Jake Hoeppner

[Hockey, December 4th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Liberals announced an emergency aid package. No, not for farmers. No, not for hepatitis C victims. Guess what? It is for millionaire hockey players and billionaire club owners.

How could the Liberal government possibly justify government handouts to rich hockey players and club owners while it is nickel and diming starving farmers?

[Division No. 298, December 3rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House and make a few comments on this bill to establish the customs and revenue agency.

This legislation creates a national revenue collecting agency, the Canada customs and revenue agency, to replace Revenue Canada. The CCRA transforms Revenue Canada into a quasi-independent tax agency to take over the collection of personal and corporate income tax, provincial sales tax, the goods and services tax, customs duties and excise taxes on gasoline and alcohol levies.

Some provincial finance ministers have shown interest in this single tax collecting agency but they have not committed to participating. Certain provinces are asking for greater flexibility in this tax policy which is an issue not directly related to the Canada customs and revenue agency. Sometimes caution is one of the better ways to go with an agency of this magnitude.

A possible condition for Reform support would be a strong taxpayer bill of rights. Any taxpayer bill of rights would include a very clear statement on the accountability of the agency and a reinforcement of ministerial responsibility through an independent ombudsman and an office for taxpayer protection. Having an independent ombudsman would be the direction to go on this issue.

The government claims the agency should save the taxpayer some administration costs. The projected estimates of savings run between $97 million and $162 million. That is quite a savings provided that the projected efficiencies are built in.

The agency would facilitate integration of tax information and reporting systems thereby improving the prospect of single window reporting and reducing the paper burden on small and medium size businesses. This is something businesses and farmers have been asking for for years. They have been asking for a simpler tax form and a simpler way of computing tax so they can better understand the regulations and how taxes are computed.

The way the agency will be set up kind of throws up a red flag. It will have a board comprised of 15 directors. The chair and two directors will be selected by the federal government. This is similar to the set up of the Canadian Wheat Board for the time being. The other 11 directors would also be appointed by governor in council with input from the provinces which is a good idea. I could support that as long as these positions did not become more or less political plums. So often that is the case.

One very good example is the Manitoba Freshwater Fish Marketing Board. We have seen the appointment of a chairman being so political that in the end the friction which developed in the board resulted in the chairman having to resign from his position. This is something we want to prevent in these types of government quasi-judicial at a distance organizations.

Revenue Canada clients are looking for more streamlined services, improved response times and the reduction in the paper burden associated with compliance for tax, trade and customs transactions. They want faster service that is easier to access and which is more responsive to their needs.

What taxpayers and people who deal with this organization want most is accountability and a fair system which a lot of taxpayers feel is not there. The conditions attached to the revenue collected in payroll taxes and GST seem to indicate that people are not treated equally and fairly.

An independent ombudsman is a must. We certainly do not want to create an agency that appears to be similar in power to the IRS in the United States. That has created a lot of problems by false or improper taxation. It has also led to people serving jail sentences that should never have been imposed.

Why am I worried about this organization being accountable and responding to the taxpayer as well as to government? I have a couple of examples of what I have run into during the last year or two as a member of parliament.

A year ago I was informed that a businessmen in a neighbouring town had a severe problem. A day or two before Christmas his and his wife's accounts had been frozen due to what Revenue Canada felt were irregularities. Imagine what kind of stress this put on the businessman during a period of celebration when people are happy and family come home to spend a joyful Christmas.

The businessman contacted me after Christmas to explain what had happened. I was astounded that a person could be put into this type of position. He had contracted to build a place of business, a manufacturing plant. The people who signed the contract with him had not fulfilled their commitment. They had cancelled some of the building project. He was stuck with a contract where he owed payroll taxes and GST, but he had never completed the project.

He had submitted $14,000 to an account so that Revenue Canada could re-evaluate the payroll taxes and other benefits it felt were delinquent. When this became known, Revenue Canada quickly backtracked on the type of service the taxpayer had received and the account was settled under very reasonable conditions. But the stress and fear in this businessman were unbelievable. The personal tragedy of it was that he spent a Christmas worrying about what would happen to his business, not what other business people were encountering.

The other thing I point out is the Dave Sawatzky case where revenue and customs laid charges against him and fined him. He appealed and won that case. The government appealed it and lost but revenue and customs are still prosecuting other farmers under the same conditions.

This is not the democracy Canadians expect from the government. This is the type of democracy we hear about in third world countries where the government is the sole authority and does as it pleases. This is why people in Canada are very hesitant to give an agency the power that the Canada customs and revenue agency will receive under this bill.

We as members of the House must be vigilant and look at it seriously, amend it where possible to make safeguards available to the taxpayers and put trust back into the customs and revenue organization.

[Canada-United States Days Of Peace And Friendship, December 2nd, 1998]

That is one that we kind of ignore as a sparring match. Probably if we had done it in a different fashion we would not have a border, but we do not know. That is for history to debate.

I encourage Reform members to support this motion. This motion is worthwhile. It can only bring us peace and harmony. It is a motion that will benefit either side of the border.

We can show to the world that even with the friction we have in our trade issues, whether we like the wheat board or we do not like the wheat board, whether we like supply management or we do not like supply management, those things can be ironed out and we can work for the benefit of all. We can work to the benefit of all. It does not say that I have to have my way and they have to have their way and we will separate and go in different directions. We have to go in one direction.

I encourage the government to build a relationship with the American government, to go to the next GATT negotiations or the World Trade Organization and work as a team. Together we are a lot further ahead. We have a lot more strength. We have a lot more to gain than we will lose.

I conclude with an invitation for members to come to Manitoba to see the international peace garden. It would be worth their while, just for the feeling they would get when sitting in that peace tower. The feeling of co-operation, friendship and kinship that we have as North Americans will explode around hon. members and they will go away with a very positive feeling.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to this motion. I wish members of the House well and I hope everybody can support it.

[Canada-United States Days Of Peace And Friendship, December 2nd, 1998]

Well, I am part American too. I do go down south once in a while to get that tan to make me look like a farmer. We do not get too much of a tan in this House. We also change the dialect somewhat. We get that southern drawl. Those are the positive things.

My roots being in the Soviet Union, in the 1980s I could see how big the disaster was over there and what their needs were. I was astounded at the people who had tried to put up a huge defence against the Russians. The American farmers were the first to collect a whole bunch of durum wheat and ship it across to the Soviet Union by plane. It got there and was used to make bread.

The American people have a heart just like we Canadians. That is what we have to emphasize in this motion. It is not just an issue about wanting a couple of days set aside to recognize that our border is unprotected. I am sure that the hon. member will agree with me that with these two days we want to recognize that we are human beings on the same planet. The less distractions, the less friction, the less feuding that goes on between our two nations, the better off society will be and the better off the whole world will be.

I commend the member for bringing this motion forward again. When we see each other's weaknesses and help to overcome them, only then will we gain the strength as two peaceful nations. We have never had a war of any substance that we could call detrimental to us.

[Canada-United States Days Of Peace And Friendship, December 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I would also like to commend the hon. member for Erie—Lincoln for bringing forward this motion. It is a very appropriate motion for today, especially as the world gets smaller and we do more things together instead of trying to create division.

I have lived beside the American people for 35 years. My property was only a couple of miles from the border so we lived as a community more or less. We had a curling rink with Americans. We had a skating rink. The figure skating club was in Smoke Lake. The Americans provided us with a little grocery store and a little bar. If we got too unhappy we could share facilities. It was quite an interesting experience.

Manitoba has one of two international peace gardens. If members ever have a chance to visit the peace garden located just south of Boissevain, in the peace tower is a unique little chapel. The piano was put in such a place that when a person plays the morning hymn during the service, one hand is in the U.S. and the other one is in Canada. It is a service that really binds the two nations. It is a real experience to observe that and see how close we as human beings really are.

There is a funny incident I want to bring forward today. I went on a tour of the Pembina watershed. The largest part of it is in the U.S. On the bus coming back were American and Canadian politicians. We came to the little town of Mowbray, Manitoba which is on the U.S. border. We talked about entrepreneurs and how they looked at different types of businesses in those days. One of the elder gentlemen said “You know Jake, if you were out here thrashing in Mowbray with your team of horses, you could drive down this road, reach into the United States and pick up a glass of beer after a long day. It was the first drive through bar that was ever built”. It was there for a number of years and never ran into political interference. It operated very well. We have lost some of these things because of quicker communications and transportation.

I want to talk a few minutes about the people across the border from where I live. As human beings we all have more or less similar needs. We want to do what is best for our families.

In the Snowflake and Wales areas, most people had relatives on either side. The intermarriage between Canadians and Americans was unreal during the early part of the century. There were no borders and love crossed whether they wanted to regulate it or not. Their girls seemed to be just a little prettier than ours and vice versa. There was always that type of rivalry building.

[Agriculture, November 30th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I will add the 50 minutes to my hour. Then maybe we will get through this issue. It is a pleasure to say a few words but it is also a sad moment for me.

There is a crisis on the farm scene. Nobody doubts that. There is a bigger crisis in the Liberal front benches. I do not see any of them over there. That is where the crisis is. I am almost blind but I noticed it somehow.

I will read a couple of quotes. Since I was elected in 1993 we have worked on the agriculture committee. We pointed out to the government that we need a whole farm income support program. This is a question that was put by the member for Haldimand—Norfolk to the agriculture minister on February 9, 1994.

In the red book we promised a system of whole farm support that would help Canadian farmers who were in distress. This was in 1994. The agriculture minister replied:

I appreciate the question. Under the previous government in conjunction with provincial governments a process is under way to review and revamp Canadian farm income safety nets.

That has never been accomplished. Why not? In 1994 everybody knew that the Europeans had huge subsidies. The Europeans would not allow their farmers to get into a financial problem. They would support them. We had to be prepared to have some safety net programs in place.

How huge is this crisis in farming?

I was quite appreciative of the member for Yorkton—Melville when he started comparing prices. I know there are a lot of supply management people in this House who have been supporting that type of system. These are prices for their products. From a devilled egg that costs $1.60, they get 10 cents at the farm gate. From a whole quiche which costs $12.50, which has three eggs, 2 ounces of cheese and 16 ounces of milk, the farmer gets 92 cents. From a 6 ounce grilled breast of chicken, costing $8.20, the farmer gets 29 cents. This is in the supply management sector. When we go back to the wheat and the hogs, as the member for Yorkton—Melville pointed out, it is disaster.

I saw a letter from a farmer who said “If you can imagine, in 1981 I received $4 a bushel net initial for No. 3 hard spring wheat. Today I receive $1.80 for that same type of wheat”. It is not even one-half of what this farmer received in 1981.

We know what has happened to the price of fertilizer. We know what has happened to the price of equipment. We have a pretty good idea of what the cost/price squeeze is.

How are these farmers supposed to deal with this? Farmers have been looking far and wide to see if they can get better prices. It is astounding that the special crops industry has not done too badly. The canola prices this year are such that if it was not for that income I think 100% of the farms would be in crisis. At least they have some value from the special crops industry with which they can supplement their income.

In the 1992 crop year in Saskatchewan grain was damaged by frost. It looked like everything would be turned into feed. Saskatchewan farmers looked across the border and found a market where they realized they could pretty well double the price for their feed wheat. What did the grain companies and the wheat board do? They dumped 1.5 million bushels into that market and ruined it.

In 1993-94, when Manitoba had the fusarium problem, what happened? Farmers who found a market for that product were not allowed to sell to that market. It was demanded that they get an export licence from the wheat board and they were charged as much as $40 to $50 a tonne more for that grain than they got in the final return.

Farmers who did not abide the law and marketed it on their own wound up with huge penalties, fines and even jail terms. Is it democracy when farmers are in a financial bind and they know there is a market a dozen or two dozen miles way that they can access but are not allowed to? If they do, then they are put away.

One of the farmers drove all the way from Saskatchewan to the Manitoba border crossing to object and to protest. He got worse than the APEC protesters in Vancouver. He was not allowed to go back without paying a fine. He was fined $1,500 and was told to turn his car in. Andy McMechan, as we know, had some barley which no one could market for him. It was a specialty barley. He wound up in prison.

Farmers will find a remedy. I had at least half a dozen farmers phone me last week. They said “I don't need any money. If you can get me a guarantee that I can market my own grain, don't bother with any payments. We will make it. We will find a market and we will survive this crisis”.

How do we deal with this? On the one hand we have markets that have developed themselves because of crisis issues, but other markets are not allowed to be developed to the point where they pay properly. That more or less puts pressure on farmers to go to markets with decent prices so they can survive, make their farms viable and have more over-production.

The hog producers in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta did not want to get into these huge hog operations because they knew it would cost a small fortune to build the barns, but they had no way out. The feed grains were such a price that they could not afford to keep their farms viable. So with provincial encouragement they expanded and diversified. Today they are losing $50 to $60 a hog.

I ordered bacon and eggs for breakfast this morning and I figured I would get a plate full of bacon because pork is cheap. They could do away with the potatoes and give me the bacon. They could have taken that bacon off a live pig and it would not have lost a squeal. That is the amount of bacon I got. It was worthless. How do we deal with a situation like that? it is funny, but it is true. I did not have to swallow too hard to put those two thin little slices of bacon away with one swallow. Then I had the two eggs left with a bit of toast.

Guess what that toast costs at that restaurant? A bushel of wheat yields about 120 loaves of bread, which amounts to about two cents a loaf. If a loaf has 24 slices and I had two slices, there would be one-twelfth of a cent of wheat in that toast. How can the price of the breakfast be $5? I know the potatoes do not cost that. I am astounded. Farmers are supposed to survive and they are not supposed to be subsidized.

Mr. Hehn appeared before the standing committee. I asked him why we were not getting better prices for our wheat. He said they were pricing it at Thunder Bay. I asked him what if they priced it in Manitoba and he said that this was the price. The price of a bushel of wheat was initially $1.57 at the elevator. The buy-back price was $3.93 at Morris, not at Thunder Bay.

It does not make sense. Farmers cannot survive. Subsidies are part of the problem, but politics and the marketing system are probably more to blame than the Europeans and the Americans thrown together in one washtub.

[Agriculture, November 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, things are now so bad on the family farm that hog producers cannot even afford to feed their animals. Canadians watched the news in disbelief last night. Farmers are forced to kill their pigs because there is not enough money to feed them.

How could this Liberal government let things get that bad?

[Agriculture, November 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, when foreign governments overfished Canadian waters, Brian Tobin stood up to them, but when foreign governments attack our Canadian farmers with tens of billions of dollars in subsidies, this Liberal government does nothing to stop these attacks.

Why do prairie farmers not deserve the same type of respect that fishermen got when their livelihood was at stake?

[Canadian Wheat Board, November 20th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, only eligible voters should have received a ballot in the first place. How could KPMG identify a secret mailed in ballot? This sounds more like a Cuban election where you either vote one way or you do not vote at all.

[Reform's Anti-Profiteering Act, November 19th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, it gives me pleasure to say a few words in support of the bill of my colleague from Surrey Central. Bill C-442 is a simple private member's bill. It is common sense yet politics are being played.

I was involved in an extraordinary situation involving a snowstorm. We were marooned in the city of Winnipeg for three days. All the telephone wires were down. All the hydro wires were out. There was no contact with our family at home. The majority of people were awfully good. They did what they could. They helped shovel.

The one restaurant open within walking distance because nothing was moving charged double for everything it sold. That did not bother me as far as the dollars were concerned. However we suffered mental anxiety during those three days not knowing whether our family was safe or alive because it was -35° to -40° and there was no heat. That really bothered me.

The bill is like a warning light. It says that in the case of an emergency where essentials should be available there is no right to profiteer or to ask exorbitant prices.

Free enterprise works very well when commodities are available. The market price will determine what the price should be or the right price. The bill does not say that there cannot be increases in costs if suppliers have extra cost factors. However it would be a warning light for people of the consequences if they take advantage. I would call them gougers, not just profiteers.

I heard my colleagues on the Liberal side saying this was a provincial matter. Maybe it is provincial, but when there are natural disasters the federal government steps in. It has to step in. Why not have some warning lights?

There are stop lights for traffic approaching highways in any province or country. The traffic going up and down on the highways can be seen but there are also stop lights. When I look at the farming industry everybody knows that running pulleys or PTOs are dangerous, but every machine company is forced to put warning decals on them. Shields have to be in place. They are there for our own protection. They are there for common sense reasons. They are there to tell people to hold it, to stop, to look and to listen because there is a danger.

That is what the bill would do. It would give us some protection when we occasionally run into a disaster where people's lives or health could be at stake.

Why would we want to make this private member's bill political? If it comes to punishment of crimes or something that affects each one individually or differently, we can argue politically which is the right sentence or which sentence is probably too harsh or too lenient. But here we are talking of natural disasters that will affect probably everyone in this country. It will come at a time when we do not expect it. It will come when we will probably be short of the necessities of life to get us through the disaster.

Let us think back to the Red River flood of 1997. The House heard that chipboard and other products to fix up homes almost doubled in price. I wonder, why does the government really help people in these emergencies? Because when they know there is money available, these gougers will take advantage of it. If they knew that these people were not willing or able to pay for it, it would not happen. So what are we doing? Are we really putting ourselves into danger of promoting this type of an enterprise?

I want to commend my colleague from Surrey Central for looking at this in a common sense way and for pointing out that it should only affect the cost of goods in a reasonable manner. Everybody in this country who has lived for the last 30 or 40 years knows that we have increases in the cost of living. But we also know what is reasonable and what is exorbitant.

This bill would prevent people from encountering more problems in future disasters and I hope members opposite will realize that.