Jim Silye

[Speech From The Throne, March 5th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources if she feels the government should reconfigure how to calculate the royalties on the oil and gas sector to try to extract an extra $100 million out of the industry.

[Speech From The Throne, March 5th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, to whomever yelled that out, I am trying to apply the rules.

What I am trying to say is when the member had the floor it was also a 20-minute time period and we were splitting our time. He was only five minutes into his 20-minute period. How could the debate have ended then?

[Speech From The Throne, March 5th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I believe you will find if you check with the table officers that when we ended debate on this subject matter, my colleague for Okanagan Centre had the floor and he was halfway through his speech. I thought that when we resumed this debate it would pick up where he left off. He still had five minutes left in his speech.

[Committees Of The House, March 4th, 1996]

It has now been acknowledged that it does not say official, it says opposition party. To apply some common sense, if Reform has 52 members and the Bloc Quebecois has 52 members, somewhere along the line out of 27 standing committees just one of the vice-chairs should be a member of the Reform Party. That does not happen. Not one committee has a Reform Party member as a vice-chair. The Reform Party and the Bloc Quebecois have the same number of seats. We have never had that.

We may have negotiated away one or two vice-chairs in October 1993, and I do acknowledge that did happen, but the Bloc members then had 54 members and we only had 52 members.

The House has been prorogued, now it is back and all new members and new chairs have been assigned. Some parliamentary secretaries were fired, chairmen of standing committees were fired so new ones were needed. That has been done and all new members were assigned.

In those standing committees now vice-chairs are supposed to be picked. There is a procedure to follow. The same procedure was followed as the first time around. They did not have any kind of duly conducted election that allowed members of both opposition parties because when it gets to committee we are not talking now about official opposition and third party, we are talking about opposition parties. It just so happened that all the vice-chairs went to the Bloc Quebecois again.

In defence of this the chief government whip, and boy does he ever change his mind when he is in government from when he was in opposition. Witness his defence of Motion No. M-1 that is also being debating today and how he flip-flopped on that issue. Now all of a sudden it is democratic to do that.

He is arguing that what the government is doing in naming all of the Bloc members as vice-chairs is democratic and is based on tradition. Tradition says opposition. That does not mean official opposition. If tradition says whoever is official opposition gets all the vice-chairs, fine, but we are now tied.

The Bloc has been named by the Speaker as the official opposition but in standing committees we have 52 members, they have 52 members. Why would the chief government whip not concede or consent, in the spirit of fairness, in the application of common sense, that maybe one or two Reform Party members be vice-chairs. There is precedence for this.

I do not know if my colleague, the current whip, has mentioned this but a member of the third party was a vice-chair in a standing committee of human rights and status of disabled persons on May 29, 1991. There are lots of examples where members other than the official opposition were vice-chairs. The chief government whip's assertion that they are just following tradition is faulty at best.

In the history of this country it has never been so crucial that we have some people representing the interests of all of Canada. If the Reform Party cannot be the official opposition, that is fine because of numbers and incumbency, but at least in standing committees perhaps Reformers could have a couple of vice-chairs. That would make sure the interests of all Canadians are being looked after, not just those interests that the separatist party of Quebec now represents. They would be only dealing with those issues, only trying to get those witnesses, only asking those questions which help to tear this country apart, not to hold it together. They are only interested

in showing that it is in their best interests to break away from Canada and to break up this country. Because it is not traditional to have this kind of a quirk in parliamentary history, we have a party sent to Ottawa from a region that is unhappy with the intrusion into their lives by the federal government, and justly so. In fact they are so unhappy that they sent a lot of them here to send this government a message. The message is: Do something about our problem. Do something to protect our interests.

That is no different from the Reform Party where the majority, with the exception of one lone Reformer from Ontario, my colleague who sits beside me, are all from the west. We were sent here to send a strong message to the federal government that it has intruded into our lives and that we want changes.

This is all about change. It is also all about change in the standing committees. It is about time that some of the government members grew up and applied a little common sense and fairness to this whole business. They cannot continue to believe in one thing and say another. I do not believe they can be in opposition and say that they believe in one thing-for instance, about reintroducing government bills after prorogation and the hue and cry that they set out here when they were in opposition-and then go over to the other side and say it is okay. At which point were they right? Are they right now and wrong when they were in opposition or are they wrong now and right when they were in opposition?

I state unequivocally that it is wrong when two opposition parties are tied, each having 52 members, that one party gets all the vice-chairs and the other party gets none. There has to be something wrong with that. Somebody coming from the outside who knows very little about it would say: "What are the rules? How come the Reform Party has none?"

The Prime Minister has even said that he would like to see more balance in the House of Commons. As a matter of fact when I first looked into what the Liberal members said when they were in opposition they also held the view, Mr. Speaker, that in the position that you are in right now that the Speaker should come from the government, duly elected, unlike what the House leader for the Bloc said. It should be by secret ballot, which is very democratic. The Deputy Speaker should be from the government side and perhaps an assistant deputy speaker should be from the government side. However they also maintain, and there is a paper to this effect that some cabinet ministers and Liberal members have written and believe in, that the other two speakers, deputy or assistant deputy speakers should be, guess what, from the opposition parties. That is what they said in opposition.

It is now two and a half years later in the second session of the 35th Parliament. The House has prorogued and come back. The

Liberals had their second opportunity, their second chance to get it right. This is their second chance to keep the promises they made, the systemic changes they put in their red book. It is in the red book where they talk about giving more recognition to the opposition parties in Parliament. Do you know why they said that, Mr. Speaker? Because they sat on this side of the House for eight years. They were frustrated by closure. They were frustrated by time allocation. They were frustrated by how they were assigned vice-chairs and how they did things. They were frustrated by who got to sit in that chair to monitor proceedings and to make sure the rules were followed.

They made all these promises to the Canadian public and they have not kept one. On democratic reform they have not kept one of their promises.

Perhaps I should write the Prime Minister a letter on the red book and ask him where he stands on these promises. Where does the Prime Minister stand on these promises he made of changes in the House and in the deputy chairs?

What I feel as a member of Parliament is very unfortunate. There is no way that we can hold the government accountable for the promises it made until the next election. It seems to me that the Prime Minister is proud of that. It seems to me that the Prime Minister is happy that he has all this time to not keep those promises, to renege on those promises.

He will not get another chance now to fulfil the promise he made on how we should be operating the Speakers in the chair and how two of them should be from the opposition parties. He will not get another chance to keep those promises that he would protect the civil service, yet 45,000 of them were let go.

When people make promises, when they say that this is what they plan to do, will do, given the opportunity to do it should they not do it? Should people not follow through on their promises?

Here we are with two opposition parties equal in the number of seats yet in standing committees, each and every one of them belongs to one party. Had the ruling been the other way, had the Speaker ruled that the Reform Party was now the official opposition, does anyone think for a minute that we would have asked for every vice-chair in the committees? The Bloc would have had some vice-chairs.

The irony is that here we have an important standing committee like public accounts where there are audits and reviews of the government expenditures. The auditor general submits a lot of work to that committee. I must admit right now that the member who represents the Bloc was the chair of that standing committee

and he did a fine job. He was an excellent chair of that committee. I am not picking on him as an individual. I want to make that very clear.

Having said that, I do not believe that in the public accounts committee the chair should go to a member of a party that has the equal number of seats as another party but which only represents a small regional, specific interest which is to take a part of the country out of this democracy, out of the union. I object to that. That is one area where the Reform could have been chair. Once again, the chair of that committee has done an excellent job. He was a good chair. That is not my point. I want to make that perfectly clear, because I do not want to hurt anybody's feelings.

The feelings I want to hurt are the Prime Minister's and those of the chief government whip because of the promises they made. They are the ones who are breaking their promises. They are the ones who are operating this House in a dictatorial fashion. Even the backbenchers cannot say anything. Government backbenchers cannot criticize the government. We see what happens to those members. They are left out; they are shoved out; they are put out.

That is not the way democracy should work. How can it ever hurt to have a few people who want to have a flat tax, to have a few people who want to get rid of the GST, to have a few people who want to protect the civil service? How can it possibly hurt when the government has the majority of members? It cannot.

To summarize, the tradition of the committee election process needs review. This whole issue should be reviewed by the procedure and House affairs committee. We have had filibusters in the past two years. In the year that I was the whip for this party I had to attend some fiascos in some of the standing committees.

Autocracy and heavy handedness was used by some of the chairmen from the government side, probably through ignorance because they did not know the rules. Nevertheless, they treated all members with disdain, just appointing and going through the election process without a concern. I was there. The chief government whip walked into the meeting and would say that this person would be the vice-chair: Bloc, vice-chair; Bloc, vice-chair; Bloc, vice-chair; Bloc, vice-chair; 23 times.

That is not a process whereby members of the standing committee are empowered to elect their chair and vice-chair. We know who should be chair; that is not a problem. But we could have had a couple of elections for vice-chair. We never had a serious one to put a member of the Reform Party there and we are now tied. It did not happen. It was all a sham and a scam.

No matter what the chief government whip tries to say to defend this, he knows what he told his people. The chairman of each and every standing committee, with the exception of public accounts, knows what he was told to do. What happened is a distortion of the democratic process. It is unfair now because we do have 52 members, the same as the Bloc.

Yes, the Bloc is the official opposition and it is welcome to the job, but in standing committees we should have a few vice-chairs. That is all we felt we should have. The signal and the sign we wanted to see from the government was that perhaps it was willing to accept the fact that some standing committees could use a vice-chair from the Reform Party. However, Liberal members were told what to do from on high and on high said no. They were not allowed to make vice-chairs of any of the Reform Party members who wanted and who sought to attain that position.

As it turns out, this government is behaving in the worst fashion. It is even worse than the previous government of the eight years before the Liberals took power. With all the things this government when it was in opposition said about the Conservative government and what it attacked the Conservative government about, prime ministerial travel, time allocation, closure, the Tory GST, nothing has changed. Only the faces have changed. We have not changed the system and until that happens, this country will pay a heavy price for it.

[Committees Of The House, March 4th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I stand corrected. I would have been okay if we had had only four weeks off. That extra three weeks totally threw me and I have forgotten some of the rules.

The party that forms the official opposition is the one that has the second highest number of seats. When we came here in October 1993 that was the Bloc Quebecois and they formed the official opposition. We were the third party. Any party that has less than 12 members is not recognized as an official party in the House of Commons. Those are the rules and they are good rules. I stand by them and I would defend them.

Now there has been a drop in numbers. Representation in the House has changed since prorogation and at this time both opposition parties, the Bloc Quebecois and the Reform Party, have the same number of members. We both have 52 members. I personally do not disagree with the ruling of the Speaker as to which party should be the official opposition.

Now I proceed to standing committees. There is a difference between how the rules operate here in the House and how they operate in standing committees. As the House leader of the Bloc tried to point out, we negotiated in October 1993. The Bloc negotiated from a position where they had two more members than the Reform Party. Now we have the same number of members. When it comes to standing committees, each committee elects its own chair. It makes sense to me that the chair of each of those committees should be a member from the government side with the exception of public accounts because that would be construed as a conflict of interest. The chairman of the public accounts committee should be a member of an opposition party.

It does not say a member of the official opposition should be vice-chairs anywhere in Beauchesne. The standing orders do not refer to official opposition, it just says opposition. I wish members opposite in the government would look that up. I challenge them to quote me differently and quote me the standing order that says official opposition.

[Committees Of The House, March 4th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak to and support the motion to amend the government motion concerning the list of chairs and vice-chairs of all the standing committees from the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

The points I want to make are all about common sense and fairness. The House leader of the Bloc Quebecois seemed to be saying that we were picking on the Bloc party. That is not the case at all. At least I am not speaking on this issue for the purpose of picking on the Bloc.

I want to point out that what is important in parliamentary tradition in a democracy is fairness, common sense and looking at the total number of seats in the House. As we all know, the government of the day is formed by the party that has the greatest number of seats. In this Parliament that is the Liberal Party. Thus, we have Mr. Chrétien as Prime Minister.

[Government Business, March 4th, 1996]

We are not sure.

[Government Business, March 4th, 1996]

What will it do to the province of Alberta that does not have a provincial sales tax? Are we going to make that government collect 15 per cent of taxes, then rebate people? The government does not brag about things like that. That is very smart politics. The Liberals know how to pull the wool over people's eyes, to distort the truth just a little by talking about what they are doing and how they are doing it. If they say it often enough then people might just believe it.

Do the Liberals brag about all the broken promises they have made but have not kept? There must be a lot of people that voted Liberal who are very disappointed in the government's efforts. In fact, I happen to know of a lot of backbenchers that are unhappy with the government's efforts. I know why they are unhappy. They are unhappy about that GST and the promise of replacing or eliminating it. The red book says replace.

The newspapers have been quite clear that when the Liberals campaigned door to door-I cannot name the members because I do not know their ridings-many of the members around Toronto said, "We will get rid of the GST. We hate the GST. This is an awful tax. It is not going to be there. You vote for us and it is gone. The GST is gone".

The red book says replace which I understand. I understand the Prime Minister saying: "I hate it. I would kill it. We will get rid of it. Now I have to find something to replace it with". I know he did say that. He said that in some speeches. I heard him say that in Calgary when I went to listen to him speak.

However, I hear that a lot of the backbenchers around Toronto did not say that. They went door to door and said: "Vote for me, we'll get rid of the GST". They did not say that would replace it with something revenue neutral. They did not get that elaborate. A lot of the backbenchers are worried about the next election. They are saying that unless the government gets rid of the GST, harmonizes it, hides it or something, and tries to keep this promise, their chances of getting re-elected are nil. It is about integrity. It is about keeping one's word. It is about making a promise and keeping that promise. The government is slowly eroding the foundations of the word called integrity. A national sales tax will be the son of the GST. However, once again it is smart politics but it is not good government.

One of the biggest promises made by the Prime Minister during his campaign was made September 10, 1993, about a month and a half before the vote. He said there would not be a promise that he would make in the campaign that he would not keep. Fair enough.

Five days later he said something to the effect that anyone could go before him at any time with that red book, wave it in his face and say, where are you with your promises? By the points that I made, where is the Prime Minister with his promises?

He broke the promise on NAFTA. He broke the promise on protecting the civil service. He broke the promise on big spending cuts. He broke the promise on the GST or he has not kept it yet, although he still has time. He can still get rid of it. We will wait for him. Mr. Prime Minister, where are you with your promises? Mr. Prime Minister, why are you acting like your predecessor, but even worse? How can you sit on that side of the House?

Reformers could never do that. Once we become the government, we are going to keep our promises. We are going to run this government the way we said we would. We kept our promises. We have kept everything up front, above board and we plan to do that all the way through. The government said one thing to get elected and now its members act like the previous government did in power.

That is a great and huge disservice to the Canadian voting public. That is not the way to retain one's integrity. I do not understand how the Prime Minister can get away with saying one thing in opposition and doing another in government. Now in government the Liberals say they will do something, then not do it or do the opposite.

The Prime Minister is sending out such confusing and convoluted messages whether he says it in French or in English. No matter who is listening, it is confusing, convoluted and complicated. Why can we not get a clear direction from the government? We ask questions in question period. Are we going to have a national referendum on the issue of national unity? Should Quebecers decide for themselves whether or not they should be voting on that issue or should all Canadians have a say?

Anybody can petition for divorce but both parties have to agree to the terms. Maybe that is where some of the separatist members of the Bloc Quebecois can see the government's side. When one gets to the terms of the settlement, perhaps it does take two sides to negotiate and to decide what the consequences of that break-up would be.

This is where the Bloc members could take a look at that new cabinet minister who is not a member yet. He is suggesting that both parties look at it.

Why will the Prime Minister not run Parliament like he promised when he was in opposition? Why will the Prime Minister not live up to the standard that the Canadian public expected of him? He is a very popular individual. He has a personality that is liked by all walks of life. He is an individual who has spent 30 years of his life serving the public.

At the end of those 30 years, is it not worthwhile to be able to say that he kept his word, his promises? Is it not better at the end of 30 years to be able to say that he meant what he said, that he said what he meant and did it instead of caging this all in flowery rhetoric, confusing everybody, hiring spin doctors to give the right image and playing politics all the way through?

I am embarrassed for the government. I am embarrassed that it is doing a worse job than the Conservative Party ever did in terms of the rules of the House and how it is trying to force its legislation through with the use of closure, time allocation and with motions that make it appear to be a government that is not interested in following the democratic process.

[Government Business, March 4th, 1996]

This prorogation was strictly for the purposes of general appearances, to make it look as if the government is still in control. As members will recall, before we prorogued things were unravelling, unsettling.

This Prime Minister bragged about that red book. He bragged about the people he was attracting to that party. He said he had the plan. He said he had the people. However, we very quickly found out that there was no plan because they spent all those months in committees trying to come up with the purple book, the green book, the lavender book and the grey book.

Talk about the people. He fired everybody. His people were so good he fired them all. He fired all the parliamentary secretaries. He fired some cabinet ministers. Where are the people? Those people he brought in, I believe 178 of them, were so good that he had to bring in two more from the outside. Now we have byelections to bring in two new members. Not only have they never been elected before, not only have they never served in public office before; they are cabinet ministers. Right away they are cabinet ministers. How good are these people? For general appearances, that was my point.

Liberals brag about how wonderful their first two years were and how the wonderful finance minister in two years of rolling targets is meeting these soft targets, how great he is and how much better he is than any previous finance minister. I will give him credit for this: the previous finance ministers have been a sorry lot. They could not even project three, four or five months ahead. At least I will give the finance minister credit for setting a target, no matter how soft, and meeting it. He made some cuts, no matter how meagre, and met them and beat them. That is good for the investment community. It just has to be done a little bit quicker.

However, that is about the only thing government members can brag about. Do they brag about abrogating the NAFTA? The Prime Minister in opposition said: "If elected I will abrogate NAFTA unless they change certain clauses". Do members know what really happened? They signed it as was. They did not change one word or one letter in the agreement. They just signed it.

The Liberals said that when they were elected they would protect civil servants. They did a good job of that. They fired 45,000 of them. They promised no big spending cuts. Since they have been in office, during the past two and one-half years, they have announced $15 billion in spending cuts. That is less than what Reformers would have cut but where did they cut the most? Right

where it hurts people the most: in education, in health care and in welfare.

The Reform Party, the party that has been accused of being slash and burn, would have cut $3 billion less than the government on health care, education and welfare. The government's combined cuts with its Canadian social and health transfer is $6.6 billion and ours would have been only $3 billion; that is $3 billion more than we would have cut.

Talk about slash and burn. Talk about draconian. That is the party that should be embarrassed. That is the party that is down loading its problems to the provinces. The provinces now have to deliver the programs for education, health care and welfare. Now they just sit back over there on that side of the House and say: "Boy, did we pull a good one on the provinces, eh? We give them less money, we made our cuts. Now they have to administer it".

Guess whose Parliament gets rocks thrown in the windows? Not the House of Commons but Queen's Park. Guess which premiers get all the flack? Not the Prime Minister but Mike Harris and Ralph Klein. They have to take all the flack over health care and education when they are trying to administer the diminishing funds they are getting. They should have had $3 billion more.

Talk about smart. That is smart. It is smart politics but it is not smart government. It is not smart investment of money.

Mr. Speaker, in the throne speech did the Liberals brag-I believe the only reason they prorogued the House was to do some bragging-about eliminating that GST? No. Once again that is smart politics. What did they do? They are now going to introduce a new national sales tax that combines provincial sales taxes with the goods and services tax, calling it the national sales tax.

Do we think the federal government is going to reduce its take from 7 per cent? No. It will expect the tax to go through, combine it with the provinces and call it one tax. I recall when the finance minister was in opposition. He criticized the GST as the replacement for the manufacturers' sales tax. I cannot quite remember the quote, but to paraphrase the finance minister he said that replacing one bad tax with another new bad tax, it still remains a bad tax. Is that not the same logic as that exhibited by the finance minister now? Does a national sales tax which combines a provincial and a federal tax not leave the rates the same? They were bad taxes separately. Is it still not a bad tax to combine them? Does it not remain a bad tax under a different name?

[Government Business, March 4th, 1996]

The action by this government on Motion No. 1 is anti-democratic, is short-circuiting the system and is a very lazy way of governing the country. That is, I think, the secret of the success of this government. It is a do very little or do nothing and keep the Canadian public asleep and quiet. Do not get them upset with any controversial issues. Distort the truth. Tell the Canadian public that we have broken the back of the deficit. Tell the Canadian public that this is the best bill that has ever come along since sliced bread. Then, as the leader of the country, stand up and say: "Don't worry. Be happy. Everything is okay. Quebecers are happy. All Canadians are happy. Everything is fine".

I am disappointed in the government's actions. I am disappointed that government members will not act and behave the way they said they would when they were in opposition.

I submit the following as being the real reason the government is doing this. It has no real, new, substantive legislation planned for this session. Therefore, it needs an inventory to draw on. What better inventory than the 32 bills that are sitting in abeyance somewhere in various stages? If it has a slow Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, when the member for the opposition party gets up on the Thursday question and asks: "What is in store the next week?", the government will be able to just pick one out here or there or knowing that a committee is not very busy and it will just pick another one out and get the committee busy. That is why the government did this. It has nothing planned.

Look at the throne speech. What is in the throne speech that sets out anything newer than what it said in the first throne speech? What is in the throne speech that gives it a new direction or a new focus so Canadians can feel there is something to look forward to? What is there?