Alex Shepherd

[Speech From The Throne, September 29th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I listened very intently to the member for South Surrey—White Rock—Langley. I am very disheartened by her tact today.

I am from Ontario and I have never in my life stood up here and talked about the fact that Ontario feels gypped by Confederation. I have also lived in British Columbia and I can assure the member that the people of that province do not think the way she is talking today.

I have heard her party time and time again talk about the need to transfer powers to the provinces. We have the social health and safety transfer which is block funding to the provinces which allows the provinces to spend the money in any way they want.

Recently I read something from the Fraser Institution, one of the think tanks that the member quite often likes to quote, showing the time between when people have been diagnosed for cardiac surgery and the date of surgery. In the province of British Columbia it is three months. The same diagnosis in the province of Manitoba is half a week.

What you tell me about the equality of people and how we are going to maintain basic national—

[Petitions, September 24th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure today to present a petition on behalf of 57 constituents who live in a co-op housing project on 610 Beatrice Street in my riding.

In part they indicate that the Government of Canada and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation have begun secret negotiations with the province of Ontario, that the people who own and operate co-operatives have been excluded from these negotiations, and that the Government of Ontario has already breached its own agreements with provincially funded housing co-operatives.

They pray that the minister responsible for Canada Mortgage and Housing will immediately suspend negotiations on social housing with the province of Ontario and resume negotiations only if the minister proceeds under publicly declared principles established with the input of the co-operative housing stakeholders.

[Budget Implementation Act, 1997, April 10th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to enter the debate on the budget implementation legislation.

I cannot help but respond to some of the comments made by my colleague from Calgary Centre. Members talk about originality. I went door to door in the last federal election. We had a phrase in my organization that we took some time to study as people do when they enter into a campaign. Our phraseology was a fresh start. We had that on our brochures. We promoted it because it was very much a fresh start for Canada and for the people Durham.

Canada had its fresh start back in 1993. It always gives me great delight when I hear the Reform Party saying me too another four years later. That tells us a lot about its policies. Basically it is mired in the past.

It has taken us a long time to get to where we are today in our fiscal responsibilities. Past governments of all political stripes for a variety of reasons created deficits and debts which we have had the responsibility in this administration to deal with. I say responsibility because we have not shirked our responsibilities. Looking back

to when I first wanted to enter this place, it was basically to improve the finances of the country.

I am proud to be part of a government that took that commitment seriously, that started off with a $45 billion a year deficit and dropped it to $35 billion. In the last budget it is down to $17 billion. We can see that we are going in the right direction.

The hon. member talks about a long term plan. Presumably he means that somehow we are going to make it go away tomorrow. We are not. We have a long term plan. The long term plan is toward fiscal responsibility, getting the deficit and debt down.

The hon. member wanted to intervene about taxation. Reformers talk about the lower income groups they will drop off the tax roll. There may well be some merit in that but that kind of policy creates a tax wall. It creates a wall so that people cannot get away from the lower income. They are lower income people and as soon as they jump over the wall they are hit with 20, 30 or 40 per cent taxes. That is the kind of regime the Reform Party would have us enter into.

They spend very little time talking about the other side of the issue. They want to give their buddies and friends, the rich of the country, a reduction in taxes. Who picks up the bill for that? It is the middle income earners, the people in my riding, people with $50,000 or $60,000 worth of income. They are the ones who will pick up the bill for the so-called Reform agenda.

I agree with another aspect the member mentioned. I do not want to dwell a long time on Reformers. On the infrastructure spending program they went on and on about comparing infrastructure dollars to jobs created. Nowhere did we ever say that the prime motivation of the infrastructure spending program was to create long term jobs. We always said it created short term jobs. It gave people hope.

It gave people hope. I remember back in 1993 when people had no hope at all. Once that infrastructure spending program came into play, people saw things were happening. More important, the infrastructure spending is not directly impacting jobs per se. It is creating the infrastructure or the environment where governments and small business people can create wealth. They have better roads and better sewer systems. They can create business opportunities.

The Reform Party seems to have entirely missed this point. It is mired in the past. It keeps studying history.

One thing my colleague said, to lead me into the main part of my dissertation, was that Canadians for some reason do not feel good. They feel a queasy uncertainty. It is that uncertainty with which the budget deals. What is that uncertainty and what drives it?

Basically, what drives it is that we live today in a period of change that is no different from the industrial revolution. Things are changing because the country is moving to a different type of economy. The Reform Party does not seem to understand what that change is all about and how it impacts people.

The people are concerned about jobs. Clearly, if someone is unemployed they are concerned about jobs. However, the people who are concerned about jobs today are the people who have them. People are worried that they are going to lose them for some very specific reasons. They see how technology has impacted their lives and it gives them fear and concern. I would like to discuss that concern relative to this budget and relative to my riding. In some ways, it is a microcosm of what the problem is.

In Durham, we have General Motors. The General Motors plants are in the riding south of mine, in Oshawa, but a lot of the workers live in my riding. More important, the person who started General Motors in our area, Sam McLaughlin, had a carriage factory. That is part of my riding.

In those days, Sam McLaughlin was building carriages so that horses could trot people around for their transportation. When General Motors came to Canada, it needed a framework to develop an automobile industry. That is very important. Most of the growth in this economy has been in the automotive sector. Basically an engine was put on a carriage that horses would pull. Think of that. We are talking about the 1800s. Think of what that meant to the people who lived there at that time.

They were people who were working on carriages for horses or people who raised horses. It must have been very disconcerting to them to see suddenly these cars going around and their business and agriculture threatened. They must have worried at night about whether they were going to maintain some kind of livelihood with this new engine of change that was enveloping them in Durham.

What happened, of course, is that this new engine created new change. It created the need for gasoline. It created the need for better roads. We were talking about infrastructure only a few minutes ago. It created the need for those kinds of infrastructures. It created the need for auto mechanics.

Generally speaking, most people will agree that if they actually study the people who got new employment from using a car, in fact, they got better jobs. They got higher paying jobs than they would have had if they were in the agricultural sector.

That is change that is really upon us. A lot of people have uncertainty. They feel uncertainty about that change. The opposi-

tion parties, whether Reform or Conservative, breed on this uncertainty. They try to say it is the government's fault that we are living in a period of change. Nothing could be further from the truth. What people need is the courage and conviction to go forward into the 21st century.

When I look at Durham today, in some ways we are very much married to that industrial economy. I have some interesting statistics here. The industrial economy allowed for a relatively modest degree of human capital to resolve into a fairly good return on people's labour. People talk about the new society which is upon us as the new knowledge based society, which requires considerably more human capital to get that higher return.

In Durham, this is something I have been very concerned about. Of course, Durham, General Motors and the automotive sector are very close together. It has created a problem for us to break out of that and to start realizing the potential benefits that science and technology can deliver. What do I mean by that? It can mean prosperity in the lives of people for better jobs, better lives, better health care, et cetera.

Over 25,000 people in my riding of Durham have post-secondary education. The education of over 18,000 of those people is science related. Durham has a population of approximately 250,000 people. That is not a lot when that aspect is considered. Another aspect to be considered is why people are not educating themselves in the area of science and technology.

Of the 18,000 people who have those degrees, only 8,000 have jobs in the field of science. In reality, there is a deficit in Durham of over 10,000 people who cannot work in Durham because no jobs are available in their field. They have to go away. A lot of our youth also go away to be educated.

The government's program, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, is just one way to equalize that and for our educational institutions to utilize the $850 million. We talk about the importance of frugality in spending, but we have found a way to spend money in these very important-

[Bond Rating Services, April 8th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Secretary of State for International Financial Institutions. The Dominion Bond Rating Service has recently upgraded Canada's short term debt position. However, other rating agencies are questioning our long term debt. Will the secretary of state address the concerns of some of these agencies in rating Canada's long term debt?

[Program Cost Declaration Act, March 13th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to honour the many speakers from all parties who stood in support of my Bill C-214.

It shows what the House can be with all members working together for the common objectives of better visibility and better accountability of how governments spend. It empowers people.

The last time I rose was in the first hour of debate on the bill. I would like to mention some organizations that support it. The parliamentary secretary made reference to the auditor general. He stated:

We share your views that the cost of government programs and operations should be made more visible to Parliament and taxpayers.

Certified General Accountants' Association of Canada also support it.

I would like to read a final comment from a letter that I received since the last time I was on my feet. It is from the Canadian

Institute of Chartered Accountants annual letter to the finance minister. It states:

We believe that government must provide cost information and analysis prior to making decisions that affect the delivery of existing programs or initiating new programs. We believe that this cost information should be made available to the public in order to foster greater awareness of government spending.

A private member's bill such as 214 that has been brought forward calls for the departments of governments to provide for financial or cost analysis of each piece of legislation on its introduction. In this way government would be more conscious of the financial impact that legislation would have and a greater scrutiny of government spending would be provided to the general public.

We urge the federal government to ensure speedy passage of this bill.

On my way to the House this morning I heard a program on the CBC that talked about gambling. It occurred to me that quite often when individual members of the House rise to vote on various pieces of legislation that is what we are doing. We are gambling but we are not using our money. We are using taxpayers' money.

The bottom line is that we have developed a system of taxation that is not consensual. The history of taxation, while some people at home might have a big yawn, is really quite fascinating. It goes back to the time of the Romans and others who tried to implement taxation systems.

The one important thing about a taxation system that starts to fall apart is the day when people do not believe they consented to be taxed.

In its simplistic form, when taxation first came into existence people could see what they were getting. They would invest in roads, local schools and services they communally decided to invest in and which they benefited from.

When people look at their paycheques today, at the gross figure and the net, they do not understand the difference. Worst than that, many of those people do not believe they were part of the process that made the decision for that level of taxation.

As a result people generally have a negative attitude toward government. They do not figure they are part of the process. They cannot control it. They cannot control the money that is leaving their wallets. They become cynical. Generally the electorate is cynical.

The legislation is trying to let these people back into the loop so that they can be part of the process of change and can feel they are a part of the consensual process. Then they can say they understand how much it will cost and whether it is a good thing. It would let them have their say.

Most important, it would empower members of Parliament in the Chamber who represent those people to make those decisions. In the case they do not want to make them themselves we would have the proper power to do that.

In closing, this is not a new concept. We have estimates from Australia and other countries. It is a matter of simply putting those numbers in a bill, allowing the people in and shedding a bit of light on the government process in Ottawa.

[Private Members' Business, March 13th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I believe you will find consent for the following order:

That at the conclusion of the debate on Private Members' Business today, if a recorded division is requested on Bill C-214 it will be deemed deferred to the end of the time provided for Government Orders on Monday, March 17.

[Vehicle Emissions, March 5th, 1997]

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

Vehicle emissions are a major source of air pollution. Canadians do not want to put their lives into danger every time they leave the house. What has been done to ensure that in future Canadians will breathe more safely, and has the minister been able to secure the co-operation of the provinces in this effort?

[Excise Tax Act, February 11th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the member for Calgary Centre. There is just one aspect of the harmonized GST that the hon. member possibly did not touch on and that is the whole concept of the ability to remove provincial sales tax from export sales.

Members will know that Canada is a major exporting country. Indeed, a big section of our job growth has been related to the export sector. Much of the financial recovery that we are going through right now is related to exports. The maritime provinces, in particular, need to rebuild their economy so that they move into the 21st century. Exporting will be a big feature of that.

For example, in my riding General Motors manufactures cars and sells them on the U.S. market. Every car that is shipped into the United States from plants in Oshawa will have a certain degree of provincial sales tax embedded in the selling price. That makes our exports less competitive with some of the other competitors that are involved, such as OECD countries and southeast Asia. One of the main aspects of the GST was its ability to remove taxes from export sales.

We have provided these three provinces in particular-and the province of Quebec already has a harmonized GST-with a tool to rebuild their economy and a tool to enter into the 21st century with a more dynamic economy zeroed in on export sales.

Why would the member and his party try to frustrate the whole concept of building a new and better economy for the people of the maritimes to create jobs in the future?

[Finance, December 9th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, as always, I listened intently to the member for Calgary Centre. He started his speech, which really set the tone of everything he said, with saying that Canada is a corporation.

Everybody knows that Canada is not a corporation. The Government of Canada is not run like a corporation. The bottom line is that the Government of Canada is about dealing with people's problems.

He went on to talk about the so-called downloading. He used the word downloading when talking about reducing transfer payments to the provinces. As has been said in this House time and time again, we reduced those transfers far less than we reduce our own spending.

The member is inconsistent. He talks about improving the efficiencies of government. Why would we not also want the provinces to become more efficient? Should we keep the provincial government transfer payments intact while reducing our own spending? This does not make sense. Everybody knows in this country that we have to add the federal government debt plus the provincial government debt to get a total quantum of public sector debt in this country.

It is only reasonable that we reduce provincial government transfer payments. The thing is technology has taken over our society to such a great degree. What we are asking governments to do is the thing that the business sector did maybe 10 years ago. It embraced the concept of newer technology to reduce the cost of government. That is what we are asking the provinces to do and that is what we are asking the federal government to do.

I am surprised that the member from the Reform Party, who spent such a great deal of time talking about the importance of balancing budgets, has not taken that into realization. We want the province of Ontario, the province of Quebec and indeed the province of Alberta to each take part in the process of reducing government spending and making government more affordable to people.

He went on and on about the ratio of debt to GDP. I dispute some of his figures. As I understand, for the 1996-97 fiscal year he is right, it is around 75 per cent of the total debt to GDP ratio. But that is projected for the next fiscal year to go down to 74 per cent.

In spite of his great long dissertation about the importance of using debt to GDP ratio, the bottom line is that we have turned the corner on that very important figure. I agree with him, we should be focusing on how to reduce government debt.

It seems most of his discussion surrounds why we cannot do it tomorrow. We are in a big hurry. The bottom line is the ship of state takes a long time to move. I have come to that realization.

This government has done the very important things to move that ship of state, whatever it is, 10 or 15 degrees from the course it was on.

Within the first two or three years it does not look like it is much different. As the program continues to impact on government spending and debt reduction, that becomes greater and greater. That is the course that we are on.

That is what everybody in this country says to us, stay the course, keep on that 15 degrees. They do not tell us to go 30 degrees or 40 degrees one way or 70 degrees back the other way. They tell us to stay the course. It is the Reform Party that wants to get off course. This all has to do with timing and how we put our plan into place.

The bottom line is the reduction in interest rates is related to fiscal responsibility. The international and domestic financial communities have looked at what governments are doing and said yes. What is an interest rate but a risk factor: "I am going to loan you x dollars and you are going to pay me back 10 years from now. I think you will inflate the economy. You will print money by increasing the deficit. Therefore I want a higher risk factor''.

In reality that interest rate component has been continually reduced in Canada over the past three years. This tells us that not only the domestic financial community but also the international financial community believe that Canada has its debt and deficit situation under control. Take credit for it? Why would we not? We have lived under an administration that did just the reverse. It drove interest rates through the ceiling. It is very much a check mark, an A+ average by the international financial community.

I heard this member talk about across the board tax cuts. The same member stood in this House about a year ago and talked about the flat tax. Remember the flat tax? We were going to take money from the middle class and give it to the wealthy. Now he has a different formula. I guess by reform he means reforming his own party.

In the final analysis most federal government spending is to people. The member has not been honest. The member has not said what people spending he is going to cut to get off that course another 10 degrees or 15 degrees. He did not talk about how much he is going to cut the old age pension, et cetera.

[Finance, December 9th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his comment. The reality is unemployment is with us and it is at exceptionally high levels.

Let me clarify one thing. As more people find work in this country we have a labour participation rate. Over 600,000 people in the last three years have found work and more people are stepping up to the pedestal saying they want to get into the labour market as well. This is partially why the rate is at 10 per cent.

The member possibly did not understand all of what I said. I said that through research and technology and our educational institutions we have to give the people of Canada new skills. A lot of that 10 per cent figure has to do with what I would call structural unemployment.

The bottom line is the economy has not changed. It is unfortunate but true. It is no different than if we had lived at the time of the industrial revolution when we changed from the horse to the iron horse, the railway. It is the same kind of technology which exists today. We can improve that but there is no quick fix. There is no quick fix for the unemployment rate. The real long term fix will be to underpin the brain power of this nation. I am suggesting that is what the report addresses and beyond.

Perhaps the member did not see the first part of the title. The first part is: "1997: The Budget and Beyond". It is the beyond that is important. It is the beyond that builds on the technological excellence we have always had in this country and tries to include all those people who for various reasons are unable to find work, long term work or skilled work. We are developing a society of skilled and unskilled workers. We have to lower our pool of unskilled workers and increase our pool of skilled workers. This is what the report has recognized as the pathway to the future.