House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 1993, with 51% of the vote.
Goods And Services Tax April 26th, 1996
Mr. Speaker, that is simply not true. Taxes will be reduced in Atlantic Canada. Taxes will be lower. The sales taxes will be considerably lower in Atlantic Canada. Our calculations show that in each of the provinces in Atlantic Canada that have harmonized individual families will be paying lower taxes. They will be paying as much as $400 less in Newfoundland. It is less than that in the other two provinces, but there will be substantially less taxes in each one of those provinces.
Goods And Services Tax April 26th, 1996
Mr. Speaker, this is simply nonsense. The government has never pitted one region against another.
When the government enacted tax reform in 1972 every single province received compensation over a five-year period. When Ontario was hard hit by the recession in 1991 and 1992 it received $1 billion in stabilization payments. When grain marketing dived in the late eighties the federal government provided $7 billion in assistance to western farmers.
I could go on, but all of these things are compensation. This is a further example of the federation working properly.
Canada Pension Plan April 26th, 1996
Mr. Speaker, the finance minister answered that question yesterday.
Unlike the Reform Party that is going to destroy pensions for low income Canadians, we are sure that we can maintain a public pension system for the benefit of Canadians and that is what we intend to do.
Canada Pension Plan April 26th, 1996
Mr. Speaker, the CPP is a joint federal-provincial arrangement set up with the provinces. It has been that way from the beginning.
The consultation committee is out consulting right now and no decision will be made until the provinces and the federal government have both agreed to those changes.
Goods And Services Tax April 26th, 1996
Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned in the previous answer, every one of us who ran for the Liberal Party ran on "Creating Opportunity", and those were the words. Never was the Canadian public better informed as to what a government would do in advance of an election.
I had in my riding alone some 2,000 copies of the red book handed out from my campaign office. We stand by what we said in the red book.
Goods And Services Tax April 26th, 1996
Mr. Speaker, in the year or two run-up to the 1993 election there were many conferences, including the Aylmer conference, developing policies for the election. Those policies were instilled into a book called "Creating Opportunity". Some words of mine made it into the book and some words did not.
However, every one of the 295 Liberals who ran in the election in 1993 ran on "Creating Opportunity", the red book. That includes page 22 in the English version and page 20 in the French version which says we would replace the GST with a system that generates equivalent revenues, is fairer to consumers and small business and minimizes disruption to small business and promotes federal-provincial co-operation and harmonization. That is what we did.
Budget Implementation Act, 1996 April 23rd, 1996
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-31, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 6, 1996.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed.)
Sales Tax April 23rd, 1996
That is not true.
Auto Leasing April 19th, 1996
Mr. Speaker, he will have to wait for the white paper to see what it says.
Auto Leasing April 19th, 1996
Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is well aware there will be a policy paper put out by the government in a little while which will treat many of these issues.