Alex Shepherd

[Income Tax Act, September 20th, 1995]

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

As part of the last budget there was a requirement that as many as 400,000 small and medium sized unincorporated businesses in all of Canada be forced to change their year ends.

Knowing the commitment of the minister and the government to help small and medium sized businesses to create jobs, how has the minister come to the assistance of the business community?

[Questions Passed As Orders For Returns, September 18th, 1995]

Regarding the proposed registration of firearms, would the government, ( a ) provide a detailed and comprehensive accounting showing the projected cost of the administration of such a system, with all costs both incidental and specific to be taken into account, ( b ) allocate these cost projections between those costs to be absorbed or recovered from legal gun owners and those to be borne by the general public, ( c ) provide all statistical assumptions taken into consideration in arriving at these projections and ( d ) in the case of the general public's allocation, show this cost on a per taxpayer basis?

(Return tabled.)

Question No. 199-

[Taxpayers Bill Of Rights, June 20th, 1995]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-336, an act to appoint to a taxation ombudsman and to amend the Income Tax Act to establish certain rights of taxpayers.

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to introduce this private member's bill which I have called the taxpayers bill of rights. The actions of Revenue Canada are often consistent and fair but from time to time the administrative practices get out of hand, so much so that one of my constituents actually suffered a heart attack over some of the actions taken by Revenue Canada. Things like rights of seizure without proper notice and arbitrary change of collection arrangements are only some of the aspects which the bill deals with.

Most important, it creates an ombudsman who will act as a buffer between taxpayers and Revenue Canada.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)

[Electoral Boundaries Readjustmentact, 1995, June 15th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I will give you a perfect example that backbenchers are still allowed to speak in the House.

I listened with interest to the hon. member for Simcoe Centre. When I listen to the Reform Party I come to one conclusion: simple solutions for complex problems. I too have some concern about this bill. When I went back and studied it, I discovered that there was an agreement with the provinces in 1985 which would have to be broken to address the concerns of some, mine included. I had an idea that we could freeze the numbers in the House.

However, it really requires addressing the constitutional agreement that existed at that time. The member has not talked about how he is going to address that problem, how he is going to go to the provinces and get an agreement with the provinces to reduce the numbers.

The formula would require major changes to address the concept of representation by population. It would require major reductions in both the province of Saskatchewan and the province of Manitoba. If my memory serves me correctly, the province of Saskatchewan would lose about four seats.

I do not hear members of the Reform Party from Saskatchewan standing up saying they are prepared to sustain a loss of four seats in the province of Saskatchewan. Let us be honest and clear about these things. They should tell us how they are going to reduce those numbers of seats and if they are prepared to lose four seats in the province of Saskatchewan. They should also tell us the magic solution they have to go back to the provinces and retrench that agreement that existed in 1985.

[Firearms Act, June 12th, 1995]

In favour, Mr. Speaker.

[Income Tax, June 12th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Revenue.

At this time of the year many single parents, mostly women, find themselves in debt to the government because they have to pay taxes on the receipt of support payments that have not been taxed during the year.

Would it not be appropriate for Revenue Canada to require tax deductions administered through the courts so that payments into custodial homes are received net of tax like forms of employment income? Would the minister not agree that this would go a long way to alleviating the April blues suffered by these families?

[Supply, June 7th, 1995]

Once again, Mr. Speaker, the Reform Party has a lot of difficulty with mathematics.

Essentially the expenditure increases are increasing at a decreasing rate. This is the first time that has happened. The last two budgets that the government has been involved in it has actually met its targets. It is the first time that I can remember in my lifetime when not only did it meet its budget targets but actually exceeded them by $4 billion. This is a success story, not a failure.

Reform members want to go back and study history. I think this is what is wrong with them, they are not forward looking. They do not understand how we are to solve these problems because they keep looking back in the past.

[Supply, June 7th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his comments. I do not think he can give me any lessons in mathematics on things I already know and that is obviously that deficits occur by the very fact that more money is spent than is brought in.

The essence of the member's question is that he does not seem to have been sitting in this place for too long or maybe he has been away. The reality is that there are significant reductions in government expenditures. The Western Grain Transportation Act will affect his constituents. The Atlantic freight subsidies have been eliminated. There have been substantial changes in attitude toward privatization. Canadian National railway is being privatized. Numbers in the civil service are being reduced. Therefore, the reality is that expenditure reductions are occurring.

The government is taking a balanced approach to this. I do not think it can cut to the point where it would actually push the country back into a recession. The growth rate in the economy right now is somewhere between 3 per cent and 4 per cent which increases government revenues. Therefore, it is a balanced approach between expenditure reductions and, at the same time, attempting to get the economy to grow.

The Reform Party would take a slash and burn approach so that the 3 per cent figure would turn into a recession and everybody in the country would be back on the unemployment lines.

[Supply, June 7th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his comments. It is unfortunate we have to take a serious matter such as government financing where we are all trying to find solutions to Canada's debt problems and turn it into a political charade.

The reality is all western countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, all OECD countries, during this same period of time ran significant deficits. It is not a unique Canadian problem. It is not related particularly to the Liberal Party, the Tories or anybody else. It was a symptom that occurred in North America and Europe, in fact, in most western countries.

I am trying to find out why it happened so it is not repeated. That is enough of an acknowledgement. The reality is we cannot talk about the past forever. We have to get on with the future, which is what the government is trying to do. It has a very good plan and it should be supported.

[Supply, June 7th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to enter this debate on supply. The theme of my dissertation will be how to improve the accountability of government programs and make the systems more efficient.

I have often wondered coming to the House how it was possible that Canada created the debt it has today. I think it is $550 billion and rising. I have often wondered who was controlling the cheque books and why it was so easy for the debt to accumulate, seemingly without the knowledge of a lot of the people in control.

Did people actually ask for all the services they received, or for some reason did the system actually give them services they did not request?

No one seems to have taken responsibility for our spending behaviour in the past. The government is now doing that, taking

control of expenditures and trying to find ways to effectively reduce them.

Has the Treasury Board in the past acted as a comptroller? Time and again in investigating the role of the Treasury Board I have discovered it often delegates authority to individual departments. Invariably departments seem to control their own expenditures. Individual departments historically have overspent. In the private sector if that were the case we would expect job losses and all kinds of negative connotations. Overspending in the past seems to have been a merit system. As the department spent more money it became larger and larger.

Studying the estimates is very difficult. I know members have a great deal of difficulty going through individual estimates to get a handle on how government spends. I am looking at the estimates and I see three lines. One is the 1995-96 estimates, one comparison column is the 1994-95 forecast, one is a 1993-94 actual. None of these three columns is a place in time. None compares estimated to actual expenditures. It must be very difficult for members of Parliament and others reading these documents to make any sense of where expenditures are occurring and where we have overshot our original estimates.

How can we make government accounting more understandable? I know we are moving slowly to set up an accrual system within government and to record assets. What do I mean by that? Currently the accounts of Canada are kept on a cash basis. We only record things when we actually pay for them and we only record revenue when we actually receive it.

I am not trying to demean farmers but they have been keeping their records on this matter for the last 100 years. It seems the business of government is big business and we need a better methodology of capturing what governments are doing. A more understandable methodology would be instead of focusing on the expenditure system we now have, we possibly think about revising it. What do I mean by that?

We should look at two aspects of expenditures, investments and consumption; in other words, governments spend and what do they spend on. They spend in forms of investment, which is education, training, anything that upgrades the skills of the country.

The other expenditure is finance consumption. We look at programs like the Canada pension plan, unemployment insurance, transfer payments in support of social services. These are all programs in essence that finance consumption.

If we could look at government accounts from a more focused point of view and ask ourselves whether it an expenditure for investment or an expenditure for consumption, we would have a better concept of how governments spend and more effectively how governments can spend so they are actually putting some good back into the economy. For instance, do we want to spend money on training or do we want to spend money on unemployment insurance? Clearly our focus should be to upgrade skills, possibly focusing on high school students who have dropped out of the educational system and upgrading their skills so they can get back in the workforce.

If we undertook an accounting system a little more focused it would give us a better idea of how governments spend and why. Clearly we have to reduce total expenditure but while we are reducing total expenditure we should also consider a shift from the consumption side of government to the investment side.

Today I was pleased to introduce a private members' bill. Since it deals almost exclusively with this very area, certainly a coincidence, I cannot help but resist in speaking a little about what that private members' bill would do to increase the accountability of government programs.

The bill basically requires all new programs entered into by the government, individual departments presenting programs to the House, prior to their being presented, be properly costed. Properly costed means they also have a certification by the auditor general that the methods of projecting costs were appropriate. This goes back to some of my original comments.

How did we get into the problem of overspending in the first place? It seems we have fallen into a lull where we bring in programs that sound good, somebody says they cost a certain amount but nobody really knows because they have not taken the time to do that properly, and two or three years later when the bills start coming in we discover the thing is way out of hand.

The bill would also take these programs and cost them on a per capita basis. In other words, each individual in the country would know that he or she is paying x number of dollars as a share of this program. That may give individuals in the public domain a better perspective of what they are paying for these programs.

People feel very removed from the estimates and other aspects of government financing. They feel it is not their money. Many people believe in magic, that somehow things happen magically either in Ottawa or the provincial capitals, that somehow the money coming back to them is not really theirs but the next door neighbour's or someone else's. If there was a proper accounting system that costed programs on a per capita basis, people would take more of an interest in the kinds of programs governments are announcing.

Other aspects of government must be encouraged to create competition. Competition can be created within government, within departments and also between governments and the private sector. Competition will also breed efficiency.

In addition, a very important aspect of spending in the federal domain will be to affix responsibility. In other words, line managers should be responsible for their expenditures. We should also consider remuneration partially based on successful management of programs.

I had a very interesting tour of a Darlington nuclear reactor which is in my riding. I was very surprised at what Ontario Hydro of all places has done. It has actually made individual managers responsible for the number of kilowatt hours produced in that plant. If the managers are under they lose part of their bonus. This marks the way we should be dealing with our expenditure programs as well.