Alex Shepherd

[Supply, October 26th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I listened intently to the member's debate. We are talking about the surpluses we have had in the EI account for the last several years. However, the thing that seems to be missing is that the history of the plan has been deficits. There were years in which there were deficits and during those periods the Canadian taxpayer had to top up the fund.

In other words, they were not the workers and the businesses that he is talking about. In fact, the average taxpayer had to reach into their pockets and pay money into that program.

When the member says “Give that money back to whom it belongs”, has he taken into account the reality that taxpayers have paid money to support the plan over the years?

Secondly, in my province of Ontario the premier and his party are making a lot of the fact that Ontario has a net outflow to support the employment insurance system. He thinks this is a bad thing. I suppose within his own province he can also find shifts between industries. In my riding, General Motors, for instance, argues that it only gets 60 cents on the dollar in the employment insurance program.

In his province of Alberta, does the member also support the idea that we should balkanize the plan and try to make it sustainable within provincial boundaries, or is there a realization that there is more to this country than just individual provincial concerns?

[National Revenue, October 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Revenue. Some suggest the provinces will not sign on to the minister's plan for a revenue agency. Three Nova Scotia ministers along with this minister have signed a service contract to be administered by the agency. How would this agreement and the agency benefit the people of Nova Scotia?

[Supply, October 20th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, it gives me pleasure to enter the debate on this motion.

Canada has always respected the basic fundamentals of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. I do not think there is any other country in the world that is more widely regarded as Canada in promoting these values not only within our country but throughout the world.

On behalf of this side of the House, we continue to cherish those basic fundamental freedoms and continue to ensure that they exist within our country.

It is an unusual debate today. I am sure those people with us today will wonder why with the problems of the nation, finance, poverty and other things, we have been able to spend so much time on one conference which occurred in Vancouver almost a year ago. When all the smoke has cleared, what is the damage that has been done? The damage appears to be no broken bones, nobody in the hospital, nobody incarcerated. The damage seems to be some hurt feelings.

What is the process? The process is the public complaints commission which was set up by a previous government basically to review the action of a police force. That, as I understand the complaints procedure, is just that. A person can be a complainant and appear before the commissioner. The commissioner has significant resources to carry out his duties of examining the complainant's claims. There has never been any provision to provide legal fees for complainants.

What we are talking about today is creating a precedent we will have to live with. The next time someone has a demonstration and they feel they were not properly taken care of or perhaps were insulted or someone stepped on their foot or something, they will be able not only to go before a complaints commission but to have access to legal advice and legal representation.

The way members are talking in this House, one would think we were all there. Everyone seems to have a definition of exactly what happened. I was not there and I am willing to say that is why we have a complaints commission examining what happened. Why do we not allow the commission to do its job, which it is well paid to do? I note that the government has provided additional funding over and above its regular funding of $650,000.

In other words, we already have this incident in Vancouver costing up to a million dollars to the taxpayers and the opposition now is asking for more money that essentially will delay and continue this process for no one knows how long, an open ended situation. Just give us more money. The more money we get, the more complainants we will get. How long does it go on? What precedents are we setting for other similar incidents?

[Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act, October 19th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, first of all what we are trying to do here is to create a framework of rules and regulations that people will understand and appreciate. It is very important. Canada is becoming a smaller and smaller country. A banking employee told me the other day that we are only 30 million people but the fact is that we are right around the corner from each other. That includes the province of Quebec. The province of Quebec is not a separate entity, but is very much part of this country.

E-commerce is the very thing in that there are no borders within Canada within that legal framework. We are going to continue to build strong ties between all the people of Canada to make this a better country, to make it competitive. All the people of Canada will be able to compete successfully in that marketplace.

[Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act, October 19th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to respond to the question, but I do not know if the comment about the bill being incomplete is appropriate. I think there are places for that.

The bill, which is a lengthy one, addresses many areas of evidential law and affects a number of basically commercial trading arrangements within Canada. Whether we want to bootleg that kind of issue on top of this one is a question of whether it is appropriate.

I have listened to members of the Bloc talk back and forth about their concerns of how this will apply. As I understand the bill it does not apply to Quebec because Quebec has an existing privacy law which is exempted from the bill in the first place. Therefore, I do not really understand why there is such a big concern. Earlier I heard one member say that they were going to give up four years of jurisprudence and privacy when in fact, the way the bill is drafted it allows for the province of Quebec to be exempted because it has similar legislation.

[Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act, October 19th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to share my time with the member for Waterloo—Wellington. I am pleased to debate Bill C-54, the personal information protection and electronic documents act. That is quite a mouthful for those of us in the House and for those listening today.

Paper transactions are time consuming, and in business and commerce time is money. This also applies to individuals. As people are able to use the Internet facilities more quickly, it will allow them more time to conduct other affairs in their lives.

Canada is in the unique position of being at the forefront of the evolution of e-commerce. It is much like the invention of the assembly line. It is a new process with which we can compete and win because of our history in embracing communications technology.

It is no secret that Canada is a vast country, the second largest country in the world. We are also the ones who fostered and promoted the invention of the telephone. Canada has the highest standing in post-secondary education enrolment in the world. We are ranked number one in knowledge workers by World Economic Forum . No longer is geographic size a liability. Indeed from B.C. to Newfoundland we are but microseconds away.

What is the advantage of e-commerce? What are we talking about? How does it relate to people in their communities today? Here are some very interesting statistics.

A recent OECD report noted that airline tickets had a cost of $12 when processed by conventional means via a travel agent. Over the Internet this cost is reduced to $1.50, which is an 87% savings. Electronic banking reduces those costs by 89%. Simply paying bills over the Internet reduces the cost by 70%. Some may wonder why our banking fees are not even lower than they are today because of the significant savings the banking industry has been able to glean. It might also tell us something about its profitability over the last few years.

This rapid change is not without its liabilities. Travel agents will obviously have to adapt to this new economy. Maybe even the banks. Many people have suggested that some of the people providing bank services in the future may not be banks today.

Amazon.com is the third largest book retailer in the United States with sales of $5.5 billion. It conducts business over the Internet where there is no waiting in line, no time consuming wait for that elusive book. This will have a tremendous impact on book retailers. I noted in today's papers that Chapters, the Globe and Mail and others plan to do the same.

Canada has currently a 5% share of transactions over the Internet. When we say 5% it does not sound like very much, but we have to realize that in the context of our per capita population it is the second largest per capita concentration in the world, second only to the United States.

Canadians have been quick to embrace the Internet. As many members have also mentioned, we are not just talking about Internet. We are also talking about intranets within corporate enterprises and other forms of electronic commerce such as bank cards. However I am talking almost exclusively of the evolution on the Internet.

There is a liability to using the Internet. In a recent Nielsen survey of CommerceNet it would appear that 16% of those who use the Internet today are willing to use it for commercial transactions. In other words, there is a large group of people using the Internet for their own personal benefit or to find out corporate information.

Indeed our government is big on promoting the Strategis site which helps small and medium size businesses make contacts with each other and find out about government services. Less than 16% of these people will actually use the Internet to conduct commerce. There is a general fear concerning privacy issues.

How many of us have been asked for our Visa card number over the Internet and how many of us have refused? There is a problem. People ask what will happen to their number when it us injected into the electronic system. Who is taking it? Who is using it? What other uses can they make of it?

We can all think of abuses. Many people worry about their own privacy and information. If Canadian businesses and consumers can take the lead in this area, it will clearly give our business community a competitive advantage in the world. Let us think of what a great advantage it would be to our business community if people throughout the world could say they can trust Canadian businesses because they have a system of rules and rules enforcement that respect Internet transactions.

Many people have stated that governments should keep their hands off the Internet. There is a great feeling among Internet users that it should be a laissez-faire sort of evolution. It is very much akin to at least the stories, if not the reality, of the opening up of the west. We opened up the west before we actually brought in law and order. Of course it was a rough and tumble place. I believe that is exactly where the Internet is today. It is a rough and tumble place without enforceable laws. It is necessary to have a framework to which we can all relate and appreciate to utilize the vast power of the Internet.

There is one issue which goes outside the e-commerce point for a minute. I know some other members have interjected their concerns about other forms of privacy over the Internet. There is a major concern, more so in the United States than in Canada, about medical records.

There is a form of Alzheimer's that can be predicted at a very early stage. In other words at a very early stage it can be predicted that a person will actually get that type of Alzheimer's later in life. There is a major concern that if insurance providers and employers could get access to that kind of information they may well make decisions based on it. Something as absurd as 18 year olds applying for a job and being predicted as getting a form of Alzheimer's when 70 years of age may result in them not being employed or not being insurable.

We must couple that with the fact that the province of British Columbia has computerized all the medical records. Suddenly we start to see where the problems of using information technology can lead.

I know the bill does not specifically address that issue, but it does enforce and balkanize the use of the privacy commissioner to ensure, at least as it relates to e-commerce, that there is protection for the common consumer.

The whole issue requires a significant amount of leadership. Part of the bill ensures that the procurement mechanism of the federal government will be open to e-commerce.

I will be addressing a business group in my riding tomorrow morning. They have already asked me some questions but I am sure they will ask how small and medium size businesses can get in on the procurement mechanisms of government. This is the very fundamental way they can do it. They do not have to be big to get access to the procurement mechanisms of government. Indeed most of the legislation deals with interprovincial trade. Hopefully the provinces and the territorial governments will all work together to ensure that this can be advanced.

We mentioned very quickly the encryption technology. This is a very big concern for a lot of people in Canada. There is an agreement to which Canada has been a signatory called the Wassenaar agreement. Part of the process of the agreement was in recognition that encryption could also work the other way around. Some members have talked about the fact that we can use encryption technology to conduct criminal activity. It was this agreement that put restrictions on the actual sale, export and purchasing of encryption technology. It is clear that we will have to modify our orientation to that agreement if we are to flourish in using encryption for the positive side of that equation.

In conclusion, I was very proud to take part in the OECD meeting on e-commerce which took place a couple of weeks ago in Ottawa. It is amazing that all the members I talked to, whether they were from Norway, Sweden or Japan, had the same problems. That is why we have an inside track at the starting gate. I think Bill C-54 will very much keep us ahead of the pack.

[Canada Post, October 5th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister of public works.

Franchise operators of Canada Post have complained that revised compensation packages have been implemented without their input and at a considerable economic hardship to them. Will the minister tell this House how he intends to deal with this matter? It has wide ranging effects on postal services in both rural and urban centres of our country.

[Information Highway, October 1st, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the industry minister. More and more Canadians are accessing their business using the information highway. Many of these people fear that their personal information will be misused.

What is the minister doing to protect these citizens of Canada?

[Canada Small Business Financing Act, September 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to reply to the member for Calgary Centre.

I understand the issue of payroll taxes. All of us would like taxes, no matter where they are, to be lower than they currently are. We have heard the Minister of Finance say it in his view, and indeed that of the Prime Minister, taxes in Canada should be reduced. I am very heartened that we are actually moving in the right direction.

To answer the member's direct question, I suggest that he should read the OECD report on Canada's economy. It will show that payroll taxes in Canada are one of the lowest in the OECD. In other words, once again we are looking at the competitive global environment in which we are competing. The reality is Canada's payroll taxes are one of the lowest.

I am not saying that is something of which we should be totally and utterly proud. Certainly we would like to reduce taxes at all levels, but relative to the ability of the restaurant industry to compete both domestically and in the tourist industry, which is very related to international competition, our payroll taxes are one of the lowest. They already have a competitive advantage because of that.

[Canada Small Business Financing Act, September 28th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I have always respected the hon. member who just spoke for his work in the area of small and medium size business.

It was interesting that the members opposite talked about the tax situation. What people possibly do not understand is that with the small business tax deduction available to incorporated small businesses that have incomes of $200,000 or less in Canada, they are treated probably the best of the OECD countries.

I really question whether we could consider that an obstruction. This government and governments before us have recognized the concerns of small and medium size business.

I am concerned by the opposition members who clearly are opposed to the Small Business Loans Act itself, not just to this legislation. They talk endlessly about a subsidy.

I have practised in the small business area. A lot of my clients would have been very surprised to think that what they were doing when they walked to the bank and paid prime plus 3% and paid a 1.5% or a 2% service charge to access the SBLA program was paying a subsidy. I do not think anything could be further from the truth.

The reality is 94% of these loans are effectively repaid under the terms and conditions. Why 94%? The reality is that when there are new start-up companies there is a significant amount of risk involved.

Why are banks not interested in taking those kinds of risks? Some of the members opposite say we should change the regulatory burden and somehow the financial institutions, banks in particular, will become great lenders to small and medium size business.

I point out one obvious factor. When they start talking about banks, they have to think where did their capital come from, where do they get their capital to loan to small and medium size businesses. They get it from the depositors of this country.

Then they have to start asking constituents in their ridings if they want to see all their savings being allocated more toward small and medium size businesses which have high significant start-up costs and risks and the possibility of loss on their deposits. That is the real issue we should be talking about. We can legislate and regulate all we want, but the reality is that there is a dichotomy within our economy that requires some kind of assistance. When I say assistance I do not mean subsidy. I do not mean a grant to small and medium size business. I mean something that will fill that gap and allow small and medium size businesses to access the capital they require.

I mentioned earlier in one of my questions and comments that our banking institutions quite often are more oriented toward short term lending. This is not just true of the small and medium size business sector but also of farms. That is why we have the Farm Credit Corporation. Often the supply of long term capital, patient capital, is missing.

The Small Business Development Bank has given over $21.7 million to about 110 businesses in my riding of Durham. This has created many jobs in my riding. Small business operators are happy about the process and happy they have been able to access that money.

Some members talked about access to capital. The reality is that 85% of those loans are guaranteed. That means that somebody, the banks in particular, are picking up 15% of the liability.

The purpose of the act is to move us more toward cost recovery. I would have thought the Reform Party would have applauded that. Yes, there have been incidents in the past where the program has actually cost the taxpayer some money. However, by reducing the amount of the guarantee by the government, plus the fee structure that is put in place, we are moving more toward not costing the taxpayer one cent.

This seems to be something that is totally missing the Reform Party which keeps talking about subsidies. The reality is in the successful operation of the bill it will not cost the government any money. I note we have restricted our total liability to $1.5 billion. That is a lot of money. I think one member of the Reform Party mentioned that is not small change. I agree. It does not mean we will lose $1.5 billion. In fact, the way the program is structured it reduces the liability on a bank by bank or institution by institution basis.

Some members said they wished there was more competition. The reality is that this act actually breaks down the number of lenders. There are approximately 1,500 lenders in Canada who can access this legislation.

Another thing the legislation does which I find very exciting, very attractive, is that it talks about capital financing or capital leases. Unlike the member who got off on leasehold improvements, what it really means is financing leased equipment.

In Durham, and indeed I believe in most of Canada, 80% of new business formations are service industries. What do they require? They require the technological equipment to make them efficient and productive in the business community. Often that is computer equipment.

Here is a situation where the government is saying that they do not have to put all their money into computer equipment if it takes it over on a long term lease agreement. This gives a very important incentive for small and medium size businesses to be technologically efficient.

We were told time and time again in the House how important it was that Canada be competitive in a global environment and that its small business sector be competitive in a global environment. I am happy to say this legislation addresses that.

Some of the comments and earlier studies done by the auditor general talked about the need for more accountability by parliamentarians. I note that one of the provisions in the legislation is to study the program on a case by case basis and not just the defaults.

Before this legislation we as a government were sent information by the financial institutions on cases where default had occurred. We could then question whether they had met the parameters of the act, et cetera. This legislation expands the whole accountability framework by basically allowing the government to look at the whole range of lending going on within those financial institutions. This is very important because we can monitor whether or not that system is meeting its objectives and the demands of small and medium size businesses.

I cannot stress too much that I believe this act is an improvement. Some members have said that it has been around for 37 years and we still have not accessed the capital problem. That should not be unusual.

Our economy is growing and some of the small businesses have become big businesses and moved on. Fortunately many other businesses stand in their place and continue to expand. That is why we need the constant support of government for the small and medium size business sector. These businesses pay taxes and create jobs. As many of my other colleagues have mentioned, they are the fastest creators of jobs in the country.

In conclusion, I am surprised by the policy of the Reform Party that would object to something that has been successful and which the small business community applauds. On behalf of the small business sector, I point out to the Reform Party that this not a subsidy; it is just good business.