Ken Epp

[Supply, June 7th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal member made reference to the fact that only a small proportion of Canadians can touch their toes. I just want to point out to him that if God wanted us to touch our toes, He would have put them where our knees are. Then I would be able to do that too.

Seriously, though, my question has to do with federal support of amateur sports. The greatest contribution the federal government can make toward amateur sports is to enable families to have enough money left in their pockets to look after the needs of their families.

The way it is right now we are taxed to death at every turn. Governments at all three levels spend 50% of our earnings. After we pay for our rent, our transportation, our clothing, our food and our utilities, there is no money left.

There are many families, and I have spoken to some, who would like to have their youngsters enrolled in some amateur sports but they cannot afford the money. It costs quite a bit to enrol them and to pay for their share of the rental of the facility and so on. Why do we not just simply give families a tax break, leave more money in their pockets so that they can do that, and let them participate?

The idea of taxing everybody to death and then trying to pick out some groups to give grants to is insane.

[Petitions, June 3rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I have double delight in presenting a petition today because the very first name on it is the name of my daughter.

She is a parent who chooses to be a full time mom, who is discriminated against by our Income Tax Act. Her family has to pay more taxes because of the choice that she makes to stay at home with our two wonderful grandchildren.

I am pleased to present this petition on behalf of some 60 voters from Regina, Saskatchewan. She got all of those people to sign this petition and I am very pleased to present it today to call for fairness in taxation for those families who choose to have one parent stay at home.

[Income Tax Act, June 3rd, 1999]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-518, an act to amend the Income Tax Act (deduction of property taxes paid in respect of a principal residence).

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to introduce this private member's bill today because it illustrates one of the greatest areas of double taxation in this country, where we pay taxes on taxes.

This particular bill will amend the Income Tax Act in such a way that property taxes can be deducted from taxable income so that we stop giving the federal government 66% of the amount of money we pay in municipal taxes.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Personal Information Protection And Electronic Documents Act, June 2nd, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to enter the debate today with respect to this very important bill.

Electronic commerce is a whole new and uncharted area. We had not dealt with this in our country until the last year or two. It is six, seven or eight years old. In the grand history of things it is in its infancy.

I have engaged in electronic commerce. I was intrigued with an ad I saw in a magazine on an airplane. It offered a clock. The clock never has to be set and it always has the precise time to the nearest one one-thousandth of a second.

Having a little fetish for time and the measurement of time, which has been an interest of mine all my life since I am a mathematician with a physics major, I was intrigued with this. I wrote down the website location and I ordered this clock radio. It is quite intriguing because literally I do not have to set it. I plug it in and in a few minutes it pulls the time from the air, sets itself and keeps perfect time after that. It is an intriguing device.

Something really interesting happened. The website of course is American. How would I know when I gave my credit card number on the Internet that it was properly scrambled and secure so that nobody else could pick up the information and use it for inappropriate purposes? I was quite worried about that. A message even came up on my screen saying that when ordering I should be aware of the fact that it may not be totally secure. That worried me. It really worried me a lot, but I did it anyway because I can resist anything except temptation and I was so tempted to have this little clock radio.

There is something else too. It was advertised at $69 on sale for $59. I thought that was a really great deal. Well, was I in for a surprise. By the time my bill appeared on my credit card, the American money had been converted, and GST and shipping and handling had been added. On top of all that, when I went to pick it up, there was a bill from Canada Customs. There is no customs duty on this, but I was charged a $5 fee to say that there was no customs duty. In the end the whole bill came to about $130 for my $60 clock, so thanks a lot, Canadian government.

I really love that rate of taxation. It is nice to hear the Minister of Finance say that he is cutting taxes at every turn, because I sure got nailed on this one. I still enjoy my clock radio and every time I look at it I am reminded that we must work hard to replace the Liberals.

I mention that because it is so easy and is a wonderful way of doing commerce. It basically opens up every store in the world to Canadian citizens or to any citizens for that matter. It also opens up the world as customers for Canadian companies, provided that our country has a tax regime that would encourage business people to stay here and operate in this country.

We have heard throughout the debate today especially from members of the Bloc about this whole jurisdictional question. It is very important for us to remember that governments, whether they be the federal government, provincial governments or even municipal governments, are there to serve the people.

I have no problem with the people here who represent many of the 43 or 44 ridings in Quebec, the separatist Bloc. I have no problem with them saying that it is provincial jurisdiction and that they already have a law in Quebec that covers it. That is what they have been saying and I presume it is correct. I have not had any dealings on the electronic Internet with Quebec firms. However, they have this in place and that is great. If another province has rules and regulations that deal with the protection of their consumers and citizens, that is fine. It is within their mandate.

However, what do we do when we have interprovincial and international transport of goods? It happened in my case when I ordered this from one of the American states, which is where it originated.

When we get on the computer and click a website it is almost transparent as to where that is. I got an e-mail not long ago from a guy who said his name was Epp. He wanted to know about me. He asked where I was from and wanted to know my family history. I answered him back and asked him to tell me, when he responded back, where he was because there was no indication on his e-mail address. I asked if he was also an Albertan or from one of the other Canadian provinces. It turned out that he is from California. Here I was corresponding with a person in California and I did not even know it.

I think it is high time that we have proper legislation in place to ensure that the scumbags in our society, who would take advantage of this kind of a system, are regulated and controlled and will face penalties in the event that they try to rip us off as citizens.

There is absolutely no problem in my mind with the federal government doing what it can with respect to the regulation of electronic trade based on what is happening into and out of Canadian homes and businesses.

We need to be careful. We need to make sure that we set this up in such a way that it is economical and efficient, but we must ensure that there are penalties in place for those who would abuse the system.

I look forward to the day when we have a federal government and a provincial government, whether it is Quebec or any other province, coming up with rules and regulations and working together. This is what we should be doing. We should be co-operating among and between the provinces and the federal government.

I am sure my Bloc colleagues would agree that the federal government would probably have a proper role to play in regulating electronic commerce internationally that has to do with work between nations.

Let us not hamstring our government officials in terms of what they can or should not do when it comes to things which make common sense and which are cost effective. On the other hand, I cannot sit down without mentioning the fact that we do want government to be efficient, to make wise and careful use of the taxpayers' money and to not enter into areas where it should not be.

The amendments put forward by the Bloc members have some validity from their point of view. I have tried hard to understand where other people are coming from, but I think in this particular instance I can only advise that on this group of amendments we should, as a body of parliamentarians, reject the amendments, let Quebec do what it wants in terms of the provincial sphere and let the other provinces do what they want to in their provincial spheres. The federal government should work not only from its part internationally but also in terms of trying to bring co-operation among the provinces.

I think that would be a great and unifying goal and would hopefully help to keep the country together.

[The Debt, June 2nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, it is about two and one-half years ago since I gave a statement in this House welcoming little Noah, our new grandson. Members may recall that I bemoaned the fact that the Liberal and Conservative governments of the past 30 years had loaded him with a debt of around $20,000.

I am proud to announce that Noah now has a little sister, Hannah, born on May 15. She too was born crying. Like her brother, her share of the debt is almost $20,000. Our four grandchildren, Dallas, Kayla, Noah and Hannah, collectively owe $75,000. I am very unhappy about leaving that legacy of debt to our grandchildren.

I say to little baby Hannah, welcome. We assure you that you are and will be greatly loved. I assure you too that your grandpa and his Reform colleagues will continue to demand debt reduction and lower taxes from this high-flying Liberal government.

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, June 1st, 1999]

Am I wrong? If I am wrong I want to be corrected. I think that position should be totally non-political, apolitical, dedicated to accurate and true science.

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, June 1st, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, that is wishful thinking. I have not read the pink book. I think it is starting to fade a little, with some of the records in it going awry. Unfortunately I have other duties in committee. I am on the finance committee and I seldom get to the environment committee. It is really quite a shame.

My understanding of the commissioner is that he is a political appointment. There is a problem with that because one knows where one's bread is buttered. I would like to see a totally—

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, June 1st, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I am a very firm advocate of sound science as I am a math-physics major and I know just enough about chemistry to get me into trouble. The member is absolutely right when he says that about the Reform Party. We are committed to that.

I would like to refer to a personal view which I do not think is in our policy. I would like to see an auditor general of the environment, totally independent of the political world, so that decisions on the environment are not based on who has the strongest lobby group.

I talked about my little Mazda. I did not replace the spark plugs for 75,000 kilometres. Then I put the same ones back in because they were still good and used them until 100,000 kilometres. Yet I was being told that MMT, which was in the fuel ever since that vehicle was new, would foul these things up in 20,000 kilometres. That is not sound science. If that were true it should have happened right away and it did not. I believe in sound science.

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, June 1st, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, in the short time I had I could only speak on one topic and I chose to speak about transportation, one of the larger contributions to pollutants.

There are industrial processes and others that use chemicals. Bill C-32 begins to address in a realistic way some, not all, of our concerns with industrial processes.

I need to tell the member and others that in my riding I have some very important petrochemical industries. If we are to be so hard on them that they can no longer operate, are we then ready to stop flying our airplanes, driving cars and having houses heated with hydrocarbon fuels? Will we put out our fireplaces and our bonfires? They are also a form of pollution. There is a limit to how far one can go.

Bill C-32 is a step in the right direction. It does not perhaps go as far as it ought to in some areas. Again, looking at me sideways, better half a loaf than none.

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, June 1st, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I am quite willing to table 301 copies with the clerk. We do not need 301 because 59 of us already have them. Certainly they are available. They are in the public domain.

Some may want to have it quicker than that. Maybe there is somebody right now in the wonderful provinces of Alberta or Saskatchewan listening to this speech, saying “I sure wonder what the Reformers say about the environment”. Get on the old Internet and go to www.reform.ca and there it is. Our blue book is right on our web page and anybody in the country can look.

I want to point out that there are some very important principles that are given here. I will read a few of them because I will not have time in my limited time to read the whole section. It is a wonderful centrefold. It states:

The Reform Party supports the principle of establishing and regularly reviewing standards that are based on sound science and which are technologically and socio-economically viable.

That is the only responsible statement that can be made on the environment. People can become extremists on one side of the story or on the other, saying on the one side that we do not care about the environment, or that we will not allow anything on the other side. There has to be some reasonable middle ground. We need to balance all of these various factors.

I have been listening all day to the debate and it has been very interesting, especially because of the different points of view that have been presented. While I was listening to these speeches today I wondered what we would really have to do to make our planet totally pristine again.

We would definitely have to stop using vehicles which pump an awful lot of pollution into the environment. It is now generally known that I am now six-tenths of a century old, but in my short lifetime I have noticed how much we have decreased the amount of pollution per vehicle.

We had a car when I was just a young man with a family. I will not mention the make because it is not nice to pick on any particular make or model. However, it regularly delivered 15 miles per gallon. I did a little calculation. Every time I drove that vehicle 100 kilometres, although we did not measure distance in kilometres in those years, I would use 18.8 litres of fuel with the corresponding amount of pollution that came from them. This was at a time when we were bringing in non-leaded fuel.

I have purchased one or two or three cars over the last 34 years. The big car we have now uses exactly half as much fuel. The old one got 15 miles per gallon; this one gets 30. It is still a reasonably big car suitable for four or five people. It uses 9.4 litres every 100 kilometres.

I am going to use the name of my little runabout because it is a wonderful little car. I will do some advertising for them. My little Mazda 323 gets about 45 miles per gallon. That is 6.3 litres every 100 kilometres. We are down to approximately one-third as much pollution for every 100 kilometres driven. That came about without any government regulation and without any inspectors. There are hundreds of vehicles like mine that are now being driven on the streets of our country.

My proudest moment is when I hop on my little Honda 125. It has a nice little 4 cycle engine. It is totally clean burning. It is difficult to believe, but I get 100 miles per gallon with it. That works out to around 3 litres every 100 kilometres. When I am going somewhere all by myself I use that bike or my slightly larger bike which is just a little less economical in fuel. I feel so good when I do that because I am not polluting the atmosphere.

I feel that it is a personal responsibility to do whatever we can individually. I agree with legislation like Bill C-32 which says we should have regulations to prevent those who would blatantly break the law. There are some. I have met them myself as have all other members, I am sure.

I have heard speeches today by people whom I have seen just outside the doors here huffing and puffing on a cigarette. It is incredible. It is the greatest concentration of air pollution. Those burning leaves are approximately 20 centimetres from the nose and mouth. The smoke is being sucked in instead of blown out. It is absolutely absurd. Yet they are here talking about pollution, Bill C-32 and regulating the environment. Let us get real.

I feel very good when I use my little vehicles and I do not pollute the air. That is a personal responsibility. Just as with cigarette smoking we ought to improve education in that regard.

In our school rooms across the country more and more attention is being paid to educating and informing our young people not only about the evils of smoking and that form of pollution but all different kinds of pollution.

It is difficult to believe, looking at me sideways, that I am a physical fitness nut. My favourite form of transportation is my bicycle. I used my bicycle to go to work for many years, long before it was fashionable. There were not even bicycle racks at the place where I worked when I started using my bicycle to go to work every day, 6.8 miles each day. It was a wonderful physical workout. That is why I am in such fine aerodynamic shape today. It was wonderful to travel along and to realize there was almost zero pollution when I was using my bicycle, depending on how close someone was following me.

I remember also when catalytic converters came out. I really do not know what it is about them but I have had the personal experience of travelling behind vehicles with them. For part of my trip I had to go on public roads. I was pumping away and breathing hard because to get this old motor going uses a lot of oxygen.

If I got behind one of the old vehicles, even though it felt a little uncomfortable it did not stop me from breathing. When the catalytic converters came out they choked me. All the scientists said it was much better, but I still remember when I was following a car up the hill from the high level bridge in Edmonton that if a car passed me with a catalytic converter I had to drop right back because I could not breathe it in. My body rejected the pollution coming from that vehicle.

We must do what we can in order to reduce pollution. I recommend that we go to bicycles, every one of us. This week for the first time I was surprised to see a fellow member of parliament on one of the city's buses. It happened to be a fellow Reformer.

I am amazed. We talk about it but who uses public transit in order to reduce pollution? Each of us likes to get in individual cabs or big limousines and drive around. We use these large vehicles one at a time. Why do we not personally take the responsibility, as I do whenever possible, to use public transportation?