Lost his last election, in 2004, with 35% of the vote.
Apec Summit October 6th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, the solicitor general said very clearly last Thursday night that he really wanted to go to the baseball play-offs and the World Series but he could not because he was covering for the Prime Minister.
I think the Prime Minister should do the honourable thing, allow this man to go to the World Series—and the play-offs are tonight at eight o'clock and there is still time for him to get there—relieve him of his portfolio and let him go.
Apec Summit October 6th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, I would suggest from now on that perhaps the solicitor general could get the keys for the Challenger from the minister responsible for heritage because he should be taking that flight.
My supplementary question is for the Prime Minister. The solicitor general said last week that he—
Apec Summit October 6th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, now that his memory bank has kicked back in and the solicitor general recalls the name of his seatmate on flight 8876 last Thursday night and that he said to Fred D. Toole “It will come out in the inquiry that four to five Mounties overreacted for five minutes. No one knows this. I think it was excessive”, will the solicitor general not agree that those were precisely the words that he used? Will he admit it here in his place this afternoon?
Privilege October 6th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, may I respond very briefly to say with great—
Apec Summit October 5th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, the solicitor general has been saying do not prejudge the outcome but wait for the inquiry. Why did he then ignore his own advice?
Is the solicitor general denying that he said last Thursday: “This inquiry will reveal that four or five Mounties used excessive force and overreacted”? Does the minister deny saying I wanted to go to the World Series, to New York, but I can't because “I'm the cover” for the Prime Minister?
Apec Summit October 5th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, my question is for the solicitor general. For weeks now the government has been giving assurances that the RCMP commission will get to the bottom of the Spray-PEC inquiry.
Why then did the solicitor general say that the Prime Minister will not be attending the inquiry because he would only become the focus of it but instead the solicitor general will act as cover for the Prime Minister? Why did the solicitor general say “I'm the cover” for the Prime Minister on this issue?
Transport October 1st, 1998
Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Canadian Transportation Agency ruled that CPR did not allocate enough rail cars to haul farmers' grain to the west coast in the winter of 1996-97.
This complaint was filed on behalf of grain producers by the Canadian Wheat Board and included a complaint against CN rail as well.
The wheat board estimates that this failure to provide adequate service cost farmers $50 million and the board is now expected to sue CP for a portion of those damages. This poor service is a direct result of the effective monopoly by CN and CP on shipping western grain. Yet these same railways argue that the system should now be totally deregulated so that they alone can decide what to haul, when to haul it and at what tariff.
This would be a disaster for western Canadian farmers. Yesterday's ruling proves that in order to protect farmers the federal government must continue to play a key role in regulating grain transportation in Canada.
Income Tax Conventions Implementation Act, 1998 September 24th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be back in the House and to follow my learned colleague from the Bloc. I listened with great interest to his speech and his recommendations. I commend it to the finance minister and to government members opposite.
I also want to associate myself with most of the other speakers who have been up on the bill to talk about the relative unimportance of Bill S-16 in comparison with the important financial, fiscal and other needs we think we should be discussing in the House.
Probably like many other members of parliament I conducted some accountability sessions recently before returning to parliament to find out what was on the minds of the constituents in Palliser. We talked about a number of things.
We talked about the low dollar, the crisis in agriculture, how any surplus the federal government has will be apportioned, the lack of a national transportation system, the fact that Canada is virtually the only country in the OECD that does not have a national transportation system, the recent hike in interest rates, the lack of national funding for medicare, what to do with the EI surplus and the Tobin toll. I assure the House that nobody talked to me at all about tax treaties between Canada and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the Republic of Croatia and the Republic of Chile.
The bill is very thin gruel by comparison to what Canadians would like to be talking about here this afternoon. I know it is up to the government to propose legislation. I will give it the benefit of the doubt and suggest that this is perhaps a bit of housekeeping that needs to be tidied from last June. We in this caucus would certainly hope that the government moves forward in a speedy fashion to bring in more substantive pieces of legislation.
This caucus will be supporting Bill S-16. It is a tax treaty bill that we do support on its merit to avoid double taxation and to prevent fiscal evasion. The taxation rules of the treaties need to be passed by an act of parliament in order to give them precedence over domestic legislation, and the conventions follow OECD models on double taxation conventions.
The bill is quite similar to several tax treaties introduced in parliament in past years, for example Bill S-9 and Bill C-10. Fortunately Bill S-9 is that infamous piece of legislation passed in the 35th Parliament that was embraced, supported and promoted by both the government and the Reform Party that offers substantial tax breaks for Canadians who make donations to American charities and American universities.
While it is reciprocal it is not terribly because we have about 25,000 Canadian students in the United States compared to only a very few thousand Americans who come north for their post-secondary education. It is a huge tax break for the wealthy in this country. Added to it was the U.S. estate property taxes dating all the way back to 1987, paid for not by the Americans but by the Canadian government. This is just a reminder about the very significant shortcomings of Bill S-9. Bill S-16 was studied by the Senate foreign affairs committee and returned to the Senate without amendment.
As I said before, the tax treaties are between Canada and the Republic of Vietnam, the Republic of Croatia and the Republic of Chile. Currently we do not have tax treaties with these three countries.
The government's rationale for the legislation is that it is necessary because the provisions of the respective agreements are sometimes different from the provisions of the Income Tax Act and it is necessary to ensure that as much tax reporting as possible be allowed. These agreements will override the Income Tax Act.
In addition we note the tax treaties are necessary to avoid double taxation and to prevent fiscal evasion. They also provide tax certainties to individuals and companies carrying on businesses abroad, foreigners carrying on business in Canada, and individuals receiving income from Canada who are living abroad.
Pension payments between the respective countries are treated in the following way: Vietnam and Croatia apply withholding tax rates limited to 15%, while Chile allows all pension payments to be taxed only in the country where they are paid out.
Social security payments under the tax treaty provisions are taxable only in the country in which they originate and in accordance with domestic legislation.
In order to avoid double taxation each of the treaties also contains specific rules which in the case of Canada refers to an exemption for certain dividends received from foreign affiliates and for credit in other cases. One exception is the treaty with Vietnam which contains a rule referred to as the tax sparing provision, ensuring that the most developed countries will not tax away some incentives provided under the domestic legislation of less developed countries. This is apparently to be a short term provision.
These treaties provide for an exchange of tax information between the revenue authorities of countries to assist them in the fight against tax fraud and evasion. The problem, however, is that the treaties only say that information may be exchanged and do not say it must be exchanged or is required to be exchanged. For example, individuals and companies which may want to play around with the tax system run a risk of tax authorities obtaining tax information but no guarantee.
While supporting this initiative to create better checks and balances on taxation information matters between these countries, however, we should encourage the same government to look further to the concerns about large flows of investments that go unrecorded and the level of fiscal evasion that these unrecorded investments represent.
While I am on my feet it is important to make reference to the Tobin tax on foreign exchange transactions which can be used in this area. Indeed there are areas of the international economy that require active supervision and control. That is our strong contention. International trade and investment grow best during the careful process of long term planning and prediction. Uncertainty such as the current turbulence in today's financial markets and their effects on domestic interest rates and dollar values are too costly. The biggest challenge we have is to regulate the financial markets so that their speed is slowed and their powers reduced somewhat.
There has been a fair amount of talk about the Tobin tax or the Tobin toll. I will take a few minutes during this intervention to comment on it. The Tobin tax derives its name from James Tobin, a Nobel prize winning economist who first proposed the idea of a tax on foreign exchange transactions that would be applied uniformly by all major countries. I believe he was talking about a small amount, less than .5%, to be levied on all foreign currency exchange transactions to deter speculation on currency fluctuations.
While the rate would be low enough not to have a significant effect on longer term investment where yield is higher, it would cut into the yields of speculators moving massive amounts of currency around the globe as they seek to profit from minute differentials in currency fluctuation.
We might ask why the support is growing for such a tax. The interest has grown rapidly in such a mechanism as the place of foreign exchange transactions and financial deregulation has accelerated significantly over the past decade. We believe that today about $1.5 trillion U.S. is traded every day on unregulated markets and less than 5% of this activity is related to trade in goods and services. The remaining 95% is simply speculative activity as traders take advantage of exchange rate fluctuations and international interest rate differentials.
This kind of financial speculation plays havoc with national budgets, as we have seen this summer in our own country, economic planning and the allocation of resources.
Governments and citizens are becoming increasingly frustrated by the whimsical and often irrational activities in global financial markets that have such an influence over national economies and are seeking some means to curb damaging and unproductive speculative activities.
A uniform tax on foreign exchange transactions would deter speculation by imposing a small tax on such activities. This would reduce the volatility of exchange rate fluctuations and provide exporters, importers and long term investors a more stable exchange rate in return for paying the tax.
The tax would give more autonomy to governments to set national fiscal and monetary policies by making possible greater differences between short term interest rates in different currencies. Such a tax would also reinvigorate the capacity of central banks to alter exchange rate trends by intervening in currency markets. By cutting down on the overall volume of foreign exchange transactions, central banks would not need as much financial clout in order to intervene in the market.
This tax would raise revenue. By all estimates there would be significant sums and receipts. Assumptions vary about the actual rate of the tax, the decline in volume of trade, the amount of trade circumventing the tax and which transactions would be exempt; however, for illustration, assuming a conservative tax rate of 0.2% and an effective tax base of $75 trillion U.S. annually, the tax would yield about $150 billion annually in receipts. Given the declining commitments to bilateral development assistance around the world, the tax should generate important resources to support sustainable human development.
There are two key political issues involved with putting such a tax into place. First, it would be necessary to forge agreement amongst the major countries to implement a uniform tax. Second, there would have to be agreement on the collection and distribution of the tax revenue.
Developing countries have always been much more vulnerable to exchange rate volatility, but there is for the first time a convergence of interest between industrialized and developing countries as they all seek stronger government autonomy and more effective central bank intervention.
Pressure is building on national governments, including this one, and international institutions to support a Tobin tax from coalitions of non-governmental organizations representing labour, church, environment, women, youth, seniors and poverty groups as they seek to restore some measure of democratic control of their national economies.
Perhaps more significant is the fact that many governments face large deficits and strong anti-tax populism among the electorate and are looking for new sources of tax revenue that are not politically suicidal. Such a minimal tax will not hit main street in this case, but rather Bay and Wall Streets.
The promise of a new source of revenue will likely be the primary motivation for reaching agreement to implement the tax.
Collection and distribution of the tax revenue is a much trickier question. The tax rate would have to be applied worldwide at the same rate in all markets. There would also have to be agreement on precisely which transactions would be subjected to the tax. Compliance would depend on the banking and market institutions. Tracking the activity would certainly be possible as the financial industry has the sophisticated technology required to do this, but enforcement would rest with the major economic powers and the international financial institutions.
There would certainly be some strong resistance from members of the financial sectors, some of whom have already begun to speak out against this proposal. That is not surprising. It is possible that some members of the financial community might support the tax; however, the pace and volumes traded in the markets has added a level of risk to doing business, for as much as great profits can result from speculation, so can great losses such as the Barings Bank fiasco of a couple of years ago.
Some experienced business people may see the value of the limited risk of more stable markets suggesting, if not the Tobin proposal, other strategies to limit the volatility of the current global money system.
What we are supporting and recommending is a tax to curb speculation in foreign currency exchange as an innovative and fair proposal that will contribute to restoring democratic control over our national economies and generate substantial revenues to build a sustainable future.
Governments around the world, the UN, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank should take the steps necessary to implement a tax to curb currency speculation as quickly as possible.
Finally, the tax should be administered by an accountable democratic structure, such as could be found within the United Nations, with the revenue collected used for genuine social development.
With that I will take my seat and, in so doing, indicate that our caucus is in full support of Bill S-16.
Agriculture September 24th, 1998
Mr. Speaker, the minister of agriculture will be aware that the U.S. Congress appears almost certain to introduce a significant farm aid program this fall amounting to several billion dollars.
The American government is responding to some of the lowest commodity prices in memory by promising help to its farmers.
Disastrously low prices exist on our side of the 49th parallel as well. Would the minister of agriculture please inform the House today what disaster relief assistance is being planned by his department for Canadian farmers?
Agriculture September 22nd, 1998
Mr. Speaker, the minister has to date steadfastly refused an invitation to meet face to face with Mr. Glickman. I appreciate that he has had some phone conversations.
In his answer to the first question is he now saying that he is acceding to the invitation and will be meeting with his U.S. counterpart tomorrow? Is that what he is telling the House today?