Ted White

[Supply, December 7th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to rise today to speak in favour of Reform's motion on the subject of B.C. land claims.

I have been listening to the preprinted, standard run of the mill, say the right thing style of speeches emanating from members opposite. Frankly, anyone in touch with the feelings of B.C. can see straight through the facade of the Liberal political correctness going on.

The hon. members for Vancouver Centre and Vancouver East spouted exactly the line we would expect from old line politicians completely out of touch with reality. I have no doubt whatsoever that the speeches of any other Liberal B.C. members are equally as irrelevant. They must have some sort of big sausage machine upstairs. They turn the handle and crank out all this meaningless stuff.

Last Tuesday in Vancouver radio talk show host Rafe Mair read out the names of the six Liberal MPs from B.C. three times. He emphasized the voters of B.C. have to remember the six names. He said: "Remember exactly how out of touch these people are with the voters of B.C.".

Even the hon. member for Richmond, who had a meeting in his riding last Saturday, supposedly to get the feelings of his constituents on the issues, told his voters he would vote against their wishes and that he put their interests after the Liberal Party of Canada. He insulted his own constituents. This is typical of the attitude we hear on issues such as land claims and unity. If it does not fit into the Liberal Party agenda, Liberal members are not interested in hearing what the people have to say.

We can see the same pattern of debate in the motion before us today. Instead of coming to the House with meaningful speeches about the concerns of British Columbians, government members have read from canned speeches prepared by their political masters who live and work thousands of kilometres away from the problems of the native land claims of B.C.

Some government members whose ridings are also thousands of kilometres away from B.C. have claimed or implied that Reform members are meanspirited or that we have some inappropriate motive for bringing this motion before the House. That is balderdash.

Here is some important news for government members. The Reform member for Beaver River taught and lived on an Indian reservation before she became an MP. The leader of the Reform Party worked for Indian bands as a consultant for a number of years before he was elected. The Reform member for Yorkton-Melville has taught on an Indian reservation. The Indian affairs critic for the Reform Party is married to a status Indian.

Mr. Speaker, anytime you hear someone say we are not in touch with the problems, the injustices or the difficulties with Indian land claims, please tell them they are wrong. We probably have more experience and knowledge about the problems than the entire Liberal caucus, certainly a lot more than the minister.

There are large Indian reservations in my riding. I have lived there since 1979. I have had plenty of opportunity to listen to and understand the concerns of both natives and non-natives in my riding.

A government member earlier today quoted from Mr. Hume, an editorialist with the Vancouver Sun . He quoted Mr. Hume as if he were some sort of expert on B.C. opinion. He fell right into a trap. The people of B.C. watching today will laugh. Mr. Hume does not represent the ideas of the people of B.C. Mr. Hume has a special interest of his own and his rantings have no relevance whatsoever to the opinions of B.C. voters. He regularly criticizes Reform, but if his rantings had any relevance we would not have 32 Reform MPs from B.C. He is completely out of touch, just like the government members.

It would be much more productive if government members would abandon their politically correct position, their canned speeches and their closed minds and listened to what we have to say as the true representatives of B.C.

It is not just us; both opposition parties in B.C. have made it clear the whole land claims deal is going off the track as B.C. approaches the next provincial election.

Government members should stop for a moment to say to themselves: "Maybe these B.C. MPs are trying to tell us something important. Maybe I should stop and listen. Maybe I should trust the majority from B.C. telling me there is something wrong here". Maybe they would just say that they should support what we are trying to do here, which is to prevent a terrible disaster from happening if things are rushed through on the eve of a provincial election.

What a treat it would be if government members would abandon their party lines just for one day and help us with a major problem in our province. It is a problem which they cannot understand because they do not have the unique set of circumstances in their province that we are experiencing in B.C.

Allow me to repeat the text of the motion before us today so that members can hear again our deep concern for the problems we have to face. We want the federal government to hold off making any treaties in haste on the eve of the provincial election because there is so much uncertainty surrounding the B.C. government. Everybody has heard of the bingo scandal. The government that is there right now might make some very unwise decisions. Our motion really does not call for too much. It just says:

That the House urge the government to not enter into any binding trilateral aboriginal treaty or land claim agreements in B.C. in the last year of the current provincial government mandate in order to respect the views of British Columbians on this issue as expressed by both major provincial opposition parties.

That is not too much to ask. I urge hon. members to please support us this one time.

[Penitentiaries, December 7th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Justice did not have the opportunity to express sympathy, but I am pleased to hear at least a partial answer from the solicitor general.

I will repeat my question. Since the solicitor general indicates that something is being done, when will he do it, an exact date, and what exactly will he do?

[Penitentiaries, December 7th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, members of the House might be surprised to learn that presently there is no effective way to prevent prisoners from harassing their victims from inside their jail cells.

One Vancouver jailbird has been leaving up to 16 messages a day on his victim's answering machine as well as sending letters from the prison even though the court has told him not to.

I am sure there will be an outpouring of sympathy from the Minister of Justice, but the Canadian people would like to know what he will do to stop this harassment and when he will do it.

[Political Party Fundraising, December 6th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would like to know what this has to do with the motion before the House.

[Political Party Fundraising, December 6th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, what I am trying to relate it to is the fact that the member opposite wants to institute some sort of democratic support of parties. I am trying to point out that the government side is not interested in anything democratic. Its members will not vote for the motion. They will not allow it to be voted on because they are not interested in democracy. They want to pursue their political agenda, their party agenda.

If Madam Speaker would feel more comfortable with me getting more closely aligned to the motion, I am certainly prepared to do so.

I support the idea that the government should review and reform the funding for political parties, but not along the lines suggested by the member. I would rather see the House get involved in the Reform Party proposal, which is to make the support of political parties depend entirely on the money they can raise from the people they purport to represent.

After all, political parties are nothing more than special interest groups. At the moment, political parties are special interest groups that have a special advantage because the donations they receive are tax deductible with a premium. They are much better than the tax deductibility for any other type of charity or special interest.

The politicians of the past have chosen to give themselves an advantage over everybody else who has to raise money from the public. Members of the Reform Party feel that the political parties should have to raise their money from the people they purport to represent and that the money should not be tax deductible. It should be truly money that is given in support of that party.

As I said earlier, if it is not worth working for something, it is not worth having. It is certainly worth working to build a political party.

Reform also disagrees with the idea that these election rebates go back to candidates and parties. All it does is perpetuate the public paying for special interest groups that they may not have any interest in supporting whatsoever. Clearly this is anti-democratic, not democratic, as the member would like us to believe.

In summing up, I would like to repeat one more time the Reform Party's position on this type of motion. I will read that policy one more time.

The Reform Party opposes any assistance to political parties and political lobbies from public funds, including any refund of candidate or party expenses, government advertising during the electoral period, the renting of parliamentary staff for reimbursement, tax credits for contributions to federal political parties and the transfer of tax credits to leadership campaigns, to nomination campaigns or to parties at the provincial or municipal levels.

[Political Party Fundraising, December 6th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, this is absolutely amazing. The member's own colleagues are denying him the right to have a votable motion. The member spent some time talking about the importance of democracy in political parties and he cannot even get the consent of his colleagues to allow a vote on that motion in the House. It is certainly a symptom of the way the government runs its affairs.

In a general sense I agree with the motion. I would like to read the Reform Party policy on funding of political parties. In the blue book policy which was developed and passed by our members it says: "The Reform Party opposes any assistance to political parties and political lobbies from public funds, including any refund of candidate or party expenses, government advertising during the electoral period, the renting of parliamentary staff for reimbursement, tax credits for contributions to federal political parties and the transfer of tax credits to leadership campaigns, to nomination campaigns or to parties at the provincial or municipal level".

It can be seen that we have a rather comprehensive policy. It stems from the way that we had to build our party.

I heard the hon. member from the Bloc talking about the difficulty of building a new party. We had to build our party from the ground up, from nothing, with not a single cent. I was there almost from the beginning, from late 1987. In fact, one of the people who is now on my executive committee in the riding association was one of the original signatories to the charter of the Reform Party.

We had to raise money by having bake sales, by having garage sales, by walking door to door asking for $10 here and $1 there. It was worth it. It is tremendously fulfilling to be able to build a party that way. If something is not worth working for, it is not worth having.

In that respect I disagree with the member's position that the state should fund parties because it is unfair to people who cannot afford to contribute. If it is not worth working for, it is not worth having.

Even though the Reform Party and even the Bloc started from way behind with tremendous disadvantages, it is tremendously fulfilling to be able to build a party from the ground up.

The hon. member stated that the present system is unfair to people who cannot afford to contribute. No, it is not. People who cannot afford to contribute can work as volunteers and help. Perhaps they can even be fund raisers. I do not think the present system is unfair at all.

Although the hon. member for Gatineau has a formula which he claims would be democratic and fair, when I look at his formula I see that there is a component that would give an equal amount of money to each party but then there is a component that gives some money based on the share of the vote in the previous election. Obviously that is an unfair advantage to the party that is in power. That is not reflected in a democratic way of the support levels at the

time of the next election. That is a major flaw in the approach that has been proposed by the member from Gatineau. All that does is give the government side an advantage so it can spin its propaganda and cover up its lack of interest in the political will of the people between elections.

The government very clearly demonstrates it has no interest in the people's opinions between elections. I do not think it is going to take this member's motion seriously because it is simply not interested in getting the public involved.

It was obvious when members opposite refused to make this motion votable that they were not interested in democracy at all. If they were interested in democracy, they would take notice of people and their opinions on the Young Offenders Act. They have done nothing to make it more effective.

If you ask people anywhere in the country if their streets are safer than they were two years ago when the government was elected, they say no. All the polls indicate that people sense that things are much more dangerous than they were then.

On Indian land claims, the government does not give a darn what B.C. MPs have stated about what is happening in B.C. They simply do not care what the people of B.C. think. We could talk about the employment equity bill and the way that was forced through the House and the lack of democracy in the way the government works.

Frankly, I often tell my constituents that if members came here just once a year for 15 minutes, put all the bills for the year on the table and took one vote, the outcome would be exactly the same. This is a place of parties, rather than-

[Political Party Fundraising, December 6th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, when I looked at Motion No. 367 I could certainly agree in a general sense with the thrust of the motion. It reads:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider the advisability of reviewing and reforming funding for political parties.

The only problem I have with the wording is that it is a little bit vague. It says "consider the advisability of". It is a pity that the member had not worded his motion "that in the opinion of this House the government should review and reform funding for political parties". That would have been a lot clearer and a bit more forceful in its thrust.

I see that the motion is non-votable and it reminds me that this one hour of debate is fairly meaningless. I wish for the hon. member's sake that it could be a votable motion so that at least members could express their opinions on this issue.

What I would like to do before I continue with my speech, Madam Speaker, is to ask for the unanimous consent of the House to make this motion votable.

[National Housing Act, November 3rd, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on Bill C-108, an act to amend the National Housing Act. I am speaking on behalf of the member for Comox-Alberni, the Reform critic for Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

This is actually a very brief bill and its intent is quite simply explained. Bill C-108 proposes to increase the aggregate amount of outstanding CMHC loan insurance from $100 billion to $150 billion, plus any additional amounts that may be authorized by Parliament. That means that CMHC's liability limit will be increased by $50 billion. That is billions, not millions-fifty thousand million dollars, a huge increase over the present liabilities.

I am not surprised that the Bloc would support such an increase in liabilities. It really thinks it is getting something for nothing. It thinks money grows on trees. The fact is it is a much more complex situation than that.

There are many areas of concern that are raised by this bill, concerns that are being voiced by Canadians right now. It surprises me that given the nature of this bill the government is not listening to those concerns. On second thought, maybe it is not such a surprise, given the history of the government so far.

Canadians are already very concerned about the current debt load. They are carrying that debt load and it is creating an inability for them to move forward financially or personally because of high taxes. Every way they turn they are being taxed over and over. There is no room to move. Pretty soon there will not be much left to tax.

The bill does nothing to halt the trend to ever bigger government and increasing public liabilities. It appears that the government is willing to gamble taxpayers' dollars at a time when the present debt is already more than $564 billion and climbing by $100 million every day.

Increasing the liability limit for insuring mortgages is nothing more than government speculation without any money. It is a trend that has been going on in other departments and it really must come to an end. The Liberal government has borrowed more than $80 billion in the first two years of its mandate, and it is continuing to spend beyond its means. This year alone the government had to borrow another $32 billion.

CMHC finances are actuarially accounted for every 20 years, so the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation does not know what its ultimate liability will be or what it really has outstanding right now. Bill C-108 should be of great concern to all Canadians, who can clearly see that the government is continuing to spend well beyond its means and incurring liabilities that on a standard accounting balance sheet would show that we are actually in very deep trouble.

By increasing Canada's liabilities we are increasing our risks. Although Bill C-108 does not ask for actual cash per se, it is increasing the liability, which will in the end cost taxpayers a tremendous amount of money if there is a major default. Loans and mortgages are not guaranteed; they can fall back on the government and lead to a further lowering of Canada's international standing and raise the overall debt.

Canadians are already staggering under an oppressive tax burden. They do not need government to dig them a deeper hole. They want to get out of the hole, as proven by the types of provincial governments they have been electing of late.

The government will not disclose its ongoing liability. I would like to see it publish a standard accounting style balance sheet once a year, as was done in New Zealand. Members know that I am originally from New Zealand. There is a law there that requires the government to actually print once a year all of its liabilities in standard accounting form. The first year the country did that, it discovered there was a negative worth in the country and it had to cancel a lot of the liabilities.

If standard accounting practices were used here in Canada to show the liabilities, we would probably find a network of debt and liabilities all strung together in a way that would be completely unacceptable and illegal probably in the private sector.

It certainly appears the government does not know how large the liabilities will be 10 or 15 years from now. Yet it is continuing to increase that liability load on us. This trend of increasing government liabilities across the board will only lead to the government overextending itself, to the detriment of taxpayers who bear the burden of the national debt.

Last week on television the Prime Minister spoke from Montreal with desperate pleas to Canada and promises to Quebec that the Liberal government would make changes if Quebec would stay in Canada. Yet it is ironic that on the eve of the Quebec referendum the government had the gall to table this bill. While the Prime Minister was in Montreal making overtures of a new and decentralized federal government, at the very same time his representatives in Ottawa were tabling a bill that takes us in exactly the opposite direction. So it should not be a surprise if Canadians find that the Prime Minister is trying to back down on his promise. Looking at this bill, it is obvious the government has no intention of decentralizing and that it really wants to cling to every piece of power it has.

When asked about promises of decentralization, all the Prime Minister could say is: "That is going to require a lot more thought and discussion, but I am sure there is going to be some of that". Some of that-what does that mean? Has the government not learned anything from the Quebec result? Did it not do any forward planning? Demands for decentralization are being heard across the country. They did not start with the Quebec referendum; they were there long before that. It takes a major crisis of unity in the country before the government will even begin to address the problems.

When asked about what degree of decentralization the government was considering, the Prime Minister responded that he did not know at this point in time. He did not know. More waffling as usual. Canadians are getting pretty tired of all the waffling from the Liberal Party.

The answer is right here in this bill. The government does not want to decentralize. It is looking to strengthen its federal control. Canadians are not going to tolerate the double talk for too long. Misrepresentation of intent from the government can be seen in the changes that are now sweeping the country at the political level.

The Liberal government's response to Canadians' desire for change has been totally inadequate to say the least. The status quo has got to go if we are going to move forward as a nation.

There was an example today in question period when we asked yet again about the Young Offenders Act. We have been asking week after week after week for two years and the government has done nothing to address the concerns of people. We still have these young punks out there who do not have their names or their pictures published. We have to get this government doing something for Canadians for a change.

Lingering uncertainty in Quebec continues to plague Canada's economic security. Only a few days ago it was reported in the newspapers that the bond raters are still uncertain about Canada's economic future because the Quebec situation remains unresolved. If the government cannot take steps to address the problems at hand, we are simply headed for more chaos.

The future financial stability of this country depends on how well this government addresses its fiscal problems. So far, the picture does not look very rosy. Canadians want a smaller federal government.

The minister responsible for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation claims that his departments and responsibilities, including CMHC, are headed in that direction. However, this bill shows the federal government is actually moving in the opposite direction.

Instead of downsizing and moving away from the housing market, the government wants to put another $50 billion of mortgage liabilities on the backs of Canadian taxpayers. This will increase the federal role, not downsize it as the government claims. If the government is as committed to decentralization as it would want us to believe, then why is the minister responsible for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation grabbing for more money?

The federal government must realign its responsibilities with other governments in this country and the time to start doing it is now. It is absolutely necessary that the government take steps in the right direction, not backward as it is doing with bills like this one. In the light of the disastrous campaign the government led during the referendum debate, it is a pity it has not learned any lessons.

Canadians are taxed to the hilt with all the levels of government they are financing. Not only are they paying for services whose needs are often questionable, but they are paying for the same services again and again through user fees, not just at the federal level but at the provincial and municipal levels as well.

The Reform Party proposed in its recent 20-point plan for decentralization to totally transfer over to the provinces a number of areas of operation at the federal level that are duplicated at the provincial level. Those areas illustrate mostly a federal level of meddling in affairs that are actually set under the Constitution to be provincial. The federal government is long overdue in getting out of those areas of provincial responsibility.

This is not the time for the government to put up its feet and relax because it thinks it won the Quebec debate. It is time for the government to start coming up with a plan that truly decentralizes. One of the things it could be doing is moving total responsibility for housing to the provincial level. If the government would come up with such a plan, it would begin to save the taxpayers some money.

Perhaps it would not be such a bad idea if the government tried adopting the suggestions the Reform Party has made. We have offered the government the entire plan. We have dropped the plain brown envelope on the floor outside the office door of the Deputy Prime Minister. All she has to do is look inside the envelope to see what good ideas are shown there.

Yesterday in his speech at the Canadian Club in Toronto, the leader of the Reform Party received a standing ovation for the suggestions in that 20-point plan. It was very well received as could be seen by the live telecast of that speech on the "National" yesterday.

The Reform Party has been listening to Canadians. If government members need some help heading in the right direction, we are more than happy to assist. They just have to pick up the plain brown envelope off the floor outside the Deputy Prime Minister's office.

As I said, one of our proposals is for the federal government to get out of the housing business. If crown corporations like CMHC are truly self-supporting let us turn them over to the private sector. Areas which are perhaps socially oriented should be turned over to the provincial level.

Not only do Canadians want an end to federal interference in areas of provincial responsibility, they also want clearer distinctions of responsibility between the provinces. They do not want this muddled thing we have right now where municipal, federal and provincial governments get all mixed up together giving one another grants. It is like government incest in a way.

Canadians also want an end to federal interference in the private sector. They are sick and tired of the federal government interfering unnecessarily in their affairs.

Bill C-108 allows the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to significantly increase its presence in the mortgage market.

It represents a further intrusion into a private market and will lead to further distortions of that market.

The federal government is artificially inflating mortgages in urban areas in order to subsidize rural areas. The government's policy of cross-subsidization of mortgages means that houses in urban areas cost more to Canadians than they would if the federal government stepped out of the housing business in the first place. It is all very well to offer a lower price to rural residents, but why should urban areas bear the brunt of that cost? Federal meddling in the housing industry also means that private companies like GE are offering mortgages at a higher rate as well.

It is time for the government to stop artificially jacking up mortgage rates and to stop subsidizing one kind of mortgage by gouging rates on another. Let private industry do what it does best, provide consumers with competitive mortgage rates.

In terms of the 5 per cent down program, there is a very real danger that any economic downturn which continues the trend we have seen lately where property prices have been falling could create a situation where homeowners are left holding mortgages worth more than the property. It is a simplification for the government to say that the liabilities we are incurring have no cost. If the property market turns down and homeowners walk away from some of those commitments, the taxpayers are left holding the can.

I was in the U.K. in August over the summer break. Incidentally, my trip was paid for with my own funds and not those of taxpayers. I met with some bankers while I was in London. To my astonishment, I was told that because of the property downturn in the U.K. some banks are now holding a lot of mortgages in their portfolios which are currently valued at 120 per cent of the properties on which the mortgages were originally taken out.

The banks are also holding in their portfolios huge numbers of vacant properties because people have walked away from those commitments. That is a sign of the sort of disaster which can happen if the government does not take into account where these liabilities could lead.

It is pretty frightening that we are building up a liability account in this area of something of the order of $150 billion. It is wonderful to offer this opportunity for new homeowners to get into home ownership, but to do it on the backs of the taxpayers is not a good idea.

For that reason among others, the Reform Party does not support an increased federal role in the mortgage market. We do not support increasing federal liabilities. We do not support federal meddling in the private sector and therefore, we do not support this bill.

In conclusion, I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word "That" and substituting the following:

this House declines to give second reading to Bill C-108, an act to amend the National Housing Act, because the principle of the bill does not address the issue of transferring the responsibility of housing from the federal government to the provinces.

[Parliamentary Reform, November 3rd, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, on October 16 we witnessed an act of great courage in the House

when a government member stood to speak out against the way the employment equity bill was handled in committee. His words from Hansard were: ``I am a first time MP. I never dreamed ever that laws were created in this fashion''.

At least 52 other members in the House agree that changes must be made to the system so that Parliament will function in a much more democratic manner. The present system is perfect for enacting a political agenda, but Canadian voters who pay our salaries are fed up with having Parliament force its will upon them and they are voting for change in greater and greater numbers.

We need more system changers in the House. If this does not happen before the next election it will surely happen during the next election. In the meantime, I ask the House to join me in congratulating all members of the House who have already shown that voting to represent their constituents takes precedence over the orders of the whip or the party line.

[Department Of Health Act, November 2nd, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I will give him time to respond. I thank him for giving me the opportunity to say that no, I do not support a United States style health care system. Neither does anyone else in the Reform Party.

Reform members have made it very clear that we support medicare plus which is a lot different. Sweden uses a similar system. I can also give an example from New Zealand of my 82-year old mother who needed a cataract operation. The waiting list in the public system was years. If you are 82 and you have to wait six years, then what? Since there is a choice down there she paid a couple of thousand dollars to have one of her eyes done. So many seniors did the same thing that the waiting list came down. When she went for her second operation she had it done within the public system and it only took two weeks. The waiting list vanished within a very short period of time.

We do not support a U.S. system. We support choice in addition to the present medicare, common sense.