Ian McClelland

[Somalia Inquiry, March 13th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister of defence.

On March 16, 1993, while in custody, Somali teenager Shidane Arone was beaten to death by Canadian soldiers. How is it possible that the Somalia inquiry will end before it investigates the event that led to the investigation into the inquiry in the first place?

[Copyright Act, March 13th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, had I been here on time I would have voted with my party on the motion.

[Supply, March 10th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, the fact that Clifford Olson is subject to review now makes this a particularly timely motion. The motion also reflects on every other section 745 review before the courts at this time.

The point is not the process by which a murderer is able to utilize the law. The point we are making is when will the law protect the victims. It is not that the criminal has to go through several more hoops and that it is more difficult to be released under the provisions of section 745. It is that section 745 exists at all and that it causes the victims to have to go through the judicial process one more time to have the scab removed from the sore and to be hurt once again. They then become the victims not only of the criminal but of our criminal justice system.

[Supply, March 10th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize to the House. I was under the impression that I would be following my Bloc colleague.

This debate brings to mind just about the very first comment that I made in the House. I recall it very specifically. I had been in the House and spoken once or twice before. I commented on something that had taken place when the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce who had been the solicitor general at the time, was involved.

When I made my statement he looked up at me and then after I had finished he rose on a point of order and said that was not the case, that he had taken part in the debate and that I was misquoting him. I apologized to the House and to the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce. I believe now that he is no longer a sitting member I may name him. We all know that I am talking about the former solicitor general Warren Allmand. I am glad that I did apologize for what he felt was misrepresenting him. Although we come from different planets as far as our approach to criminal justice affairs are concerned, I came to know him over the succeeding couple of years as a very fine individual.

We may not have agreed on very many things as far as criminal justice affairs are concerned, but we found that we could honourably disagree and respect and like each other, even though we did not sing from the same song sheet.

Section 745 came about as a direct result of the abolition of capital punishment. The abolition of capital punishment came about, as members know, because it was considered that there were two standards of justice in our country. It was considered by many in the civilized world as barbaric and that capital punishment in the name of the state was still murder. It really puzzles me how the same people who can be violently against capital punishment can be at the same time in favour of abortion but that is a whole other story.

Another major concern with capital punishment is that from time to time the state makes mistakes. That is evidenced by what is going on now in Ontario with the Morin inquiry. The criminal justice system has becomes more capable of making scientific evidence available that will-I am talking now about DNA evidence-conclusively prove that someone was not involved. When we look back at what could have been a mistake in the name of the state we have to say we are glad we do not have capital punishment.

Opposition to capital punishment comes from the notion that in our society it is better that a thousand people go free than one innocent person be convicted. And carrying that to an extreme, it is better that the benefit of the doubt stay with the potential victim of the state so that an innocent person will not be punished. That is really the bottom line and basis of our jurisprudence, our criminal justice system, of our common law, that came to us over 800 or 900 hundred years ago and has stood us very well.

The quid pro quo for Canadians concerning capital punishment is that people who are convicted of capital offences will be in prison for 25 years, not for 15 years or not for 10 years. The quid pro quo to get rid of capital punishment was if someone, having committed first degree murder-we are not talking about manslaughter here, we are talking about premeditated murder as a capital offence-would find themselves in jail for 25 years. The maxim used all the time is "if you cannot stand the time don't do the crime".

Our society says that at minimum people convicted of capital offences will be imprisoned for 25 years. That brings me back to the ex-hon. member from Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Warren Allmand. When he was the solicitor general he stated, I will paraphrase but at the time I quoted from Hansard that ``from this day forward the raison d'être, the reason of our criminal justice system, will be rehabilitation. It will not be the protection of society,'' which it had been up until that time. It was going to be from this day forward in Canada rehabilitation of the criminal.

That is not all wrong. It makes sense because the recidivism rate, the rate at which criminals would find themselves out of jail, back in jail, as everyone knows is just like a revolving door. It makes sense to try to stop this never ending revolving door of people getting into trouble and then back into jail, getting out and then going back in. The only way that we can possibly stop this is by rehabilitation. The notion of rehabilitation just makes eminent sense.

However, as it often is, when the pendulum swings it tends to swing too far. In my opinion and in the opinion of many the pendulum has swung far too far in favour of the rights of the criminals. It needs to swing the other way to give balance to the rights of victims.

When we are talking specifically about section 745 which is the so-called faint hope clause, we have to ask ourselves who should have the faint hope? How is society best served? Are we serving society by saying to everyone who commits a crime, as Edward Greenspan, the famous criminal defence attorney, has said, that a person's future should not be determined by one horrific event, no matter how horrific that event was? The idea is that everyone is deserved of a future and the opportunity to right a wrong, and that we as individuals should not be known forever because of the results of one mistake, no matter how horrific.

On the other side of the coin, how is society to be protected if we do not hold people accountable and responsible for what they do?

Our society has decided against the death penalty. Many people including myself believe that the death penalty is horrific and should not to be done in the name of the state. How are we to protect innocent victims? The only way is to ensure that before people commit a crime they understand the time that is involved. Before people make a decision to commit a crime they should understand they will be held accountable. To take another person's life in a premeditated first degree murder will result in 25 years behind bars, period, with no hope of parole. If they do their time properly in the future they will be allowed to leave.

In conclusion I move an amendment to the motion:

That the motion be amended by inserting the words "and immediately" after the word "formally".

[Supply, March 5th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, allowances must be made for the hon. member opposite because he has had this file for the past year and surely must be weary of it. You can tell because of the cobbled together package he has brought to Canadians.

The member opposite makes great political capital of the fact that the provincial premiers have joined them. Jesse James and his gang have come together to rob taxpayers by foisting this despicable, expensive program on the younger generation of Canadians. It is a darn good thing the Liberals foisted off the gun control first because there is no defence against the Liberals when they come charging up and start putting their hands in your pockets, you know they will go deep and it will hurt.

The government has known for 30 years that the Canada pension plan would not work. Circumstances finally forced it to cobble together the unholy alliance with the provincial governments to continue the funding for another 20 years of moneys at the long bond rate, which is what it came to us with. The government members should be hanging their heads in well deserved shame.

[Supply, March 5th, 1997]

He will need it. Much of the political and social disagreement concerning the Canada pension plan could be addressed through creating options. This is the area where the Liberal government has let us down. The government has the responsibility of leadership, not just patching over the cracks.

If it took over 30 years to get where we are on this road with the Canada pension plan, with the $600 billion deficiency, why in the name of heaven would we spend another day going down that road? Why would we want to patch over a plan that was flawed right from the beginning? People knew it was flawed. Why would we not use our best efforts to make this plan work much better for succeeding generations? That has to be the elemental question. Why put a band-aid on it? Why not do what needs to be done to fix it properly?

I mentioned earlier in questions and comments to other speakers that the Canada pension plan became a honey pot of money and entitlement that politicians found irresistible, rather like flies to honey.

The disability take up on the Canada pension plan has been surprisingly high over recent years. That is not terribly surprising because the take up rate on Canada pension plan disability has a direct correlation to the job market. When jobs are scarce people do what they have to do to survive.

One of the things that people have done, and that is why the take up rate on the disability side of the Canada pension plan is so high, has been to use it to provide an alternate source of income. Once this availability was established, government cannot turn on a dime and tell people it is sorry but the plan is no longer available.

Since the auditor general's report identified this as a particularly difficult problem for the Canada pension plan, the policing of the disability entitlement has been much more severe. As I mentioned earlier, over a 10-year period the Canada pension plan had a 92 per cent increase compared with the Quebec pension plan which had only a 2 per cent increase.

The disability community, persons who have long term, systemic disability, did not want the Canada pension plan disability tampered with because, quite rightly, it said that it has problems enough protecting itself from the ravages of the cuts to the Canada health and social transfer. To the credit of the government, the report on persons with disabilities by the member from Fredericton addresses some of the concerns very well.

There is a very real difference between Canadians who are in systemic, long term disability into which they are born or have suffered a tragic accident and people who take up disability because it is part of the pension plan privileges. We have combined the two. In hearings with persons with disabilities they would prefer not to be combined but they do not want to rock the boat now.

In my view, it is our responsibility to protect persons with disabilities. That is part of our common wealth. That is part of our responsibility one to another. That is how through our own independence our interdependence is strengthened. However, the two should not be confused. Insurance is insurance. The Canada pension plan is a pension plan. By allowing the Canada pension plan to become something that it was never designed to be puts increasing stress on its ability to fund what it was supposed to do in the first place, which is to be a pension plan.

If, as a society, we need to look at funding persons with disabilities, then let us also deal with that honestly. Let us put it on the table and see how it can best be done economically and ensure that people who must take up the provisions of disability insurance get into and out of the program.

That has been duplicated already because every province has a workers' compensation board. The provincial and federal governments need to work together to ensure that every single citizen gets the best return on the common investment. However, they should not trickle down responsibilities from one order of government to another. Citizens should not have to shop to see where they can get support. They should not have to make a disability premium payment to an insurance company only to find that the insurance company will not pay until after they have been able to collect from the federal program.

I anticipate some well thought and well founded questions from members opposite. I hope that when they ask the questions they will keep in mind that this is a particularly poor return on investment for young Canadians who must bear the burden of the debt that they will inherit also.

I would ask members opposite to get their calculators out and tell Canadians what return would come on a 40-year investment of $1,000 per year at an average rate of return of the equity markets in Canada and tell me that is not better than the CPP deal.

[Supply, March 5th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, this is a particularly important debate for all Canadians, particularly younger Canadians. During the course of the debate, I hope I will be able to make five points. The first point would be that the Canada pension plan, even as it has been restructured, which admittedly is better than it was, is a poor investment for all contributors but it is particularly poor for younger Canadians.

I would also like to make the point that payroll taxes are, in the words of the current Minister of Finance, a cancer on job creation. They are a cancer on job creation to the most vulnerable people in our society, the last hired and the first fired. It is a cumulative effect of payroll taxes. I do not care what name we use to disguise it, if it is a contribution or a mandatory payroll deduction it is a tax and it is a cancer on job creation. It is something that we, as members of Parliament in this legislature and all legislatures across the country, have to mitigate. It is our responsibility.

I would also like to make the point that the plan continues to be irresponsible. It continues to be a pay as you go plan. It is a defined benefit plan that defines the benefit that contributors will receive but the benefit does not have a direct relationship to the amount that is paid into it.

I would also like to make the point that unless the contributions to the Canada pension plan receive a substantially higher return, and in view of the changes to pension planning for all seniors brought about by the change to the seniors benefit, the change to OAS and GIS, old age security and the guaranteed annual income

supplement, which will now be the seniors benefit, virtually everyone will see half of their Canada pension plan taxed back.

In the year 2001 when the seniors benefit takes effect all single seniors in our country turning age 65 will receive $11,420 per year tax free. However, any additional income, including pension income and the Canada pension plan, will be taxed back at 50 per cent. That means that unless pension income over the working life of the taxpayer generates a much better return on investment, it is going to be virtually totally taxed back anyway.

The last point I want to make is there is a direct relationship between the pension plan for members of Parliament and the Canada pension plan and the increases to the Canada pension plan.

I thought long and hard before I opted out of the MP pension plan. It is a very lucrative pension plan. My being here is going to cost me and my family down the road. However, I thought we as members of Parliament were in a particularly difficult time. We all knew it and everybody in the country knew it. It was only way that we could have the moral authority to say to Canadians that it is necessary for all of us, every single Canadian, young and old, to make a sacrifice because we must leave our country in better shape for our grandchildren than we found it.

The only way that we could have the moral authority to do that would be to be the first people to take a hit. We had to demonstrate that we were not going to ask people to do as we say. We were going to demonstrate that we would ask people to do what we have done and to show leadership. That is what this is all about. It is not a question of being holier than thou and wearing a hair shirt. It is a question of having the moral authority to ask Canadians to tighten their belts because we have a responsibility in our generation to leave our country in better shape for our grandchildren than we found it.

When our children and grandchildren have the opportunity to pay a Canada pension plan tax of 10 per cent of their income, they will at the same time, as we all know, also have the opportunity to pay taxes to support a $600 billion national debt.

This is the legacy that we leave our children and our grandchildren. We leave an unfunded tax liability on the Canada pension plan of $600 billion, and the very generations of Canadians that put that responsibility on the shoulders of their children and grandchildren are also leaving future generations of Canadians with a $600 billion debt.

Unemployment in our country is at historic high levels. We have had the highest sustained levels of unemployment since the depression. At the same time we are greatly increasing payroll taxes. Payroll taxes, by every objective standard and by every commentator, are acknowledged to be killers of jobs and employment.

If we were to collapse the Canada pension plan today, current and future taxpayers would still have to pay approximately $600 billion in accrued pension benefits which we are liable for that have not yet been paid. That unfunded liability is equivalent to our $600 billion national debt. It is something that parliamentarians for the past 30 years have been very uncomfortable in addressing. Instead, we have increased the contribution rate to build up a fund over five years instead of two, while maintaining a pay as you go dimension to the plan. Pay as you go means that each succeeding generation will pay the benefits of the generation which preceded it.

Somewhere down the line, at some time, someone is going to have to make good on these pension promises.

We overlook the fact that in Canada, if the pension plan were to collapse tomorrow, annual premiums would still be required to pay for the $600 billion of accrued benefits. When we view a proposed 6 per cent premium in 1997, 6.4 per cent in 1998, 7 per cent in 1999 and 9.9 per cent in 2003, we should be aware that the promise that premiums will be frozen at 9.9 per cent must be considered suspect. After all, if full funding of the benefits of a completely collapsed plan would cost 8 per cent or 7 per cent annually, how can 9.9 per cent be viewed as stable when the unfunded liabilities will continue to increase?

During question period over the last couple of weeks I have put that question directly to cabinet ministers. Of course the question has not been answered. I have asked cabinet ministers when the CPP premiums hit 9.9 per cent, will the government guarantee that there will be no further increases in pension plan premiums or decreases in benefits. The reason that question was not answered is they cannot answer it. They have no idea. I suspect, however, that we will see that happen.

When the plan started in the mid-sixties the contribution rate was 3.5 per cent. Then it went to 5.65 per cent and it will go to 9.9 per cent. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that rates will continue to increase.

Also at issue is the timing of the increase. Is our economy sufficiently healthy that employers will be able to pay the increased premium of $1,300 and continue to increase employment? At the same time, the employment insurance fund has a great surplus. This is the link between the payroll taxes of employment insurance and the Canada pension plan premiums that kept Ontario out of the mix for so long.

I know the government says Ontario came on board because it managed to wrestle from the government a 10 cent decrease in unemployment insurance premiums for a corresponding $4 increase in Canada pension plan premiums. I doubt very much whether that is a victory people will hear the Ontario government crowing about very long.

I point out once again that this is being done at a time when one in 10 Canadians are unemployed, when many are under employed and 17 per cent of young Canadians are unemployed. They are the people who will be hurt most.

Whether people call the increase in the Canada pension plan premiums a tax or a pension contribution, it is still a compulsory cost to the employer which raises the cost of creating a job.

The government insists that the 9.9 per cent tax is not a tax but an investment. Therefore, the government believes it is not reasonable to speak of the disastrous effects the Canada pension plan rate increase will have on employment. I submit that it is a false argument.

Unless we, as members of Parliament from all sides, are able to look at the problems that face the country honestly, unless we are able to deal with things as they are and not as we would wish them to be, how can we ever make them right? How can we possibly fool ourselves into thinking that a mandatory deduction that must be taken and paid by every working Canadian is not a tax?

Only two people in the whole country believe it is not a tax. Unfortunately, those two people are the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance who has worked so hard at putting the changes to this Canada pension plan together, does not believe it is a tax either. I hope history will judge him fairly and with considerable compassion.

[Supply, March 5th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I am always touched by the irony when members of the Bloc stand up in the House of Commons and defend the right to take a pension from Canada, "but by the way we want to take the province of Quebec out of Canada". It may escape members of the Bloc but I assure you, Mr. Speaker, it does not escape the people where I come from.

The point I want to make to my colleague from the Bloc is that in order to have the moral authority to ask other Canadians to tighten their belts, we as Members of Parliament must first tighten ours. We are asking Canadians to pay twice as much for less. Yet we think it is quite all right for us to go along merrily as we have in the past.

My question relates to the different vision that we have of Canada. This does not make one right or another one wrong. It is just different; the collective nature of Quebec and the fact that Canada pension plan premium increases have not struck a resonant chord in Quebec. I would ask my colleague to think about the 45 per cent of Canadian businesses, as reported by the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses, that say payroll taxes are a major disincentive to hiring. Unemployment, particularly among young people, in Quebec is a disaster. What affect will this payroll tax increase have on employment in Quebec?

[Supply, March 5th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring the President of the Treasury Board back to the fiduciary responsibility of the government to handle citizen's money in the best possible manner. I draw his attention the Quebec pension plan, the disability payments and the way in which the Quebec pension plan has been administered vis-à-vis the Canada pension plan.

Would the minister advise the House and Canadians generally why under the Quebec pension plan for disability take-up between 1986 and 1994 there was a 2 per cent increase while at the same time in the Canada pension plan there was a 92 per cent increase?

Would the minister also tell the House why in 1976 when there were 55,000 people involved in the Canada pension plan 1,219 people came off disability, but in 1995 with 300,000 people on disability only 2,000 people came off disability? Is this the minister's indication of sound management?

[Supply, March 5th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, with great respect, as far as the comments of the President of the Treasury Board regarding the MP pension plan and its equity vis-à-vis other Canadians' pension plans are concerned, Canadians know full well that members of Parliament through their pension

plan got the gold mine and Canadians got the shaft. Of that there is no doubt. People know it and they know it for what it is.

In his comments the President of the Treasury Board pointed out that the provinces went along with the changes to the Canada pension plan. They went along with it obviously because they have been partners in this rip-off of Canadians for 30 years.

What the President of the Treasury Board did not say was that one of the features of this renewed Canada pension plan at 9.9 per cent of earnings is that the provinces will have the privilege of rolling over their debt for another 20 years. Therefore, this plan is not going to start getting better right away. They are going to postpone making it healthy or healthier for another 20 years.

My question relates to the equity of the CPP. The President of the Treasury Board indicated during his comments that Canadians need to be fair in sharing the future. It is incumbent on the President of the Treasury Board, in representing the Liberal Party of Canada, which has been in power for at least 20 of the 30 odd years that this plan has been in force, to account for the mismanagement of the plan that got us into this mess in the first place.

Actuaries and demographers did not just wake up overnight. The plan was flawed right from the beginning, but the Liberals did not have the strength to keep their hands off the honey pot. What politician does? The changes to this plan have not made it safe from the honey pot.

Based on the average industrial wage of $36,000, if a young Canadian were to place 3 per cent of earnings over the lifespan of their work into an investment vehicle that has a return of a typical average over the last 40 years, would that Canadian have more money from a 3 per cent investment than they would for their almost 10 per cent investment in the Canada pension plan?