Ken Epp

[The Economy, February 19th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the finance minister filed his fiscal flight plan when the financial skies were clear and the winds were calm. Now the forecasts clearly indicate some fiscal turbulence ahead and a revised flight plan is called for.

Will the finance minister table a new budget reflecting the present reality, or is he intent on risking the safety of his Canadian passengers on only a hope and a prayer?

[Canadian Mint, February 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, in a February 8 press release the director of the mint said the facility could not sustain the rapid growth of the last two years and that there was a fall off in demand in the foreign market. We told them this two years ago, but they would not listen.

Here now is a very important question. Will the government get out and stay out of competing with private businesses in the country?

[Canadian Mint, February 16th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, several years ago the government approved the building of a coin plating facility at the Canadian Mint in Winnipeg. This was in direct competition with a business in my riding. I warned that the world demand was inadequate to support this facility, but the government bullied forward anyway.

The demand is not there. Forty-five mint employees have now been laid off. Today is the last day for 26 of them. Another 30 jobs are at risk.

How could the government and the mint so badly misread world markets and make the mistake of getting into the coin plating business?

[Supply, February 15th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed the speech my colleague just gave. I have a fairly straightforward question. Sometimes in negotiations it is good to be able to go in without having laid all the cards on the table. Therefore for us to debate and come to a conclusion on our opening position in some of these negotiations could put Canada at a disadvantage.

Does the member see the necessity of parliament debating in broad generalities the position going in or actually getting specific? Does he advocate that parliament should ratify the final agreement after it has been negotiated by the various officials who do the negotiations?

[Canadian Alliance, February 15th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, despite the misinformation and defamation thrown at us by the Liberals, the Canadian Alliance achieved huge gains in the last election.

In Quebec we gained over 200,000 votes. The PCs lost 76% of their support in Quebec. In Ontario we were the only party to increase our popular vote, by 18.5%. The NDP and PCs each went down about 26%. Across Canada our support went up by over 30% while the NDP went down by 24% and the PCs by 36%.

Despite a lower voter turnout we gained 764,000 votes. We elected 10% more members to the House of Commons while the Conservatives and NDP elected 50% fewer than in 1997.

I say to Alliance members and Canadians across the country, let us work hard to build on this success so that we will win the next election.

[Employment Insurance Act, February 13th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to enter the debate on employment insurance revisions. Before I do that, I want to make a few comments about the unconscionable action of the government in invoking time allocation today.

It used to be that governments invoked closure, which basically said that the House did not adjourn until the debate collapsed. Those were days when the House would sit right through the night and debate continuously until there were no members left to speak.

Time allocation is even worse than that because it does not even allow members to stay until midnight or two or four in the morning to speak. It says that at 6.15 p.m. today we are done. I think it is unconscionable of the government to say that we may not even express our views after a certain point.

I am very fortunate that I am designated now to give a 10 minute speech, so I am able to express my views. What about all the other members who want to speak on behalf of their constituents on this very important bill? They literally are not allowed to do so because of the government's action in passing the motion a few minutes ago.

Furthermore, it is very sad that all the members on that side automatically vote for a bill such as this one, when on this side we would very happily vote against time allocation or closure. However, on that side a sudden transformation seems to take place. They somehow deposit their brains at the door and become stone statues. They no longer use their own heads. They just do as they are told.

I know a certain degree of respectability is required in parliament. We sometimes need to submit to each other. A husband and wife do not get along unless they do that. We have a certain degree of that in the House. However, it has to be wrong when members blindly follow orders with which they do not agree.

I am very surprised that Liberal members do not have the fortitude to stand on their own and say what they will do. We will probably see the same thing tonight when members will all vote against their own election platform of 1993.

Parliament is being eroded. I am beginning to think that perhaps my colleague from the previous parliament, Lee Morrison, had it right when he said that this place really was a waste of time because of all the restrictions and controls put on it by the government.

I regret that Canadians did not see through this and that Ontarians, because of all the misinformation, were once again persuaded to elect Liberal candidates instead of voting for what is right: a parliament that actually works on behalf of Canadians.

In order to actually use my time I will say a few things about Bill C-2, the amendments to the Employment Insurance Act. A number of issues are very important to Canadians, and one of the most important is that the rules should be the same for everyone across the country.

I know one can say that in areas of high employment it is tough to get a job, and that EI benefits in such areas should therefore be increased or extended. That is a reality. However, right now there is a problem of greater magnitude on the prairies with respect to farmers.

When we lose our job we lose our income. Without income we cannot provide for our families. We have great sympathy for people who lose their jobs or who are in seasonal work. However, there are also farmers in seasonal work who have now lost their income because of the inaction of this government.

Input costs for farmers exceed what they are able to get for the sale of their products. Consequently their incomes have gone to zero or negative. Is there any help from the government for farmers? Not that we can see. Big, heady announcements have been made but nothing has been delivered.

What we get are farmers having to pay their accountants $500 or $600 to do the bookwork to determine whether they are eligible. When farmers do submit their applications they get back $5 or $10 because that is all they qualify for, and a bill from their accountant.

It is absolutely absurd that the government cannot solve a problem.

The government recently gave out $1.3 billion in energy rebate cheques to Canadians, 90% of whom probably did not pay heating bills. The government says that the rebate was meant to compensate Canadians with high heating costs. However, the government has totally mismanaged it. It is really a $1.3 billion boondoggle in the sense that the rebates went to people completely off the target. The government totally missed the mark.

The Employment Insurance Act also has a problem in reaching its target. Frankly, if someone loses his or her job it does not matter whether 10 or 100 of his or her neighbours have lost their job. It is a very personal thing. The person is saying that he or she has lost his or her job and income. It should not matter whether they live in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick or Newfoundland, if people pay into EI and lose their job they should receive benefits until they get another job.

We use the word insurance, so let us talk about insurance. What if my house burned down and my insurance company said that because not too many houses burned down in my area this year it would not pay me? Insurance companies do not base their decisions on that. If there is an area where a lot of houses are being destroyed by fire they will probably look at it and see what they can do in the area of prevention. This is another area in which the government has totally dropped the ball. To get people off unemployment they have to have jobs. Has the government done anything other than make big announcements, especially during an election campaign, about some teeny-weeny tax cuts, instead of some substantial tax cuts and policies that would encourage businesses not only to stay here but to establish here and to create new employment? No, it has not.

The unemployment rate is now going up and our economy is in the doldrums. Why? It is because of the total failure of the government to provide policies that would make our country excessively strong in the world economy. We are hangers on with a weak dollar. That is the only thing that seems to be an advantage for Canadians right now because all of us are being asked to take a 30% cut in our earnings in order to sell our products around the world. That is helping but what a price we are paying for that. It is not a long term solution.

There are a lot of things wrong with the EI bill. One of the other things that comes to my mind is the total unfairness of the employment insurance rate structure. I know the rates have gingerly come down and the Liberals will crow about this.

The surplus in the EI fund is $25 billion, now possibly $30 billion in terms of the actuarial value. The present act says that the chief actuary should give advice. At the present time the surplus in the EI fund is double what it needs to be, yet the government keeps collecting huge amounts of money from employers and employees. In fact, it is collecting 40% more from employers than from employees. No wonder these people do not have any money to invest and to hire more people. That is the crux of the matter.

What does this bill do? It takes away the actuarial requirement and simply gives the rate setting structure as a new power to the minister. No wonder we are upset about this bill. No wonder we want to talk about it and change it. I wish the government would be willing to do that.

[Financial Consumer Agency Of Canada Act, February 12th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, one of the dilemmas legislators face, of course, is to what degree they should pass legislation to protect people from their own negligence. If I get a cheque from someone, especially from a bank, I will read it to see what the fine print says. We all know good and well that there is no such thing as free money. That should be an alert right there. I would think that the primary responsibility is with the consumer in this case.

We do that in other areas. We cannot buy any other product without the company presenting it in such a way that it will keep our business.

If I were one of the people ripped off by the Scotiabank in that way—and I would use that characterization of it—I would just go to a different bank. I would tell the bank that I was done with it, that I wanted my money back and that I was going elsewhere. I know some people cannot do that because only one branch of the bank is close to them and the next one is far away, so they have limited options.

I would again say to the banks that if they do things like that they are only inviting legislators, like the House of Commons, to pass rules that restrict them in how they can advertise their business. They need to use their heads. The other thing open to consumers is a giant class action suit, after which the banks would never repeat it again.

[Financial Consumer Agency Of Canada Act, February 12th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, it is very difficult to compress into 2 or 3 pages what is contained in 900. It is true that a lot of it is technical and in great detail. Some of the concepts in the bill can be expressed in a sentence or two. I think that what we need to do is make sure that consumers, customers of the banks, ordinary citizens, are aware of the avenues they can use if they have a complaint. They should also have full access to the ombudsman's office. I would recommend that banks put into their offices signs, phone numbers and addresses of websites people can visit for more information, or to find relief for their complaints if they have complaints, or where they can offer suggestions for better service from their banks.

We must also remember that banks right now are competitive. It is not in their interest to do things that would send customers to other banks, which, as I said in my speech, some banks have done to me in my lifetime. It is usually in their interest to keep their customers. We must rely to a great extent on the banks themselves to communicate with their customers and to treat them in a way that will keep them there.

As far as parliament is concerned, in communicating this to our constituents the best we can do is to pick some of the highlights, write a short summary, put it into our local papers or into our householders and hopefully it will get through.

[Financial Consumer Agency Of Canada Act, February 12th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to continue my speech, which I began before question period today.

I also thank you, Mr. Speaker, for giving us the privilege of debating the issue of agriculture. I commend the member from the Progressive Conservative Party for once again raising that issue. It is an issue which is very important to all of us who are representing ridings that have a fair number of farmers in them. We look forward to that debate tomorrow evening.

To continue with our debate on Bill C-8, the act to establish the financial consumer agency of Canada, before we were interrupted I was talking about some of the issues that are dealt with in the bill. As I indicated, we are mostly interested in supporting the bill. It is a bill that is long overdue. If anything, we should probably chastise the Liberal government for not acting more quickly.

One of the things in the bill that I consider to be very important is that it does provide for more competition. I have observed over the years that not only myself personally but many of my friends and, since I became a member of parliament, a number of my constituents, appreciate having a choice.

We have had quite a bit of discussion about airlines lately, about the fact that with less competition we seem to be getting lower service levels from Air Canada. It would be wonderful if we had a very strong, viable competitor, because that would mean we would then get better service as consumers.

The same thing is true in the banking industry. It has happened to me more than once in my life that I have been displeased with the way I was mistreated by the banks on certain particular issues. I had, in every instance, the option of saying to that bank “I am out of here, you are done” and saying that I was not accepting its low level of service and the way it treated me. I did that. I will not mention the specific banks. I have dealt with several. I have always appreciated the opportunity to go to a competitor.

It just so happens that I have now been a member of the credit union in my community for a large number of years. I should not use this venue to advertise for the credit unions, but I am glad that this legislation will provide a greater ability for credit unions to offer good competition to the banks. I have found the credit unions very responsive to the needs of their members. That is because instead of being owned by big investors somewhere, they are actually owned by the people who bank there. We have membership meetings. We have shareholders' meetings, and we can go to them, listen to the reports and put forward motions. We can make suggestions to the board of directors, which usually tries to respond to them. Sometimes, of course, they cannot because of various restrictions being put on them.

I like the fact that in Bill C-8 there is more opportunity for competition. The rules for starting up new banks have been made more favourable. The requirement that a group now needs to have only $5 billion capital in order to start up, as opposed to the previous $10 billion, is a good forward move. There is a reduction in the requirement to have 75% of the board of directors be Canadian. That is reduced to 66%. That is a good move because it permits people from other countries to participate as well in establishing competitive banks in this country. I believe that can only help our own domestic banks to provide better service.

There is also, of course, a better and a more transparent process for merging existing banks. We support in general the legislation that is being proposed on that account.

There is also an improvement to consumer protection in the bill. One of the things we struggle with as members of parliament is what happens when a constituent comes to our office with a complaint against a specific bank. There are some cases that are very difficult to deal with. There are some that are impossible as they are legal matters and we cannot deal with them. Sometimes we find that just being able to show support for the person to the bank or the banking ombudsman helps to get these problems solved.

The new legislation in Bill C-8 requires that all banks and financial institutions have in place complaint procedures. In other words, they cannot just do this on an ad hoc basis. They must actually come up with a formal procedure for dealing with complaints, which must be reported to the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions and is subject to review.

There is a very good consumer protection change in the bill which has to do with the Canada deposit insurance. Until this bill is passed, banks are required to hold insurable deposits. That is now being changed so that the banks themselves will be insured institutions, so I believe that in general there is greater protection for consumers and for depositors.

There is also better access to the access to payments system. This is a great improvement. There are a lot of financial institutions that are not banks but transfer great amounts of money to Canadian citizens, for example, investment firms, life insurance firms and so on. With their ability to access the payments system there is better service for consumers at a lower cost, because it basically cuts out one of the middlemen in the transaction. Giving access to the insurance companies, trust companies and others means that they can actually set it up so that they can transfer money directly into recipients' accounts, on an annuity, for example, without having to go through the bank, thereby saving money. It should be a more reliable and efficient service. We support that move.

Insurance companies are a vital part of our financial base in the country. They are important. They are one of the pillars of the financial structure. I am sure that essentially everyone in the House and, I would hope, everyone listening on TV or hearing this later on, will take the time to make sure that they have insurance in place. It is a very important thing to protect families and others. Here again, Bill C-8 provides for a more equitable system for establishing new insurance companies. There are lower capital requirements, which hopefully will increase the amount of competition and thereby improve service for Canadians.

Finally, there are some other protections for consumers in the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions.

All in all, this bill is worthy of our support. We should probably make sure that it gets to the finance committee as quickly as possible. Hopefully, interested people who have identified some amendments they would like to see included in this 900 page document will appear before the committee and show us, chapter and verse, what needs to be amended. We as a committee will then consider that and hopefully the outcome will be a new structuring of financial institutions in Canada, which will make them strong in the long run, give us great financial stability in the country and make us a major competitor in world markets.

[Financial Consumer Agency Of Canada Act, February 12th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to be able to enter into the debate on Bill C-8, which will establish a new organization of government, the financial consumer agency of Canada. It also involves the amendments of a number of acts.

I am aware that we cannot use props so I cannot show the people of Canada the size of the bill without actually reading from it. I will just open it at random here and read one of its sections:

That subsection (6) does not apply in respect of a particular transaction if the bank is acquiring control of an entity whose business includes an activity referred to in paragraph 2(b), other than a specialized financing entity.

That is only one of three parts of section 390(7) on page 480 of the massive bill. We obviously see that the task of the opposition in bringing a critique to the bill is mammoth indeed. For us to go through and decipher the meaning of even one paragraph almost stretches the brain to capacity.

I will not be able to go through it entirely. Nor is that the purpose. However I want to go on record by saying that I agree with the bill in principle. We should send it to the finance committee forthwith, so that we can do some detailed study, along with our researchers, and listen to the witnesses that come before it.

I had the privilege of being on the finance committee in the previous parliament. We spent quite a bit of time on what was then Bill C-38, which was essentially the same bill. We heard from many different interest groups. Some were very much in favour of the particular legislation going forward. Others came to us with very specific concerns.

In fast summary I could mention three of the groups had great concerns. Those who ran automobile dealerships and automobile leasing companies were very concerned that we should not, in amending the way banks operate, give them the ability to become involved directly in automobile leasing. I have not read every word in the 900 page document, but as far as I know that prohibition is still maintained and we will not have the problem of having banks in automobile leasing.

The second group was the insurance people. They do not want banks to sell over the counter insurance because it would be deemed very unfair in the competitive field. I am not saying I agree with it but that was their argument. They made us a very strong presentation. I believe it is upheld in the legislation as well.

The third group that was very significant in its impact statements to the committee represented the down and outers in society, the people who do not have large financial holdings and in many cases no holdings at all.

They require basic banking services. They were concerned with monopolization and the concentration of the finance industry in fewer and fewer holding companies that they would be even more disadvantaged. They gave presentations to the committee. I believe the bill addresses their concerns to some degree. I have some philosophical questions about the way it does, but it is an interesting concept.

I will talk very briefly about different parts of the bill, the financial consumer agency of Canada act. It is appropriate to commend the Secretary of State for International Financial Institutions for the openness that is apparent on that side of the House in listening to the debates and incorporating into the legislation the various concerns we as a party and Canadians are bringing to the debate.

I also commend the member for Prince George—Bulkley Valley, one of our members in the Canadian Alliance, who has worked very hard in bringing forward ideas, concepts and principles that should be incorporated in the way our financial institutions are run. He has done commendable work. It is interesting that many of the things that he first came up with in his report are incorporated in the legislation.

To all the people out there listening in radio land I say that the work of a good, effective opposition is useful in parliament. We think we could do better if we were on the government side, but we on the opposition side are influencing the government. We should debate each other in a respectful manner, not the way we were forced to debate in the last election campaign. We should debate issues forthrightly and talk about the different options. Then debate is useful. An effective opposition is very important.

I also emphasize that we need a very strong financial sector. Sometimes the in thing to do is to bash banks. Many of us receive complaints from our ridings about the way people are treated in banks. We have to respond to them. Usually we try to get them in contact with the right people so their problems can be solved. Many of the complaints we hear about banks are specific.

Having strong banking and financial sectors is absolutely critical. We ought not to get into a malaise of complaining about them all the time, although it is appropriate through legislation and other presentations for us to put forward the wishes of our constituents and the fact that they deserve good service from banks.

Consequently I appeal to the banks to make sure they run their businesses properly. They should do this so that legislators do not have to come up with too many 900 page documents to regulate and control how they do their business. My first choice would be for them to make their decisions in an honourable fashion so that the public does not have reason for complaints or to come to us as legislators with a cry to bring in regulations and laws to control and restrict the behaviour of banks.

In a very real way banks have to exercise a serious social conscience. They have to make sure that they are treating their customers fairly. They have to make sure that all depositors and all people who have invested in banks are giving their money in trust to organizations that are credible and solid. The last thing we want is a financial organization that is tenuous and cannot be depended upon. It is very important for the banks to do this work. It is also very important for the government to bring in regulations and a framework for financial institutions which permit that to happen.

I will comment on some specifics with respect to the Bank Act. There is a change in the way banks are governed. One important point is that the ownership of banks is now more flexible.