Dennis Mills

[Supply, October 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the fact that you have acknowledged I had some time left in answering the question from the Reform Party.

The question had to do with the comparison the Reform Party tries to make quite often that running a government is very much like running a business. Of course I do not agree that running the Government of Canada is like running a business at all.

The member said we should have had a pretty good idea when we took power about what was happening with the books and records of the country. The member knows that when we took

over the books and records, there was close to a seven or eight billion dollar difference in the real numbers.

I really believe the Reform Party should acknowledge that. It should likewise acknowledge that our very aggressive handling of the deficit and the debt is something for which we should be given some marks.

[Supply, October 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to answer the last part of the member's question first. Of course we have always based any government expenditure on need and not on want. As I said earlier in my remarks, governance is not to be focused on those who are advantaged. It should be focused on those who are disadvantaged.

I challenge the member's approach to taking over a company. He mentioned that you have a pretty good idea of what you are taking over. Generally speaking that is the case but I can say to the member, and he knows this, that when we took over there was close to $7 billion on the deficit that had never been talked about during the election campaign.

If the member was-

[Supply, October 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by picking up on some of the remarks the member made in her speech. It is very important for Canadians and for the Reform Party to understand that the Government of Canada cannot be run in the same way as a business.

The Reform Party mentioned earlier that I have had a little business experience and I would like to deal with that. The fact is that I have had a little business experience. In business the preoccupation is with earnings per share per quarter, and profit and loss is the bottom line. The bottom line for the board of directors of the House is not profit. The bottom line that we are responsible for is the people of Canada.

My colleague comes from an eastern part of the country, a rural region. He spoke earlier with passion because he has been sent to this boardroom to speak for his people, not unlike my colleague, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, who has to come to the Chamber and speak for the people of his region who right now are going through a hell that very few of us in the House can imagine. If the House becomes preoccupied with cuts, cuts, cuts and eliminating the deficit entirely, who will speak for and who will look after Canadians who are truly disadvantaged and in real pain?

When General Motors decides the earnings per share per quarter are a little low it lays off l,000, 2,000 or 10,000 people. Who picks those people up? It is the programs designed by the men and women in the Chamber. General Motors does not pick them up.

I had the privilege of working for two years with one of the most successful companies the country has ever produced, Magna International. Its latest report was published about two weeks ago. It made pretax about $400 million and paid about $140 million in taxes. Its net profit was about $240 million. In the middle to late seventies Magna was one of those companies the taxpayers of Canada supported. It developed computer aided design and computer aided manufacturing that allowed it to be one of the greatest companies in North America, one of the greatest exporters. Today that small company employs 20,000 Canadians.

In debate in the House on better public policy we cannot focus on just cuts, cuts, cuts; lean government; efficient government; and wasteful government. I am not going to support waste. No one in the House would. We all want lean government but we must have a caring government, as my colleague from New Brunswick said earlier. She said that it could not be a mean government.

What concerns me about the debate today is that there is not enough focus on growth. We have tried with concrete activities in the last year not to focus just on deficit and debt. We have also focused on growth.

We said in opposition and during the campaign that small business was the greatest hope for driving this economy and putting Canadians back to work. We said the 900,000 men and women who own and operate small businesses across the country represent our greatest hope for putting Canadians back to work. The government acted immediately in the industry committee to work on their greatest difficulty, which was access to capital. We heeded; we were told by them.

We consulted them in opposition and they said that if we became the government we had to have the courage to challenge the financial institutions because as small businesses they needed access to capital not just on the debt side but also on the equity side. We did that. I am happy to say that we did it with the help of the Reform Party and with the help of the Bloc. We recognize that. We acknowledge it publicly. It is concrete action that we took.

When members of the Reform Party stand today they should not be shy in acknowledging that a specific action has taken place that affects the business lives of about 300,000 small businessmen and women who employ possibly millions of Canadians. Do not just focus on the negative, do not just get caught up in opposing for the sake of opposing.

Since coming into power we have taken specific action on the information highway. In terms of that activity we are probably one of the most advanced countries in the world. It allows us to hook up, network and interact with companies all over the world. This is a tremendous aid to our export activity. The results are shown in the hard numbers. These are not Liberal numbers nor are they Government of Canada numbers. These numbers are acknowledged by independent agencies. Our exports have increased dramatically in the last year and no one can deny that.

We should be looking at those export numbers. We should be encouraging them even more because we cannot reduce the deficit and attack the debt unless we get those 1.5 million Canadians back to work. We are not going to leave them hanging. Jobs have been our central focus before the campaign, during the campaign and in our first year as government. The facts are that over 300,000 Canadians have been put back to work not by us directly but by assisting in creating some hope and an environment where we were serious and were focused on a direction.

I did not pull those numbers out of the air. They are real numbers reported by independent agencies. I am not standing here saying that we are satisfied with those numbers. We are not satisfied. How could we possibly be? However, progress has been made by this government in the first year of its mandate.

There is another thing this government has decided to push. The Prime Minister is in Vancouver today announcing our renewed focus on tourism activity in Canada. After the forestry and automotive sectors tourism is our greatest job creator. There is not one member of Parliament in this House who would stand up and speak against tourism.

We have taken action on tourism. From a piddling little budget of $13 million in the Department of Industry for tourism for all of Canada, the Prime Minister today will announce that we are going to make tourism a priority sector. He is announcing a further $50 million for partnerships with the private sector.

As every member in this House will stand up and say, tourism can generate a return in less than four or five months, once we get out there and market it and tell people to come to Canada. And it is not just for tourism, it is for trade shows and conventions, activity that will support other business opportunities. Sometimes people think tourism only concerns a family on holiday but it is more than that. Tourism is making sure we get our share of trade shows and conventions. This government has taken specific action and the Prime Minister will announce that commitment in Vancouver today.

I have been around this town. I have been an assistant to a prime minister and this is my second term as an MP. I watched the Tories when they governed here. I sincerely believe our government has been one of the most effective and hardest working governments I have ever seen in this town.

This government is making decisions almost at the speed of light. I know it is never fast enough and I will be the first one to admit that. There is a transition period and it takes a little bit of time. Many in the Reform Party are business people. You do not just go in and take over a business and make all your decisions in the first month or the first quarter. You have to get a handle on things. We have been able to get a handle on things very quickly. The numbers are starting to go in the right direction, but is it enough? It is never enough, but we will press on.

There is another thing I want to take on today in challenging the Reform Party on its motion. One of this government's commitments has been to support Canada's export activity. I cannot remember when another government has done so much as this one in terms of selling products and services abroad, especially in the Asia-Pacific region and the eastern European countries. We must be one of the most export oriented governments Canadians have ever seen.

In reflecting on one of the reasons that our exports have so dramatically improved, we can trace a lot of this export activity back to Pierre Trudeau's multiculturalism policy of 1971. I will explain this to the Reform Party. In 1971 when Pierre Trudeau stood in this House and said that we were going to have a policy in which no culture was less than or greater than another culture and we were going to encourage people to retain and promote their cultural heritage, this was something no other country in the world was doing. The United States had its melting pot theory and we did the opposite.

Today there are Canadians who have retained their language and culture of origin. We have a trading advantage into every part of the world because of that facility with language and culture that no other nation on earth has. A close analysis of our trading activities abroad will trace a lot of that success back to that multiculturalism policy, the very policy the Reform Party wants to strike and cut saying that it adds no asset value to Canada's balance sheet.

I suggest to member's opposite that multiculturalism is not about dancing, it is not about books. It is about turning Canadians into assets for Canada's balance sheet. Those people who have been able to use their links and their roots back to their country of origin have provided tremendous success for our exports side.

My point is that in this last nine months we have acted aggressively on some very specific issues. We appreciate the constructive tone of the members opposite during the debate over the last year. There have been times when they have not just opposed for the sake of opposing and the debate has been very constructive.

In many respects I am quite comfortable with some of the Reform Party's thrusts, especially in the area of tax reform. As I said earlier, there are only a few years to get things accomplished in this Chamber and the greatest catalyst for making things happen in this place is a constructive opposition.

I say sincerely that if it focuses, the Reform Party has a chance to act as a real catalyst for tax reform in Canada, which is the one thing we have not yet taken on. Even though we have accomplished all these other things in the last year I hope the Reform Party will not give up challenging us on tax reform.

[Supply, October 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask one very short question. I still do not believe we sit in this Chamber to put all of our energy toward helping those people in our society who are advantaged. I believe that a good part of our responsibility is to make sure that those people and regions in our country that are disadvantaged from time to time get our attention and our support.

I would like to ask a very simple question of the member. Does he believe in that fundamental view, yes or no?

[Supply, October 25th, 1994]

This is not a business.

[Supply, October 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I will begin by commenting on the last point the member made on creating a value added pasta plant for our durum wheat. The member has brought a new insight to me. I will give him an undertaking that I will take his point up with the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food.

I do not know the issue well and there may be some technical points which make this not as easy as the member describes it. However, I think the member has raised a very insightful point. Any time we can create a value added opportunity with a resource like this we should look at it.

This goes back to the point I wanted to make. In the last nine months this government has taken on a very thorough review of all crown corporations. If they do not meet the public policy objective that we all believe in then a lot of those crown corporations have had their budgets cut, some of them severely. It would be inappropriate to leave Canadians with the impression that we are not reviewing and evaluating all crown corporations.

In fairness to the member, he did acknowledge that the Minister of Transport has done a very good job in commercializing all the airports in Canada, privatizing and offloading them to local authorities. Some would even argue that he is moving too fast. I know the Reform Party feels quite comfortable with that. However, I caution members opposite that when we are dealing with a complex department like transport, which traditionally has galvanized the spirit of this country and helps pull this country together because it deals with rail, transport and sea, before we just cut and offload it we have to make sure we are doing it in a manner that does not fracture the very fabric of the country.

[Supply, October 25th, 1994]

With regard to the downward pressure on interest rates and tax reform.

[Supply, October 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I want to make one short comment and then ask a question.

I think the member is not being reasonable on the infrastructure program. During the establishment of infrastructure the job time might be for three, six or nine months but the actual completed infrastructure provides an environment. As the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance said, the new transport system from the airport in Winnipeg will be there for 30 or 40 years. It will allow for the economy in that sector to move forward in a more efficient and productive way in terms of exports to the southern United States.

However I want to ask the member a question about the deficit and the debt. As the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance said in his remarks this morning, if our interest rates were to go up by half a point it would cause an added burden of approximately $3.5 billion in service charges. Obviously we have to create an environment where we can stabilize our interest rates and create a system that would put downward pressure on interest rates, which subsequently would allow us to have a lower cost in servicing the debt of the country.

Does the finance critic for the Reform Party believe a tax system that is fair and promotes entrepreneurship could reverse capital flows that are currently leaving the country? By capital flows reversing and coming back to Canada a downward pressure could be put on interest rates. Does the finance critic believe that comprehensive tax reform could create that possibility?

[Supply, October 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I want to return to my opening question. The member who is the finance critic for Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition criticized some of the areas in the tax design with which he did not agree. By the way, I share his views in a couple of the areas.

However, he is here to lead his province out of Confederation. He stated that in his speech. That is his democratic right, but Quebecers and Canadians would like to know what type of tax regime, tax design, tax system Quebecers will have in this new country that they are designing?

It is very important for the member, who has this lead role, to tell Quebecers what this system is. We would also like to know what this system is because it might contain a couple of ideas we could implement now. Specifically, what will the tax regime look like in this separate Quebec?

[Supply, October 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the hon. member of the Bloc Quebecois.

Just imagine for a minute that Quebec is a separate country. I would like to ask him what kind of system, what kind of tax reform he wants for Quebec? You referred to problems arising from Canada's complex system. I would like an answer to the following question: As far as tax reform is concerned, what kind of system would you have if you became a separate country?