George Baker

[Oceans Act, October 8th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I understand what the hon. member is doing. Like other members of the Bloc, she is concentrating on fees which will be charged by the coast guard. She is suggesting that the fees will be charged on bathtubs as well as on pedal boats.

I wonder if the hon. member could comment on the main purpose of the bill before the House today. I wonder if she could comment on the main thrust of the bill. It is an incredible piece of legislation. It is an historic piece of legislation.

There is no agreement with another nation. It is taking a convention of the United Nations and it is saying that Canada will manage conservation systems on behalf of the people of Canada. The zone will be extended 200 nautical miles outside the territorial sea, which is 12 miles, which goes from the low water mark all around the coasts of Canada.

This is an incredible piece of legislation. We have not seen the likes of it since Canada was created. It is what is commonly called the EEZ, the exclusive economic zone. The Liberal administration promised to bring in this bill during the last election campaign. The United Nations has held meetings on this subject for years, advocating that this was the way to go for conservation purposes.

I wonder if the hon. member can stand in her place to praise the Liberal government for taking such an historic step as declaring the exclusive economic zone, which is the main purpose of the legislation.

[Oceans Act, October 8th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I wonder if the hon. member could comment on the general thrust of the bill which is of course aimed at conservation, aimed at better fisheries management and the fact that Canada is now declaring its own 200-mile exclusive economic zone outside the territorial sea for management and conservation purposes. Perhaps the member would praise the federal government, praise the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and the parliamentary secretary for finally taking this magnificent move for the people of Canada.

The hon. member mentioned the fact that toxins and pollutants are getting into the streams and waterways in the province of British Columbia and in other parts of Canada. Does he agree with a recent move by the Canadian government, this administration, instead of using toxic chemicals such as Matacil and fenitrothion and other chemicals over wide areas of forest land in our provinces,

to the biological use of bacillus thuringiensis, commonly referred to as BT? This was developed in Canada by Canadian scientists. In fact, the scientist who developed it was Professor Smirnoss in the Quebec region.

Does the member agree with the shift away from the use of chemicals in forest protection and in other areas, which chemicals inevitably find their way into the streams and thereby into the oceans?

[Oceans Act, October 8th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member from the Bloc who just spoke is doing exactly the same thing as the other Bloc members are doing concerning this bill.

He is concentrating, as the hon. member from the Gaspé did, on just six or seven clauses in the bill. There are 109 clauses in the bill. The Bloc has picked out six clauses, about that, from clause 47 to 52, regarding the wording that the minister "may". It is not the minister "shall". It is not the minister "will". It is not the minister "has to". It says "the minister may" do this or that.

Then it has to be published in the Canada Gazette after 30 days of its passing. Then it goes before a committee of the Statutory Instruments Act and to be reviewed by a House of Commons standing committee.

The hon. member has not even commented on the main thrust of this bill, which is that the Canadian government on behalf of the people of Canada is declaring an economic zone, that there will be an exclusive economic zone that runs 200 nautical miles out from the territorial sea which goes to the low water mark.

An historic bill in the House of Commons by the Government of Canada to protect the marine resources and the seabed of Canada is the main purpose of this bill.

All one has to do is read what the Department of Justice has put in the summary of the bill, which is exactly what I said, to meet the changing law at the United Nations under the United Nations law of the sea convention.

They decide to not even comment on that. What they are talking about are fees that were introduced under previous legislation that enabled the minister to do this or that in the past. Under this act, the six sections they are dealing with, it does not say the minister "shall". It says the minister "may". There is a whole procedure under this act that the minister has to go through.

I am sure the hon. member will stand in the House and praise the government for the general thrust of this bill that will protect the fishing rights of the fishermen of the north shore of Quebec and the Gaspé.

For once a government in Canada is turning around and doing what a lot of other nations have done in this world. We should have done this years and years ago. However, it is to the credit of this administration that it is now being done.

I hope that the hon. member will rise in his place and congratulate this Liberal Government of Canada for what it is doing for the fishermen of Canada.

[Canada Shipping Act, October 8th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the Minister of Transport. I would also like to put on the record that the official opposition parties appear to be in favour of this legislation.

It is an historic day for the House of Commons. This legislation will complete the job of environmental protection, as far as substances such as PCBs are concerned, as it will regulate their use and transport in Canada.

We have a law in Canada today which prohibits the use of polychlorinated biphenyls. That law was brought in by a former minister of the environment in a previous Liberal administration, Madam Sauvé. It followed the adoption of other great bills by the Liberal administration of the day: the Environmental Protection Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the Fisheries Act, which govern the protection of the environment as far as the oceans are concerned. This will complete that protection. It will not only ensure that polychlorinated biphenyls are not present in our environment, it will also increase the liability for those companies which have to move the PCBs.

It is one thing to outlaw a substance such as polychlorinated biphenyls, but it is another matter to move it to the location which has been chosen to destroy it.

I would again like to congratulate the Minister of Transport. This is a wonderful bill. I also congratulate the opposition parties for agreeing with it.

[Oceans Act, October 7th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, listening to the members from the Reform Party and the Bloc, one would think that this was a terrible piece of legislation we have before us. One would wonder why the Government of Canada would introduce such a terrible piece of legislation according to the official opposition.

The fact is that the bill before the House today is the first of its kind. It is a historic event in the House of Commons because Canada for the first time in its history will actually pass a law, if the majority of the people in the Chamber vote for it, to put into law that Canada has an exclusive economic zone.

It took the present Liberal administration under our Prime Minister to bring in this act. The act was brought in by the minister, the MP for Bonavista-Trinity-Conception in Newfoundland, a rear admiral, a man who knows more about the ocean than perhaps any other member of Parliament knows. The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans represents a riding that perhaps has more fishermen than any other riding in Canada has.

As well, the parliamentary secretary is a learned and extremely well educated colleague. I do not know of anybody ever in the Chamber who has received the education that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans has. He has a masters in law. He is on the judicial committee at the Hague. He knows international law inside out and upside down.

The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans is bringing in this bill, which the opposition does not want to praise him on because there is too much in the bill that is good politics, good for Canada and good for our fishermen. Where else would we find such terms as contiguous zone, Canadian waters, continental shelf, exclusive economic zone, territorial sea?

Never before have we ever seen that in legislation before this Chamber. Why is that? The reason is quite simple. Never before have we had a government that has brought in a piece of legislation that outlines two things, one of which is conservation and the other of which is proper management.

The Bloc stood in the Chamber today and put on the record how bad the management of DFO has been over the years and how terrible it is that it has not been able to manage the resource properly. I suppose one could agree with that statement if one looked at what happened under the previous Tory government.

There was no logic behind the management decisions made by that government. It led to the destruction of the northern cod stock off the east coast of Canada. It led to the destruction of the fish stocks that the northern cod stock fed on. It led to the destruction of the pelagic resources of our oceans. It led to the destruction of some of the greatest spawning grounds for fish in the entire world.

I remind the hon. member who spoke for the Bloc to look at the great spawning area for mackerel off Quebec's coast, the greatest spawning area perhaps in the world. For year after year after year when those mackerel at the end of May were trying to get in from the ocean to the Gulf of St. Lawrence to go to those great spawning areas, the Government of Canada, then led by the Tories of course, assigned foreign quotas to block the migration of those mackerel into their spawning grounds off the coast of Quebec. That was done simply because of poor management decisions by the Government of Canada.

However, under this legislation and under the actions of this government, the minister and the parliamentary secretary in bringing this legislation forward, that will no longer be possible to do. In other words, for the great resources of the fishery off the coast of Quebec, especially along the north shore of Quebec where the great spawning areas are for those fish that were blocked from their migration pattern on to those spawning grounds, never again will there be quotas assigned. Quotas were assigned under the previous Tory administration to Norway, to Sweden, to Denmark, to Cuba, to Japan, to the Russian states, in order to block that migration on to the coast of Quebec.

It is a two-way street, is it not? Not only did the mackerel disappear from the coast of Quebec where they spawn, but they disappeared as well off the coast of Nova Scotia where they were on their way into the spawning ground. They disappeared along the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador because that is where the mackerel go after they spawn at the end of May. It takes them until about September to become eight or nine inches long as they travel up around the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador and go out into the ocean again.

That migration was prevented. It was stalled. It was stopped by those quotas to foreign nations in Canadian waters, assigned by the Tory government. That is perhaps the blackest mark we have on our fishery. It was poor management.

Under this legislation the minister and the parliamentary secretary are bringing forward today, fisheries management takes top priority. Conservation becomes the most important thing in the decision of quotas and the assigning of them.

As well, it operates both ways for the fishermen of Quebec. The hon. member representing the Bloc should remember that the squid disappeared in the early eighties off the Quebec north shore. The reason they disappeared was that the squid which are prevalent on Canada's east coast are not born like the mackerel are along the coast of Quebec. They are born way down in Florida. Their migration path is almost like the Trans-Canada Highway of the squid. They go up past the east coast of Nova Scotia.

What was happening there under the poor management of the previous administration, the Tory governments of this country? We had vessels from Cuba, Japan, the Soviet Union and from other nations with licences from the federal government to block that annual migration of squid in the month of July.

All of a sudden the squid did not show up on the coast of Quebec or on the coast of Newfoundland or on the coast of New Brunswick

or Prince Edward Island. Why? It was poor management, poor decision making. That would not be possible under the legislation passing this Chamber today. Why? The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans is bound to consult and not only consult, but the fishermen themselves and the industry itself will have to have an input.

On the same argument, as far as the Quebec coast is concerned, at the same time in the early eighties there was the tragic disappearance of the capelin, a very tiny fish that does not spawn as the mackerel does on the coast of Quebec, as the squid does down in Florida; it spawns off the coasts of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and off the south coast of Labrador.

Due to poor management, because it did not have an act of Parliament like this at the time, what did the previous Tory administration do? In 1980 the Tory government gave a quota to the Soviet Union for over 100,000 tonnes of capelin. That is more than has ever been caught in any one year in Canadian history by all Canadian fishermen put together. Why? The Government of Canada was not bound by an act like this. The Government of Canada was not bound by these regulations.

I point out to the member from the Bloc what has happened in the past under previous administrations because they did not have this bill. They did not have the Liberal government we have today. They did not have that before, and what happened to his shore, his coastline, was that yes, the mackerel were prevented from going to their spawning ground at the end of May; yes, the squid disappeared at the end of July and were not seen anymore after 1980 because of the decisions of the federal Tory government at that time; yes, the capelin that spawn off Newfoundland and southern Labrador and Nova Scotia were never seen again because all of their biomasses were practically eliminated by overfishing licences given by the federal government.

There is a reason I mentioned those three species of fish for the benefit of the hon. fisheries critic for the Bloc. Those are the three fish that form the main food supply of what the hon. member has been so concerned about, codfish. They are the main food supply of the cod.

One would think that if we catch the food of the cod we would actually affect the codfish. According to the scientific evidence that was available at the time the Tories were in office, that conclusion could not be drawn. This was the reason they claimed it could not be drawn. They said we would have to have fishing of this food for about a year and then non-fishing, fishing of that food stock and then non-fishing, to be able to compare it year after year. A common sense thing like that. That is why this bill allows the minister to take certain measures in consultation with the fishermen and the industry to ensure this does not happen.

The main food supply of the cod was destroyed through mismanagement under the previous Tory administration. With this bill we

will have brought in a measure by which the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans will be able to step in to prevent that from happening in the future.

The other point which the hon. member from the Bloc did not consider was that the bill will also allow the minister, more than ever before, to step in as far as types of fishing gear are concerned.

We could imagine the effect of factory freezer trawler dragging the bottom of the ocean, ripping through a spawning area where fish accumulate at a certain time of year to reproduce. Imagine the effect that would have on the fishery. Imagine the common sense which went into the decision which said "yes, you can use that type of equipment". Where was the common sense? It just was not there.

This bill will enable the minister to make decisions based on consultation with fishermen. They would never allow that to happen. It amazes why this problem was created in the first place. When we look at all the scientific evidence which is available on how codfish and groundfish spawn it is amazing that the Tory government would ever have allowed those types of licences to be issued.

The scientific studies all point to the same thing. They say that during that four week period when fish are in the process of and preparing for their spawning season that even a little food cannot be dropped among them because they will disperse. There were studies done which used gigantic fish tanks to examine the spawning habits of various types of groundfish. When the studies reached that four week period the fish could not be fed. No food could be dropped into the tanks during the four week spawning season. Why was that? The fish would then swim at such a speed they would collide with the sides of the tank. If we disturb a groundfish in the process of spawning it will not spawn.

This bill will enable the minister and any future minister of any future federal government in Canada to look first and foremost to conservation and then to management. There must be management committees. They must consult with the fishers, as it is stated in the bill and as my learned, educated and civilized friend, the parliamentary secretary, pointed out a few moments ago.

The hon. member for Vancouver Quadra has written 23 books and co-authored another couple of dozen, all concerning an aspect of this bill, international law, the law of the sea.

The Speaker is telling me I am out of time.

[Supply, September 26th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I want to add one thing to the excellent dissertation that was just given.

As the hon. member is aware, those estimates were not made by the Fraser Institute or the Canadian association of accountants or any Canadian organization. All of those estimates the hon. gentleman just gave were made in Paris. Who made them? Economists representing 27 nations in the world, the OECD. Twenty-seven of the nations in the developed world whose job it is to sit down and to realize the economic growth in the world and to promote those excellent standards and lo and behold Canada leads all the rest.

[Supply, September 26th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, the Bloc members at times, very rarely but at times, do show some indication that perhaps they want to make the government accountable, something other than their trying to figure out a way to break the country up. There are rare occasions.

That is why I bring to the attention of the hon. member, to the attention of the House, to the attention of the Speaker, and through the Speaker to the people of Canada that this official opposition really does not belong in the situation we are in. They stand up

here today and talk about tax changes and blame the Liberals, when it was the Tories who did it and would do it again if they ever got in office.

Then the hon. member does not like it. He does not like it because what I have taken out of Hansard is something which I could never understand but I do know why they did it. That is how the official opposition could turn around and approve and support it and say: ``Bring it on. We love it. It is just as good as sliced bread''. Massive tax changes that they were supposed to be objecting to.

They supported the very thing today they blame the Liberals for, for more flows of capital into the United States. They asked for more. Why? They asked for more because during the debate in the House where I took these quotations from they said that they were preparing for separation. Therefore they would like to have lots of ways of getting capital into the United States because they want to deal directly with the United States. That was the logic used. According to that logic they are not fulfilling their duties as the official opposition.

What the Bloc members are scratching about now is when they realized the Government of Canada has been so fantastic as to lead the industrialized world in economic growth, the member complains about contributions to the Liberal Party. The official figures show that Canada leads Italy, France, the U.K., Germany, Japan and the United States and stands all alone in economic growth for next year. At that rate one would expect the contributions to increase.

[Supply, September 26th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I have just a few words on this motion put forward by the Bloc. In looking at this motion, I think it is first, a condemnation of the Tories and second, a condemnation of the Bloc itself. I say that because what the Bloc is talking about are family trusts.

Bloc members are talking about family trusts and trying to blame the Liberal government for a report given by the finance committee. Where they are wrong is in their accusations against the Liberal government. It was the Liberal government that brought in the capital gains tax on family trusts. It was the Liberal government that brought in the rule that would supposedly close the loophole created by forming a trust because a trust does not die. This was the problem facing Canada back in 1971. Prior to that, we had the inheritance tax in Canada. We had the estate tax in Canada, as in the United States today. It also has the capital gains tax.

We had the inheritance tax and the estate tax in Canada and along came a royal commission that recommended substantial changes, the Carter commission, but those recommendations were not followed at the time. I wish some of them had been but they were not. The Liberal government at that time brought in a capital gains tax that would affect family trusts at half the normal taxation rate of income.

When that was brought in a problem came up, as it always does when one changes the law. There were ways around it, especially for paying taxes. The way was found around it by putting assets in trust so that when somebody died you would not have to pay the normal capital gains tax that was imposed by the Government of Canada in 1971.

At that time the Liberal government, in order to close the loophole, said that at the end of 21 years, regardless, the taxes that would normally have been paid on the increased value of the assets would then become due in 21 years. That was during the Liberal administration, to close the loophole of wealthy people being able to hire very expensive law firms and accounting firms to get around the tax law.

What happened? For 21 years assets had been put into a trust. On January 1, 1972 the new law came into effect and all of a sudden we are now in 1992, and guess what? That money would now be owed to the Government of Canada. It was estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

I and other members of the opposition went through access to information and we discovered that expensive consultants were hired during the Tory regime to try and convince the government to lift that 21-year rule that the Liberals brought in, to make everybody pay up.

In looking at the correspondence to the then ministers of finance of the Tory government, you could see that a man who had $100 million in trust was going to have to pay $11 million in 1992. Another man who had $200 million might be liable for $15 million; another man with $70 million was going to have to pay $7 million. They were pleading with the Tory government: "Don't let this happen. I do not want to have to pay all this money. After all I only have $100 million". It almost made you want to cry. This was in letter after letter after letter.

Then came the consulting firms. We also received the surveys that were done by the consulting firms. I will not mention their names because if I do perhaps it will give them more business because they were very successful in changing the mind of the government of the day.

The problem became, what could somebody do with a family trust, with this magic 21 years coming up and the taxes having to be paid? Could it be rolled over? An anti-avoidance rule was brought it. A person had to go before a judge and prove that it was not being done to avoid taxes. All of these rules were there to prevent it from being done.

It is in that setting that we discuss these family trusts. A great many of them did not mind paying the taxes. From the documents that we received at that time from access to information some were quite willing to pay the tax. I recall one gentleman who owed $12 million writing to the agency that was trying to change the law saying: "I have to pay $12 million but there is no problem".

In 1985 the government of the day made a decision. The government has to be held responsible for what bureaucrats do. If the Department of Finance and Revenue Canada do something, the ministers and the government are held responsible. A decision was made.

In 1991 they moved $2.2 billion in this one instance across the border to the United States. If the purpose was to escape the 21-year rule, which I do not know if it was but I rather suspect it was not, they should not have worried at that time. They should not have worried because we had a government in power which, as sure as you are sitting there, Madam Speaker, was going to change the rules so that all of this money would not become due. That is the Tory way of doing things.

The Tories always supported, as the Reform Party does, the very wealthy in our society, the people who have loads of money and the people who they identify as keeping the economy moving.

A change was made. The change I am talking about took place on December 23, 1991. A couple of weeks later they actually removed the 21-year rule. In other words, all of these family trusts were supposed to pay taxes after 21 years. A decision of the Government of Canada said that all of this money which would have become due after 21 years would not become due until the death of the youngest member of the family.

That was the Tory government, the same Tory party that is trying now to regain power in Canada. They want to become popular across the country again, that same Tory party with those same Tory principles, the same as the Reform. Some people say the Reform Party is worse.

The Tory party said: "All of that money is not going to come due now which the Liberals proclaimed". The Liberals closed the loophole. The Trudeau administration brought it in. All taxes that are avoided will come due in 21 years. That is why it was called the 21-year rule.

At the last moment the Mulroney administration gave a reprieve. They said: "Oh, no, you won't have to pay up". At the last minute in 1992 they said: "It's okay. You won't have to pay up because we are going to bring in a tax change and we are going to change it so that the money will not become due until the death of the youngest person in the family".

The Tories were replaced by the Liberals. In the debate before the House today the Bloc say it pertains to family trusts. What did the Liberals do when they got in? It was the Liberals who closed the loophole. Along came the current finance minister and he changed the law again. The door that was opened up by the Tories has been closed. The Liberals said: "You won't be able to do that any more. We are going to give you a few years until 1999 but at the end of that, no more".

The Bloc stands in this Chamber on a motion and criticize the Liberals for creating loopholes on family trusts. It was the Liberals who closed them. It is this Liberal government and this Minister of Finance who have once again closed the family trust loophole.

The second portion of the motion is an outright condemnation of the Bloc. The reason it is a condemnation of the Bloc is because that party is supposed to be the official opposition in the House of Commons. I am not supposed to be. Liberal backbenchers are not supposed to be. We have had, on occasion, to delve into the facts to take the place of the official opposition. Why did we have to do that?

The Bloc's motion talks about condemning the Liberals for something which the finance committee suggested. It condemns the Liberals for the tax free transfers of family trusts when it was the Liberals that closed all the loopholes. The Bloc is condemning the Liberals for what the Tories did and what the Tories would do again if they ever got back into power. If the Reform Party got into power the same thing would happen.

What did the Bloc do? I have gone over the record of that political party just to see the way it has treated the transfer of hundreds of millions and possibly billions of dollars every year. The Bloc claims that the Liberals opened the doors. It is an absolute total outrage.

What did the Bloc say about the transfer of funds across the border into the United States?

The Liberals took action on the transfer of $2.2 billion, which involved, as the auditor general said, secrecy. There was secrecy in Revenue Canada on the rulings. Let us not forget that if the ruling in 1985 had become public the tax auditors and the tax lawyers would have been on to it and all of a sudden Revenue Canada and the Government of Canada would probably have realized they had a problem.

What did the current minister for Revenue Canada do? First, she said that rulings will be made public. What did the finance minister do? The finance minister closed the loophole again, just as the Liberals had closed it before the Tories opened it up again.

We had a response from the finance minister. He is perhaps the greatest finance minister in the history of the country. The minister for Revenue Canada is doing a fantastic job. They responded in concrete ways. Not only that, I understand that there are perhaps even further measures going to be taken to ensure that this will not happen again.

There are two sides to the argument. People talk about the transfer of money across borders. It is the thing to talk about these days. The borders are opening up. Barriers are being dropped. Withholding taxes are disappearing, at least between certain nations in the industrialized world. We are into globalization. We are into a situation in which multinationals control over half of the trade in our world today. What we are doing is removing barriers.

What did the Bloc members say when the United States received what it wanted through the Senate banking committee? What did Bloc members say about the announcement on the withholding tax on dividends, that is, the payment from subsidiaries to their parent companies in the United States and from subsidiaries in the United States to their parent companies in Canada-not many of them, most of it goes the other way.

What did Bloc members say when the tax rate was dropped by 50 per cent, amounting to about $700 million? They said the same thing to that as they said to the other proposition that was in the same agreement which said that the tax on interest gained would be dropped from 15 per cent to 10 per cent. The tax on royalties, even copyright royalties would be bifurcated so that they could be dealt with individually.

What did they say with that great loss of revenue? The Bloc said: "It does not specify how many millions and billions of dollars are at stake in this protocol. We do not know which country, Canada or the United States, will benefit the most from this tax liberalization proposal. We do not know, but we support it".

What did Bloc members say when the Americans wanted, and we changed, the estate tax relief that was granted to a wealthy person in Canada who had property in the United States including stocks and bonds through a Canadian bond agency? What did the Bloc say when the suggestion was made that a tax credit would be given in Canada for somebody if they had a billion dollars worth of property in the U.S. and were subjected to the U.S. inheritance tax, estate tax?

What did they say? I have it here. The Bloc said: "We are proud and happy to participate in this development in supporting this Senate proposal because it goes in the direction that we have always advocated. The only way to live side by side is to support legislation that will make more harmonious relations between the two nations".

I will conclude. The Bloc members are frustrated. What are they frustrated about? They are frustrated about the popularity of this Liberal government. They are frustrated because we are the best performing economy in the industrialized world.

[Supply, September 26th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to the hon. member from the Bloc. In its position as the official opposition to the Government of Canada, the job of the Bloc is always to hold the government accountable. Its job is to ensure that any legislation coming before the Chamber will be accountable to the people of Canada. In particular, its job is to watch the public purse. In particular, the Bloc motion states that the government is opening the door to other capital transfers that will deprive the federal government of hundreds of millions, and possibly billions, of dollars every year.

I cannot understand the Bloc political party. Only a year ago the transfer of money across the border to the United States was under discussion in the committees and in this Chamber. Changes were suggested to the tax treaties between Canada and the United States. The general public has to understand that these are reciprocity agreements which apply to Canadians and Americans.

A suggestion was made by the Senate banking committee in the form of a bill that came to this Chamber eventually. This political party was asked to pass judgment on a major change in tax policy that would mean a reduction in the withholding tax on multinational corporations that sent their money from their subsidiaries to their parent company in the United States. Do you know what the Bloc said, Madam Speaker? The Bloc said on page 14707 of Hansard that it was a wonderful thing because now our capital could freely flow into the United States.

I ask the hon. member to justify his position in view of what he is saying today. Here is what was said at page 15541 of Hansard : ``The bill does not specifically say how many millions and billions of dollars are at stake in this protocol. We do not know which country, Canada or the United States, will benefit the most from this tax liberalization protocol but we support these proposed tax changes''.

How does the hon. member support the position of the Bloc when it supported the movement of capital out of this country and at the same time put in the words of this motion today and present this picture to the people of Canada?

[Committees Of The House, September 19th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, the Liberal Party of Canada would never be that extreme. The Liberal Party of Canada, since the fall of 1993, has been the most progressive economically of all of the industrialized nations of the world, and is projected to be that way next year, without adopting the Reform principles of cutting health care, making people pay for their roads and doing away with social programs.