Ted White

[Supply, May 30th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, first I would like to deal with the issue of free votes. As the critic for democratic reforms for the party this is my area of specialty. I would like to put on the record that every vote which is held in the House is a free vote for the Reform Party. It is just that our definition of free votes is a little different than the other side's.

The way we define free votes is that a member must show that in order to vote contrary to the general principles of the party there must be support from constituents. We do have a process which a member must go through in order to demonstrate that the way he or she is voting is actually representative of constituents. There is a process. Every single vote that we have is free.

In terms of whether or not I am bitter, I would prefer to call it passionate. I am passionate on behalf of my constituents who are, very rightly, cynical about what this government does. It is cynicism which led to the dumping of the PCs at the last election and the voting in of 52 Reform MPs.

The people came to the Hill yesterday to honour themselves and to look at their names on plaques. The member says they built a great country. I will admit that they contributed to the country, but in ways in which a lot of people would disagree with. Most Canadians are not satisfied with the way the justice system treats them or protects them. They are not satisfied with the level of debt.

The member mentioned what a wonderful job they had done in controlling the deficit. The fact is, they have cut $9 billion out of government spending at the same time as they added $9 billion in interest payments. The finance minister, with great credit, has walked along a tightrope right down the middle, but he has kept us on the treadmill. The problem is still not solved. The debt is still rising dramatically. In the last hour in which we have been debating, the debt has risen another $2 million. That debt is a millstone around our necks which will continue to erode our social programs.

I would like to deal with the names on the gold plated plaques. I never intended any disrespect to our Speaker. I am well aware that the plaques were funded with private money. Really, that was not the point. The point I was trying to convey on behalf of my constituents was how that exercise looked when someone was watching it on a television set in western Canada. I believe I was successful in making that point because of the reaction of the member.

My constituents would have no problem whatsoever supporting plaques in the House of Commons showing the names of everyone who has served here if they thought they were getting value for their money, if they thought MPs were not ripping them off, if they thought MPs were following the will of their constituents. There is not a scrap of evidence that ever happens. Every piece of evidence that every constituent has is that nobody gives a darn for their opinion from the day of the election until six weeks before the next election. That is the way this place operates.

I have a letter which was sent to me by the minister of immigration in response to a letter I sent asking her to deport yet another group of criminal refugees who are committing crimes in my riding. I have had a plethora of them over the past year. I cannot get rid of these people. They are a menace to society. I wrote to her again on March 18. She was kind enough to reply on May 15. She said, basically, that she does not want to deport anybody in lieu of

sentencing because she wants to make sure they realize they must serve their sentences and that simply deporting them would be to diminish the severity of their crimes. Frankly, that is a load of rubbish.

The way my constituents look at it is that these people will get out on early release to wander around in the community. Early release and probation are considered to be a part of sentencing. There is no accountability. These people should be deported at the time they are convicted.

[Supply, May 30th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be speaking today in support of this motion which severely criticizes the government because it does give me the opportunity to talk about all the broken promises.

I bring up some matters mentioned by the member for Kenora-Rainy River. He mentioned the importance of voters selecting a party based on facts, not fiction. Let us get something very clear. Fifty-one of fifty-two Reform MPs in the House gave up their right to any pension. Therefore nobody can point a finger at us. All of the greed is on the other side of the House.

I am getting a bit sick of having my constituents attacked as racist, bigoted, homophobic, extremists or any other derogatory adjective these Liberals keep bringing up. Just because my constituents do not believe in Liberal tax and spend policies does not mean they are intolerant. Every time the member puts a label on us or our policies, which incidentally have not changed since the 1993 election, he is attacking our constituents. More than two million people, 20 per cent of the voters of Canada, voted Reform in the last election. Therefore every time he gets up arrogantly to use those labels I suggest he give a little thought to what he is doing.

I continue with the latest set of broken promises from the government. Canadians will remember that about a week ago the Prime Minister in western Canada said Canadians will have to live with high levels of unemployment. By admitting failure on the job front the Prime Minister has confirmed that neither he nor any of

his government employed for life colleagues have the slightest idea how real jobs are created.

The Prime Minister claimed during the 1993 election campaign that his $6 billion job creation infrastructure project would create all sorts of wonderful jobs and we would return to the days of low unemployment. He had this theory that all the people employed by the program would spend the money in their communities and that this would then reduce unemployment.

However, anyone with business experience could see that the plan could not work from day one. The reason was the government was not creating long term, meaningful jobs. It was buying jobs using taxpayers money and borrowed money, and those sorts of jobs are only short term.

Frankly, if running deficits and accumulating a $583 billion debt could create jobs we would each have at least three by now. Instead the overspending has led to punitive levels of taxation. It has driven businesses out of the country. It has reduced the amount of disposable income in the pockets of consumers. Debt and deficits have caused unemployment. Until the people on the other side of the House-and we can laugh at this right now-come to grips with that we will not make any progress.

Although governments cannot themselves create meaningful jobs, they can create the climate that permits private enterprises, the private sector, to create those jobs. The steps to success would require the federal government to balance its budget as quickly as possible so that those who are to be affected by the changes can adjust as quickly as possible and then immediately get into tax reductions to put more money into the pockets of consumers. With that money in their pockets, consumers will spend more, stimulating the demand for products, increasing the demand for jobs and subsequently lowering the unemployment level.

These steps were the foundation of Reform's zero in three plan for balancing the budget, which we used during the 1993 election campaign. We are three years down stream from that now. If the government had taken our plan the day it came to office, we would today be running surpluses and arguing about what to do with the surplus money instead of arguing which social program we are to cut next.

We would not be talking about disassembling CPP and cutting the transfers to medicare. We would have a surplus and would be talking about enhancing those programs.

I come from New Zealand. New Zealand politicians were forced by a fiscal crisis in 1984 to take exactly the steps I just detailed. Today the New Zealand unemployment rate is below 6 per cent. It has large budget surpluses. It is applying those surpluses to expanded health care programs, better social programs, and at the same time workers this week received a $100 per month reduction in income taxes.

Imagine if the Minister of Finance had been able to stand in the House in his last budget and announce a $100 per month reduction in income taxes. The government side is always paying lip service to eliminating and reducing poverty. The best way to make that happen would be to get taxation down so that there is more money in the pockets of consumers.

New Zealand has proven that a dollar in the hands of an investor, a business person or a consumer will be spent more wisely and will create more jobs than that dollar in the hands of anyone on the other side of the House. We can have jobs, jobs, jobs if we want them but first we need to get a few MPs in the House who understand how jobs are created.

The sad thing is that even though there are methods for job creation that have been proven in other countries, one must ask why we cannot not get that in the House.

The basic problem is there is a party unwillingness on the other side to admit that any idea that comes from this side might actually be worth considering. That problem stems from the fact that Parliament in its present form is much more suited to the enactment of a party agenda than it is to the enactment of sensible policies or the will of the people.

In blunt terms, the $125,000 plus to run this place every hour gives us little more than a charade of meaningless debates and answerless questions. The outcome of every vote on every government bill is known in advance, before the first speaker even gets up. The government knows every one of its bills will pass. The problem is that to change that sort of thing we will need a lot of sacrifice by those in power. At the moment those people are the least willing to sacrifice the power they maintain.

Despite their resistance I can feel the tide turning. I feel the tide of Canadian support turning against those traditionalists. The progress of the revolution can be measured at the ballot box. It certainly manifested itself in tremendous uncertainty for the traditional parties over the last five years or so.

We need look only at the success of the Reform Party of Canada, which jumped from one seat in Ottawa prior to the 1993 election to 52 seats. It was contrary to the predictions of the pundits and despite the vigorous, completely unfounded media attacks against the party. It used to use the old labels of racist and bigoted, but those long ago lost their effect because they were not true.

Let me give a personal example. My riding was held from the middle of the 1970s until 1993 by Chuck Cook, a Progressive Conservative. In the vote of 1993, I received a higher number of votes than Chuck Cook ever had in his entire history in this place, votes paid to any suggestion that this party is a reincarnation of the

PCs. Through our policies I took 18 per cent of the NDP vote to Reform. That happened in Reform ridings throughout western Canada.

The truth is voters saw through the attacks, the labels attracted to the party. What they saw they wanted, a populist set of policies based on their input and a promise that MPs would represent the will of constituents in Parliament.

Perhaps this is an appropriate time for me to mention again that my constituents are getting fed up with hearing Liberals in the House continually implying, through their personal attacks on Reform MPs, that the millions of Reform voters and supporters across the country are racists, bigots, homophobes and extremists simply because they do not agree with Liberal policies and because they do not agree with the way bills are rammed through the House.

They are not racists, bigots, homophobes and extremists. They are caring, responsible, compassionate Canadians, and they are sick and tired of being attacked by the politically correct who sit on that side of the House. It has to stop because it is unacceptable. It would do well for those taking part in the smear campaigns to remember that every time they stand in the House to make those kinds of accusations.

This morning I had a call from a constituent who watched the television coverage of yesterday's extensive ceremonies involving MPs. I ask members to put themselves in the shoes of ordinary Canadians who watched that yesterday. They saw former members of Parliament honouring themselves by unveiling a series of wall plaques listing their names in the House of Commons. They saw them heading off for a cocktail party at the governor general's residents.

Those taxpayers were asking who was paying for all of this self-glorification. Do they not have big enough pensions already? Do they not have a big enough trough already? Do they not take any responsibility at all for what they have done to the country? Are they proud of the $583 billion debt they left for our children and our grandchildren? Are they proud of the highly excessive taxation levels forcing people to deal in the underground economy? Are they proud of a justice system that cannot protect us? Are they proud of the Young Offenders Act which lets young offenders roam out of control in gangs, not accountable for the crimes they commit?

They are the ones who caused all the problems. Why are they honouring themselves? It was because of them that millions of Canadians voted in 52 Reform MPs in the last election, a party with ethics that would stop wasting taxpayer money on gold plated pension plans and would restore some common sense to government.

The truth is the real extremists in our political system are sitting on the opposite side of the House. They are the traditional politicians who flocked to this place yesterday to admire their names on the gold plaques on the walls. They were the ones who before they began dismantling the CPP for ordinary Canadians voted themselves a gold plated pension plan that would be illegal in the private sector.

They were the ones who ignored the will of ordinary Canadians and rammed their politically correct legislation through Parliament. They are the ones who invoked political correctness so that Canadians are afraid to speak openly about the issues that concern them. As a Reform MP I have had to live through a lot of attacks from special interest groups which see their funding threatened.

On this latest attack that we have heard over the last couple of months, this extremist label that has popped up, the public sees labels for what they are, a smear campaign without foundation. As the constituent who called me this morning said, we have only to look at the actions of the traditional parties to see who the real extremists are.

Their $583 billion debt is extreme. Their punitive tax rates are extreme. Their decision to let dangerous offenders out of prison after a few years of sentence is extreme. Their actions in ramming special interest group bills through the House are extreme. Closing off debate on important bills is extreme. Their thousands of annual patronage appointments and grants to special interest groups are extreme. Most extreme of all is the legislation they passed for their own pension schemes.

All these things were achievements of the people like those on the opposite side, the traditional old line politicians who ignored what the people wanted them to do and enacted the will of the special interest groups instead. Yesterday they celebrated their achievements and people watched on television. Members should have heard the comments they made.

The people on the opposite side of the House are slow learners. There is no doubt in my mind that we have now reached the point where any party, federal or provincial, which does not listen to the voters and start enacting the will of the voters is going to find itself subject to elimination by the voters of the information age. We can already see the evidence that it is happening by looking at matters in the provinces and even at the federal level.

It is only the social engineers who still cling to the belief that people are too stupid, too mean, too intolerant, too lacking in compassion to govern themselves. Those social engineers are resisting change.

The traditionalists think they are the sole possessors of compassion, understanding and tolerance and that the voters can only be

trusted to make a decision once every five years about which benevolent dictatorship will govern them next. I know for certain, and every MP in this House must know, the public notices how every party when it gets elected says how clever the voters were to have selected it to run the country. Any time the public will is against one of its bills the first thing the party does is label the voters as ill-informed, mean-spirited, racist, homophobic, extremist. No wonder the voters have become cynical about their governments. They have good reason.

Let us look at an example which happened in the House just a couple of weeks ago. The member for York-Simcoe stood in this House and criticized the member for Yorkton-Melville who made a statement on behalf of a group of Cree Indians. Leonard Iron, a Cree of the Canoe Lake Band had handed a letter to my colleague from Yorkton-Melville and asked him to read it in the House. That is exactly what that member did. Then last week the member for York-Simcoe said in her statement in the House:

Once again a member of the Reform Party has lashed out against a minority group, this time Canada's aboriginal community. This Reform member made derogatory remarks about Canada's native leadership when he said that its leadership will turn native self-government into fascist states.

After she made the comment I walked across the floor of the House and I said to the member: "When you read that statement, did you know that my colleague was reading it from a letter from the Cree nation?" She said to me: "Yes, I did". I said: "What sort of person does that make you?"

I can respect differing opinions in this House. I am prepared to argue for the policies that I stand for but I have no respect for people who set out to destroy others by not using the facts.

Here is another example. I have been waiting for the answer to a question I put in this House in March of last year. I realize there has been a prorogation but anybody with an ounce of common sense knows that if any work had been done on the question it could continue after the House came back. Since March 1995 the question is:

With respect to the Squamish Indian Band in North Vancouver, what has the federal Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development determined to be (a) the total number of band members living on the reserve, (b) the total amount of funding provided to the band in each of the years from 1990 to 1994 from all federal government transfers, including but not limited to, transfers and grants for any purpose, government leases of land from the band, housing costs, education and training, special purpose funding and income from Park Royal South Shopping Centre lease collected on behalf of the band?

I have been waiting for an answer to the question for my constituents for more than a year. It is a disgrace the way this government conducts itself.

Unfortunately our parliamentary system has made it possible for the MPs of the traditional parties to be unaccountable between

elections and to ride to election on the coattails of a dictatorial leader who will tell them how to vote in the House. In my opinion this has the potential to rob them of their dignity, their decency and their morality and could reduce them to the level of trained seals.

Unfortunately those who hold the reins of power presently pay lip service to consultation and input. It is very rare for anything to change in their plans as a result of that input.

The Prime Minister has done nothing to rectify this problem despite the promises of free votes. If he truly believed in democracy, all he would have to do is rise in the House, the way Pierre Trudeau did when the present Prime Minister was the minister of finance, and state that a vote lost on a government bill does not mean the defeat of the government but should be followed by a confidence vote to restore confidence. This would allow democracy to prevail. It would allow meaningful debates in the House in which members would have a chance to talk openly and freely to perhaps convince one another to vote a different way.

The problem is there is no accountability. There is the same lack of accountability by ministers. For example, the minister of immigration answers letters from my constituents with ridiculous statements which I do not have time to read.

It is very depressing to see what happens here. I support the motion of my colleague and I hope others will also vote in favour of it.

[Petitions, May 30th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I would like to present a petition today on behalf of Elizabeth Dowber of North Vancouver and 93 others. They believe that the privileges which society accords to heterosexual couples should not be extended to same sex relationships. They pray and request that Parliament not amend the Canadian Human Rights Act or the charter of rights and freedoms in any way which would tend to indicate societal approval of same sex relationships or of homosexuality.

[Currency Act, May 30th, 1996]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-288, an act to amend the Currency Act.

Madam Speaker, the last bill which I am introducing today is an act to amend the Currency Act. Actually, my hon. colleague who seemed to be a little disturbed will probably like this one because a former colleague of his introduced a similar act in the previous Parliament. It calls for the abolition of the one cent coin. It provides for the one cent coin to disappear after July 1, 1997 so we can get rid of all those little take a penny, give a penny canisters by cash registers.

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

[Plain Language Act, May 30th, 1996]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-287, an act to promote the use of plain language in federal statutes and regulations.

Madam Speaker, this bill is to promote the use of plain language in federal statutes and regulations. The purpose of it is to ensure that plain language is used so that people other than lawyers can understand what acts of Parliament are all about.

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

[Income Tax Act, May 30th, 1996]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-286, an act to amend the Income Tax Act.

Madam Speaker, this bill is an act to amend the Income Tax Act in connection with political activities by charities which receive public funds. The bill would disqualify from charitable status any corporations, trusts and organizations that have received discretionary funding from the government and then use that to promote or criticize any candidate or party in an election.

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

[Canada Elections Act, May 30th, 1996]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-285, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act (election expenses).

Madam Speaker, the bill I am introducing to the House today amends the election expenses section of the Canada Elections Act. The purpose of the bill is to eliminate any reimbursement of election expenses incurred by candidates and political parties.

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

[Income Tax Budget Amendment Act, May 27th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the title of Bill C-36 is an act to amend the Income Tax Act, the Excise Act, the Excise Tax Act, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions Act, the Old Age Security Act and the Canada Shipping Act. The title alone shows that this is just another typical case of Liberal tinkering. The Liberals are trying to adjust half a dozen different acts instead of addressing the real problems which are inherent in the tax system itself because of its complexity.

This bill in implementing aspects of the budget is finding more creative ways of taxing Canadians. The proof of that is in the size of the additional tax moneys that will be collected which were mentioned by the member from the government. All that additional taxes do is increase unemployment.

There was a lot of discussion today during question period about unemployment and the Prime Minister having said that we are going to have to live with high levels of unemployment past the turn of the century. The fact is that the Prime Minister and all of his employed for life government colleagues have no idea how jobs are actually created. If they did know they would be busy creating them.

Certainly members have heard me use the example from time to time of New Zealand, the country I originally came from. It had to face up to the problems of government overspending and debt which became unmanageable. The government in New Zealand gave up on acts like Bill C-36 because it realized it could not squeeze any more money out of the citizens of New Zealand. The entire system was overhauled to simplify it, to bring it down to much more of a flat style of taxation and to get control of government spending to reduce spending and begin paying down the debt.

As a result for example, just in the last week the New Zealand government has introduced a $100 per month tax reduction for the average citizen. There is $100 more per month in every New Zealand worker's pocket. Imagine what ordinary Canadians could do with $100 more in their pockets every month. That is significant. That is not tinkering around the edges saying we will give Canadians half a per cent here or take half a per cent from over there. It is substantial tax reform which truly makes a difference to people's lives.

New Zealand has not done everything perfectly. I am not saying we should mimic everything that New Zealand does. Because I am very familiar with it I am using it as an example of ways we could learn methods which have worked to help create employment in other countries.

New Zealand's unemployment rate is below 6 per cent and has been for several years now, since about 1993. The economy is very buoyant. I have relatives in New Zealand who own companies. They have told me that the wage rates in New Zealand are rising quite dramatically because the competition among employers to get people to work for them is so high. There is so much competition in the marketplace that the workers are now starting to reap some benefits from it. A lot of the adjustments and other things being done in this bill by the government would not be necessary if it would only adopt a realistic approach to the idea of job creation.

In 1993, as part of the election campaign, the Reform Party had a document called zero in three, which we used as a campaign document. It was delivered all over the country. In it we detailed exactly how we would balance the budget in three years and begin showing surpluses. The step following that would be to begin reducing taxes. That would put more money in the pockets of the people. They would spend more, which creates consumption and job creation. Those were the steps. We laid them out.

Here we are three years further downstream. If the government had adopted our zero in three program the day it came to office, today we would be arguing about what to do with the surpluses instead of arguing about which social program should be cut next.

It does not take very much common sense for Canadians to look at what is happening on that side of the House: erosion of social programs. We heard today how the CBC has actually had bigger cuts made by the government than were listed in Reform's zero in three program. Why would the government, which claimed that it supported the CBC, make bigger cuts to the budget of the CBC than were in Reform's supposedly slash and burn budget? The reason is that it waited too long to address the problems of overspending.

Every day that this type of bill comes forward which tinkers around with the system instead of truly addressing the problems makes it harder and much more difficult to deal with those problems. If the Liberals had only got to work the very day they took office they would be running surpluses today and we would not be discussing how to reduce contributions to RRSPs.

What a ridiculous thing to be doing. RRSPs are people's nest egg. It is the tool people use to be able to retire so that they are not a drain on taxpayers. It is all very well for the finance minister to bring in rules that cut RRSP contributions because he will not be around when other governments have to deal with the problems.

I watched a documentary on television last year where they were interviewing finance ministers of the past from this place. Every single one of them admitted they knew that all of these problems would come to a head some time in the 1990s and they did nothing. They knew it would be beyond their mandate. They would not have to worry about it.

A whole series of decisions were made in this place that have critically affected the future of our children and our grandchildren. Those former finance ministers did not care about the millstone of debt and deficits they were hanging around the necks of our children and grandchildren. They went ahead because it suited them to be dipping into the trough full of taxpayers' money when they should have been truly addressing the problems.

I feel embarrassed when I have to go into a high school as I did the other day in Bedford, Nova Scotia to talk about the debt. I wrote the debt figure on the chalk board, $583 billion. In the one hour that I was in the school it went up $2.5 million.

We were talking about the debt. I said to these students: "How long do you think it took to build this $583 billion debt?" The answer is that most of it accrued during their lifetimes. In all the time that Canada has existed, most of that debt accrued in the last 20 years.

It was accrued by people who have worked in this place and did not consider what they were doing to their children and grandchildren. This bill, which tinkers with things like retirement savings, reduces people's ability to plan for their futures. At the same time, the government sends delegations around the country to tell people the bad news about the CPP. Meanwhile the politicians in this place protect their gold plated pension plan that would be illegal in the private sector which they can collect after six years and retire for good.

What about the average person out there who relies on CPP that is now being eroded because the people who sat in this place in the past did not bother to invest the income for the future. What should be done as soon as possible, before it is too late and the whole plan disintegrates, is to adopt a plan similar to the one that is used in Chile. It gives people their own super RRSP style plan. It requires compulsory contributions just like the CPP. The employers deduct and remit to the individual plans but those plans belong to the individual worker. The money does not go into government coffers to be handed out to somebody else.

In the meantime, the Government of Chile guarantees to those people who are in their forties or fifties that there will be a top-up from the taxpayer to ensure they will have a minimum pension when they retire. For everybody else there are nest eggs building which are completely separate from government control to protect them when they retire.

That system has been in place in Chile for about 12 years. The first people collecting pensions doubled what the government is providing under the government scheme. It truly works. It takes pension planning out of the government sphere.

This ridiculous Bill C-36 is eroding people's ability to save for their futures. Chile is 10 years ahead of us in innovation and in taking care of those problems.

Further down on the list the government plays around with corporate tax rates. Has it not learned where jobs are created? The Prime Minister stands up and says he has given up. He has admitted failure in creating jobs. He is just like Kim Campbell because they come from the same political school with the same old, tired out, 30-year-old theories that do not work. They just will not let them go. They think the answer to all their problems is more taxes. They think that by taxing the corporations they will fix the problem.

What about all the jobs that have left Canada because they drove corporations out of Canada? What about the 20,000 people who work across the border from Vancouver in Bellingham? Every day they drive across the border to work at companies because their bosses moved the companies out of the Vancouver area into the United States to get away from high taxation.

This is not the policy of any party. I simply want to use it as an example. Just imagine if we had a zero corporate tax rate in Canada. Can you imagine the rush of companies from the United States that would establish in Canada? They would come from all

around the world by the thousands. We would have so many jobs, jobs, jobs we would not know what to do with them.

Obviously somewhere between a zero corporate tax rate and the punitive rates we have right now is a better rate that will re-establish those good jobs for Canadians. Bills such as this increase the irritation to business with higher taxes that reduce and kill jobs.

I am from the small business sector in the Vancouver area. I owned a company that had 10 employees. I sold that company shortly before becoming an MP. Because I am from the small business sector I have many friends in that sector. I cannot tell hon. members how many of them have scaled down and moved back into their homes to operate mom and pop type operations in order to get away from taxation and all of the various levies and fees that they had to pay when they had employees. When they had employees they had to pay the Workers' Compensation Board, CPP and UI premiums. They had to remit income taxes. They had to pay all the benefits which are legislated. It gets to the point where 30 per cent or 40 per cent of all the cheques which a small business person writes go to various levels of government.

Gas taxes affect business. There was a great foo-fa-raw a week or two ago about the price of gasoline across the country. A simple bit of analysis shows that about 55 per cent of the cost is taxation. If governments were not dipping their hands into everyone's gas tank the price of gasoline would be about 26 cents a litre. It is government greed at every level that has created the problem. Bill C-36 is just another case of that.

The Liberals claimed during the 1993 election that their $6 billion infrastructure project would kick start the economy and create a job bonanza. The theory was that the people employed by this wonderful $6 billion program, although it turned out to be a big boondoggle, would spend the money in their communities, boost consumption and then the good old days of full employment would come back.

However, anyone with business knowledge knew the plan could not work from day one. Why could it not work? It would not work because it did not create long term, meaningful jobs. It bought jobs using taxpayer and borrowed money, money that was borrowed against the future of our children and our grandchildren. It was money that we did not have to spend.

For at least two decades these old line governments have been throwing money into ineffective job creation plans, grants to special interest groups, regional development funds and government funded training programs without showing the slightest concern for the debt legacy and the crippling tax load that it has left for our children and grandchildren.

If governments could create jobs through deficit spending and tax bills like Bill C-36, everyone would have three jobs each by now. Twenty-five years of $30 billion deficits and a $583 billion debt and what there is to show for it is chronic unemployment and terrible fiscal problems. Social programs are being cut and the government is scrambling to tax away every little last cent that it can get from taxpayers' pockets.

I had a call from a constituent last week who runs a yacht brokerage in my riding. He sells yachts. There has just been a change to the GST rules. Now he has to charge GST when he sells a second hand yacht. As he says, that is going to put his business out of business overnight. Why would people pay an extra 7 per cent to have a broker sell a yacht? It comes straight off the sales price for the person who is selling a yacht. They are now going to try to sell privately instead of putting it through a broker.

The government, in its enthusiasm to try to get that extra bit of tax out of yacht brokers, is actually going to put them out of business. This is so stupid. That same new tax rule is going to apply to auctioneers. Can anyone believe this? We will go to an auction to buy a used table and GST will be charged. It is just government greed. It has nothing to do with good management of the economy. It is typical of the type of thing this bill represents.

If the government truly wanted to make amends and get this country back on track it would not be passing things like Bill C-36. It would be creating meaningful, long term jobs if it could create a climate for job creation.

Every time the unemployment rate goes down the government likes to take credit for all the jobs that have been created. However, when unemployment rises it does not want anything to do with it. It says it is the global economy or somebody else made the wrong decision. It never wants to take credit for rising unemployment.

The fact is that the government neither creates jobs nor loses jobs but is responsible for the business environment that results in job creation or job loss. Therefore, governments should really concentrate on the business environment. Unfortunately reversing the effects of two decades of government meddling in the economy is not without its pain, as those who have ever watched the New Zealand situation would know.

About three or four years ago, Eric Malling, on the TV program "W5" did a program on New Zealand showing the sort of fiscal restraints that New Zealand was going through at the time as it adjusted to becoming a free market economy. When I left New Zealand in 1979 it was a socialist country. It was cradle to grave socialism. The government paid for everything.

By 1984 New Zealand had pretty well gone bankrupt. By 1993 adjustments had been made and New Zealand was on its way back to prosperity. Maybe members of this House saw the program on television last week where Eric Malling on his program "Maver-

icks" updated the New Zealand situation and showed how private enterprise has created so many jobs and how buoyant the economy is there.

I actually visited New Zealand at Easter. I can confirm what Eric Malling showed on that program. The country is buoyant. One can feel how successful the country has become, and it has not done it with government subsidies, with extra taxes like this. It has not done it by suppressing the right to invest in RRSPs. It did it by the government getting out of the economy and letting business create the jobs. It created jobs by getting rid of marketing boards so that entrepreneurial farmers could sell new products.

For example, I went into a supermarket and there on the shelves were flavoured whipping creams. There was brandy flavoured whipping cream, Kahlua flavoured whipping cream for special occasions. There were specialty cheeses made by little cottage industries which operated a tiny cheese making facility that perhaps only made spreadable pepper cheese and sold it to a world market.

In the supermarket there were eggs from farm operations which specialized in low cholesterol eggs for which they charged premium prices. They were almost three times the price of regular eggs. There were eggs from guaranteed free range hens which were allowed to wander the fields. They cost two and a half times the price of eggs produced under the old marketing board battery hen type operations.

These are examples of government getting out of the meddling aspect of the economy and creating the environment for job creation. It is not necessary to pass more bills to grab more taxes.

The net result in New Zealand was that so much income came from all the prosperity, the government has been running surpluses in the range of $3 billion to $6 billion a year, paying down the debt. That was responsible for the latest announcement of $100 more in the pocket of every working New Zealander's pocket every month, the result of a reduction in income taxes.

Imagine if we were able to announce in the last budget in the House that there was a $100 tax reduction for every Canadian worker. We could have done it if we had adopted Reform's zero in three program the day we came to the House. The answer to job creation and getting around these tax problems is to adopt a proactive program of creating the environment for job creation.

My colleague, the member for Capilano-Howe Sound, introduced a private member's bill on March 4, the taxpayer protection act. The bill would have required it to be compulsory for the government to live within its income and not run deficits and that there would be penalties for politicians if they overspent. They would actually lose pay.

At least one province has already introduced such legislation. The provinces are way ahead of us on this. They realize they cannot keep grabbing taxes the way Bill C-36 does. Before question period I was updating the House on the B.C. Liberal Party which is presently involved in an election. The provincial wing of the Liberal Party has promised a taxpayer protection act that would guarantee a balanced budget in two years and, if it does not make it, pay reductions for the politicians.

Look how out of touch the other side of the House is with the real world, people saying they have had enough. They do not want to pay any more taxes. They are sick of the government overspending. It is about time government got on top of the problem and do what the people want instead of following its own ideology constantly.

I hope that when there is an opportunity to debate a little more on my colleague's taxpayer protection act members will seriously consider supporting it and get us out of this cycle of tax and spend that has been going on for so long.

In my opinion the bill we are spending time on today would not have been necessary if it had not been for the irresponsibility not only of current members on the other side of the House but also of the parliamentarians who sat here for the last 25 years spending $30 billion more a year than they took in. They just did not care. They knew they would not be accountable for the end results. They were answering the short term demands of special interest groups at the expense of the next generation. It has been the most massive intergenerational transfer of wealth in the history of this country. It has to stop and the first step along that pathway is to defeat this bill.

[Questions On The Order Paper, May 27th, 1996]

With respect to the unemployment insurance program, for the calendar years of 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 and 1995 ( a ) how many cases of fraud were reported each year ( b ) how many convictions for fraud were secured each year ( c ) how many frauds were there as a total of overall claims?

[British Columbia Election, May 27th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, one of the parties running in the B.C. election is calling for an end to the gold plated MLA pension plan, for victims rights to be put ahead of the rights of criminals, for dangerous young offenders to be upgraded to adult court, for free votes in the legislature on everything but budget bills, initiative, referendum and recall, for two year balanced budget legislation, for pay cuts for politicians

who overspend, for opposition to gun control Bill C-68 and for the reworking of the Nisga'a land claim deal.

These certainly sound like Reform policies, and they are, but they are also listed in the B.C. Liberal campaign literature. No wonder the member for Halifax and many of her caucus colleagues have been so critical of B.C. Liberals. They are the most un-liberal Liberals in the country. They are actually promising what the people want.

The last decaying bastion of tax and spend liberalism is the one in this House. For the sake of taxpayers let us hope its passing is swift.