Jim Silye

[Program Cost Declaration Act, December 13th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to this bill presented by the Liberal member for Durham. I feel in this particular instance he is definitely on the right track. As this is a private member's bill I can personalize it and strongly emphasize how much I support the general thrust and intent of the bill.

The bill will require that the estimated annual cost and the cost per capita of every new government program be published as soon as the bill that authorized it is introduced in Parliament or the regulation that implements it is issued. The auditor general's opinion on the estimate is also to be published.

When a bill would come to this House at second reading stage there would be a requirement for the government to present to us the costs and economic impact of the bill. The actual requirement is that the government would have to explain the economic impact so that all members of this House and all Canadians could understand the nature of the bill. This has to be a tremendous improvement over what we are doing now in this House of Commons. I will use two examples to illustrate areas that would be improved by this bill: the tobacco bill and the disability aspect of the Canada pension plan.

The tobacco bill is being hotly debated and hotly contested. It is a tough issue. There is a fine line between trying to impose regulations and steep taxes on this legal substance-it is legally allowed to be sold-and restricting the impact of this substance on the health and welfare of individual Canadians, especially the young people because of its highly addictive qualities.

We have debated this bill. The tobacco industry and related lobbyists have said that the advertising and sponsorship provisions in the bill and the restrictive nature of the sale of cigarettes will force them to reduce their funding.

The Minister of Health has not provided us with any numbers on the economic impact on advertising or sponsorship. He has raised the taxes by $1.50 per carton. He said that he could not go any higher, that the committee had advised him a greater tax increase would encourage the smuggling trade. Some of these numbers should have been given to us, for example the extra revenue the tax increase will generate.

Why is it that cigarettes can be sold in B.C. for $44 a carton with a high taxation level, which encourages east to west smuggling? When people are in Toronto they go to the huge warehouses and buy cartons of cigarettes for $19 each whereas in B.C. they pay $44. They will spend $500 to save $500. It pays for the air fare. If they bring $1,000 they can really save money.

When bills are presented, these things are not being explained to us as members of Parliament. If this type of explanation were given, a bill like the tobacco bill would not be debated just on the basis of emotion, the emotion of addiction, the emotion of what it is doing to youth, the emotion of something that supposedly is bad but nevertheless is legal. The bill could be discussed with some balance; the emotional arguments would be balanced with the economic arguments.

The government has been trying to introduce the tobacco legislation for 14 months but has not been able to. People have been dying from smoking cigarettes. But when the health minister suddenly introduces the legislation, it has to be passed now, before Christmas. It has to be fast tracked because people are dying and that is all we are concentrating on.

If a bill were presented along with its economic impact it would have to have a more thorough review at the departmental and ministerial levels before it even got to cabinet. If cabinet were to approve the bill with its financial ramifications, it would then be presented to us on that basis. That would make a big difference for all parliamentarians. Then we could make a proper balanced decision on these bills.

I read the member for Durham's opening speech on this bill. He said that many members of Parliament end up voting just to go along with their party line, but they do not really understand what they are really voting for and why they are voting the way they are.

I am currently a member of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. We just finished reviewing chapter 17 on CPP disability. In his report the auditor general indicated that management is a problem in the civil service. I am not saying nor is he saying that it is mismanagement. The problem is undermanagement.

There is not enough leadership, not enough guidance. There are not enough rules for the people in management to carry out effective control of the programs they are in charge of. There are not enough effective controls to say yea or nay to certain people on disability. The rules are archaic. They have been added on since 1970. It is an abomination.

Some of these people in the bureaucracy need help. As legislators, we are the ones who are standing in the way. We have now given them the tools to work with so all they have to do is say no or yes to people and there are a lot of complaints. This type of bill would enable the presenter to make the proper changes and talk about the financial impact.

An overall review is necessary in our CPP, which we are doing, but it is also needed specifically in the disability area. Since 1993 the department has done 24,000 reassessments of long term disability claimants and found that 34 per cent of them no longer qualified but were still receiving benefits. Fortunately, over half of that money will be recoverable and the government will get some money back.

It is a serious matter. There has to be a mechanism in the rules which states that we must present a cost benefit analysis of a bill or changes to a bill so that everybody understands not just the kind of society we are trying to create or the caring we want to show the people in Canada but also the economic impact along with the emotional impact.

It is important for us as legislators to give those in the civil service the tools to work with so they can do a proper job in effectively controlling the public purse strings. It is becoming far too easy for politicians to stand up and say that they just blew it. If that is what we say, then we are not assuming our responsibilities to pass good and effective legislation that will make spending more visible, that will make the cost of government more apparent that will be in the best interests of every single political party in the House and all Canadians whose tax dollars we suck out of their pocketbooks. We must know who spends it, who is accountable for it and how wisely the money is being spent, which is what Bill C-214 does.

We could amend the bill a little by adding a sunset clause where it would be compulsory at the end of the fifth year to check out the viability of each of the programs to see if they are successful in achieving their desired ends.

On the auditor general's opinion on the estimates, which is also to be published, I disagree a little bit with my colleague from Durham in this area. The job of the auditor general is to audit after the fact and not predict before the fact.

The auditor general's job in auditing is to match the intent of government legislation and the intent of programs with the success or failure of achieving the objectives, which is what he is doing now. I believe that is something he can still do. He would be doing the value for money audits but for example, it would have been so much easier had the Minister of Health presented all the financial implications of the Tobacco Act.

There is also the Endangered Species Act. How much is that going to cost? What is the impact of that act? There is hardly a member of Parliament here who knows what the impact of that bill will be. Why has that not been presented to us by the minister?

We have a right to know how the money is going to be spent and who is going to have to pay for it. Things like that are very important, very critical and very crucial. I commend the member for Durham for bringing forward a private member's bill like this one.

This is what is going to happen with this. The President of the Treasury Board has said: "We must equip ourselves with better systems for evaluating the actions of government so that we can genuinely answer for actions first and foremost to our fellow citizens who are both clients and taxpayers". He is not showing his support for this bill. He is staying neutral because he says it is a private member's bill. He says it is the job of the standing committees to ask those questions about what a bill costs and what money is going to be spent.

My colleague from Lloydminster in a prior speech has pointed out how effective standing committees are in getting that kind of information. The minister says: "A cost analysis is given to cabinet confirming the financial impacts in a confidential memorandum". If it is already being done, then share it with the Canadian public

and the House of Commons. It should not be any big deal for the minister to support this.

I would just like to conclude with one comment by the member for Durham. I like this quote and will give him credit for it: "The forces that would turn government back on the road to fiscal irresponsibility are at work today", and they are still out there. "They ponder how to spend annualized surpluses, even though the debt stands at over $600 billion. This legislation will serve as a check on these forces".

[Petitions, December 13th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition from 29 Calgary constituents who call on the government to support the immediate initiation of an international convention which will set out a binding timetable for the abolition of all nuclear weapons. They request that the initiative be concluded by the year 2000.

[Petitions, December 11th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition contains 139 signatures on behalf of the Don't Tax Reading Coalition.

They call on the government to demonstrate its commitment to education and literacy by eliminating sales tax on reading materials under the proposed harmonized sales tax.

[Petitions, December 11th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present two petitions. The first petition contains 26 names on behalf of the Canadian Automobile Association.

They call on the government to join with provincial governments to make a national highway system upgrading possible beginning in 1997.

[Excise Tax Act, December 10th, 1996]

There is another member who does not understand the facts of what the Prime Minister has done. There are two ways taxes are raised. One way is to raise the rate. The other way is to reduce the exemptions or the deductions or to tinker with the tax base on which one has to pay that rate of tax. He has not raised the rate, but he has surely and often in a number of ways tinkered with the deductions.

Let me give an example. From now on if ever the Prime Minister or the finance minister says that he has not raised personal income taxes-and I dare him right now to say it after I have put this into the record-his nose will grow like Pinocchio every time he says it.

The current rule in the Income Tax Act for labour sponsored venture capital corporations is that you are allowed up to 20 per cent of the net cost not to exceed $5,000. In layman's terms that is what the rule says basically. Now the government is reducing that for this year. There is a transition from 1996 to 1997. It has amended section 127.4 to provide that an individual's tax credit is limited to a uniform 15 per cent of the net cost. That means it has been reduced to $3,500. It means that those people who were putting money away, working for companies that sponsored these RRSP type investments now have to pay tax on another $1,500 that

prior to this they did not have to pay tax on. That is a personal tax increase.

The finance minister has increased personal taxes to the degree of disposable income for families on a personal basis going down by $3,000. I just hope that this finance minister has the courtesy to admit this and never again say in this House that he has not raised personal income taxes. That is as close to the Pinocchio syndrome that we have in this House. I would use another word, but I respect the Chair and I know that I cannot use language like that.

My final comment is that there is a member from Newfoundland who was talking about what I said about harmonization. We are against this nickel and dime, two bit effort to harmonize. If a package was presented to us that harmonized with all provinces we might consider supporting it. We would have to see it first. We have not seen it yet.

Second, if the government is going to harmonize and we do want to have the lowest rate, we have to look at the possibility of taxing everything that we can. This is what the member from Newfoundland will not put in his speech. To help the poorest and the neediest of the needy you have an increased rebate program to make sure that those people do not suffer. This would really tax the rich and that is what the Liberals like to do-

[Excise Tax Act, December 10th, 1996]

Is that true, hon. member across the way?

[Excise Tax Act, December 10th, 1996]

Yes. Cooking the books is what it is.

It is a fine line but a lot of people have compromised on it. If we had proper time to debate this, and if the member opposite would sit and listen for a while instead of just jabbering off and trying to interfere with my speech, he might learn and understand that this is a bad precedent. It is bad for Canada.

Politicians cannot be allowed to cook the books. The finance minister needs to stick to generally accepted accounting principles, stick to government precedents and not change the rules as he goes along just to make himself and his government look good on their promise to achieve 3 per cent of GDP and to get this out of the way so he does not have to show it in this year's statement.

That is why we are upset about time allocation. It restricts the time that members have to say what they want to say. We have to waste half our speech to get this message across to the Canadian public that our democratic rights are being infringed on when we are being denied the opportunity to speak.

Another thing that really upsets me when it comes to finances is yesterday, in answer to a member from the Bloc Quebecois, the finance minister bragged that he has not raised taxes in three years, that personal income taxes have not increased in three years.

[Excise Tax Act, December 10th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to finally address Bill C-70.

I find it ironic that the first thing the government does is it invokes time allocation again. When the Liberals sat here in opposition and the Conservative government did it, the Liberals cried about how it was anti-democratic, how it was restricting freedom of speech, and how it prevented people in all parts of the country from speaking out on an issue that is as important as this one.

This bill is going to cost taxpayers in excess of $1 billion. The sum total of the bill's ramifications will be in excess of $1 billion. I will get to another amendment on getting rid of exemptions on the ways and means motion in a second.

Why put this kind of pressure on members of Parliament by not allowing proper time to debate an issue? Why push this through the House of Commons real fast? Is it because the government has used an incentive of $961 million to get these Atlantic provinces to buy into a program that is going to cost Atlantic consumers more in the long run? Is it to make three provincial premiers look good today, while in the long run they are going to lose their jobs? I predict what just happened in P.E.I. will happen to the rest of them.

People across the country have one thing in common: if it affects their pocketbooks they get upset. When they find out in Atlantic Canada that this harmonization is strictly helping business, that this tax inclusive pricing will tend to lead to higher prices in the long run without them knowing it, there is going to be a huge rebellion in those provinces in the next election.

How can the government justify invoking closure on a bill like this? It goes back to the March 6 budget of this year and here we are today in December. Does the government not know how to plan an agenda? Does the government not know how to present something in the House of Commons so members can totally debate it?

We have been here for three years and I have counted 26 time allocations and three closure motions. For those people who do not understand the three closure motions, closure allows time to talk out the issue until 11 o'clock that day. That gives more time for members of Parliament to discuss it.

What does the government do? Twenty-six times it has used the hammer of time allocation, not closure. This means the debate ends at the end of Government Orders which is usually around 5.30 p.m. This debate will be over at 5.30 p.m. tonight and it denies us an extra five and a half hours to debate the issue.

Where are the Liberal members from western Canada? Do they agree that we should give $1 billion of taxpayers' money outside those provinces? They are too chicken to say anything. I challenge them to stand in the House and say something. I challenge the members from B.C. to speak for 10 minutes in support of the finance minister on this issue. I challenge all of Atlantic Canada Liberal members to get up and support this and say how wonderful it is. I expect them to do that and justify it.

Twenty-three per cent of the bills that we have been debating in this House have used either time allocation or closure. Let us look at the statistics a little further. One hundred and twenty-three bills have been passed in the three years to date and half, or close to half, of those bills have been supported by the opposition. That reduces it to 62 bills. That means whenever the opposition, either the Bloc or the Reform, puts a little pressure on the government by trying to show how a bill can be better, or tries to improve it through amendments or whatever, the government has invoked time allocation and closure 29 times. That then increases the percentage to almost half.

This government does not appreciate debate. This government does not welcome debate. Its members are hypocrites when they say they listen to the public. They are duplicitous when they tell the Canadians public that members of Parliament are given lots of time to speak. We are not. Our ability to speak out on this issue has been severely restrained and it is time for us to tell the Canadian public what is happening.

A payment of $961 million was made to three provinces in October of this year. It was charged off to last year's budget, to last year's income statement, to last year's deficit ending March 1996. This finance minister is setting a bad precedent. That is not just my opinion, that is the opinion of the Auditor General of Canada. That is in the public accounts.

Yes, the auditor general signed off on the financial statement. He did not have any reservations about them because he felt the bottom line of $28 billion is a true number but not because it includes the $961 million. He would not have included that. It is because there were other circumstances. I got this from the testimony of members of Treasury Board and the auditor general in the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. It is because there were other areas of revenue, small amounts and bigger amounts, that add up almost to the same amount. Because he saw those offsetting amounts he did not have a reservation. If those other amounts had not been understated by the government he would have had a reservation in this last year's presentation.

[Excise Tax Act, December 10th, 1996]

Keep going, George. Keep going.

[Excise Tax Act, December 10th, 1996]

Read us something. Be accurate.