Eric C. Lowther

[Customs Tariff, October 24th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I will be speaking of course to Bill C-11 this morning, the simplified customs tariff.

Sometimes a low profile bill like this does not get a lot of attention. It is not front and centre in the media. It does not get all the excitement around it that some of the other bills do. But I want to say this morning how important this bill is because of its very significance around what it represents. Bureaucracies in general have a tendency to grow and if left unchecked, they just grow and grow and grow.

This particular piece of legislation that is being proposed is counter to that bureaucratic current of continual growth. I am going to come back to that concept later but I would like first of all to go through some of the highlights of this particular piece of legislation. I may touch on some of the notes of the previous speaker but as I go through these highlights I would ask members of the House to focus on the efficiencies and the countercurrent to bureaucratic growth that is inherent in this piece of legislation and consider applying this same kind of approach to other pieces of legislation and other parts of the bureaucracy.

First, this particular piece of legislation focused on reducing the custom duties on the goods that are used in the manufacturing process in Canada, allowing Canadian businesses to better compete in the international marketplace.

Second, this piece of legislation totally eliminated some of the tariffs and duties for products in a not made in Canada category. This allowed Canadian businesses to improve their competitiveness on a broader range of duty free imports, but maybe even more important is the sea of red tape that that one change allowed. No longer do we have to go through an onerous process of determining what is a not made in Canada product and trying to track that as the situation changes in Canada both by government and industry.

I would like to also mention the clean-up that was done on the concessionary tariff codes. Many of these concessionary codes, as the previous member mentioned, had become obsolete. Two thousand of them in total were either eliminated or restructured and put in place as regular tariff schedule items. There are great gains in efficiency there.

In addition we had the elimination of the machinery remission program, duties remitted on machinery that was not available in Canada. This program had a huge administrative cost both for the private sector and for government in the determination of what is the machinery that is not available in Canada and how do we track it as the situation changes, applying for the remission and then tracking to make sure one actually got the remission cheque. Then there was all the discussion around whether or not it applied to the legislation that was in place. This was a great simplification of the tariff that is inherent in this new legislation which we fully endorse.

There was also the clean-up and elimination of those duties that were expressed in dollars and cents numbers rather than a percentage. The majority of tariffs are in a percentage but there were some that were still expressed in dollars and cents. It was much more appropriate to move them all into the one common format of percentage. It allows for much greater ease of use. It is also more appropriate as the price of the tariff item changes.

In addition some of the trade developments that have occurred in Canada made some of the regulations obsolete. Three hundred different remission orders and regulations were revoked. Seventy others were replaced with simple tariff items. Again all of this reduced the regulatory burden.

In addition there was a rationalization of the tariff schedule which was terrifically unwieldy the way it was before. There was the elimination of nuisance rates. Anything that was less than 2% tariff was eliminated. There was a rounding off of numbers to make it easier to apply the tariff. There was a harmonization of rates on like products. There was an amalgamation and a fixing of anomalies.

None of this is particular earth shaking. None of it is particularly difficult to do. It just took work. But the benefits to Canadian business and the Canadian government are substantial. The cumulative effect is a more predictable, simplified tariff legislation with less regulatory burden and increased competitive strength. Some aspects of Canadian business I would suggest are even ready for a lot more of this.

After touching on the highlights of this particular piece of legislation, let us go back to the significance of this kind of work and take the success of this particular initiative and apply it to the broader range of government legislation and bureaucracy that is out there.

As I said, bureaucracies have a tendency to grow. Why is that? It is largely due to their reward structure. In a bureaucracy the way one gets ahead personally is to build the bureaucracy underneath oneself. Always spend all your budget plus a little bit more. Launch new ideas and try to win support for your ideas. Get more people motivated around your good idea with very little accountability to what is actually being provided in the way of service and the value of that service evaluated through an impartial third party.

This particular piece of legislation goes counter to that kind of bureaucratic tendency in that it serves to shrink the bureaucracy and add efficiency. Those who are involved in this type of work are usually within bureaucracies and their efforts go unrewarded.

I would like to suggest that the Reform Party from the very inception recognized this tendency within bureaucracies to grow and grow. Within our policy and platform books it is clear that we have called for a simplification of the regulation, a rationalization of the redundancies of the processes within government, adding to the efficiency and quality of the service provided by government but doing it in a way that downsizes the extent of the bureaucracy.

Reform has recognized the need for this type of initiative from the very inception. In fact within our policy documents it is clear that we have also recognized the need for a change in the reward structure around bureaucracies.

What we are calling for within our government is a recognition for those people and those individuals who can demonstrably deliver a higher quality of service at lower cost. These kinds of efficiency gains are usually brought about by individuals within the government at the front line or at the first level of management who are aware of the waste and aware of where the problems are.

The problem today is if those people do take the initiative to increase efficiency, they are not rewarded. In fact they can even encounter some very significant resistance. Our policy calls on that type of initiative to be rewarded. If we are to really see the bureaucracies in our government begin to shrink and become more effective, we need to recognize individuals and groups of people who are focused on providing a higher quality of service at a lower cost to Canadians.

I would like to commend the individuals who were involved in this project. They consulted with industry. I am sure there were many hours spent poring over this piece of legislation to come up with something that is refreshing and is counter to the usual growth we see in the bureaucracy.

With those comments, I would like to say that this is the kind of legislation that is a step in the right direction. It is consistent with what Reform has been calling for. Would it not be refreshing to apply this kind of approach to other pieces of government legislation, perhaps the Income Tax Act.

Many people do not realize that the Income Tax Act was implemented as a temporary measure to fund the war effort. It was actually 36 pages at that time. Now it is over 600 pages of legalese and another 700 pages of special interpretations and guidelines. It is almost twice as thick as the yellow pages in my own home city of Calgary. And Canadians are supposed to somehow figure all of it out.

I believe we need to apply the same kind of rationalization and simplification that we are seeing in this bill to a number of areas within our government. That is why this bill is so significant for what it represents here today.

The Reform caucus and I believe all my colleagues are in support of this bill. Therefore it can be anticipated that there is support from this side of the House on this bill this morning.

[Supply, October 23rd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask the member to comment on a news item which was recently reported. A well known premier in the Atlantic region decided to step down and, having stepped down, he was free to speak his mind. Mr. Frank McKenna announced that he felt the grants and subsidies which had been provided to the Atlantic region had effectively become an opiate for that region. He was advocating that maybe one of the best thing that could be done would be to have a tax reduction in that region.

I wonder if the hon. member would be willing to speak to that particular item.

[Canada Co-Operatives Act, October 22nd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, before I address Bill C-5 I would like to encourage all occupants of the chair to continue to maintain the decorum that we have had in the House and continue to set the high standard that you are. I would even encourage you to elevate this standard as need be. So please pass those comments on.

As I understand Bill C-5 this bill was actually prompted by the co-operative associations themselves. They recognized the need for change in its industry. They recognized the need to be increasingly competitive. They are competing against larger entities with smaller management hierarchies, with less bureaucracy. They are competing with large entities that are very customer focused and front line driven. They have to achieve some measure of increased efficiency if they are to survive.

They also realized they needed access to investment, investment dollars and capital. They also realized that in order to eliminate some of their redundancies in their operations they had to amalgamate, consolidate and knit themselves together so they could be more efficient to survive.

The co-operatives through all of this were dealing with reality. I want to speak about dealing with reality for a minute. I would really like to encourage our government today to take a lesson from what the co-operatives have been doing and start dealing with reality.

Recently the finance minister toured the country celebrating that soon we would have a balanced budget. It is wonderful to celebrate that, but it has been more than 27 years coming.

He presents it as if we are there, we have arrived, everything has been done. He is not dealing with reality. We have a $600 billion debt in this county and many of us do not realize it but we are sitting on an interest rate time bomb that could go off at any minute.

I can remember a day in Canada when interest rates were almost 20%. When they came back down to 12%, we all breathed a sigh of relief. We have a debt that has an interest rate of around 7% or 8%.

I think the likelihood of those interest rates going down is very small. The potential for them to go up is real. I read recently that there is already pressure to move in that direction.

Here we are celebrating almost having a balanced budget and yet we are sitting on an interest rate time bomb that could blow away that balanced budget in a second and we will never see the days of surplus. But we are not dealing with reality. We are celebrating an almost balanced budget.

How much is the interest on a $600 billion debt? It is $45 billion a year. How much is that? I cannot conceive of that much money but let us put it into perspective so that Canadians can understand.

We talk so much about the importance of secondary education. Forty-five billion dollars would pay for 4 million young people to go through a four year degree program. That is how much that is and we pay that out in interest every year.

We talk about the need for health care. There is a lot of talk from the other side of the House about how we do not want two tier health care. The best way to achieve that is to make sure there is a very strong basic health care system.

Forty-five billion dollars in interest on this huge debt, if we did not have to pay that, that amount of money would pay for every hospital in Canada including the ones that are being forced to close to operate for two years.

That is how much this is costing us, yet do we have a government that is dealing with reality like the co-ops are? No, we get a throne speech with 29 new spending initiatives. I heard lately it is 31.

Canadians are crying out for less government, not more government. We are asking the government across the floor to hear this.

There is something else that the co-operatives demonstrated. They demonstrated they have the ability to plan for the future. They realize that they need to gain capital so that they can build a secure future for themselves.

The government should allow Canadians the same privilege. Again I do not see it listening. Instead, what do we get? We get a Canada pension plan that has been there for 30 years that people have been paying into for 30 years. Where is the money? Nobody seems to know where it is.

The money that goes into that plan by young people and people working today is the same money that goes out of that plan to people who are collecting. It is a flowthrough system. There is no pot of money available. There is a $560 billion unfunded liability there. It is a flowthrough system.

Canadians are even losing faith in this system. For all the great rhetoric we are getting from across the floor, a recent study done in Maclean's magazine showed that 66% of Canadians said this program will not be there when they need it. They have lost faith in this program. What is the government's answer? Its answer is to give us more of a plan that did not work, not just a bit more but 73% more.

It will go from taking 5.85% from our cheques to 9.9%, effectively 10%. That is a 73% increase in a plan that has proven to not work. That is the largest tax increase we have seen. That is 10% off the income of every Canadian, your money flowing into a system that does not work.

What troubles me about this on top of everything else is that the young people of our country who have become trained and are eager to work and build a future for themselves are faced with 16% to 17% unemployment. We have a government that increases payroll taxes by 73%, further shortcircuiting the chance for these young Canadians to build a future in Canada.

The government has an answer for us. The answer is another government appointed investment board to manage the money that is contributed. If it is consistent with the track record of most government appointed investment boards, I can see why Canadians do not have much faith in it.

The question that should be asked by the members on the opposite side is whose money is this. This money is earned by Canadians. It is not a tax. It is meant to be there when they need it at retirement age. Let them own it and manage it. Within successful private financial institutions that are professionals at managing money, they cannot do worse than the government has done in the last 30 years. It is not possible to do worse than that. Even modest evaluations with conservative interest rates prove out that there is a three to fourfold greater benefit derived by going through private institutions than going through a government run investment board, taking the critical moneys that Canadians earn and further shortcircuiting the hopes of our young people to obtain a job in this country.

The concept of Canadians owning their own investment plan, owning their own pension plan, having title to it, is not something radical or unheard of. This concept is being applied around the world with outstanding success. Countries and governments are allowing their citizens to plan for their future, like the co-operatives are doing.

I am asking the government to allow Canadians to do the same thing instead of going back to a plan that does not work.

There is another dimension of the co-operatives bill. The co-operative management group had the foresight to implement measures with this bill that will protect it and allow it to survive in the long term. That seems like a reasonable thing for Canadians to expect from their government. That is continually what the government says it wants to do and yet we continue to be faced with too much government, too much intrusion in our lives, huge debt and huge interest rates, as I have spoken to.

We have the highest tax to GDP ratio of any of the G-7 countries, and the government comes back with 29 new spending initiatives on top of all that. Even as I speak it in this House I am overwhelmed again with the facts. Surely the light is going to come on one of these days.

Ten per cent off every paycheque of every Canadian, another government appointed board, the litany goes on and on. Behind all this, as we are celebrating a balanced budget finally wrestled to the ground, there are some facts to be looked at.

The $7.5 billion that went toward balancing the budget was actually a surplus paid into the unemployment insurance program. It is not really savings. It is intended for a totally different purpose but has gone off somewhere else. It is misleading Canadian people.

The youth unemployment rate is 16.5%. Today I was at a presentation for some gentlemen who were receiving the Order of Canada. I had the opportunity to talk to one senior scientist being recognized about his son who had recently graduated with an honours engineering degree and sought work in Canada.

We have all heard the story. Members know where I am going and where he went. He left Canada to get a real job, not a government job, because he could not get one here. This passionate Canadian who received the Order of Canada was hurt that his own son could not apply what he had learned in Canada. Brain drain to the max, and it is happening.

It is not more government we need. Canadians are burdened with government, taxes and all that comes with them. They are carrying a heavy load. Canadians are a stoic bunch. We tend not to be complainers. We tend to buck up and do it. We have a government that continues to take another brick and put it on top of the load. It continues to weigh us down one more brick at a time, one more brick at a time.

I do not want to depress everybody here although this is a depressing topic. I want to give Canadians some hope and to inspire members across the floor. There is a bright note in all this. The government actually listened to the co-operatives when they came forward and said what they needed. The government actually listened and put together the bill. That proves to me when the heart is willing and they really want to do it Liberals can listen. They allowed co-ops to plan for their future.

Along with the members of my party I am earnestly requesting the government to do the same for Canadians. It should deal with reality and the realities of the debt. It should allow Canadians to plan for the future and to keep the money they have earned. It is their money. Let us emphasize that. It should set us on the road to long term viability and allow for an environment where young people can hope for real employment in their own country.

Canadians do not want more tax and spend governments. They want a government that does a few key, important things well for less cost instead of a lot of things poorly at great expense. It is simple. That is what they are pleading for and demanding. It should stop crushing them with the weight of government adding bricks to the load.

The government has demonstrated that it can listen. It should now listen to Canadians, listen and deal with reality. We have waited too long. It is almost too late. It is a critical time. We have a window of opportunity today to make changes but it is only here today.

I encourage all members of the House to deal with the realities and capitalize on the window of opportunity. Whatever we do let us not miss it or future generations will judge us and indict us.

[Taxation, October 10th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, Premier McKenna said that he can finally speak his mind now that he has stepped down from office. I wonder if the minister across the way can actually say the same. To point to harmonized tax cuts does not at all address my question.

We have a national unemployment rate of 9%. It is time for the government to take off its rose coloured glasses and look at real solutions.

Will this government listen to the millions clamouring for tax relief or is it still stuck with the old vision of big government spending?

[Taxation, October 10th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, Liberaldom was rocked yesterday by the comments of New Brunswick Premier Frank McKenna. Now free from Liberal office, the premier can honestly say that federal transfer payments and income support had become the opiate of the Atlantic region. The premier instead suggests that maritime businesses be stimulated by lowering taxes. Imagine that.

My question to the finance minister is, will the minister take this frank advice and make broad based tax cuts this government's number one priority?

[Speech From The Throne, October 2nd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for her very impassioned comments. They are consistent with some of the comments we heard from the minister earlier.

I find these people speak from their heart. They have the ability to paint a picture which they believe in but which I do not think it is quite accurate.

I ask that they consider allowing the Canadian people to be the ones who paint the picture. The presentations which I heard this afternoon, as a new member in this House, seem to imply that we have arrived, we are there, as a Canadian people and it is now time to move on to new government programs.

I point to the throne speech with 29 new spending initiatives and very little reference to paying down the debt or relieving Canadians from the tax burden they carry.

I am concerned that they are talking about more government investment. We have had years and years of government investment and that has not done it for us. I am concerned when they talk about partnerships, because government partnerships mean that somebody is left out of the partnership. Usually the one left out of the partnership is the struggling entrepreneur whose tax dollars are paying for one who is allowed into the partnership. This is not going to stimulate the innovation and entrepreneurial drive that was referenced in the throne speech. It is counterproductive.

I ask the Liberals to consider what the Canadian people are saying and I refer them to one of their own recent polls done by Earnscliffe that points out that 57 percent of Canadian people feel the government has done a poor job in reducing government waste.

I would also point out that the number one priority for Canadians from the government's own survey is the reduction of government spending. Yet we have a throne speech with 29 new spending increases.

I want to encourage the minister and the people on that side of the House to stop misleading the Canadian people with the picture that we have arrived. I would be much more encouraged if I had heard a much stronger commitment in the throne speech to relieving my grandchildren of the burden of this national debt, giving my children the opportunity that tax relief would allow them in a more innovative and entrepreneurial environment.

[Speech From The Throne, October 2nd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I want to applaud the hon. member's comments. I certainly respect his Hungarian heritage. I have had the pleasure of working alongside many people from Hungary. I can usually keep up with them for the first hour and then I have to resign myself that I cannot quite keep up.

I was interested to hear that when he spoke to a group in Hungary he had the conviction to say that Canada was his home, but his place of birth was Hungary.

Does the hon. member endorse the money spent by his government to fund multicultural activities that celebrate the place of birth somewhat more than the accomplishments of Canadians?

I also ask the hon. member would he support the option of marking Canadian citizen on our census forms? This is the kind of initiative that I think is consistent with his comments and which serves to strengthen our nation and celebrate our Canadian citizenship.

[Supply, September 30th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour to address you in this House for the first time. I have listened closely to the throne speech and the various statements from the members of this House. My most recent experience was that of an average Canadian rather than that of a lifelong politician. I am encouraged by the process, the skill and the passion of members of this House in exercising their duties to their constituents and our fellow Canadians.

I was pleased to see in the throne speech that there was some recognition given to the impact which the technological revolution and the information age is having on our society and the world. These pressures are pervasive in all walks of life. The impact of these new technologies is changing the way we relate to one another.

Time and distance restrictions to communication have been almost eliminated. Information and entertainment choices are exploding. Ideas and opportunities fill the information highway and they are constantly increasing. This creativity is pushing the highway to new limits in a demand driven expansion.

Canadians understand that this is a global phenomenon. It is a pervasive backdrop constantly present as we enter the 21st century. No effective barrier can be erected to separate oneself from its impact, not on a personal level, not provincially and most certainly not nationally.

The information and communication explosion can only be embraced and allowed to shape itself in a manner which meets the needs of Canadians in order to realize the great potential that it offers. The shaping and application of these information technologies will best serve Canadians if we each have input into the process through an open, and to use an oft repeated word from the throne speech, and innovative marketplace.

A government attempting to package and overmanage how Canadians participate in a global information explosion will at best deliver very costly, mediocre results. In the throne speech there seemed to be some recognition of the need to allow Canadians to participate more fully in a global information age. As the Leader of the Official Opposition might say, there seemed to be some bone there.

Unfortunately when I look at the actions of this government there appears to be a cancer in this particular bone. It is the cancer of the heavily bureaucratic and excessive control tactics of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the CRTC. Here is another government body whose actions have the exact opposite effect to the fine sounding words of the throne speech. Say one thing, do another, that is what it looks like to me.

The throne speech calls for innovation and stimulation of the entrepreneurial spirit in Canada. Meanwhile that commission, the CRTC, has an implied stated agenda to create large players and protect these large players from competition. Those entrepreneurial innovators who have the intestinal fortitude to apply for a licence or approval will be forced to play in a game where the rules are frequently changed. But you only find that out after you have lost.

The entrepreneurs the government says it wants to help have been required to spend up to $1 million to complete this regulatory marathon and submit literally thousands of pages demanded by the application process. Then they are told “We do not think your ideas will work, so you will not get a chance to try them”. After being kicked in the stomach a few times like this, the smart players say “No more, thanks”.

The CRTC does this in pursuit of what it calls sustainable competition. The innovators dragged through this process have come to recognize that sustainable competition really means market control through government selection and restriction.

I wonder what is meant by the new term creative partnerships. Those chosen as partners will be the blessed ones and the entrepreneurial interests of others will be left at a competitive disadvantage. This does not serve the best interests of Canadian consumers.

The approach of the CRTC scares away quality entrepreneurs and risk takers which this government states it wants to attract. The result of this approach is that government selected information networks and broadcasters appear to be chosen more because of lobby efforts and who you know instead of the energy and innovation they bring to the marketplace.

The throne speech makes reference to the government's intention to promote trade in Canadian culture and support Canadian culture at home. Again, it is difficult to believe this when due to the inaction of regulatory delays over the past years, 300,000 Canadians who wanted direct to home satellite service chose to access the only service available at the time via the grey market. Now it seems that the CRTC culture police want to treat them as criminals even before the courts have made a final ruling.

This government says it wants to support Canadian culture. Its commission approves a Playboy channel and disallows a faith channel which was clearly desired by a number of Canadians. All of this while publicly demanding Canadian content and diversity in programming. It seems like more of the say one thing, do another approach of this government.

I do not think Canadians want the CRTC making these decisions for us based on the CRTC's own political and ideological biases. The cultural engineering approach of the CRTC selects winners and losers rather than allowing Canadian consumers to have the benefit of a truly competitive marketplace. Such a marketplace would provide the information products Canadians want with the best service for the least cost.

Just as leisure suits and lava lamps have had their day, and I got rid of mine, their contemporary, the CRTC, must also be re-examined for its relevance and desirability. It is now doing more harm than good.

We see that the actions of the CRTC and its cultural police conflict with the stated goals of this government to facilitate innovation and entrepreneurship. We see that the costs to business, consumers and taxpayers are excessive and unnecessary. We see that under the guise of protecting Canadian culture, it is attempting to define and impose it. In addition, it pours regulatory cold water on the information highway's entrepreneurial flame.

We see that with the reality of today, the current CRTC is obsolete. It costs far too much and delivers far too little. The time is long overdue to move away from protectionist policies and toward those that allow Canadian products to compete in the global market. We only protect what is weak. That which is strong can be promoted. In the right regulatory and business environment, Canadians have no need to fear global competition. Control and manipulation by government is what we should fear.

I ask the government to listen to industry and consumers and remove excessive bureaucracy and the regulatory quagmire within the communications industry so that Canadians can set the standard for the world during the communications century.