Ted White

[Referendum '94, May 3rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, at a news conference this morning Referendum '94 on proposed amendments to the Young Offenders Act was officially launched.

Referendum '94 is believed to be the world's first ever electronic referendum. In the next few weeks every registered voter in North Vancouver will be receiving a confidential PIN number which will allow them to vote by dialling a 1-900 number, using their touch tone telephone to enter PIN identification and then voting yes or no to the questions on the electronic ballot.

North Vancouver high school students 15 years and older will also take part in the vote using a special series of PIN numbers that separates their vote from the vote of the registered voters.

A Canada wide 1-900 access will permit all Canadians to be part of an opinion poll on the same three questions that will be asked to the voters of North Vancouver in Referendum '94.

[Supply, May 3rd, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I very much enjoyed the speech of the hon. member. In fact, I hope he has the ear of the revenue minister and is managing to get some of these changes put into effect without too much delay.

I hope the hon. member will listen to my speech later on today about tax saturation because I think that is a point perhaps we have reached here in Canada today. Taxes are too high and part of the reason is that the spending is far too high.

I hope the hon. member will admit that is part of the problem. I certainly hope that it does not take a debt crisis as it did in New Zealand before we can come to grips with this tax situation and actually turn it into something fair.

I agree with the member regarding the complexity of the system. He implied a few times that millionaires do not pay their fair share of taxes. I would like to explore that a little. I would like to know if the member can give me a list of the reasons or ways millionaires do not pay tax other than because of a family trust, which he mentioned. I would really be interested to know. If millionaires can avoid paying taxes in some way legally then those same ways should be available to any average taxpayer in this country. If those ways are there I would like to know about them because I think I am paying too much tax as well.

I wonder if the hon. member could explain the ways millionaires escape paying tax.

[Unemployment Insurance, May 2nd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I often receive letters from constituents who are frustrated by certain aspects of the UI system because they do not understand the limits of their coverage.

Most complaints are about restrictions on training or the taking of temporary jobs that beneficiaries felt would have improved their chances of finding more permanent work.

Anyone who insures a home or a car receives a written policy which lists entitlements, deductions and restrictions. A lot of misunderstandings and frustration could be avoided for workers if a similar document was available which listed entitlements and deductions for the UI system.

I urge the minister to produce a printed insurance policy for UI which could be posted in places of work or supplied to workers when they begin paying UI premiums. This could lead in time to a range of UI policies being available at different premium levels which would better meet workers' needs and would introduce some flexibility into the UI system.

[Youth Employment, April 26th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister of human resources.

On April 16 a group of North Vancouver voters who had been selected at random from the voters' list reviewed applications for grants under the SEED program for the creation of summer jobs for students. The group rejected 16 of the 52 applications as being unsuitable use of taxpayers money.

Employment Canada is sending the rejected applications to the minister for review. Will the minister please assure the voters of North Vancouver that he will not overrule their democratic decision?

[Pearson International Airport Agreements Act, April 26th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, what a strange situation we find ourselves in today, debating whether or not to pass a bill which might control the amount of compensation which can be paid as a result of the cancellation of the Pearson airport privatization deal.

Under normal commercial circumstances in the private sector cancellation of a contract usually means a negotiated or litigated settlement which takes into account the lost opportunities and the lost profits.

Admittedly these private sector negotiations can sometimes take years to complete. It is often only the lawyers who make money out of the whole exercise. However an entity in the private sector does not have the luxury of legislating itself to be exempt from the obligation to compensate another party when it breaks an agreement.

Generally speaking there is something unattractive in the idea that a government can do what the private enterprise cannot do by exempting itself from the need to compensate a group and to also exempt itself from the ability of someone to start litigation against it.

I must admit I feel somewhat uncomfortable about the reality of the bill, the fact that the government could introduce such a bill to protect itself. I know this Liberal government has a large proportion of lawyers in its ranks whereas within the Reform caucus we only have one lawyer.

Perhaps it is this abundance of lawyers in the Liberal Party that has driven the introduction of the bill. Perhaps they are celebrating what must be every lawyer's dream, the ability to control the outcome of a case. Why would one need a judge and jury when one can simply legislate the outcome of the event with no recourse?

I admit feeling somewhat uncomfortable about this situation although I also admit that the circumstances in this situation are rather unique. It was August 1993 when the then Minister of Transport announced that a general agreement had been reached with the Pearson Development Corporation to redevelop terminals 1 and 2.

The minister indicated that the agreement would be finalized in the fall with a legal document for the long term management operation and redevelopment of the terminals. What an impressive list of players there were involved. Included were Donald Matthew, a former Tory president and fundraiser; Otto Jelinek, a former Tory cabinet minister; Bill Neville, formerly a Tory chief of staff and part of the transition team for the previous Prime Minister. There was a Quebec multimillionaire, Charles Bronf-

man. There were also some well known Liberals, a certain senator, Herb Metcalfe, and Bob Wright, a Liberal fundraiser.

It is the involvement of these high profile Liberals that caused me to use the word might in my opening sentence when I said the bill might control the amount of compensation. Could it be that clause 10 of the bill will allow the Minister of Transport to look after Liberal friends while shutting others out?

The portion of the bill in question reads: "If the minister considers it appropriate to do so, the minister may with the approval of the Governor in Council enter into agreements on behalf of Her Majesty to provide for the payment of such amounts as the minister considers appropriate".

The question I have is whether appropriate compensation for a Liberal supporter will be different from appropriate compensation for someone else. One wonders aloud. Despite all this, there is one aspect to the circumstances surrounding the signing and subsequent cancellation of the Pearson deal that provides a powerful argument for supporting Bill C-22.

It comes from the natural sense of justice that a person feels when having warned someone that there will be consequences of an action, that person defies the warning, goes ahead with the action and subsequently does indeed suffer the consequences.

Just nine days after the Pearson agreement announcement of August 30, 1993, the previous Prime Minister called the election. Prior to the conclusion of the legal agreement on Pearson, the then Leader of the Opposition, now Prime Minister, clearly stated that parties taking part in the agreement did so at their own risk because a Liberal government would not hesitate to pass legislation to block the privatization of terminals 1 and 2 if the transaction was not in the private interest.

The chief negotiator for the government at the time took the statement so seriously that he asked for written instructions about whether to complete the transaction. On October 7, 1993 in the final days of her government, the previous Prime Minister gave her written instructions to complete the deal and the same day the agreement was made.

Subsequent events, starting October 28, 1993 with the appointment of Robert Nixon to review the deal, have resulted in its cancellation. Although the idea that a government can exempt itself from responsibility for compensation bothers me, on balance I would tend to support the bill because all parties to the agreement were clearly warned of the consequences. Perhaps some of them even believed that the deal would be cancelled but took a gamble that compensation would be paid in the normal manner after cancellation. Quite a gamble.

I doubt that any party to the agreement could claim that there was not an awareness of the stand of the present Prime Minister on the issue when he was in opposition back in October 1993. There was plenty of publicity and plenty of reason to believe that the deal would indeed be cancelled if the Liberals took power. At the time the polls certainly showed that to be a possibility.

Incidentally I have often wondered why those same pollsters who so confidently predicted a win for the Liberals never realized that Reform would get 52 seats. I wonder whether they really knew and suppressed the information or whether they did not conduct a reasonable poll.

I will continue to listen to the debate on Bill C-22 and will continue to take input from my constituents who have been writing me letters and making occasional phone calls on the issue. I would urge all other members to do the same: listen to the debate and receive input from their constituents before they make the final decision on whether to support Bill C-22.

[Budget Implementation Act, 1994, April 14th, 1994]

I apologize, Mr. Speaker. I got carried away with the excitement of the speech.

Through you, Mr. Speaker, if there is anyone watching today who feels they should write to the Prime Minister about these things, I encourage them to do so.

It is important that the young people of today should try to take part in the political process. They should become involved so that they can direct us as their representatives to work on their behalf to minimize the impact of this borrowing and the mortgage on their future.

Thanks to a lot of publicity by the National Citizens' Coalition over the years, the shocking details about a lot of government mismanagement of funds have become apparent. One of the most public aspects is the MPs pension plan. MPs who have served just six years can retire on a pension for life. Unfortunately the previous Prime Minister just missed out with only five years of service. She was unable to pick up a pension for the rest of her life. However many people who have served here for just six years have managed to pick up a pension for life.

One of the things the Reform movement would like to change is this gold plated pension plan. It is just one of the many things which contribute to the high tax burden of Canadians and which is totally unjustified. Members can be sure that Reform MPs will continue to be the watchdogs for the Canadian citizens to make sure that we spend less, tax less and add less to the borrowing burden for the future.

[Budget Implementation Act, 1994, April 14th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, although the bill is mainly of a housekeeping nature it once again reminds us of the tax grab of the previous government. That tax grab is being expanded by the present government.

A businessman I know got pretty angry recently when he was writing his month-end cheques for his business. He had to write about six cheques, five of which were for various forms of taxation. There was money that had to be sent to the Workers' Compensation Board, Revenue Canada for corporate tax, the B.C. government for PST, the municipality for a business licence tax, and Revenue Canada for the GST.

In small businesses taxes have become a major disincentive to expansion and job creation. There is some evidence that the tax saturation point has been reached.

For example, the Department of Finance figures list tax revenues for September 1992 at $11.07 billion and a year later in September 1993 at $10.17 billion. That is down 8.3 per cent in one year. The revenue for April to October 1992 was $64.94 billion. For April to October 1993 it was only $61.22 billion. That is down 5.73 per cent from a year earlier. These drops are pretty serious because they really interfere with a government's ability to raise additional revenues to fund the programs we all rely on.

If we look at something like the GST, recent figures from the GST branch of Revenue Canada show that GST revenues dropped about $.2 billion between 1992 and 1993. It is interesting that although the GST revenues dropped the actual cost of collection jumped 25.4 per cent in one year from $268.5 million to $336.7 million.

In one year the number of GST employees increased by 23.3 per cent. I wonder how many businesses would deliberately increase their workforce at a time when revenues were dropping. To increase them 23 per cent is a disgrace.

A number of votes have already taken place in this House on the recent budget of the government. Predictably every Liberal MP voted in favour of both the budget bill and the bill authorizing borrowing of up to $37 billion.

Of course every Reform MP voted against both those bills. We proposed an amendment that would cap spending but that was rejected by both government members and the Bloc. I had hoped that some government members would respond to an intelligent debate in the Chamber and would change their votes but it was not to be.

On Monday, March 8, 1994, the hon. Secretary of State for Multiculturalism spoke in favour of the borrowing bill. During her speech she turned to the public gallery where there were a group of high school students. She said she was talking about their future and how important the $37 billion borrowing effort was.

When her speech was over I asked the hon. member whether she had ever asked her children or grandchildren or the people in the gallery whether they wanted $37 billion more added to their mortgage for the future. The hon. member replied that her children told her the government was moving in the right direction. Frankly I found that hard to believe. I really find it hard to believe anyone would approve of someone else borrowing $37 billion on their behalf and leaving them to carry the can. I find that quite difficult to believe.

On the same day I gave a speech about the budget. I explained how I felt as I had listened to the Minister of Finance deliver the budget. I said I had felt a bit of anger and despair but mostly a terrible sense of sadness because of my background with New Zealand and understanding the debt crisis situation that had developed there. I had seen the same symptoms and problems before: the denial that there was a problem; the failure to act soon enough; the rejection of the idea that there would be a day of reckoning.

Unfortunately we have now been committed to another $40 billion in debt this year. The national debt federally now exceeds $510.7 billion. It is growing by approximately $1,400 per second, every second of the day. The debt per taxpayer is around $36,500 and per capita is almost $18,000.

In relation to this tax load the government has been increasing its spending in some programs. It constantly praises the student job creation program and brags about its increases of expenditures on it. I think that is mainly because it is politically correct to do so.

An internal audit of the program last year concluded it was very poorly monitored. It was rife with political patronage and it was a questionable benefit in terms of genuine job creation.

That raised a few red flags for me when I received about 80 applications for grants under the student job creation program, the challenge program, in mid-March. As I looked through these grant requests from Employment Canada I was shocked to see the sorts of things previous MPs had authorized taxpayers' money to be spent upon.

One of Reform's basic promises is that we will be the fiscal watchdogs looking for ways to cut unnecessary spending and government waste. Regardless of the party that was in power previously, NDP, Conservative or Liberal, all of them were rubber stamping these terrible grants that really were quite a questionable use of taxpayers' dollars.

I quickly arranged for a small group of North Vancouver citizens chosen at random from the voters list to come in and have a look at some of these applications. Without exception every single one of those people rejected at least half of the applications that were put before me. That is a very telling piece of information about the value of this student job creation program.

We are caught between a rock and a hard place. If we do not automatically approve these challenge grants we perhaps are ruining the prospects for student jobs. On the other hand if we do rubber stamp them we are authorizing the wastage of taxpayers' hard earned dollars.

Debt should be a major concern to youth. We know many Canadians have become very cynical about politicians. Young people especially find it very difficult to take part in politics and to get involved in the votes. The lack of participation by young people in this political process is a major concern for us in the Reform Party.

Today in the House we are really mortgaging the future of Canada's young people. There are many vital government activities which young Canadians have a direct stake in protecting. These include education funding and student loans, job training, and the building of infrastructure.

However the most important issue facing the youth of today is this debt and taxes problem. Young people need to know that every year this federal government is spending approximately $40 billion more than it takes in. By next year Canada will owe $550 billion to its creditors. That is $20,000 for every person in Canada. Approximately $40 billion more is being added to the national debt every year.

Deficit spending is of critical importance to young Canadians because every time the government borrows money to fund programs it is picking the pockets of future generations. It is guaranteeing they will have to pay more taxes and have a lower standard of living than did their parents.

Today's high tax burdens are already holding back company expansion and job creation and driving businesses out of Canada. If the trend is not reversed things will get much worse. I urge all young people who are watching this program today and hear about the bill which will increase spending to write to the Prime Minister: Tell him you want this intergenerational transfer of wealth stopped and you want it stopped now. Tell him you do not want higher taxes and you do not want your job prospects, your take home pay and your health care system put at risk by this deficit spending program. Tell him you do not want to be left with the bills of my generation. If you are between 18 and 24 years old and watching this program today, virtually the entire $500 billion debt has been incurred during your lifetime.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Suspension Act, 1994, April 12th, 1994]

As the hon. member says, S.O.S. Save our seats. That is the whole attitude of the Liberal government. I urge them to take the moral high road and to vote against this bill.

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Suspension Act, 1994, April 12th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, at a time when our dollar is plunging and our interest rates are on the rise, the Liberal government should be ashamed of what it is trying to do with Bill C-18. It is imposing the will of unhappy Liberal MPs on the voters of Canada, members who perhaps are worried that they will not be re-elected to collect their gold plated pension plans.

I do not think they will be re-elected anyway. Therefore, they should support the amendments that we have proposed or preferably should defeat this Bill C-18 altogether.

Without regard to the huge investment of time by the Electoral Boundaries Commissions and without regard to the millions of dollars which have already been spent on a non-partisan process, the government is going to ram through an ill-conceived and selfish piece of legislation.

Politicians have no business setting their own electoral boundaries. Human nature dictates that members could act in their own interests to trim areas of opposition from their ridings or to add little pieces of support to their ridings. Even if that did not happen there could be the suspicion that it was happening.

The important thing is that the whole process should be seen to be non-partisan. Politicians should have absolutely nothing to do with the process.

To illustrate this point I would like to mention something that was said by a government member earlier in this debate. That member claimed that Reformers were being inconsistent in wanting to amend Bill C-18 to alter the period of suspension to 12 months. Reform originally argued against the proposed 18 month suspension because it would have given the Liberal government an advantage in deciding when the election would be and in deciding whether the old boundaries or some new boundaries would apply during the next election.

In negotiations Reform took the position that either 24 months or 12 months was better than 18 because at least then it would be clear what was going to happen. Of course we prefer the 12 month suspension because at least the process could get restarted again and we have a chance that the non-partisan process would be completed before the next election.

All hon. members who value democracy should work to defeat Bill C-18 and at the very least should agree to the suspension by 12 months rather than the 24.

I join many other members who have spoken against Bill C-18 in expressing my concern that B.C. is the province that will be most hurt by the bill. The increase in population of B.C. entitles us to two more seats in the House. Even if we were to hold the number of seats constant, at the very least they should be redistributed to give a more fair representation for the province of B.C.

In my riding of North Vancouver the proposed changes would take a small section at the eastern end of my riding, isolated between the harbour to the east, the harbour to the south, the mountains to the north and sort of append it to another riding on the other side of the harbour, the riding of Port Moody-Coquitlam.

The people in that part of my riding can see that is an impractical way to re-arrange the riding. It is very clear that the member in the Port Moody-Coquitlam area would have to move through two other ridings in order to get to this little appendage that would suddenly be attached to her riding.

However, even though it is clear that isolating this small portion of North Vancouver is not in the public interest, the voters in my area have confidence in the process. They have confidence that by appeal to the commission that this decision would be reversed and a much more sensible decision would be made.

Everyone can see from looking at the map that this particular adjustment was not sensible. Even I, living in that portion and will have my home transferred to another riding, agree with the process and I am prepared to take my chances with the commission and the hearings.

I vigorously oppose Bill C-18. I am proud that the Reform Party members can stand and say that they were against this government attempt to ram the bill through in a clandestine fashion on a Friday afternoon when nobody is watching style of thing.

In time Canadians will recognize that Reformers once again stood up for democracy while the government stood up for the old line Victorian style of politics. Shame on them, Mr. Speaker.

[Supply, March 22nd, 1994]

Madam Speaker, since I have to be brief I will only make a comment on the distribution of wealth.

It is well known that if one took 100 per cent of the income from all of the people who earn more than $100,000 a year and gave it all to the poor, they would get a couple of hundred dollars each. What use is it taking money off people with high taxes on this pretext of redistributing wealth? It does not work.