top-notch talent to fill positions in the company within Canada. I know that Peggy Witte's company, Royal Oak Mines, is certainly not the only one that has deserted our province because of high taxes.

Where I live in Vancouver, we are very close to the United States border. There are something like 30,000 Canadians who have business interests just across the border in Bellingham and Blaine. Many thousands of Canadians go to work every day just across the border because there is a lower tax climate there both at the corporate and personal levels.

It was not just CEOs though who responded to the poll and indicated that they were dissatisfied with tax levels. Among average taxpayers, a vast majority favoured tax reductions and by 28:1 they favoured cuts in personal income taxes. It is not difficult to see why they would favour cuts in personal income taxes when we look at an article that was printed in the Vancouver Sun on September 18 and sent to me by a constituent.

The article shows Canadian household savings are on the decline. Canadians are saving much less than ever before and mainly because since 1980 the government's share of personal income has gone from 17 percent to over 25 percent. The government has increased its take from personal incomes by 8 percent just since 1980. As a result, people have far less savings. In fact the graphs, which I cannot show to members, show that personal savings have dropped dramatically as taxes have increased dramatically since the early 1980s. At this point the savings rate is running at about 1 percent. That is a full 9 percent lower than it was just a decade ago.

Of course income taxes as we know were supposed to be a temporary tax. I mentioned to members yesterday that I had a folder full of things that constituents had sent to me over the summer that they would surely hear about as we went on through the business of this House.

There is another clipping here sent by a constituent who wanted me to remember that September 20 marked the 80th anniversary of the birth of the income tax in Canada. It preceded today's income tax. It received royal assent on September 20, 1917. It was supposed to be a temporary measure which would be reversed once the war was over. I think we are still in a bit of a war but now it is to try to battle back those who want to spend other people's money. They certainly throw it around very freely.

Mr. Trevor Roote in my riding was a bit outraged when bureaucrats at the GST collection department said that they were losing revenue because of the exemptions for groceries, drugs and medical devices. He really objects to the way that bureaucrats say they are losing tax revenues because of exemptions. He said that it was only through the permission of the people that they can have these tax revenues.

Really, it is quite outrageous that the government treats this as if it were a business income to which it has a right for some sort of service that it provides. I realize there are many services that the government provides which we all agree are necessary and essential but there is a tremendous amount of government waste. Some of it was mentioned today during question period.

I am sure many members have seen the headline on the front page of an edition of the Hill Times : “Pork barrel politics: Bagmen, old college buddies and riding association presidents all benefited from Liberal largesse collecting plum government appointments last month”.

There were some examples: Gilles Champagne will sit as a member of the Canada Post board of governors. The three-year appointment which was approved by cabinet on September 24 pays a $600 per diem and a $7,000 annual retainer. The Liberal Party director in Quebec knows Mr. Champagne from their fundraising work together and he described him as a good Liberal.

The Liberals for example made another appointment in the heart of Bloc Quebecois country. Mr. Frappier, who is the son of a Liberal appointed judge, was given a plum position there.

Bryan Williams, a lawyer in the Vancouver area, a long time Liberal supporter, was named chief justice of the Supreme Court of British Columbia last month.

There are a whole slew of examples even in the Hill Times and many of these examples find their way into the mainstream press. We read about them regularly.

I think some of us will remember members who were not re-elected to this House. Geoff Regan, whom I remember, represented Halifax West. I mentioned to him at one time that his failure to represent his constituents on an issue would probably come back to haunt him. I see now though that not satisfied with the taxpayers' decision to throw Mr. Regan out of office, the government has appointed him senior assistant in the federal ministerial regional office located in Halifax, the executive suite where the ministers go to powder their noses. Mr. Regan landed on his feet.

Of course we remember Mary Clancy and how many times in this House she criticized the United States, how she slammed the Americans. And where is she now? She is in Boston in a patronage position at the embassy. Imagine Mary Clancy as an ambassador for Canada. Can you imagine that? The person who condemned the United States constantly.

That is one area of waste, but there are many others such as the federal-provincial infrastructure program of course, which Reform criticized because much of it went to pork barrel politics.

There are the results of a questionnaire that was sent out to all members of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business a couple of months ago asking whether there should be a renewed federal-provincial infrastructure program. Of those who replied Canada wide 49 percent said no. These are business people answering these questions about the way tax dollars should be spent. Forty-nine per cent Canada wide and fifty-six per cent in B.C. said “Don't use our tax dollars on these pork barrel federal-provincial arrangements”.

When we think about it, what a silly way to raise taxes for local infrastructure. We tax workers in B.C., transfer their money to Ottawa where it gets shuffled around by the bureaucrats and then it gets dumped into a program for infrastructure and gets sent back to B.C. again where it gets shuffled around and handed out under the grants program.

We probably if we are lucky get back 50 cents on every dollar to actually spend on the infrastructure. It would have been better for the local government body closest to the taxpayer to be responsible for collecting that money in the first place and spending it on the infrastructure directly.

Then the minister for multiculturalism today in question period said how carefully she screens the grants to multiculturalism groups and how they never waste any money.

There was an example in British Columbia which I wish I could have brought up for the minister at the time, the Canadian Association to Fight Racism, which of course has a wonderfully politically correct name. No one would ever dare suggest that maybe it is doing something wrong.

That organization had failed to file its papers with Victoria for three years in a row. It got struck off the register. It was still collecting money from the minister of multiculturalism when it had no mandate and no legal authority to exist.

These are the sorts of things that go on constantly with our taxpayers' money. I could go on. I have a big stack of stuff here that I could go through for all these examples of waste, one which all the members in this House would have got about a week ago.

There is another survey from Ms. Tremblay which she does every parliamentary session, $41,000 down the drain again, asking us whether we think there should be more women in Parliament and what we should do to arrange that. It is the voters who decide who will be in Parliament, not us. What a waste of money.

I wish I could spend a half a day talking about this absolute pile of waste, but I know that members opposite are bursting to ask me questions.

[Supply, September 30th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, I believe the person who will be correcting that will be the third in line in this segment.

I would like to recognize the presence in the gallery of some constituents from North Vancouver, Mr. and Mrs. McKenzie. I welcome them to the House.

[Supply, September 30th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I found the speech by the hon. member to have some very creative accounting. It was quite interesting.

If government spending created jobs, if it created all these wonderful jobs, the government has overspent $600 billion at the federal level in the past 25 to 30 years. If we add the overspending of the provinces to that, in total it overspent maybe $1 trillion. If throwing government money at problems could fix them, how come this $1 trillion that has been spent has not bought three jobs for everyone of us throughout the country? That is the first question.

The hon. member talks about the medical care system and how he would like to see jobs created in medical care. I would like to ask him whether he realizes that about $2 billion crosses the border into the United States every year with wealthy Canadians who buy medical services in the United States. Would it not be a good idea since he supports jobs in the medical care system to try to bring that money back into Canada in some way, to provide an alternative choice for those people who are already spending $2 billion across the border? Let them spend it here and certainly put rules in place so that doctors cannot run into that special new program. Let people spend it here so that new jobs will be created in the medical care system.

If the member would look at examples in other countries which have done this, such as Britain, Sweden and New Zealand, he would see that the medical services jobs almost doubled as a result of introducing such plans.