Dennis Mills

[Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, March 9th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his questions. I will first deal with the elimination of the cap on CAP in the transfers. I would never have eliminated the cap on CAP. I would have done the equalization in a way that these moneys would have been handed directly by department, by members of parliament in this Chamber so that the Government of Canada presence could have been reinvigorated, especially in the remote regions of Canada.

On this notion of writing a single cheque to the premiers, I would not trust half of them. The notion of them distributing this money is not something that appeals to me. We are here to think in terms of the national interest and they do not tend to think that way.

Let us deal with the member's issue on tax reform. I support every member in this House from all sides and all parties in the idea that the biggest challenge we have in this Chamber is comprehensive tax reform. I think the tax act of this country is a scandal. I really believe that. We have 50,000 cases in front of the courts of Canada on tax challenges and 95% of them are with huge corporations that know how to essentially challenge or rig the system. I pray for the day when we can all come together on that.

The third point was the national energy program. I was working in Ottawa in Mr. Trudeau's office at the time. I think the national energy program was like a crafted jewel.

[Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, March 9th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this debate.

Yesterday when we were debating Bill C-55, that bill which protects this country's magazine industry, I said that I was a passionate interventionist. Today I am happy to see that we have another debate in the House which in essence deals with Government of Canada intervention.

Quite frankly, I believe that the purpose of all of us sitting in the House of Commons is to deal with different levels, different styles of government intervention. I believe our purpose in sitting in the House of Commons is to speak for those people who do not have a voice, to speak for those regions of Canada that from time to time need voices to stand up for them. When I hear debates in the House of Commons where we stand up for people who need a referee in terms of making sure that their needs or their concerns are looked out for, I cheer.

I feel sad when I see an issue like that of homelessness and the Government of Canada is not in a position to respond in a direct way. Some of our listeners and some of the members today might wonder what I mean by that. Over the past few years, in the name of fiscal responsibility we have boarded up Government of Canada instruments, or Government of Canada departments or agencies that allowed us to intervene when we needed things done in the common good.

Homelessness is one of those issues which I think illustrates that by disengaging too rapidly and too radically we have lost our ability to intervene. This problem exists in my city and in other cities across Canada. People are living on the streets. Families, and not all of them are young families, are living in motel rooms.

In my city of Toronto, the richest city in all of Canada, over 1,200 families are living in motel rooms. Think of that. A country as rich as Canada, a city as rich as Toronto, and over 1,200 families with young children are living in motel rooms.

When Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which is a Government of Canada agency, had the national authority to participate in housing requirements in whatever region of Canada, we in this House of Commons could have intervened in a second. We could have fixed that problem. We could have had a national housing policy. But in 1989 we devolved and the government said that it did not want to intervene, that it wanted to walk away. There would be less bureaucracy, less intervention.

This chamber walked away from the responsibility that had been bestowed on the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, a Government of Canada crown agency. We walked away saying that we would let the provinces look after it, that we would give them the constitutional authority to deal with that national issue and that we would let them do it by province. That was a mistake.

I said it yesterday and I will say it again today. I believe that the Government of Canada, when there is a national crisis should have the authority and instruments to intervene. I believe in intervention. I believe in it passionately.

It almost makes me sick when I think that we are sitting here with a $160 billion budget process and we do not have the mechanism or the authority to intervene and look after those families that are living in motel rooms, or that this national chamber cannot figure out a way to get those people who are living on the streets in whatever city of Canada into medical centres where they can be looked after. Most of those people living on the streets in sleeping bags are there more through a mental health condition than anything else.

When I see the bill in front of the House today talking about equalization, I cheer. The essence of the country is that those who are advantaged must look out for those who are disadvantaged. There are regions of Canada that have extraordinary wealth and resources. We are here in this chamber to make sure that all members of the national family have access to the total riches of Canada.

I hear the opposition talk about less government intervention and interference. That is an abdication of our responsibility in this chamber. We are not in this chamber to speak for the advantaged. We are not in this chamber to speak for those people who can look after themselves. We are here for the exact opposite reason, generally speaking for those people, regions or situations where government intervention is required, because the voice of those people or the message of those situations is not getting through. We are here to make sure that it does.

We could have an honest disagreement on levels of intervention and types of intervention, but let us at least agree that the essence of the responsibility we share in this chamber is government intervention. We should not be shy about it. We should not run from it. We should be proud of it. This is something that I could never understand about the Reform Party.

Many members of the Reform Party come from the province of Alberta and other regions of the west. Historically, government intervention at all levels, but certainly at the national level, played a tremendous role in building the fabric of western Canada from the railway through to the oil and gas business through to the wheat board and all of the areas that are considered to be the jewels of the west.

The sectors of the western economic fabric were reinforced and embellished because of Government of Canada intervention, intervention from this Chamber, over the past number of years.

It is a mystery to me when Reform members stand to say “We do not want Government of Canada intervention. Why would we let bureaucrats intervene?” That is really misstating what happens.

Bureaucrats or officials of government do not do things on their own, without direction; they implement the political decisions that are taken in this Chamber. We tend from time to time to knock bureaucrats, but we should not do that. They are there to implement what we ask them to do.

Essentially, if someone is knocking a bureaucrat they are knocking what goes on in this House because they follow the law of the land by department. Those directions come from the laws that are made in this House.

When we cut, cut, cut, our public servants, our officials, cannot do their work because they do not have the resources or the manpower. I will give a specific example.

I remember when the Conservative government came to power in 1984. It said that it would cut the bureaucracy by 10% across the board. In my city we have a huge immigration challenge. When 10% of the bureaucrats were cut from the department of immigration it caused lineups. It caused people to jump the queue. There were no more immigration police. We ended up with people coming in through underground means.

It created a bigger problem in the long run. We were penny-wise and pound foolish. The government wanted to have the satisfaction of saying to the general public “We will cut those bureaucrats”. That was folly because we, the people of Canada, ended up getting a quality of service that ultimately did not serve our community or the country.

We applaud the opposition's support for the thrust of this equalization bill which is being debated today. However, let us stop knocking government intervention. Let us start celebrating it because that, in essence, is the life of a national parliamentarian.

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, March 8th, 1999]

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage has just corrected me and I appreciate that. Almost 80% of the magazines on the racks in this country are American magazines. Is the Reform Party that satisfied with the Americans having 80%? Does it want us to roll over and give them 90% or 95%? When will it stop? The Reform Party is going to want us to erase the 49th parallel next.

I dread the day when we have to have a debate about water with the Reform Party sitting in the House. My goodness, that will be the day when we really will be put to the test because that is something the Americans want a heck of a lot more than more shelf space on a magazine rack. We should all be united and I can see the Reform Party running away from the water debate saying to just roll over and give it to the Americans.

We should respect and work with our neighbours, but at the same time we have a duty and a responsibility to make sure that our magazine industry is vibrant and viable. If it means the Minister of Canadian Heritage has to stand up and say enough, that this is what we are going to do, then we should be a fist in this House of Commons, especially when the Americans have access to our community by selling magazines like no other country in the world.

The Americans ship them across the 49th parallel. There are hardly any shipping costs when they move magazines into this country. Let us think about that.

Members have to understand that many of the craftsmen and craftswomen who design, write and organize our magazine industry are the same artists who help other sectors of the cultural industry, the motion picture industry and the television industry. Unless those artists are given an opportunity to maximize and test their potential and have others give them feedback and critique the quality of their work, this is going to have an adverse impact on other business components of our cultural industry. It is a huge, huge industry. We are talking job numbers here that are very serious to our gross domestic product.

To the members of the Reform Party, let us not diminish the Canadian cultural activity. The Reform Party members said when they came to this House of Commons that when they saw something good for the nation, they would work with us and make change.

If there was ever a case for government intervention, this is it. This bill should be supported because the American magazine industry currently has almost 80% of the magazines on the racks in this country. I say to the member for Elk Island that is quite enough for our neighbours and it is time that all of us in the House stood up for our own.

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, March 8th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this debate and especially to follow the member for Elk Island. I can honestly say that the member represents for me probably 90% of the reason I could never ever be associated with the Reform Party. I am a passionate interventionist.

The member talked about how we are ramming this bill through. The bill is not being rammed through.

Today the Government of Canada and the people of Canada are receiving the MAD treatment from the Reform Party. Many years ago, when I had the great privilege and pleasure of working for the then Prime Minister Trudeau, we would refer to the MAD treatment, maximum administrative delay. That is what the people of Canada are experiencing today. Whenever an opposition party essentially wants to delete every clause of a bill and thereby delete the bill, that is the MAD treatment.

Passionate interventionism is what I believe in. There is not a riding or a sector of this country's economy that would be alive and well today if we had not had some form of government intervention.

The member talked about tragedies. One of the real tragedies of the House of Commons has been the impact that that opposition party has had on so many other issues where we have watered down the Government of Canada activism, the Government of Canada presence in this country. That is part of the reason we have separatism, but fortunately that party is on the way out now. We can see that party has been so distracted lately because the economy is coming back. It is starting to lose its separatist foundation in that province.

I want to quote one of our national treasures. There was an article in the Globe and Mail on Saturday, March 6. I want to quote one of our great Canadian hockey treasures, Frank Mahovlich. The article is by Graham Fraser. It states:

But Mahovlich has a bleak view of the game he once mastered and charmed.

“The head office is now in New York,” he said in his radio interview. “We have lost this game. The game is not what it used to be. I mean, we've always changed the rules to suit everybody else. When we played the Russians, back in 1972, we weren't playing our rules, we were playing the Russian rules, the Olympic rules. So the game is not Canadian any more. We've lost it. Whether we can get it back or not, I don't know. We'll have to wait and see”.

The members of the Reform Party have tried in so many areas to diminish the Canadian content, to diminish the Canadian presence, to diminish the Canadian activism. If there was ever an area where Canada's House of Commons should be standing on guard, it is in the area of culture.

I consider that Bill C-55 is really not an overly aggressive attempt to keep this country's magazine industry alive. I cannot understand for the life of me why the Reform Party is trying to put a spike in the spirit and the heart of this bill.

The member said to us that we think Canadian magazines cannot survive on their own. The bottom line is, I believe that. I believe they cannot survive on their own.

Have the Reform Party members ever competed against the American muscle with all its money and influence? When was the last time? Let us ask any Canadians who are listening to this debate. Do not listen to me. Walk down to the local grocery store, walk down to the local variety store or go into the local bookstore and look at those magazine racks. Better than 50% of the magazines—

[Supply, March 4th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, to the members of the opposition, specifically the Reform Party and the member of the NDP, I agree with many of the comments I have heard this morning. Members were talking about comprehensive tax reform and fixing the inequities in the tax system.

I find it strange that we are having this debate three weeks after the budget has been announced. This is like trying to debate something after it is a fait accompli. The time to talk about comprehensive tax reform and fixing these inequities was before the budget.

For three months all we heard from the opposition was gossip on airplanes, pepper spray, water bombs and other cheap political tactics. Never once in the three months leading up to the budget did we have any real solid comprehensive debate on the fact that our tax act needs serious reform.

Can we count on the New Democratic Party over the next few months to put a more specific and substantive focus on comprehensive tax reform, building fairness into the system, so that we can build toward this for the next budget? On some of the inequities members are pointing out I tend to share their views. I think our best hope now for reform is to build toward the next budget at this time next year.

[The Budget, March 2nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the day the member for Calgary Southeast was elected to this Chamber I actually celebrated his victory because I thought from day one that when he got here he would press all of us to get into comprehensive tax reform.

He should have been doing that three months before the budget. Instead we played around with pepper spray and gossipy conversations on airplanes.

I pray that this member, who understands tax reform better than all of us put together, will make it his personal mission in the next six months that we get on to comprehensive tax reform so that it is part of the next budget.

[The Budget, March 2nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party is the party of hope. The Bloc Quebecois is the party of despair.

We know very well what our challenge is in Quebec. Our challenge is to show Quebeckers that it is better to be a part of the whole of Canada than trying to fight and be an island alone by itself.

After spending the last week in Quebec I can say to members opposite that their joust about being separate from Canada is over. I talked to hundreds of Quebeckers last week and separatism is dead, and sovereignty association is not far away from being dead.

[The Budget, March 2nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, it is not rhetoric. I say this humbly to Canadians that we came to the responsibility, the trust for this government with 11.4% unemployment and it has been reduced to 7.8%.

There has been a cost to Canadians to create that economic climate to maintain jobs, plus the 1.5 million that had been created. There has been a cost. The member is right. I have acknowledged that he is right. One of the single biggest issues that we have to face as a whole parliament is comprehensive tax reform. In the process of getting there, do not knock the hope that we are moving in the right direction. That is a very principal point.

[The Budget, March 2nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the members for Prince George—Peace River and for Calgary Southeast. The member for Prince George—Peace River said tell the story, tell the whole story, we are not shooting straight.

I listened to the member for Calgary Southeast. Not once in his remarks did he offer any constructive alternative. Leadership is all about dealing in hope. The reality that Canadians surely understand is that six years ago we had an unemployment situation of 11.4% when we assumed power. When this budget was announced it was 7.8%.

I am not proud. None of us are proud of that 7.8%, especially in remote areas of our country where we have unemployment numbers far in excess of that and especially the huge numbers related to youth unemployment.

Let us be candid. We cannot be proud of those numbers. When we talk about dealing in hope, we talk about where we were six years ago and where we are heading. What is the trajectory of where this government's financial plan is headed? I believe the Minister of Finance has the trajectory going the right way.

Very few Canadians realize that one of the things we have had to do in order to create an economic climate that would cause businesses to invest in Canada and those businesses here to further invest was create a climate of stability, a climate where those jobs that have been created in the last few years, almost a million and a half, would remain.

That does not happen unless the expenditure plan of this government came under some control. Quite frankly I am surprised that the Reform Party does not take credit for this. The reality is that because of the pressure of Reform in the last six years in my humble opinion the cuts around here have been so drastic in so many areas. This was done all in the name of putting the fiscal framework of this country back together. I think quite frankly that we have gone in many cases away too far with the fiscal discipline in this place.

In this budget we are just beginning to see a return to a sensitivity toward some of those things that really built this nation. We are beginning to replenish the health care system in this country.

By the way, I say quite openly, I still think we have a long way to go. The reality is we had to do it in the context where at the same time we could keep the economic confidence of this country moving forward. We all know how fragile economic confidence is. I think the Minister of Finance has been faced with a very tough balancing act. He has had to get that trajectory of fiscal responsibility going the right way but at the same time we all know that average Canadians, low income Canadians and seniors have carried an awful lot of economic pain on their backs.

As I said earlier in my remarks, today is the day when we should be dealing in some hope. The member for Calgary Southeast should have stood here today and acknowledged the fact that the fiscal framework was heading in the right direction.

I agree with the member for Calgary Southeast when it comes to comprehensive tax reform. I totally agree. I think this is one issue for parliamentarians in all parties. The separatists have already said in committee if they ever did become a separate country the first thing they would do is have comprehensive tax reform. I believe the economy is going so well now, even though there are better times still needed, that separatism is almost dead.

I spent last week in Quebec City and it is hard to find a separatist. They are all coming home. They are all coming back to the reality that Canada is a much better place whole than divided. That to me comes from an economic climate that is improving.

I stand in the House today satisfied that we are heading in the right direction. Do we have to do more? Yes. We have to do a lot more, especially in Atlantic Canada. We have too many young people in Atlantic Canada who have absolutely no work and there does not seem to be any opportunity for work.

I know the Reform Party calls it, not patronage, but pork barrelling. I would be proud to push, press, prod the Minister of Industry to move some of that innovation money to Atlantic Canada where those highly educated young Atlantic Canadians could get involved in computer programming, creativity, computer manufacturing and become a leadership section of Canada in the whole realm of information technology. Would I take $1 billion and move it to Atlantic Canada and reinforce that sector out of the information technology fund, the knowledge based fund? I would do it in a second. I know the Reform Party calls that pork barrelling. I do not call it pork barrelling when we see a region of this country that needs extraordinary help because its natural resource fell away from it through no fault of its own. That is what I would do about that problem of youth unemployment in Atlantic Canada.

I say to the members across the way that we still have a long way to go, but the fact of the matter is we are seeing all kinds of hope right now. The fiscal framework is moving in the right direction. The health plan is being replenished. There are actually little sparks of hope for comprehensive tax reform in this budget. There was at least an attempt by the Minister of Finance to get lower income Canadians off the tax rolls. It did not go far enough in my opinion, but those are the kinds of things that a constructive opposition would acknowledge and then complement with some specific ideas of its own.

So far here today I can honestly say that all I have heard have been dealers in gloom. That is not leadership. They should be dealers in hope and they failed that test today.

[The Budget, March 2nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. In his speech the member referred to the Department of Revenue Canada as geniuses. I think he would like to correct the record on that. He tried to say that was a reality and we all know that is a myth.