Alex Shepherd

[Supply, February 23rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the member could comment on the fact that the evolution of the MAI, as I understand it, is basically to address those areas which are not already mandated by multilateral agreements. Eighty per cent of our trade is with the United States, therefore 80% of our investment agreements are already documented in the NAFTA. The rest of that, almost 20% or at least 15%, is now mandated in bilateral agreements. In other words, 95% of our trade and investment policy is already undertaken in these agreements.

What the member is talking about and what her party is so concerned about is an agreement that cannot at maximum affect any more than 5% of foreign direct investment now occurring in Canada. Could she relate to me how important she thinks that is?

[Supply, February 23rd, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I listened intently to the member for Kamloops' intervention about how the MAI was going to completely destroy our country. The reality is that 80% of our trade is with the United States, all of which is already encompassed under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

He goes on to say how it is solely the New Democratic Party that is concerned about this issue. I wonder if the member could explain this comment in Friday's Globe and Mail : “Many of us have been encouraged to think that the fight for the MAI is very worthwhile, said the Saskatchewan minister responsible for trade, Mr. Wiens”. It would appear that his own provincial government does not back his understanding.

[Supply, February 23rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the member from Peace River could clarify something for me. There is no such thing as an MAI agreement. There is no signed agreement. Why is the member from Peace River engaging in the same kind of conspiratorial theory that the NDP wants to bring out? How can we have a reasonable discussion on a non-existent agreement?

As my hon. colleague the parliament secretary said, I have a list of consistent meetings with the provinces, the private sector, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Information Technology Association, the Canadian Federation of Agricultural, the dairy farmers, and so on. There has been a consultative process. The member is falling into the very trap that these people want us to believe, that somehow there is a conspiracy.

Will the member speak to that issue?

[Supply, February 18th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I listened with intent to the member. He talked about huge economic social problems of the future. Also, the motion addresses people fleeing from this country.

I could not help but observe a few short days ago that this party sided with and supported a motion from the Bloc Quebecois which denied a legal process. That is the unilateral declaration of independence by the separatist party in Quebec. I take that one step further. It is a suspension of the Constitution of Canada. It would be a suspension of the rule of law in this country.

How many people does he think will leave the country the day that revolution starts?

[Supply, February 18th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, having three children in post-secondary education I understand the problems. Microsoft is now recruiting people in Canada to stay in Canada. With the technology today no one has to leave the country.

The reality is that this government and the member for Sherbrooke raised the debt in this country from $169,549 million to $466,198 million a 274% increase. These people left us with a mortgage that we have to pay and that is why we cannot reduce taxes.

[Banking, February 17th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the secretary of state for financial institutions.

With reference to the announced statement by President's Choice, Loblaws will provide financial services throughout Canada. What assurance can the secretary of state give this House that these changes in services will be in the best interests of all Canadians?

[Research And Development, February 12th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Industry.

Granting councils like the Medical Research Council and NSERC are the basic foundations of research in Canada. Their funds have been reduced considerably over the last number of years.

What is the minister doing to strengthen the granting councils to ensure Canada's competitiveness in a changing world?

[Ice Storm 1998, February 4th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am certainly very appreciative of the minister of agriculture for sharing his time with me. I am sure some of our viewers are wondering why the member for Durham would be speaking on the ice storm but it has affected me and my riding in a multiplicity of ways.

When the ice storm first struck I immediately received a phone call from friends and associates living in the Winchester area. The minister just talked about Winchester and the devastation of the storm there. The call was that they needed generators and generator capacities.

We have an agricultural community in my riding, a dairy producing area. The call went out to ask some of our constituents if they could find generator capacities to share with these people in eastern Ontario. I am very proud of the people in my riding who immediately rose to the call. I was fortunate enough to take a truck and to have the local chamber of commerce provide a trailer. I took my staff and we went into the area of Winchester to drop off a number of generators.

It was my good fortune to go to some of the farms affected by the storm and physically take these generators off the truck and install them. It was not so much the mechanics of all this but the human interest.

I remember a particular dairy farming operation in a place called Moose Creek. I drove into the driveway. The house was totally in darkness. Little children were looking out the drapes. This was their first contact with the outside world for over a week. Just the smiles on their faces and the fact that they knew other people cared about their problems were certainly uplifting for me. It was uplifting for all the people in my riding and others who tried to help and create those bonds which make us a truly great nation.

I said that the storm had affected me in a multiplicity of ways. I mentioned the hamlet of Moose Creek in the riding of one of my colleagues, the member for Stormont—Dundas. I went into its local community centre which was being used as a shelter and talked with the people there. There was a lot of anxiety. These people had been without hydro for about a week. As a matter of fact, by the time this had culminated we had about 30 generators in the area under my control or under the control of the people of Durham. It was interesting to talk to some of the people in the shelter and to hear about what they had gone through and their anxieties.

We live in a so-called modern world and we take a lot of things for granted. We will go home tonight to sleep in a nice warm bed. We will get up in the morning and turn on the lights. This is what we expect. All these things had been taken away from these people which caused a great deal of anxiety in their lives. The connection was the human beings who tried to reach out and make a difference. There were military people from the regular forces in Petawawa in the community centre. They told me how they were trying to pump out people's basements that were full of water because their sump pumps had failed to work. They were making a tremendous commitment.

I have two sons in the reserve forces, one with the Cameron Highlanders in Ottawa. I lost track of him for over a week. They were down in Maxville and Vankleek Hill doing the same thing I was trying to do, but they were doing it a lot more effectively and efficiently than I was. I was allocating generator capacity between households by moving one generator between six households. We had to move it every two or three hours so all the houses could have a bit of heat.

This all seems rather absurd as we approach the 21st century. I am sure people will look after the fact into how we could have handled things differently. We could have had manual overrides on our furnace systems to prevent such occurrences. The fact is that people were thrown into the situation. As we speak here tonight many people are still without hydro.

My son was involved in the command operation in Maxville. People were suffering. A fellow named Richard who was helping him said that it would be nice if Maxville had new Canadian flags. A lot of its flags were old and tattered. They felt much more a part of the country than they did before this happened.

The Reform Party often criticizes our flag campaign. I was very pleased to approach the Minister of Canadian Heritage to say that the people of Maxville needed 20 flags. I asked her to give us 20 flags to make those people feel a little happier about being part of this country. I am happy to say she forwarded them to me and they are now in Maxville. It made them feel very much part of this great country.

The minister of agriculture said that it was almost over in the sense that people being reconnected. It is not over as far as the hurt, the anguish and the pain that have been suffered and will be suffered by these people. A small business operator who lost a month of income but has a mortgage suddenly has a significant problem on the doorstep to meet that mortgage payment.

Consider the insurance business. Many of these things were considered to be acts of God. Many were uninsurable. Our government and the provincial governments are attempting to deal with disaster relief assistance. In reality, when the smoke clears, these people will have major financial difficulties. There will be a grey area in which insurance companies will question the insurability of events.

Maybe a big insurance company or a big bank with lots of assets can be very generous. However situations will arise in which smaller insurance companies and financial institutions will not be so generously inclined. Suddenly these goal posts about what is claimable and what is not or how to assist a business person or a person who is making a car loan payment will become big problems.

I am very happy to say that the caucus on this side of the House has provided for a number of these organizations to come and visit us tomorrow. I want to give a personal appreciation for the Conference Board of Canada, which is going to appear before our caucus tomorrow; the Canadian Bankers' Association, which is going to provide members in the relief areas; the Caisse Populaire of Quebec, which is coming here to say how it is going to deal with these problems; and the Insurance Bureau of Canada, which is sending all its representatives to tell us on this side of the House at least, as parliamentarians, how they are going to deal with these people not only today but in the future and solve some of the problems that are going to exist.

[Income Tax Act, February 4th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to enter the debate on Bill C-223. I would also like to thank the member for Portage—Lisgar for bringing this matter to the floor.

This is not the first time that this has been debated in the House of Commons. The ill fated government of Joe Clark and Mr. Crosbie made it part of its budget projections which eventually saw it defeated. Subsequently not many people have sought to reintroduce it.

I understand the member is interested in helping young families get a start in life, a very admirable position to have. I do not think it is going to attain the objectives he is interested in for a number of reasons.

First, this would increase the complexity of the existing income tax system. The thing that people mention to me is they want to see a simpler and fairer taxation system. We will have one group of taxpayers eligible for deductions and another group not.

I want to specifically talk about some of the problems of the American system which allows the deductibility of mortgage interest. I am certain the administrative people in the United States would dearly love to get rid of the mortgage deductibility. The tendency of the government there has been to eliminate consumer deductibility for other forms of debt such as car loans and credit card interest, which have already been eliminated. The American system is tending to go away from the concept of mortgage deductibility.

What this does is encourage people to be in debt. I have some American friends who are quite amazed that Canadians eventually pay their houses off through a process of saving. Canadians have one of the highest percentages of home ownership probably in the western world because of that. I know the member is talking about first time home buyers, but it has been the tendency for Americans that every five years when their mortgage comes up for renewal they increase their mortgage. They increase it based on the inflated value of their real estate because there is a tax incentive to do so.

As a consequence few people actually try to pay off their mortgages and they live with debt risk. If there is a downturn in the economy, these people, the very people the member is interested in assisting, will end up losing their homes because they are too highly leveraged and the incentive to save has not been there.

Let us look at the experience in the United States. We have talked about the difference between the wealthy benefiting from this package as opposed to those who are not so inclined. Of course it benefits people who own homes as opposed to those who rent.

In the United States currently only 8% of new homeowners recently polled cited the tax break as a reason for purchasing their homes. In the United States only 6.2% of household earnings between $10,000 and $20,000 per year claim the deduction compared to 78.1% of filers who declared more than $100,000 of taxable income.

We can see very clearly that the American experience is that the high income earners are the ones taking advantage of this and not those with low incomes. It is a regressive tax in the sense that it favours higher income groups at the detriment of lower income earners.

Previous speakers have mentioned that to some extent capital gains on personal residences are taxed in the United States. Of course Canada does not do that. If we introduce a process whereby people are allowed to deduct the interest they pay on their mortgages, it follows that we should also tax capital gains. I believe we would find there would be a lot of reticence if we moved in that direction.

This would be what we call a retrogressive tax. It would increase the complexity of the tax system. It is a reward for spending as opposed to saving. These all seem to run counter to the things which government should be promoting in our country.

The Americans like this because they have a consumer driven society. Basically we will find in the United States that their savings rates are significantly lower than those of Canadians. That creates a great deal of uncertainty in their lives. Indeed many people live from paycheque to paycheque. I suppose we could argue that this happens in Canada as well, but it is more evident in the United States.

When the hon. member first opened debate on this issue he talked about who would benefit. I am surprised at the reference he made. He said that he had been informed by the banking industry that it would be in favour of this. Why would it not be? After all, if the banks are going to increase their mortgage business, why would it not be a great business to have?

I suggest to the hon. member that the people he is trying to defend, the first time homebuyers, are the very people the banks want to get into their clutches. The banks will tell them not to pay down their mortgages or save because the banks will lend them the money. We know who will become wealthy from that. It will not be the first time homebuyers, it will be the financial institutions which will benefit.

In conclusion, while I am aware of the good intentions of the member, I encourage my colleagues to vote against this bill.

[Year 2000 Problem, February 3rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Industry.

Statistics Canada, his own agency, has found that SMEs, small and medium size businesses, are unprepared to meet the challenge of the year 2000 problem. What is the minister doing to ensure that we do not have chaos in our small business sector in slightly over 600 days from now?