Nelson Riis

[Division No. 327, March 8th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to say a few words on this group of motions.

The debate coming from certain quarters has puzzled me somewhat. The Reform Party has been very strong in its opposition to this bill. It has been saying that we have no need to protect culture but only to promote it. That is an interesting observation. I do not agree with it but it is a free country and people can hold the views they want.

Today we are debating the 21 amendments proposed by the Reform Party. In my judgment those amendments delete every clause of the bill until nothing much is left. The amendments to methodically delete every trace of the bill seem to reflect the Reform Party's approach to Canadian culture, not in terms of protecting but in terms of promoting. In a very methodical and clinical way these amendments delete, delete, delete until the bill is emasculated.

[Petitions, February 19th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to present a petition pursuant to Standing Order 36 on behalf of the citizens of the great city of Kamloops who point out many concerns they have regarding a number of our international trade agreements. They fear that they obligate the transfer of bulk water from Canada to the United States and northern Mexico.

The petitioners are simply asking the House to re-examine these agreements to ensure that is not the case.

[The Budget, February 18th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance likely knows that people on social assistance do not get the benefits of that child tax benefit. The provinces claw it back. He knows that benefit is not a great deal.

My supplementary question regards a comment written in the red book which I suspect he had something to with. It reads, “The introduction of the hated GST has compounded unfairness and complexity. The GST has undermined public confidence in the fairness of the tax system”.

Rather than come in with this array of tax changes that really benefited some very wealthy people and did nothing for those who need it the most, why did the Minister of Finance not reduce the GST even by one point—

[The Budget, February 18th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance who did indicate in his budget the growing concern about the gap between the haves and have nots in Canada.

As a result of the tax changes he introduced the other day, we find that the president of the Royal Bank received about a $30,000 tax break while hardworking Bob Price in my constituency got a tax break of about 35 cents a day. Holly Olson, a single mom with four children on social assistance, got zero tax relief from this budget.

With these kinds of tax changes, does it not actually expand the gap between the haves and have nots as opposed to reducing it?

[The Budget, February 18th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend's question. I can best respond to it by saying there would be a fair way to approach this issue.

His figures were accurate. I did some checking locally. He was right that a bank president like Mr. Cleghorn would save about $30,000 as a result. Bob Price, a gentleman who works in my constituency, calculated that he would benefit by about $115 a year. This is on taxes. Remember that at the same time there is a tax benefit of $115, the government is taking that much more in CPP payments. In a sense he will actually lose. Carol Smith, a single mom raising two children on social assistance, got nothing in terms of tax benefits.

Obviously this is a very unfair approach in terms of how the tax system is modified. My friend's suggestion is worth looking at and has considerable merit.

[The Budget, February 18th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend has summarized a number of obvious concerns regarding the budget. She referred to one aspect that I do not have time to address and that is the whole issue of employment insurance benefits.

I think it is well known by all members and most Canadians that one of the reasons the government has a surplus in order to provide some of these initiatives is as a result of taking a lot of money out of the EI fund. That is really an insurance fund; it ought not to be a source of government revenues. It is also fair for her to say that it is acknowledged that the level of benefits is inadequate.

It was interesting to note on doing an analysis the other day that a few years ago 75% of people who lost their jobs and had paid into the EI fund actually were able to collect some benefits. That has gone down now to about 34% on average across Canada. Interestingly enough this 34% is the same level as that in the great state of Arkansas, the state which is held as probably one of the crummiest states in which to live in terms of social policy. We have now reduced our social program called EI or unemployment insurance down to one of the lowest levels of the United States, which is what a lot of people feared would occur. We thought we would now see some obvious recognition of this imbalance.

I simply want to say in response to my friend that when we went into this budget, the social playing field if I can call it that, was very much tilted, out of whack. The gap between those who have and those who have not was increasing. This was an opportunity to level the playing field in social policy, to make it a little bit more even so that a child growing up in one part of Canada under certain circumstances would have a similar opportunity as a child growing up in another part of Canada. In other words, level the playing field so people have an equal opportunity to become the productive citizens they wish to be.

Was that playing field improved, or was it tilted even further? It was actually tilted even further. The gap was made even worse as a result of this budget, which is why I started off my speech by saying that I found it to be a rather disgusting budget presentation, when we consider what could have been done and what was done.

[The Budget, February 18th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question because it allows me to say two or three points which I forgot to mention. By the way, I did not write out my speech, as she could probably tell.

Not only did I listen to the Minister of Finance, I was in the lockup and read all the documents for four straight hours. Therefore, it is not as though this were some kind of a flippant response.

First let me inform my hon. friend that a mother on social assistance raising children does not get the child tax benefit. It is clawed back by the provincial government and the member should know that.

When the member goes home next week I would ask her to visit some of the families in her constituency. Ask them how delighted they are with the federal budget. I know what she is going to hear. They probably do not even know there was a federal budget and thank goodness because they were overlooked in it.

Should I or they be thankful for this little tiny handout? That is like walking down the street and getting mugged. Somebody takes your wallet with all your money and credit cards and then says “By the way pal, here is your wallet back” and you are supposed to be thankful for getting the wallet back.

If all the minister has to say about child poverty is that there is going to be, in her own mind, some minute benefit because of the GST—minute benefit I believe are her own words—if that is the only initiative that the government has taken, I would hope that she would feel kind of badly.

The first part of her question was that investing in productivity will eventually benefit poor people. Boy, there is Ms. Trickle Down herself. This is trickle down economics at its best: give breaks to the wealthy; give breaks to some of the big corporations; give certain select tax breaks and grants; wait for a few weeks, months or years and eventually some will trickle down. Canadians have told her many times they do not want to be trickled on any more. They want some trickle up economics, not trickle down economics.

[The Budget, February 18th, 1999]

The Minister of Finance said in 1990: “Only the federal government has the resources to provide leadership on this crucial social issue”. My friend should be embarrassed for suggesting that it is up to the provinces when her own Minister of Finance said quite the opposite.

There is much to talk about in terms of this budget. At the end of his budget speech the Minister of Finance quoted Sir Wilfrid Laurier saying that the 20th century belonged to Canada. We are entering the 21st century. What a terrible way to be exiting the 20th century with one and a half million kids living in poverty with the government doing nothing to alleviate it. There are hundreds of thousands of homeless people on the streets yet the government does nothing. When we walk out of here today we can see on every main corner in the city of Ottawa, the nation's capital, people begging with caps in hand, and the government does nothing about it.

One thing symbolizes this budget. We acknowledge in this House that parents dependent on social assistance and attempting and struggling to raise families are not getting a single cent of benefit from this budget while millionaires walk away with at least $8,000 in extra cash. It means that the gap between those who have and have not in this country continues to widen, thanks to this budget.

[The Budget, February 18th, 1999]

Does the member think the Minister of Finance did not consult Canadians? He did. I was part of the consultation process. It is called prebudget consultations. I will tell my Liberal friend that the finance committee went into every province asking Canadians to come forward and tell us what they thought should be done with the surplus. That was their task. Not a single individual said that the priorities should be major tax cuts. We talked to hundreds of people. Nobody said ignore the homeless, ignore the unemployed, ignore students with huge debtloads. They did not say that. They said address these serious issues, including health care.

When I went out to consult Canadians from coast to coast to coast and asked them what should be in the budget, none of them said this stuff. None of them said they wanted this budget. They said they wanted a whole bunch of advances on important fronts. What did this Minister of Finance do? He ignored people. If we go out on the streets of Canada today and ask people what they think of this budget they will say that there is nothing in it for them. They did not get anything out of it. Their family did not get anything out of it. They are unemployed. There is nothing in it for them. There are students $40,000 in debt. There is nothing in it for them. There are single moms on social assistance trying to raise three kids. There is nothing in it for them.

I know one guy who is really happy. Mr. Cleghorn, the CEO of the Royal Bank, made a tax break of $30,000 on that announcement. He is $30,000 richer today because of this budget. Bob Cleghorn is a happy camper.

I will tell the House who is not a happy camper. The hundreds of thousands of single moms and single dads raising children on social assistance. They did not get a single cent from this budget. What kind of a government is that? What kind of a government alienates and ignores Canadians? For political scientists watching this, this is the classic liberalism. It is the Darwinian approach to social policy where the weak die and the strong survive. It is survival of the fittest. It is based on the key role of the individual in society.

The Minister of Finance in his budget actually said that the marketplace cannot deal with the social issues of the country. It requires a government. We measure the value of a government not by how it treats the Bob Cleghorns of the world, the millionaires. We measure a government by how it treats ordinary citizens, particularly citizens in need. Were the homeless recognized in this budget? No, they were not. Were the people who today are looking for work recognized? No, they were ignored.

Let us identify a single group of young people. This morning 1.5 million children who are living in poverty because their parents are living in poverty woke up still living in poverty. Is there anything in this budget that is going to change their lives to give them hope and optimism? There is nothing for the 1.5 million kids living in poverty. How can my Liberal friends sit there and not do anything about it and applaud and say this is some great budget? It is very sad.

He said this was a health care budget. What does someone who knows about health care say about it? Let us ask the president of the Canadian Medical Association. He said it had moved it from being an emergency situation to a urgent situation.

He acknowledges that over the next number of years the government is to restore funding. Why? Some members will remember back in 1995 the occurrence of the Ottawa chainsaw massacre. The Minister of Finance came in here with a chainsaw and started to hack $1 million, $2 million, $2.5 million out of the health care budget, one of the major symbols of what it means to be a Canadian.

We had a quality health care system. Yes, I know it started with the NDP in the province of Saskatchewan and built up over the years, but it was a showcase that we could show around the world as what one can do as a country. President Clinton tried to emulate it but he lost that battle. He said look at what Canadians have.

To every single Canadian it was a symbol of what differentiated us from others. It was the best of being Canadian. What did this government do? It just followed suit of Brian Mulroney and came here with a chainsaw and started hacking the health care system year after year.

Finally this year the government says “Whoops, we blew it. We made a mistake. We cut too deeply. We have destroyed the system”. If one looks carefully out there one will see the stealth like change occurring to health care as it is being privatized. Thirty per cent of health care funding today is in the private sector. Nobody talks about this because they are embarrassed to talk about it. It is all because of the slashing, hacking and whacking of the health care budget that allowed the private sector to move into the health care system.

Let us take a look at what this will do. The government says it will restore some of the funding and in a few years from now it will be at the same level it was back in 1995. Big bloody deal. In other words, after years of restoration we are going to be at the same level we were back in the middle part of this decade. Is that progress? At the same time inflation is moving along and the population is increasing.

We are supposed to be cheering here today because the funding is to be restored in a few years back to the levels of 1995. This is almost unbelievable. It is pathetic. Somehow this is held up as a health care budget. The reason it is called a health care budget is it did not do a bloody thing to anything else. Nothing else was recognized.

I think we all acknowledge, including the Minister of Finance in his comments the other day, that the small business sector accounts for most of the jobs being created in Canada. One would expect, at a time when we have levels of joblessness in this country that have been for the last decade the highest since the Great Depression, that the government would want to do something significant in terms of creating employment opportunities and grow the economy into meaningful jobs with the recognition that this involves the small business sector.

Would one not expect the Minister of Finance to do the right thing and say he would make the small business sector a priority by finding ways and means of assisting and supporting the small business sector so it can create employment? I will bet most people thought that would happen.

What did the Minister of Finance, the government and the Liberal Party do about small business? Diddly-squat. I do not know if that is a parliamentary term but I think I will use it anyway. I cannot even say zero because they decided to put $50 million in the next little while into the Business Development Bank of Canada.

I did some calculations and asked what that meant for the province of British Columbia. It means that the province of British Columbia will get over the next few years $5 million to assist the small business sector. This is the only initiative taken by this government. It is absolutely incredible that this government would be so insensitive, so uncaring, so unrealistic, so impractical that it would not do anything to help the sector of the economy that is actually creating some employment.

That is not all. Good grief, I wish I had a longer speech today. Let us acknowledge that the one sector of our economy that creates a lot of meaningful employment is the construction sector. We know that the issue of homelessness is a national tragedy. I do not think there is a single MP in this House who would not say we have a housing crisis in this country. We have to work at this. We live in the second largest country in the world. There are trees from one end of this country to the other. We have land everywhere. We have the banks filled with money and we have a housing crisis. To have a housing crisis you have to really work at this. Our government has somehow been able to do that, to create a housing crisis.

A few years ago the government said it had a big deficit and that it could not do much so it was going to get out of the business of social housing, out of the business of assisting in the development of affordable housing for Canadians. People said that is fair enough, they understood that.

Now we are into a situation where we have billions in surplus. We have people who do not have houses to live in. We have many more people who do not have decent houses to live in. They are trying to raise children in substandard housing. I had a moving evening one night speaking with the grand chief of Canada. I asked what crucial issue facing aboriginal people we could begin to address in the House of Commons. He answered that it was obviously housing. He asked me to imagine being a young first nation child growing up and trying to do homework in a two room house with 13 people living in it, no water and no sewage system. Imagine trying to raise children in that type of environment, and for some that is a good place.

We have been waiting and now that we have $10 billion or $15 billion in surplus we think we will see some action. It is not that it was not encouraged. At every single stop as we criss-crossed the country people said we should take a step to confront the housing issue.

The construction consortiums from coast to coast said the following: “The industry wishes to help in the development of housing infrastructure in this country. Housing infrastructure would put tens of thousands of unemployed Canadians back to work at meaningful jobs and do a great deal in addressing this serious problem in our country”. Create jobs and confront a major social issue.

The mayors of all the major cities got together and asked what they could do. They said that it is an emergency and a tragedy. We should put 1% of this year's budget into housing. That is a little over a billion dollars into housing that would really show leadership on this. This is a term that is no longer part of the Liberal vocabulary but I will try it anyway. That would provide leadership on this issue.

If the Minister of Finance had said we are committed to dealing with this issue, we are going to allocate 1% of the national budget to the housing sector, there would have been a standing ovation around this house and a standing ovation from one part of this country to the other. But he did not. He said we are not going to put a single penny into housing, we are not going to take a single step toward resolving social housing and affordable housing in this country.

[The Budget, February 18th, 1999]

There is something else that is strange about the budget. The Minister of Finance should be arrested and charged. I will tell you why, Mr. Speaker. A few years ago an individual called Doug Small leaked a little bit of a federal budget. He was a broadcaster in Ottawa. He leaked a few phrases of the budget and was charged by the RCMP. He went to court for leaking a budget.

The Minister of Finance leaked the entire budget. Every major issue has been out in the public domain for weeks and weeks. He should be charged by the RCMP for leaking his own budget. Why did he do that? Why did the Minister of Finance leak his own budget?

I will tell the House. I will have trouble saying it, so I will have to muster up my courage. When the Conservatives were in office they had guts. They actually believed in certain things. I do not believe in them. Most Canadians do not believe in them, but the Tories believed in them. They said the GST was good for Canada. They did not leak it out.

I remember Michael Wilson rising and saying “We will introduce a GST tax for every walking Canadian”, and the Tories jumped up in applause. They thought it was a great idea. He also said “We have a better one. We will give a $500,000 capital tax exemption for major capital raised in the country”. There was a standing ovation for that one.

They announced it during the budget. They did not float it out weeks before and then do focus groups, polling and trial balloons to see what works and what does not work. This is not leadership. This is cowardly leadership where before they say a single word as leaders on financial matters, they test every single phrase, every single word, every nuance. If it does not fly then they will not say it. If it is popular then they will say it. That is not what leadership is. Leadership is when they come in here based on convictions and make announcements on what they want to do. That is not what happened.