Ken Epp

[Supply, September 21st, 2000]

Madam Speaker, I find this quite interesting. We have put forward a motion today to simply stop collecting a tax which was intended to be collected while we had a deficit. All we are doing is saying to the government that it should now stop collecting that tax and it should stop collecting GST on taxes on fuel.

That little simple request is being countered by all sorts of high powered arguments by the other side. They say no, they will not do that. It is as if a youngster came to my house and said “I want a bowl of soup because I am hungry” and I said “Well, because you did not ask for the whole kettle, I am not going to give you the bowl”.

I do not think the government recognizes what is happening here. It talks about the hon. member from Pickering who has worked on this problem for so many years. How ineffective. He has worked for two years and the government has not listened.

Now the government is blaming us because we are not allowing a motion which simply says that the Minister of Finance should talk to the provinces. Frankly there is not a thing we can do to prevent the Minister of Finance from talking to the provinces. Let him do it. He does not need our approval. He does not need the approval of this parliament. The government has thrown in a red herring in order not to deal with the real issue, which is simply to vote in favour of stopping collecting the 1.5 cent per litre surtax that the government imposed on us along with the GST.

[Supply, September 21st, 2000]

No, I said of the product.

[Supply, September 21st, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the hon. member's speech and I appreciate his thoughtful presentation. He talked a couple of times about a bad thing, the high prices that the oil companies are charging, whereas in fact roughly 50% of the value of the product is charged in taxes. Taxes are a very large component of the price we pay at the pumps.

With respect to the profits the companies are making, it seems as if the prices have gone up primarily due to the change in the world supply as manipulated by the people in the near east. When the world supply goes down the price seems to go up. That seems to be one of the rules of economics.

Is the member proposing that we have a two price system, that we sell domestically a product that is comparable to what we are willing to pay and with exports we go with the world price? Would he then extend that to farm product prices so that Canadian farmers would have one price for their product if it was sold domestically and another price on the international market? I would like the member to expand on that.

[Supply, September 21st, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I decided to count them and after three times I would rise on a point of order. The hon. member has now misnamed our party three times. It is the Canadian Alliance. The Speaker has previously ruled that is the name to be used in the House. I would ask you to call him on it.

[Supply, September 21st, 2000]

I am not looking at diesel. I am looking at gasoline, which is what we are talking about.

Would the member comment on the role the gasoline tax plays in the province of Quebec vis-à-vis the provincial tax?

[Supply, September 21st, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I observe that Quebec is the only province where the provincial tax on fuel exceeds the federal tax. All other provinces have a provincial tax which is less than the federal tax.

[All-Numeric Dates Act, September 21st, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. There is a private member's bill already on the order paper in my name in exactly this form. It would probably be out of order to accept another one.

[Interparliamentary Delegations, September 20th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. During the time when you called for statements by ministers I thought perhaps there would be one from the minister reporting to us.

[Taxation, September 19th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, let us look at the facts of the Canadian Alliance solution 17. Under our solution 17 a family with a mom and a dad and two kids would pay no income tax at all on the first $26,000 of income. The Liberals are squeezing $6 billion per year from these families.

Let us compare two families under our proposal. One family earns $60,000 and with solution 17 their taxes would go down to about $6,000. However families with a $30,000 income will have their taxes go down all the way to $680, one-half as much income but only one-tenth as much tax. That is a fair progressive system, and those are the facts.

This plan will work. It is affordable. It is good for families. It is good for the economy. Careful scrutiny shows that our plan is far superior to the Liberal plan. Canadians will find the truth and when they vote for us that truth will liberate them from years of PC and Liberal tax slavery.

[Organized Crime, September 18th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I have sat here while the member has been speaking and our debate is not assisted at all by him name calling and saying things about us which, frankly, are not true. I think that you should call him on a point of order. He should be relevant to what we are talking about today, and that is criminal gangs and how to deal with them.