Ted White

[Questions On The Order Paper, September 18th, 1995]

With regard to the rate of recidivism for persons convicted of first degree murder, second degree murder or manslaughter over the past 30 years, what has the government determined to be the number of those persons so convicted who, ( a ) reoffend, are formally charged and subsequently sentenced on a charge of first degree murder or, ( b ) reoffend, are formally charged and subsequently sentenced on a charge of second degree murder or, ( c ) reoffend, are formally charged and subsequently sentenced on a charge of manslaughter?

[Questions On The Order Paper, June 22nd, 1995]

With respect to the unemployment insurance program for the calendar years of 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993 and 1994, ( a ) how many cases of fraud were reported each year, ( b ) how many convictions for fraud were secured each year, and ( c ) how many frauds were there as a total of overall claims?

[Income Tax Act, June 21st, 1995]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-338, an act to amend the Income Tax Act.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce a bill to amend the Income Tax Act with respect to the political activities of charities receiving public funds.

I would like to thank the hon. member for Hamilton-Wentworth for seconding the bill.

The bill would allow the revenue minister to disqualify from charitable status corporations, trusts, and organizations that receive discretionary grants from the public money of Canada if they engage in public activity that goes beyond the direction of their charitable object.

I call upon members on all sides of the House to support the bill. I would remind them that our federal debt is now over $550 billion.

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

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustmentact, 1995, June 20th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the television broadcast within the House indicated a 30 minute vote. There must be other members in this House who saw that. As a result it started at 30 minutes.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustmentact, 1995, June 15th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, that is an interesting question from the member. The member asked why some of the members on the Reform side were getting up rather slowly during the votes on C-41 last night. I would like to mention that I think they were emulating and mimicking the member for Burin-St. George's, who makes a habit of carrying on that activity.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustmentact, 1995, June 15th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for her question.

I am astonished that she is astonished. Having had the opportunity to be in this House for some time since the last election, I would have hoped that the hon. member would have noticed that every vote that has been taken in this House by Reform has been a free vote.

We think very carefully about the details of the bills before us. We all consult with our constituents on an ongoing basis. For the most part we have been elected by voters who have similar beliefs and feelings, so it is not uncommon for us to be able to vote the same way on a bill. On routine bills, that is the way it happens. On controversial issues or issues where there are regional differences, it quite clearly can be witnessed that Reform has been able to demonstrate that freedom of voting quite regularly. There is never any punishment. There is never any animosity between the members because that is the understanding. The constitution of the Reform Party requires Reform MPs to reflect the wishes of their constituencies whenever that desire can be clearly demonstrated, and it is compulsory in the case of moral issues.

I do thank the hon. member for permitting me to elaborate on that and to clarify that point.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustmentact, 1995, June 15th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, as I was saying, once we get to a point where the representatives in this place are clearly representing their constituents, there will be no more need for Bill C-18s or Bill C-69s, Bill C-41s, because the people of Canada will be represented here rather than the political parties of Canada being represented here. The legislation passed will be meaningful because it will be legislation wanted by the voters and taxpayers who are building the country and supplying the funds we need to run this place. The debates will be real debates. The committee meetings will actually mean something. Questions during question period will actually be answered, and members of Parliament will regain the respect of the people of Canada.

In closing, I would like to mention two things. Our debt has increased by almost a million dollars during the time it took me to give the speech, the total time of the speech. The second point is that the Deputy Prime Minister promised to resign if the GST had not gone within a year of the election. She still has not done it.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustmentact, 1995, June 15th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, when my speech was interrupted last night, I was speaking on Bill C-69. At the time when I began my speech I mentioned the continuing growth of the debt and deficit.

I would like to mention that in the 11 hours since I have stopped speaking and have started again, the debt has increased by approximately $50 million. Overnight while we were out of this place the government overspent by $50 million. That gets added on with interest to the debt burden already being carried by our children and our grandchildren.

I also mentioned earlier in my speech last night and I would like to reiterate that the issue of constituency representation is a very important aspect of many of the bills we are considering. Free votes were never an issue in past Parliaments because the three worn out, dictatorial, arrogant old line parties all played the same game of agenda politics.

They never wanted to and still do not want to govern the country according to the wishes of the Canadian voters. They are not interested in conducting business in accordance with the wishes of taxpayers. There was a very good example of that less than 15 minutes ago when the government created a situation where the House has to stay open well after midnight, debating bills and motions that could have been debated adequately many months ago when there was plenty of time to have public input, to do these things properly. Those bills and motions do not have to be rammed through the way it is being done, all jammed into a few days at the end of the session when the public and the media do not get an adequate opportunity to look at things.

If the government had been truly interested in carrying out the wishes of Canadian voters and taxpayers, it would not engage in this type of activity. It would admit that many of its bills are badly flawed and would simply allow them to die or withdraw them.

At the moment, with the exception of the Reform MPs and a few independently minded Liberals, most of the MPs are nothing more than voting machines. All we do is keep busy between votes. Apart from the group I just mentioned, MPs are simply not interested in reflecting their constituents' wishes in the House.

All of the debates, the questions, the committee meetings, the hearings, the witness testimony and the travel junkets are nothing more than make work projects to keep MPs busy between votes, votes for which the outcome is already known because the Prime Minister knows what he wants to happen before the first words of debate are uttered.

As I finished last night, I mentioned that last year the government introduced approximately 60 bills. By the end of the year, approximately 60 bills had been passed. Members could have come here for one day, for one hour last year, stacked the whole 60 bills this high on the Clerk's table, voted once and the outcome would have been pretty much the same.

For all of the debates and discussions that went on, the outcome would have been pretty much the same. That is because the outcome is already known before debate begins. It makes a mockery of attempts by people to properly represent the taxpayers, the constituents of this country.

Instead of having a reasonable approach to the bill before us, members end up debating a bill that resulted from partisan interference in the non-partisan electoral boundaries redistribution process.

When is the bill being debated? Right at the end of the session. Members have to go through the process of speaking right into the small hours of the morning. The government does not particularly care about input or debate any more than it cares for input or debate on any other bill.

The Liberals know it will pass because the Prime Minister has already issued his instruction. It will pass. Yesterday maybe half a dozen Liberal MPs were brave enough to defy the orders of the Prime Minister and to vote against the gun control bill in order to represent their constituents. Congratulations to those members who felt strongly enough to stand up for the principles that were important to them.

We heard that the Prime Minister gave a speech during the Liberal caucus meeting yesterday morning in which he told Liberal MPs that if they vote against a government bill twice, then they are out. If that is true, then I hope the hon. ladies and gentlemen on the government side think very carefully over the next few days about whether they can tolerate such an ultimatum.

Can they maintain their dignity? Can they continue to claim to have ethics? Can they look their families and their constituents in the eye? And can they continue to support their party if they would accept such a dictatorial ultimatum? Are they grown adult Canadians with a sense of morality, or are they prepared to be pawns in a giant political machine?

Clearly, we have a little way to go before free and representative votes are a normal part of the operations of this place, but I truly believe we are on the verge of a revolution in the way Parliament functions. If there are dinosaurs on the other side of the House who refuse to accept the inevitable change, they will soon be sent into retirement by the voters. Then there will be no more Bill C-18s and no more Bill C-69s, because the people of Canada will be represented here instead of the political parties of Canada being represented here.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, 1995, June 14th, 1995]

My hon. colleagues say we should have at least 50 per cent. Sometimes I would agree with them. The west obviously has a much more sensible attitude to politics than we have seen over on the opposite side of the House. We could certainly do with a greater percentage of the seats.

I am proud that Reform Party members stood against the government's attempts to ram through Bill C-18. They tried to do it in a clandestine fashion on a Friday afternoon when they thought no one would notice. I am proud that my colleagues stood and prevented that from happening.

Canadians are starting to see time and time again that Reformers stand up for democracy while the government continues to practice the old line Victorian style of politics. It punishes any Liberal MP who dares to represent their constituents by voting against a government bill. That method of operation is completely outdated. It is not appropriate to the information age. It may have been perfect in the olden days when the present Prime Minister first came to the House, but it is totally inappropriate for the information age. Shame on this government.

In previous Parliaments the issue of constituency representation in the form of free votes was never an issue because the three worn out, old style, dictatorial, arrogant, old line parties all played the same game of agenda politics. They never did want to and still do not want to govern the country according to the wishes of the majority of Canadians. They simply saw government as an opportunity to enact their own political agenda without regard to the concerns of Canadians.

The pressure for change is here in this House today and it is not going away. At the moment, with the exception of Reform MPs and a few independent minded Liberal MPs, most MPs are nothing more than voting machines; no matter what their constituents say, they follow the orders of the Prime Minister when they come into this House to vote. All of the debates, all of the questions, all of the committee meetings and hearings, all of the witness testimony, all of the travel junkets are nothing more than make work projects to keep MPs busy between votes. Those votes we already know the outcome of because the Prime Minister had already decided before the first word of debate was spoken.

Last year the government introduced approximately 60 bills. We debated them. We questioned them. We commented on them. At the end of the term we had passed 60 bills. We may as well have piled them up on a table 60 high and come here for one hour on one day and voted once. The outcome would have been exactly the same.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, 1995, June 14th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I feel tempted to repeat what I just said and maybe I will as part of my speech.

Before beginning my remarks on Bill C-69 I would like to remind the House that almost two years after the 1993 election the debt and deficit has risen by almost $100 billion. That is just in the two years since the Liberal government took office.

In the past 24 hours the government has spent almost $100 million more than it took in. That is about $4 million per hour or $67,000 per minute in money we simply do not have, money we have to borrow. This borrowed money continues to collect interest that adds to the more than $550 billion debt burden our children and grandchildren will have to carry.

Some weeks ago at a public meeting in Vancouver the Liberal member for Halifax said that as a traditional tax and spend Liberal she had crashed and burned when the Minister of Finance announced his budget in March of this year. If serious action is not taken very soon to seriously start addressing the problem of the debt and deficit, the hon. member is sure going to crash and burn again and again and again. It will be to the point where the international lenders will stop supporting our foolishness.

Today we find ourselves debating again Bill C-69, which exists simply because of Bill C-18, which we debated earlier in 1994. I said then that the Liberal government should be ashamed of itself because of what it was doing. It was imposing the will of unhappy Liberal MPs on the voters of Canada. It was probably because they were worried they would not be re-elected to collect their gold-plated pensions at the pension trough. They were worried that if the boundaries changed they would not be able to collect their pensions.

They have protected the content of those pork barrel pensions with Bill C-85, which they are also ramming through the House this next week or so. Now they have brought back the electoral boundaries issue in a last ditch attempt to control the shape of their ridings. Without regard to the huge investment of time by the Electoral Boundaries Commission and without regard to the millions of dollars that have already been spent on a non-partisan process, the government is still trying to jam through ill-conceived and selfish political agendas.

Politicians have no business setting their own electoral boundaries. Human nature being what it is, some members might be tempted to act in their own interests, to trim areas of opposition from their ridings or to add little areas of support to their ridings. Even if that did not happen, there would be the suspicion of course that it was happening.

The important thing is that the whole process should not only be non-partisan but it should be seen to be non-partisan. Politicians should have absolutely nothing to do with the process.

One of the disturbing parts about this whole process is that the increase in population in the province of B.C. entitles us to two more seats in the House under the present rules. Even if we were to hold static the number of seats we presently have, at the very least they should be redistributed so that B.C. has a greater proportion of the seats.

I vigorously oppose Bill C-69.