Pierre Brien

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, September 25th, 2000]

moved:

Motion No. 25

That Bill C-3, in Clause 2, be amended by deleting lines 3 to 6 on page 3.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, September 25th, 2000]

moved:

Motion No. 19

That Bill C-3, in Clause 2, be amended by deleting lines 19 to 21 on page 2.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, September 25th, 2000]

moved:

Motion No. 12

That Bill C-3, in the preamble, be amended by replacing, in the French version, line 28 on page 1 with the following:

“d'offrir soutien et conseil à ceux”

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, September 25th, 2000]

moved:

Motion No. 7.

That Bill C-3, in the preamble, be amended by deleting lines 11 to 14 on page 1.

[Gasoline Pricing, September 21st, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, just so that the minister is clear on this, the excise tax is a federal tax. In the provinces, it is a fuel tax.

If the Minister of Industry really wants to put a stop once and for all to the part of gasoline price hikes attributable to a lack of competition, would he be prepared to amend the Competition Act so that three major refiner marketers do not single-handedly control 75% of the market in Canada and hold us hostage to gasoline price hikes?

[Gasoline Pricing, September 21st, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, high fuel prices are certainly not hurting the federal government. Not only is it collecting more GST, and more tax on oil company profits, but it is also continuing to enjoy the sizeable revenues from the excise tax.

I therefore ask the Minister of Finance whether the federal government should not temporarily lift its 10 cent a litre excise tax, given the supposedly unexpected surpluses the minister announced yesterday?

[Supply, September 21st, 2000]

The hon. member mentioned New Brunswick. I believe there are other maritime provinces where the situation is similar.

That being said, as regards the fuel tax in Quebec, which is 15.2 cents per litre, there is a tax rebate in several regions and that rebate varies roughly between 10.5 and 15.2 cents per litre. So, in some cases, that tax is much closer to the level of the excise tax, while in other cases it is higher.

After this technical explanation I should add that, in my opinion, the justification is better when we consider what the government reinvested in the road network. In Quebec, the amounts collected in gas taxes and the amounts reinvested in the transportation budget are similar. The percentage is much closer than it is at the federal level. I believe that over 80% is reinvested.

So, this is much closer to the principle of a dedicated tax. In Quebec, if we add the environment, we are almost there. I do not know the situation for every province, but I know that this is the case for Quebec.

This is why I think it is justified to have gasoline taxes. It is normal to apply the user pay principle. It is normal that the users of the road network make a greater financial contribution. This does not mean that other members of the public should not contribute, because everyone uses transportation infrastructures in some way. But it is only normal that users should pay more.

Except that right now we have reached the limits of what is tolerable. Some help is needed on a number of fronts for consumers of gasoline and diesel fuel, for truckers and for those who are or will be using heating oil for their energy needs, especially this winter, because it is going to cost them quite a bit. Action is needed on all fronts.

This is where I feel the Canadian Alliance motion has something of a flaw, and it concerns the GST rebate for truckers. Fuel may be seen by many as input; they have tax refunds. For them, therefore, lowering the GST would not mean much of a change in their situation. That is why we are focusing more on the excise tax, because this can also help truckers, particularly the independents, facing tough situations.

I will therefore conclude by saying that we are going to support the motion. Other things can be done as well to improve the situation and take things even further. Let us not lose sight of the fact that what we have here is a Canadian industry with a competition problem and that that is what we must tackle, not just in 2001, after the Conference Board has pronounced, but sooner than that. We can do it and we do not need to look very far; if we look across the border, a number of American states have laws that could quite easily be adapted to our situation here.

[Supply, September 21st, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I do not have the exact figures with me, but I can assure the hon. member that it is not true that Quebec is the only place where the provincial tax is not lower than the excise tax. There are other provinces where that is also the case.

[Supply, September 21st, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I totally agree with what my colleague has said. The tax on gas is a cash cow for the government. It is extremely profitable, and the government reinvests little of it.

It is all very well to boast from time to time because there is an infrastructure program, even if the infrastructure megaprograms represent an investment of $2 billion over three years, which represents about $700 million a year for all of Canada. Every year, the government collects $5 billion in taxes, excluding revenues from the GST. With the excise tax, it is nearly $5 billion a year.

The total budget of the Department of Transport, including the rail, air, land and other sectors, amounts to no more than $1 billion. The same is true of the Department of the Environment. In social terms, the government could say that gasoline taxes fund the highways network and are reinvested in the environment, because there are alternatives to gasoline, which affects the environment.

I would have no problem with closely examining the issue of dedicated taxes and having the excise tax go to funding them. The federal government would have to deal with the following problem: either it reinvests more in highways and the environment or it reduces its taxes, because they are not justified and it should not be taking this amount of taxes.

I totally agree with that and hope that the entire debate on the present matter will lead us to look at what is actually happening in the federal government, at how it profits hugely from the current situation and the high taxation, which is quite indecent, given how little of it is reinvested. The comments by the Alliance member in this regard are absolutely right.

[Supply, September 21st, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for her question. It will give me an opportunity to raise a point I did not cover in my speech.

It is true that the provincial governments, and I am going to talk about Quebec, with which I am more familiar, tax gasoline, but they have responsibility for the roads. I would point out that, when we add up the revenues from the two taxes mentioned, compared to what the Department of Transport contributes, it works out to about the same.

Ottawa is collecting close to $5 billion a year in excise tax alone. How much is Ottawa putting back into roads? Very little. Not even 20% of gasoline taxes is reinvested in transportation or in the environment, and I am talking about the entire Department of Transport budget.

We must keep things in perspective. Nor is it necessary to be a math wizard to see that the provincial coffers are not in the same shape as those of the federal government. Here, only four months into the year, there is a $11.2 billion surplus, whereas a surplus of $1.5 billion or $2 billion would be exceptional for the government of Quebec.

Yes, there are provincial taxes on gasoline. If the hon. member is interested in more information, she should know that there are regional rebates. The 15 cents a litre she is referring to is not the figure everywhere; it is 15.2 cents, but in certain regions with less tax it can be as low as 10.9 cents. It is not 15 everywhere. Of course, if a person were to take the maximum and use it as a comparison, that does yield the figures we have just been given.

This does not mean that one day the provinces will not join in a movement, but it is not true to say that Ottawa is going to use the fact that the provinces do not initiate the offensive as an excuse not to do so itself. Ottawa should set the tone. If the provinces want to improve the process later, all the better. I am not excluding that possibility.

First of all, the federal government has the capacity to take action, and the responsibility to do so, particularly since I would very much like to see reference in this debate to the profit the government makes from gas taxes, from its shares in Petro Canada, from its partnership as well in the Hibernia drilling rig. The federal government rakes in a lot from all this but very little gets reinvested in transportation infrastructures, the road system or the environment.

There is material for a very worthwhile debate on this matter and I am ready any time to make a comparison with what Ottawa is doing.