Jake Hoeppner

[Supply, November 6th, 1997]

I do not know why they did not kill the tax. They were talked into trying to jump on the tax train and grab as much as they could, forgetting that it would hurt more in the end. I feel sorry for the Quebec government but it is not just Quebec that has been hurt, it has hurt us right across the country. It is the taxpayers who are suffering. They will continue to suffer until we dismantle, scrap, kill or abolish the GST. That will probably only happen when the Liberals are back here and we are over there.

[Supply, November 6th, 1997]

A partner in crime. A very good comment.

I did the right thing. I took the gopher trap off my kids' hands which relieved the pain totally and made them happy again. That is what the Quebec government should have done. It should have removed the tax. Instead it harmonized it and created twice the pain. If you want to help heal a problem, you do not make it bigger, you put something on it to cure it.

I want to give another couple of examples of how they could have listened to the Liberals when they were in opposition and how they could have solved the problem. This is what the present finance minister said in the Montreal Gazette on April 4, 1990: “I would abolish the GST. The manufacturers sales tax is a bad tax and there is no excuse to repeal one bad thing by bringing in another”. The finance minister admitted that.

The finance minister had a good idea. He knew what he was talking about. On June 21, 1994, after he was elected he became the finance minister, and this is what he said in the Ottawa Citizen : “It is almost impossible to design a tax that is more costly and more inefficient than the GST”. He had the answer.

We were sitting on this side, waiting for the GST to be killed, to be abolished, to be scrapped. What did the Bloc and the Quebec government do? They said, “Let us jump on the gravy train. Let us get some extra taxes. Let us make things roll in this country. Throw in another tax. That is the way to go”.

Here is what a writer said in 1996 about the GST. I am citing this to show how destructive the GST has been to our economy. He said: “My message to the Prime Minister comes after yesterday's chilling report from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation which shows that new home construction across the country crashed to a 35-year low last year. That makes 1995 the worst year for our homebuilders since 1960, outstripping the pain of 1994 when we hit a 10-year low, and for Toronto it means a loss of another 10,000 construction jobs”.

Are we surprised why the Quebec government is feeling the pain? I am sure it hit Montreal. I am sure it hit Quebec. That is just in the housing industry. What did it do to the service industries?

I can remember that in Winnipeg in my own province it killed tourism. It killed restaurants, small businesses and the service sector. As the member said, we cannot even afford to get a haircut because we have to pay tax on it.

[Supply, November 6th, 1997]

Here is another Liberal who graduated to that other place after they were elected. This is what he said: “The GST has undermined Canadians' confidence in the fairness of our tax system”. That is exactly what this motion is talking about, the unfairness.

There is an old saying my dad used to remind us of. He said that if you are going to play with fire you are probably going to get burnt. This is what the Quebec government was doing with the GST. It saw the federal government raking in the dollars and it figured, why not harmonize it, broaden it a bit and then rake in some more money. All of a sudden, it realized that its economy was stopping, that it was deadening itself, it was killing itself. That is what was happening. Then the pain started coming and it did not know how to cure that pain.

This reminds me of another little incident with my two older children when they were about five or six years old. My wife came to me one noon and said, “Jake, we have a pocket gopher in our garden eating all our vegetables. You better get a gopher trap and catch that varmint”. What did I do? I went out and put a trap in the hole the gopher had dug and covered it up, never suspecting that my two youngsters were watching to see how I did it. That is what the Quebec government was doing. It was watching the federal government putting on taxes.

Within an hour my kids thought there should be some results. When you do something you have to have results. They tried to uncover the hole and they got their hands in the gopher trap and ow, it hurt. My son and daughter came screaming home, “Dad, help, help”. That is what the Bloc is saying today, “Help. There is pain”.

What did I do? I had to reduce my kids' pain. I took the trap off. But if we look at what the Bloc did to soften the pain, they put a gopher trap on the other hand and then they really had pain. And now it is really hurting. They created it themselves. How can they blame the federal government? They looked in the mirror to see how it was working.

[Supply, November 6th, 1997]

He is presently the public works and government services minister. Yes, that was his view of the GST when he was on this side.

[Supply, November 6th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House today to say a few words on the Bloc motion.

Before I start into my little speech, I want to commend my hon. colleague from Calgary Southeast on his comments on this motion. I would like to point out to this House that here is a young man who was led down the broad path of taxation and spending. He followed the advice of political pundits who said that this was the way their life would be regulated, that this is the direction that our youth would have to take.

He came to the pinnacle of truth, he looked down and saw the big debt hole and said, “Hold it, I am not jumping”. He looked back and saw Reform and he said, “There is my answer. Live within your means. Be comfortable. That is the way the government should be run”.

What did this young man do about it? He became active in politics. And here he is. Here is the man who is going to change the future for many young people down the road. Here is the man who is probably going to be on that other side some day and will say, “Look at what those people did. Look at the suffering they have created”. He will fix it like some of our other young colleagues who are sitting with me in this House. And I am proud to be a colleague of theirs.

I would now like to say a few things about the Bloc motion. I kind of feel sorry for the Quebec government, that it got rooked into this deal.

I do not agree that the deal should ever have been made but I know they have been suffering. If members want to hear what the Liberals said in opposition, here is what one of the members said and he is still in the House today: “We created a monster. Now we have an underground economy so big that no one can even account for it”. That is exactly what we heard.

[Supply, November 6th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the hon. parliamentary secretary a question. It is nice to hear the kettle calling the pot black. The present Canadian heritage minister said in this House that everyone knows the GST is largely responsible for a flood of cross border shopping that is costing thousands of Canadian jobs.

Why is the parliamentary secretary pursuing the GST policy and killing the jobs of Canadians with a tax that places a heavy burden on our tourist industry? I think the Bloc has very legitimate cause for feeling a little hurt by the GST. That was the comment of the present heritage minister.

I would like to ask the hon. parliamentary secretary how he justifies that comment?

[Supply, October 30th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for that quick question.

I do not know if he remembers the good old days when discipline was exercised at home and also in the schools. We knew after being disciplined by the teacher that it would be worse at home. Maybe that was a little harsh.

If the fines and the sentence are not deterrents, what is? Why do we have fines at all? We must have fixed discipline, fixed sentences for these accidents. I cannot call them crimes but I guess they are crimes to humanity. When that happens, I think people will start listening and obeying the law.

[Supply, October 30th, 1997]

I thank my hon. colleague for the question. It is a very hard question to answer. When I moved into the area where I farmed for 35 years, alcoholism was a real problem. It is not just drunk driving.

The education in our schools, in our homes and probably by government programs all point out how serious is the issue of being drunk, whether in a car or on a snowmobile or on a farm implement. A number of accidents have occurred in our community. They did not just happen on the road.

I remember one of my neighbours who had been drinking quite heavily during the day was having problems with his baler. Luckily the good Lord prevented him from being killed. He stuck his head into the bale chamber when the tractor was running to see what was the problem. That is how serious this issue is when your senses are not 100% clear and you do not really know what you are doing.

We have to start really hammering this home to young families. Children have to be educated to know that they have to be responsible for their actions, whether it is being drunk, whether it is being disobedient to law enforcement officers. Education is worth its weight in gold if it can be more or less implemented in all our homes and schools.

We can never imagine what kind of savings this country would have emotionally and financially if we did not have the drunk driving instances, whether on the road or on the farms or on the sports field. We have seen a number of serious accidents in boats where boaters should not have been physically behind the wheel.

I thank my hon. colleague for his question. I hope that adds a bit to the debate.

[Supply, October 30th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, it has been an interesting day so far, not just the debate, but also question period.

As I was sitting and thinking of what I was going to say in these four minutes, I thought I would give an example of how sad some of these drunk driving cases are.

My brother, who is a little younger than I, lives on Highway No. 3. He had his in-laws visit him during the middle of the day one summer to look at the crops. They left at about five o'clock in the afternoon and as they were going down Highway No. 3, his mother-in-law saw a cardbox lying in the ditch. She said “Hey, let's stop and pick up that box. It's junk. Let's clean it up.”

Her husband parked on the gravel shoulder of Highway No. 3. She was in the middle of the ditch when a drunk driver came along. He saw the car sitting on the shoulder of the road and drove on the other side of the car, into the ditch, and killed this woman instantly. She was in the middle of the ditch, not on the road. This happened half a mile from my brother's place.

Every time I go by it, I know what it does to me. How often have I stopped on the road somewhere to pick up something or to go through the ditch and look at the grain. That tragedy will never be erased from my mind. That family is going to suffer for the rest of those people's lives. The grandmother's life was snuffed out. The grandkids were in their early teens or just below. I know it affects my sister-in-law because it happened half a mile from their home. She cannot miss going by that place.

That is one example from hundreds that have happened in this country. It should not have happened.

That accident could have been avoided. It was not night time, it was not dark, it was during broad daylight. But a man was so intoxicated that he did not know the difference between the highway and the ditch. He was not injured, he just instantly killed a mother and a grandmother. I hope people listen to that example and try and imagine the sadness and the effect it had on that whole family.

I hope the debate continues in the friendly way we have seen it develop and that we really do talk about the issue and address it.

[Agriculture, October 30th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, last week I provided the agriculture minister with a U.S. leaked document that showed western farmers lost at least $1 to $1.50 on their feed wheat when Alberta pool and the CWB dumped it into the U.S. market at half price.

Could the minister explain to western Canadian farmers why the same grade of wheat sold in the same timeframe and into the same market was worth $1 to $1.50 a bushel more when farmers exported it than when Alberta pool or the CWB—