Alex Shepherd

[Taxpayers Bill Of Rights, April 30th, 1996]

moved that Bill C-215, an act to appoint a taxation ombudsman and to amend the Income Tax Act to establish certain rights of taxpayers, be read a second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure today to finally have a private member's bill brought before the House. I regret it is not a votable bill but that is the way of this place.

This bill originally was part of a larger package of the general concept of tax reform. Another private member's bill which is also in the hopper talks about changing the accountability of government legislation and how we cost government programs coming before the House. Another portion of the bill was to deal with the capacity of individuals in this country to sustain tax increases, in other words, to put an upper limit on the amount of tax to be extracted from people.

I do not think I have to tell the House that Canada has one of the highest taxation administrations in the world. I think it is second only to France in the western world. This is causing a great strain on our economy. It is causing a significant reduction in disposable income and the ability of people to purchase and create a robust economy.

My background is in accounting. I am a chartered accountant and practised in the taxation area for 25 years. I advised clients and dealt with their tax matters with Revenue Canada. My father and many of his associates also worked for Revenue Canada and were tax auditors. I have an understanding of how the taxation system works and how the administration of Revenue Canada operates.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which represents taxpayers throughout Canada, has said that it would be well served to have this kind of legislation outlining the basic rights of taxpayers. There is a wide base of support for this kind of legislation.

We were debating in the House today a Canadian human rights amendment which is to prevent discrimination against certain groups in our society. It is surprising that we have not taken the time to consider a significant minority group in this country, the taxpayers. There are over 13 million taxpayers in Canada. Surprisingly they have very few fundamental rights. In its guide, Revenue Canada has about 240 words on the rights that taxpayers have. They are mainly platitudes and there is not a lot about how one gets restitution if the system does not work.

The people at Revenue Canada are basically fair minded. As a general principle I have found them to be concerned about the issues of Canadian dignity and so forth. Having said that, the reality is our tax collection system has been pushed to where it is trying to extract the maximum amount of money it can within its constitutional parameters. From time to time people in the department cross the line. In their desire to extract money from people they infringe on the individual rights of people.

I call it Caesar. As a matter of fact those people watching out there are going to see the hand of Caesar in the House today. We can actually see the hand of Caesar represented in some hon. members who are going to speak against it. I respect the rights of my colleagues but it is surprising that a number of people will defend that Revenue Canada considers some of the concerns of private individuals.

The United States already has a taxpayers bill of rights. Senator Pryor brought forward legislation in 1988. It has now been amended a second time in the United States.

The United Kingdom has a taxpayers ombudsman as does New Zealand and many Scandinavian countries. You can see this is not a novel concept. In fact it has been accepted in most other tax jurisdictions except Canada. Do we need this kind of legislation? Do we need to protect taxpayers? I will give some examples of what I am talking about.

In my riding there is a woman named Cheryl Sassville who is a single mom. She was dinged for not paying tax on her child support payments, a common problem with many single mothers. She came to an arrangement with Revenue Canada that she would pay it off over a prescribed period of time. This lasted about two or three years. She went through one collection officer and everything was great. She went through another collection officer and that was fine. She was paying as agreed.

Then she got a collection officer who said that it was not fine. He was trying to make waves for himself in Revenue Canada. This sometimes happens. Her whole life was in balance and what Revenue Canada did was it seized her bank account and got $94. This woman had a heart attack over it and she lost two weeks of work. It cost her $700 and Revenue Canada never said it was sorry. It did not even give her the $94 back.

Another incident which occurred recently is the change to the Canada-U.S. tax treaty. What has happened there is we have taxed seniors in this country, people who are receiving social security payments on American income. That might seem novel and not a big problem, but there are 81,000 seniors in Canada who have been affected by that legislation. Many of these people are low income seniors.

There is the example of Elen Mowat, a woman who was earning $14,000 in total retirement income. About $10,000 is social security she gets from the United States. She was hit for 25 per cent in tax, $2,500 from somebody who is only making $14,000 a year. What did Revenue Canada tell her to do? It told her to go and lobby Washington. Her own government told her to go and lobby Washington.

A letter just came in today from a Mrs. Leona Jeremy of Middleton, Nova Scotia. Because our government does not take into account the fact that this tax occurred, her guaranteed income supplement is reduced.

These people are living below the poverty line. Do we need somebody to take care of this problem? Can these people afford tax lawyers and accountants to appeal their cases? No they cannot and that is why I am here today.

Another incident concerns medical exemptions. In 1991 Revenue Canada decided it wanted to change how it was going to calculate the medical exemptions. The only problem is it was not widely distributed in the population. People continued claiming under the old system. In 1994 it decided to get tough with these people.

Mr. Roberts in my riding had no idea that the legislation had changed. Revenue Canada turned around and simply reassessed him for $1,000 and told him to pay right now. Mr. Roberts earns less than $12,000 a year. He cannot afford to pay the money. There does not seem to be anyone who wants to listen to his problems.

The Financial Post has done lots of polls on people's attitudes toward the taxation system. Poll after poll has said that people want to be part of the process. They want to have something to say and they want protection from some of these problems.

These are some of the features of my legislation. I talk about legislated standards for audit completion. What do I mean by that? It means if an audit is started on a small or medium size business it has to be finished some day. I have seen it happen time and time again where an audit is started and goes on and on for years, sometimes two years. It ties up the whole business operation. People's lives are put in limbo while they are going through the audit process.

My legislation also says it is up to that taxpayer who has made a mistake that they can avoid the six month period. The reality is it is up to Revenue Canada to execute its mandate within a reasonable time frame and to give proper notice prior to seizures.

I have seen time and time again that small and medium sized businesses have had their bank accounts seized. It could be an error. They are not even given notice. The money is just taken out of their bank accounts and then Revenue Canada says it made a mistake. It can affect their credit ratings. I am suggesting that the legislative powers of Revenue Canada need to be used moderately.

Another aspect of my bill would give people an understanding of the Income Tax Act. We are constantly changing the taxation system somewhat randomly. My legislation says that no change in any one year should affect more than 1 per cent of the taxpayers and no cumulative changes should affect more than 3 per cent and that major tax changes which affect the lifestyle of people will only occur every 10 years.

If this legislation were in place, people would have a greater understanding of the taxation system. They would learn to understand it and possibly even learn to respect it.

The other thing is to prevent arbitrary cancellation of payment agreements. I was just talking about people over 60 being forced from their homes. How could anybody in the House argue against that? If people over 60 years of age for whatever reason, possibly the death of a spouse, trigger the tax liability, Revenue Canada can force them to sell their house. I am suggesting that the house be mortgaged and wait until the demise of the sole spouse, but do not force people from their homes. This is only reasonable in our society.

Finally, I come to the issue of an ombudsman, to which some other speakers will probably object because the hand of Caesar does not want to be questioned.

Revenue Canada has 38,500 employees which is equal to 60 per cent of the entire armed forces of the country, and a budget of over $2 billion. Within that framework 10 or 20 employees could be found to create an office of an ombudsman to protect 13 million people from the random and arbitrary nature which sometimes occurs at Revenue Canada. Some will say it is impossible, that it cannot be done. However, Revenue Canada is hiring all kinds of people to deal with the enforcement of the GST. Money can be found to do that but we cannot find money to protect the people of Canada.

The House and the committee just went through the whole process of looking at the concept of an ombudsman for our financial institutions. Why? We thought that people were being taken advantage of by their financial institutions, by banks. The banks have set up their own ombudsman. As a government we forced them to have a national ombudsman to protect the rights of people. Why is it that we are not prepared to protect the same rights of people within our own government structure yet we will force the banks in the private sector to carry on with that legislative agenda?

I talked earlier about the United Kingdom model. When we talked with the banks about the provision of an ombudsman, I had an opportunity to talk to the ombudsman from the United Kingdom. He told me the system worked very well.

Some of my colleagues would suggest if we have an ombudsman everyone will appeal their case and the whole system will fall apart. There could be a screening device and we could monitor for clearly spurious cases where people were simply trying to delay paying taxes.

The ombudsman system in the United Kingdom is a bit odd because it actually thinks that members of Parliament have some power. Complaints are put through members of Parliament who in turn make decisions as to whether or not there is a valid complaint. I am not suggesting that for us. I am just illustrating how other jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom and New Zealand have dealt with the problem.

What we are asking for is a very simple and efficient dispute settlement mechanism. Some of my colleagues will suggest that Revenue Canada can do it all by itself. I would like to suggest that it has not done it by itself. As a matter of fact, a recent Supreme Court of Canada decision recognized that Revenue Canada had changed its attitude in an audit situation. It was forcing people to pay money which they did not owe. The court actually made a decision to tell these people to sit down and talk calmly to each other. Imagine that. I think that clearly indicates a need. The Supreme Court of Canada is telling us there is a need for some form of ombudsman.

We have developed a litigation system in Canada. The way individuals solve their taxation problems is to get a lawyer. The people I just talked about cannot afford a lawyer. They cannot afford to go to Washington to protest. They cannot afford the $1,000 that Revenue Canada is randomly extracting from them. There is no place for them to go.

Some people would say they should go through the political system, that they should go through the minister. Revenue Canada does not want that kind of intervention. It does not want to be monitored. It wants to have a free rein and not to be held in check.

I feel we have to temper the hand of Caesar. It has happened in all civilizations. It is interesting to note a book on the history of taxation of the world. This book is about people who have dealt with this in earlier days. This is from the theodecian code of laws under Constantine. It states: "If any person shall complain in court that payment has been unduly exacted of him, or that he has sustained any arrogance, and if he should be able to prove this fact, a severe sentence shall be pronounced against such tax collector". We do not have that legislation today. The Romans addressed the problem and understood that people were to be treated with dignity and respect.

I am not suggesting that the system is out of order and that it runs rampant over the rights of people as a general course of action. However, I have witnessed situations where it has. My legislation would address that. It would give people the ability to go to an ombudsman to get restitution, such as Mrs. Sassville. That poor woman never got her $700 back. She is entitled to her $700. I remember that woman coming into my office in December. She said: "I cannot buy groceries for my kids. I cannot buy a Christmas turkey". I had to send her to the food bank. That woman's dignity was broken and she is owed an apology. That apology never came, even though I asked for one.

This legislation would add a certain degree of dignity and respect to the system. People would have more respect for the system in the way it dealt with them. Through that process they would understand and believe that the system was fair and they would be happier about paying their taxes.

This is only one part of a long process which I have in line. It is very hard to introduce major legislation to change the income tax system through private members' bills, but I will continue on that course.

[Budget Implementation Act, 1996, April 25th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, why is it 15 per cent was the question. Studies have been done on tax policy throughout the world and I will refer to the European Union; we do not want to use the Canadian example. Studies will tell us that consumption tax rates in excess of 15 per cent are almost impossible to collect. I suggest that the province of Newfoundland was probably having a considerable amount of difficulty collecting the 20 per cent tax.

If the tax is reduced to 15 per cent, and it will also be in a value added tax system, more revenue will actually be collected. I suspect the tremendous amount of efficiencies in doing a rate reduction will actually expand the tax revenue in those provinces. In fact the exposure to the federal government will be even less than has been suggested.

The second matter the member spoke about was the concept of a hidden tax. I for one have always thought it was important to have

the tax visible. When I served on the committee and went across the country, I listened to Canadians. They told me over and over again that they do not want to see it. The bottom line is we have turned the country into a nation of bookkeepers and accountants.

If we go to Chicoutimi and there is a dress on a rack which is $100, we cannot figure out how much it cost when we leave the store. People do not to deal with it.

If we want to make it a visible tax, we should make it visible here. If we want to change that 15 per cent to 16 per cent, we should do it in this forum so that everyone can know the rate is changing.

When we go to a gas station, we do not get out of our car to check the metre to see how much tax was added. Maybe we should. The bottom line is most people do not want to do it.

We are doing what people have asked us to do. That is the democratic process.

[Budget Implementation Act, 1996, April 25th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I have heard the Bloc Quebecois members mention many times the necessity of creating a Canadian common market. Even in their strange world of a separate country they see the need for a common market. The European Union has been wrestling for decades to harmonize consumption taxes within its jurisdictions.

The member mentions that they need their independence because they want to create new and wonderful bridges and walls. We are spending time here on another piece of legislation, the agreement on internal trade, which attempts to reduce barriers between the provinces. Why? To support commerce. Why? Because the erection of artificial barriers is inefficient. The bottom line is that everybody pays for that because we do not get the best and most excellent in our economy.

It is in the best interests of all Canadians, Quebecers included, that we have a harmonized rate system on our consumption taxes. We are not going to tell the province of Quebec how to spend it. That is Quebec's choice. That is how we respect constitutionality under federalism. To say that we want a 25 per cent rate in the province of Newfoundland instead of 10 per cent, the bottom line is that we cannot conduct commerce in this country, we create artificial barriers to carrying on business in this country which is not in the best interests of developing a unified common market.

To answer the member's question, he cannot have it both ways. He cannot argue at one point that he wants a common market and then turn around and say they want to fix their tax rates differently from everybody else. It just will not work.

[Budget Implementation Act, 1996, April 25th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, after listening to the member for Calgary Centre I have decided to change my speech somewhat to include a discussion of consumption taxes.

I also served on the committee that travelled across the country. We talked to not just every day Canadians, but businesses and people in policy administration.

It was interesting when we got to the maritime provinces. I discovered the problems those governments were having in dealing with the revenues that were being generated through their provincial sales tax systems and what they were doing with them. When we talk about money being transferred through taxation systems it is important to not only consider taxation itself, but to also consider the other side, what does it do?

In Newfoundland much of that money went toward supporting its health care system. In your province of New Brunswick, Madam Speaker, the health care system and the educational system are among the systems for which province uses the money.

Industrialization has brought a changes over the years, indeed some will say over the centuries. The maritime provinces have seen a reduction in their industrial base. This has put great strains on their financial resources to maintain services which are similar to those in the rest of Canada.

The change in rates from 19 per cent to 12 or 13 per cent in some provinces is positive in a number of aspects. We must consider that through the process of equalization payments the wealthier provinces are already transferring moneys to poorer provinces. Whether they are given a subsidy or an implementation or a structural change which allows those provinces to change those rates for a brief period of time or whether it is transferred by way of equalization payments, it is all the same.

This is a better system. It allows those provinces to reduce the retail sales tax. It also allows them to move toward a more efficient tax. What do I mean by that? A retail sales tax by its very nature taxes business inputs. To put it simply, in my own riding, General Motors is a big manufacturer. The automotive sector accounts for approximately 6 per cent of our GDP. Because the province of Ontario levies a retail sales tax, General Motors will pay that tax on some of its input costs. For example, if it buys stationery and adding machines for its offices, it is paying retail sales tax as it is an end user.

As businesses are not social institutions, they transfer those costs on to consumers. The people who buy automobiles manufactured in the province of Ontario pay retail sales tax. They are paying a portion of that retail sales tax when they buy the automobile.

The province of Quebec has already harmonized its retail sales tax system. It does not have a retail sales tax, it has a value added tax, the GST. Through the administration of that tax, those companies which export their products worldwide are able to take the tax off those products. To show how ridiculous it is, within Canada there are nine retail sales taxes and one federal sales tax.

In the province of Quebec, General Motors in its plant at Sainte-Thérèse is able to take the retail sales tax out of that product. In other words, it can ship cars from Sainte-Thérèse, Quebec into the American market cheaper than a similar plant in Oshawa if only the retail sales tax is considered. Therefore, retail sales taxes have a very negative effect on exports. The export sector accounts for something like 30 per cent of Canada's GDP.

The government's move to harmonize taxes is very positive. A plethora of people are in the tax collection business. There is tremendous duplication. The governments in Fredericton and Charlottetown, and others, collect their own retail sales taxes. Some are having great difficulty. The administration of the retail sales taxes in those provinces has great inefficiencies in collecting taxes. Some fully admit that a lot people in those provinces have been able to escape the retail sales tax system.

It is very easy to escape the retail sales tax because it is a single stage tax. If you do not pay it once you sneak away from it entirely. The value added tax is a lot more difficult to escape simply because every stage of production adds a tax. If I buy something from one person I get a credit for the GST that has to be paid if I use it in my business. This is not so in the retail sales tax area. A lot of those provinces have had difficulty in the simple administration of the

tax. There is no question the retail sales tax, compared to a value added tax, is a lot less efficient tax.

What I really want to discuss today is the whole area of consumption. That is what this budget implementation bill is really all about. Everyone is very concerned to make the Canadian economy more efficient and to create a degree of harmonization across Canada.

Next Tuesday is the deadline for people to file their income tax returns. If there is one thing that unites us as a nation, although we might have a common dislike of the event, is the once a year requirement to file a federal income tax return. Generally speaking, the rules and regulations in the Income Tax Act are the same whether you live in British Columbia, the Yukon, Quebec or in Prince Edward Island. It is a commonality that happens across the country.

I have encouraged the Minister of Finance and I believe he has taken it somewhat to heart that what has to be achieved through the harmonization process is a consistent rate across Canada of the GST. Why would I say that? When I was in Newfoundland I was surprised and shocked to discover that there is a tremendous business in mail order sales. People buy things through the mail from Ontario rather than going to downtown St. John's or Cornerbrook to buy from a local retailer because the retail sales tax in Ontario is 3 or 4 percentage points lower than in Newfoundland.

In other words it was a negative for the people in Newfoundland. People were not buying their products from the local retailers but from Ontario solely because Ontario had a lower retail sales tax. The province of Alberta would gain the most because it has no retail sales tax.

It shows how the country gets into these ridiculous economic situations. It should be the end objective of the GST legislation that all provinces come onside so the rates are the same across the country. Then there will not be the problem of products moving between jurisdictions or how the rates are adjusted. This is just a ridiculous situation. People say a consumption tax is a lot fairer tax.

I heard the member for Calgary Centre talk about how we should have a flat tax. I say that a flat tax is not an efficient or fair tax. With a flat tax interest would not be taxable. The banks of the country must really embrace the Reform Party because any interest earned on revenues under a flat tax system would not taxable.

A flat tax would take the tax burden from the wealthiest and shift it to the middle income earner, those people making $65,000 or $70,000. In the Reform Party's magical world those people would be paying more taxes than wealthy people.

The President of the United States said: "I do not understand a flat tax. Everybody over $200,000 is going to be paying less taxes and those people in the middle income brackets will be paying significantly more". That says a lot about the Reform Party and who it represents.

As members will recall, Steve Forbes advocated a flat tax when he ran for the Republic nomination for president. I read an interesting comment which I will paraphrase because I do not have the article in front of me. It pertains to Steve Forbes.

The magazine said that the companies that Mr. Forbes owns, Forbes magazine and others, stood to gain $3 billion from the implementation of a flat tax. The magazine went on to say that it is not a fair tax and is not something America wants. I was not reading a leftist magazine. It was called Money magazine.

People who deal in this area know that the flat tax is not a fair tax. I can only suggest that the Reform Party is representing those who are not the common people of the country.

A lot of people think a consumption tax is a fair tax. It is a discretionary tax. If we do not buy that new car, we do not pay the tax.

The reason I want to talk about it is because I am personally very concerned about the level of consumer credit in the country. The government is also concerned about it. If we look at the budget and the dedication to reducing the debt and deficit, it is part of the process of getting the economy back on its feet again.

There has been an alarming growth in consumer credit. I talk about disposable incomes. Ninety-two per cent of disposable income in the country is now committed to fixed debt payments. That is the cheque taken home every week. In looking at the financial statements of the banks it does not take long to realize how that has changed. There has been a tremendous growth in consumer debt with our financial institutions.

Is that healthy for our country? There are some other interesting statistics coming from Stats Canada telling us that personal bankruptcies are at an all time high in the country. The banks will tell us that the reason they have to keep credit card interest rates so high, 18 per cent when interest rates have been declining, is because of personal bankruptcies.

Which is the cause and which is the effect? Are there personal bankruptcies because the banks have loaned all these people money to finance personal consumption? Or is it the other way around? I suggest that we have an alarming problem in the growth of consumer debt.

It is not unusual for the banks to send out credit cards to all university students, people who do not have a way to pay them. They are getting into debt at very early stages of their lives. I was alarmed the other day when I saw an ad which read: "Go to Costa

Rica for $85 a month". That was the end of the message. For $85 a month, someone can go to Costa Rica and have a good time on the beach. That is $85 a month for another year of their life. Many people are susceptible to that. A lot of people who are under stress and strain today are susceptible to such escape mechanisms.

What we are doing is compounding people's debt problems and they will never get out of these situations. Many of our young people think they are never going to be able to own a home because they are entrapped with consumer debt.

Governments try to help people such as ours has done with RRSPs in the last budget. We have recognized that a lot of people are not able to utilize those RRSPs. In their younger years they may be doing other things and are not able to save that money. We allow them to transfer those credits and eligibility for RRSP deductions. We allow them a second crack at it.

When I talked about 92 per cent of disposable income going into supporting fixed debt repayments, that is across this country. If we look at it intergenerationally and at people under 45 years of age, we will find they actually have negative consumer income.

Why is this a bad thing? It is bad because most recoveries in the economy have been driven to some degree by a prior mandate of savings. In other words, people save money to buy big ticket items, such as a car or refrigerator. We have allowed our financial institutions to so eradicate the concept of savings that people can no longer afford to buy anything.

I was interested to hear some of the statements of one of the manufacturers in my riding, General Motors. It said that in Canada the actual sales of automobiles is declining. The types of sales that are occurring are for smaller vehicles which cost less money.

People are holding on to their cars much longer than they have ever done before. The average age of a car is something like eight years now because people do not have any money. They have spent not only all the money they had but they also went into debt to financial institutions to finance an automobile, a house and now consumption.

How many times have we gone to a liquor store and watched somebody slip a card through the credit machine? In Canada, the average debt held on a credit card is something like $1,500. Think about that when we say 25 per cent of the people pay it off every month. The real average of those people who do not pay off their cards is astronomical.

We have developed a whole culture of debt. That has not happened before in Canada. These are alarming figures. I had an opportunity to discuss this with the Governor of the Bank of Canada. He too questioned whether these were not alarming statistics.

I am bringing it here to the House of Commons because I would like to alert parliamentarians of the real concern that not only I but many other people are starting to have about the growth of credit in this country. We should think about curtailing it. How do we curtail it?

Financial institutions are regulated through the Bank Act. We have had discussions about whether they should be selling insurance. Now they tell us they want to lease cars. Do we want our financial institutions to have such a hold on our economy that we cannot create growth?

People do not have the savings in order to gain stability, and stability is another big feature of this. People do not feel stable any more in their own environments. They are not even sure whether they will have their jobs next week. That is compounded by the huge debts they have built up.

Watching the bankruptcy statistics will only give further proof that we are pushing a lot of people into financial situations they cannot handle. Governments have problems with debts and deficits. An important thing we are forgetting is that generally people also have significant debt and deficit problems.

In conclusion, I am very supportive of the budget implementation legislation. I am very supportive of what we are doing here in Ottawa to get the government's fiscal and financial house in order. I believe as our debt and deficit come down, disposable income will start to rise. Hopefully in three or four years we will start to see reductions in tax rates occur in this country to free up more disposable income for the average Canadian. Then not only will Canadians be able to save for their future but they will also be able to invest in items to support our manufacturing sector.

[Bank Act, April 17th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, first I want to stand in defence of grandmothers. It seems to me that the members have been castigating grandmothers. I have met many grandmothers in my life who are very astute investors.

Beyond that, it is getting back to the whole question of CDIC and the purpose for CDIC insurance. CDIC is not a bond rating company. Reformers want the CDIC to divulge this information to the general public. That is not its purpose. If a bond rating is wanted, they would go to Dunn and Bradstreet.

Finally, I want to quickly say that the whole concept of co-insurance in the member's argument is in defence of the large financial institutions that allow them. The junior financial institutions will not be able to compete if the concept of co-insurance is brought in.

[Bank Act, April 17th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I have heard Reform members one after the other talking about co-insurance. The reality is that depositors are not interested in co-insurance, just the financial institutions. The reason is that co-insurance would require depositors to have knowledge of the credit worthiness of the institutions in which they are depositing their money.

That sounds fair and reasonable. But the reality is that the ability to understand a balance sheet, et cetera, is not well understood by some members of the public. I know this because my wife runs a financial company which sells GICs and uses a deposit insurance corporation for that reason. The average investor or depositor simply does not have that skill. If we brought in co-insurance, the reality is that those people would simply make their deposits with larger institutions and we would end competition in the financial sector.

Co-insurance is not something that is specifically desired by the average person, only by the large financial institutions. I would suggest that is who the member is speaking for. He is not speaking for the average Canadian who would not understand the concept of co-insurance and which would probably prevent them from making deposits.

The member also went on to say how co-insurance exists in a number of other countries and in Europe. He failed to mention that in United States the insurance is $100,000 per deposit, not $60,000. I only say this because the Reform Party is constantly saying how we should be like the United States, yet in this case the member decided not to use that example.

I would simply ask the member, can he not see that co-insurance is not something which is supported by the average Canadian?

[Strategis, April 17th, 1996]

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

Our government is committed to fostering a new partnership with small and medium size businesses which will create even more jobs. How has the recent launch of Strategis and other initiatives which give businesses access to the information highway created a new business environment in Canada?

[The Budget, April 16th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I was very concerned about the attacks on the Minister of Finance. It is just more of the same from the Reform Party.

As I understand it, the company of the Minister of Finance has 17 out of 21 vessels registered under Canadian ownership. The company pays taxes. The minister made that statement in the House. It is unfortunate that the Reform Party refuses to take that into consideration. The lack of acknowledgement of facts is not peculiar to this issue. It is common in the Reform Party.

The member said that no jobs are being created in the country. It would appear that from the time Reform members were elected in 1993, they stopped reading, they stopped understanding and they stopped looking at Statistics Canada.

We know that over 500,000 new jobs have been created in Canada. Why speaker after speaker gets up and says: "Jobs, jobs, jobs. You never create any jobs" is beyond me. Can I send you some Statistics Canada productions? The last quarter has had a major net increase in job creation as well. This seems to be the rewriting of history which is common in the Reform Party.

He also talked about when the House was down, he was out running around the country and how the rest of the members in this House were doing nothing. I find that an insult, quite frankly. I was conducting town hall meetings and talking about the Canada pension plan with my constituents. We were looking for real solutions to real problems.

He talked about the concerns of people in his riding in paying their mortgages. He could have gone on to say that through the mandate of the government, real interest rates have declined significantly. Those mortgage payments are a lot easier to pay today than they were in 1993.

I would like to mention two items that are of interest to me, credit cards and the RRSP component being 20 per cent foreign mandated and perhaps it should be more than that.

Do members imagine that taxpayers should subsidize people to invest in other countries? I would have thought they would have been arguing the reverse, that we should reduce the 20 per cent foreign component of RRSPs to encourage more investment in Canada and to encourage small and medium business formation. However, not the Reform Party. The Reform Party seems to think it is quite fine to have that investment capital flow outside of our border to be invested in the United States. It would create jobs down there I suppose.

The member mentioned credit cards. One thing that concerns me is the growth of consumer credit in Canada. We know that 93 per cent of disposable income is now paid toward debt repayments for the average individual, which does not include taxes. It is being paid to banks, to financial institutions, et cetera.

Would members of the Reform Party agree that is an alarming level of credit, that we need to curtail credit spending by individu-

als and possibly the extent of credit financing by some of our financial institutions?

[The Budget, April 16th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member talk about the redistribution of income. I think that was his last comment. I was surprised how he took exception to the proposals in the budget to restructure old age pensions. Basically the budget sought to define those people who are most in need in our democracy, those people who have less income in their retirement years. It sought to underpin their incomes in their retirement years. Indeed it actually increased their real disposable income. It made those payments non-taxable.

I heard the member say at one point in his speech there was a need to redistribute income. At another time I heard him take some exception to the fact that we have spent a lot of time in designing this legislation to create that safety net for the elderly.

I know as well that a committee is currently travelling throughout the country talking about the Canada pension plan. I am sure also that one of the parameters there is to ensure that those funds will be available for those people who are most in need.

These are things which I think are courageous of the government. We could simply forget about the Canada pension plan and by the year 2015 the cheques would stop coming. That perhaps would not hurt people who have high incomes but of course for those people who had not anticipated that it would create undue hardship.

Our government has taken the time and the energy to recognize there is a problem coming, maybe not tomorrow but by the year 2015. We want to deal with problems today so a future generation of Canadians will have adequate means for retirement.

I would like to know how the member can argue that we are not redistributing income while at the same time he argues we should not be underpinning the retirement incomes of seniors who have less income than others.

[The Budget, April 15th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I heard the hon. member say in her speech that jobs had not been created.

It always amazes me when opposition members talk that way. All they have to do is get a copy of a report by Statistics Canada and they can see that well over 500,000 new jobs have been created since the last election. In fact, for the last quarter, just about every month there has been new job creation in Canada.

Second, long ago the province of Quebec harmonized with the GST. I will tell the House why this is a good thing for Quebec and Canada and how governments should co-operate and work together. Manufacturers in the province of Quebec have the ability not to include retail sales taxes in the sale of manufactured goods for export. Quebec was clever enough to notice the advantages of harmonizing the GST.

Unfortunately my province of Ontario does not see that. Where I live General Motors is a major manufacturer. The manufacture of automobiles in Ontario includes a certain element of retail sales tax. That gives Quebec a tactical advantage over Ontario in the export of automobiles to the North American market.

I would like to suggest to the member that rather than attacking some of the advantages of harmonization, she should be applauding the government for its foresight in trying to apply the harmonization method that has been used in Quebec across the rest of this country.

Finally, I would like to suggest that if she contacts Statistics Canada it will tell her the net new job growth on a month to month basis. She will see that we have been very successful in creating new jobs in Canada.