Ken Epp

[Kosovo, April 12th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I share the emotions of many of my colleagues in the House today. I did not realize when I first ran for the nomination to become a member of parliament that it would involve debating matters of such magnitude.

This morning while walking over here from my hotel there were a thousand thoughts in my mind. I had spent most of the night listening to the debate, between sleeps. It is obvious that we have a huge dilemma on our hands.

It seems to me we can boil this down to one fundamental question. How much killing do we engage in in order to stop killing? It is a sobering thought.

From the reports that we have, and we believe they are reliable, there is no doubt in our minds that tremendous atrocities are taking place in the former Yugoslavia. There are great difficulties among the people.

It reminds me of some of my family history. We take our freedoms so much for granted. When I was walking here I did not feel threatened. Several cab drivers wanted to give me a ride but they were rather generous in their invitations and did not threaten me in any way. There are people not only in Kosovo but in many parts of the world today who do not have the kind of freedom we enjoy in Canada.

It takes me back to my family history. Approximately 75 years ago my family faced the same situation as people are now facing in Kosovo. It is generally known with a name like Epp that I come from immigrant stock. Members of my family were very firm Christian believers. Perhaps they took the Christian teaching beyond what many do, but they also believed that it was wrong to kill another person for whatever reason.

My grandparents on both sides, both my mom's and my dad's families, even though they did not know each other at the time had very parallel circumstances. My mom's dad had three of his brothers shot. What was the crime? They were not supporting the revolution in Russia after the first world war. Because they were not in support of the revolution they were considered enemies of the revolution and therefore were fair game. These marauding soldiers as they were called went into the Mennonite villages and shot all the men and all the boys who were old enough to fight. Both of my grandfathers said that it was time to get out. They took their families and fled by night and hid by day until they got out of the country. It is an amazing story.

I still remember my grandmother talking about it. I think this is taking the Christian faith to the ultimate. I remember as a youngster hearing my parents and grandparents talk about their experiences. I grew up in one of those farm family homes before there was central heating. It is amazing but we had a house which had a hole in the ceiling on the main floor in order to provide some heat to the second floor. When we were kids we would hear the adults speaking. The hole in the floor was in the hallway upstairs. We left our door open so that some of the heat would come into our bedroom. We heard them talking about this.

I specifically remember my grandmother. She was probably the strongest one in this, although grandfather echoed it. Even though members of our family had been ruthlessly killed, she said that we cannot continue to hold that against them, that we must practise forgiveness.

It is regrettable that the Lord's Prayer has been taken out of our morning prayers in this House. We used to pray: Lord forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. My grandparents, ever grateful that they were able to come to Canada, insisted that their children exercise no animosity and seek no revenge.

Over all these years, these people, my family and other families like mine, have been very open to their former country, Russia. They have worked in order to bring some peace and harmony to that country.

One thing occurred to me this morning when I was thinking about this. When I think of what happened to members of my family who refused to shoot their enemies but who came here and left some of the family behind, left that country behind, I cannot help but think that perhaps there is a divine purpose for all of this. We know that the prosperity, and I am not speaking only of financial prosperity but the total prosperity, the freedom of our family was far in excess of that which they could have fought and killed for.

If we look at that part of the world today, people there have very little in comparison. They have very little in terms of personal freedoms, very little in terms of economic strength and very little in terms of amenities which we take for granted.

As Canadians and in the solid Christian tradition on which this country was founded, we ought to be emphasizing what we can do there to alleviate the suffering. We do not have any idea of what kind of terror those people have gone through.

Our son worked for a while in Bosnia. He has been in many different parts of the world. One of the things that struck him when he was over there was how much the countryside was the same as Alberta's, how the homes looked so similar, but close up the difference was that they were full of bullet holes. He told us of some of the atrocities. It is difficult to speak about them. Some things are so horrible one cannot even verbalize them.

He spoke of the atrocities against women. One of the things my son did over there was to provide refuge for people who were victims of these marauding what they call soldiers but that is a misnomer. They are marauding criminals who go around raping, pillaging, killing and burning. That is what is happening in Kosovo.

I would like to see big time in big spades Canada reaching out to those people in love and compassion and providing a refuge for them in this time of trouble.

I cannot imagine some of the things they are going through. My son told us about some of the things. I will resist the temptation to talk about them here because as I said, they are so horrible I cannot even bring myself to say the words.

Canada is known around the world for its peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts. I have some problems with the fact that we are engaging in dropping bombs. Is there a worse terror? Which is more terrorizing, the fear of the marauding tribe coming into someone's home at night with guns and bayonets or the stray bomb that blows someone instantly into oblivion?

These are difficult questions. We have spoken of having a vote. What a difficult vote that would be, yet that is what should be done.

In conclusion, I simply say my thoughts, my prayers, my compassion are for the people over there who are suffering.

[Points Of Order, March 25th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, my point of order is very succinct.

Standing Order 30(5) says that during Standing Order 31 members other than ministers of the crown may make statements. Then with respect to Statements by Ministers Standing Order 33(1) says a minister of the crown may make a short factual announcement or statement of government policy. It goes on to say a member from each of the parties in opposition to the government may comment briefly thereon.

Mr. Speaker is very familiar with those standing orders. The government has taken to using question period for this, depriving us of being able to respond. The example today was the minister announcing the pay raise for privates in the military. I think that should be corrected.

[Transit Passes, March 24th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, once again we have an opportunity to debate an issue of considerable importance put forward by the member for Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys.

The member has put forward an interesting motion. He is proposing that we influence human behaviour by the manipulation of the tax code. The member is saying that if we want a person to do a , then we tax that less and the person will do a . If we do not want the person to do b , then we tax that more and b will happen less often.

There is a deep philosophical question here: To what extent are governments justified in using the tax code to manipulate behaviour?

In this particular case the argument is fairly strong that this may be a valid use of the tax code. The proposal is that if employers want to provide a benefit for their employees they can do so by providing them with free transit passes in the various urban communities of our country. In return for that the company will presumably use the benefit as a tax write-off because it is a part of doing business. On the other hand, the employee would receive it as a non-taxable benefit. That is the way I understand the motion.

Immediately when we look at this we can see that these are pretty laudable goals. It forgoes a bit of government revenue, but one can immediately turn around and argue that it saves a lot of government expense.

It helps us to meet our emission goals. It helps the environment, presumably, by reducing the number of vehicles on the road. Instead of having 100 vehicles with one person in each, we may have two or possibly three buses to haul the same number of people. If we ignore the black smoke that comes out of the diesel buses, then we have made an environmental gain. Certainly we have made a gain with respect to the amount of road infrastructure required, since 100 cars require more road space to move the same number of people per hour than a couple of buses on the same road. This looks like a good, laudable motion which has been put forward.

However, I have a few problems with it. They are not serious problems, but I have a few problems with this whole idea. I have a prior aversion to using the tax code to manipulate human behaviour.

When I lived in Edmonton I took the bus to work. I am one who thinks it is important to do our part environmentally. I know members will appreciate this. I could hardly wait until spring so I could ride my bicycle to work and did not have to use the bus any more.

I was a real pioneer in this area because I rode my bicycle to work, a total of some 6.8 miles, and I rode it before there were bike racks. I was the only one and people looked at me as if I were still a child because only children rode bicycles in those days.

However, I found it very convenient. It was an excellent physical workout. It was, except if a guy rode too close behind me, essentially pollution free. It was very enjoyable to be out in the fresh air. I always felt very good making my contribution to reducing the amount of pollution and the rate at which we were using up our non-renewable resources. I always thought that was a worthy goal. When I speak the way I am now, being in at least tentative favour of this motion, I am simply carrying through with the commitment that I have had for a long time.

I do not know how many millions of dollars we spend as taxpayers building roads and bridges. In fact, between here and the airport in Ottawa, in the last two or three years, the road was constricted while they were extending it, adding another lane to one of the bridges. It must have cost millions of dollars.

I am annoyed at that because when I look at the traffic on that bridge not only are there very few buses, not only are there many single passenger vehicles, there are thousands of vehicles with only a driver.

We have an insane rule which says that only those who pay the money can actually go to the airport to pick up passengers. So every taxi that takes a passenger to the airport is not permitted to pick up a passenger and bring one back. Therefore, half of the cabs are going empty in one direction and, of necessity, the others are coming back empty.

Just by the stroke of a pen we could have changed this and saved the taxpayers an awful lot of money, and basically cut the amount of traffic on that road in half.

I would have changed it so that at least the cabs would be permitted to take passengers both ways. In fact I might have even gone so far as to say it was required. But that is too much common sense for a government town, Canada's capital.

In principle the motion contains some very worthy goals. There would be a reduction in the amount of taxpayers' money required to build roads. It would certainly make a contribution to the reduction of pollution. However, I have a bit of a problem with respect to the application of it. As I said earlier, there are many people who either cannot use public transportation because of their location or, in some cases, because of the nature of their work.

Therefore, this would become a tax break to only one group of people, and I am a strong advocate of saying that everybody in this country needs a tax break. I would like to see tax breaks or tax reduction on a large scale because we end up having approximately half of our income confiscated by the various levels of government in this country. Every dollar that our citizens earn is cut in half. They get to keep only half of it.

I have mentioned before in the House that when I was a young man and we had a young family we decided that my wife would be a full time mom. In order to make ends meet, as expenses went up, I took an evening job teaching night classes. I used to teach Tuesdays and Thursdays. I always said that Tuesdays I worked for Trudeau and Thursdays I worked for my family. It was pretty well a 50:50 split on my incremental income. We are overtaxed in this country.

When the motion was proposed to have public transportation provided to employees without making it a taxable benefit I liked that. However, I would like to see that principle expanded and broadened in a very major way to apply to the millions of Canadians who are overtaxed in a very great way.

The other problem that I have is with respect to accessibility.

For many years now my wife and I have lived approximately 20 miles from the nearest bus. I know I need the exercise. It would be good for me to walk to meet the bus I am sure, but it would take quite a big bite out of my day. As a matter of fact, after we moved out into the country I had been riding my bicycle for many years and I was in fine condition. I put over 4,000 miles on my bicycle just driving it to work and back. I decided to drive my bicycle to work from our new country place, but unfortunately it took me two hours each way and I just could not spare four hours.

Perhaps we should be looking at that as well. Perhaps we should look at ways in which we can encourage our citizens to walk and to use bicycles. From a physics point of view, the bicycle is the most efficient form of transportation.

I regret that you are giving me the signal, Mr. Speaker, because I am just getting warmed up. However, I do appreciate this member's motion and I think that we should probably support it.

[Government Services Act, 1999, March 23rd, 1999]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At this time of the night I need that kind of affirmation. Had I known I was going to be here at ten minutes after ten debating this tonight I would not have worked until twenty after one this morning.

This is a very important issue. We are talking about cash flow for farmers. We are talking about the delivery of grain. We are talking about the sale of grain which brings their income. These are the farmers who, as I was saying when I was so kindly interrupted, are at large risk because they do not have the cash flow to sustain their operations.

I do not know whether there are many members in the House who have had that experience. I have. I grew up on a farm. My father bought it. It was really tough in the 1930s when he got into farming. There were a number of years when he had no income, and if it was not for the fact that we kids did not eat very much I think he would have gone bankrupt. We saved him, and hon. members can see that later on we made up for it. It is certainly true that it is very, very tough to be a farmer.

These farmers are now facing the cost of putting in their crops for the coming year. They just had notice that the cost of fuel is going up substantially. They have all sorts of crunches, and at the same time we have a small group of people who, because of this government's failure to reach a contract with them, feel that they are forced or obligated to hold rotating strikes to press their particular issue. This is so unfortunate. It comes at such a bad time.

As a matter of fact, I do not think there ever is a good time for a strike or a labour conflict. It really is better if we can work together, bargain in good faith, come to agreements and motor on.

About 20 years ago a friend and I had a little business. It happened to be a dairy business. We had about 50 cows, or a little more, and we milked them morning and night, seven days a week. We never took Christmas Day or Easter off because when one has a dairy operation it demands one's attention every day, without fail. Whether one is sick or not, it does not matter; one has to look after the cows or they will not maintain their health. They need to be milked every day.

What happened? There was a strike at the dairy which picked up our milk. Suddenly, just like that, the truck did not come to empty our big chrome-plated tank of milk every day. We ended up putting 5,000 gallons of milk down the drain every other day. We lost our income and we really had a tough time. It set us back fantastically. It was simply because they did not have an agreement. It was a tremendous hit for us.

We have an obligation to each other. Often we hear in the House, particularly from the Liberals that we are such a compassionate society. I agree. We need to work very hard and care for and look after each other. There are times when we are in conflict. Sometimes our rights conflict and collide with the rights of others and desperately so.

I know it is essentially impossible to reach but there should be times when labour unions and others say, “We know we are entitled to this but we cannot let these other people down and put them at risk to that extent”. I think that is a breakdown. Right now I am putting the blame on the unions but I am also putting the blame on the employer, in this case the Government of Canada.

I had a great meeting with one of the PSAC members last Saturday. I am told it is their opinion that the government has not bargained in good faith. They have some requests, some demands, some positions they want in their new contract and the government is just saying nyet. The government is refusing. By the way, for the translator who needs to put it into English, nyet is Russian. The government is saying it will not do it.

The union wants to have the same salary for the different classifications across Canada or at least some move toward that. That does not seem to be terribly unreasonable to me. As the hon. member opposite has said, the government did move partially toward that. Perhaps it is part of a process. Maybe the unions should be a little more patient and say that it got a little bit this time and next time it will get a little more.

It is a required process. We need to consider what our actions mean to others. This Liberal government has to think of what this action means. It has already talked about the implications for thousands of Canadians who are waiting for their income tax refunds. The government needs to think very hard about what this means to the prairie grain farmers. We have emphasized it so much in the last four or five months. It has been a tremendously difficult crunch for them.

There is an attachment to the land. When one farms the same property, as my family has done now for over 60 years, one gets very close to the soil. I often think that I can empathize with the natives of our country who identify with the land. Some of us come to this part of the country, we cover it with concrete and asphalt and we do not get close to the land.

My dad is 87 years old and he still gets excited every time the harvest comes off. He still goes out every day to the farm during seeding and harvesting to see how the boys are doing and what is going on. He would love to drive the tractor but unfortunately with the huge equipment nowadays that is not always possible because it takes considerable skill. He has a great interest in this. It is devastating to families, to people like my brother and my dad, to even contemplate that their business operation is so threatened that they may lose what is theirs and what they have worked for, for now into the third generation.

I want to share an experience I had. I have indicated many times in the House that I worked as a mathematics instructor at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. In 1982 the institute went from being governed by the government directly to being operated by a board of governors. My colleagues honoured me by electing me as the founding chairman of the staff association. My responsibilities were to get the organization up and running, build a constitution that worked and all those things. We also had our first collective agreement.

As a matter of fact after serving for five years, my gift, my token, my memento of that five years of service was a beautiful work of wood art. One of the members of our woodworking section handcrafted a copy of the first collective agreement with our signatures on it. That sits on our coffee table with great pride.

I want to say something about that first agreement. Before we were under a board of governors, we were forced members of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees. As professional staff, most of us would have chosen not to be under that union but we were obligated because we were civil servants of the province of Alberta. We did not like some of the things that happened. We thought that the union was sometimes unresponsive to us. When we formed our own staff association, we said one of the things that we were going to solve right at the beginning was the problem of dispute resolution.

There are two levels of dispute resolution when it comes to labour agreements. One is the ongoing one, where members who are under the collective agreement feel that they are not being treated fairly under the terms of that agreement. That usually yields a grievance or some other mechanism to try to solve that difference of opinion. The other area in which there is room for the correction of a disagreement is the negotiation process itself.

When an agreement cannot be reached in negotiations and hence an agreement cannot be signed, the old-fashioned way in Canada and in much of the western world is for the unions to withhold their services. They go on strike and force the hand of the other side.

In the case of industrial businesses and manufacturing plants there is a tremendous economic loss to the employer. In the case of educators, there is usually a gain to the employers when the employees go on strike. The employers save the money of the salaries when the employees are on strike and invariably the students catch up on their studies later on.

We argued that because we were in an educational institute, it was to the advantage of the employer if we went on strike and it did not force the employer's hand so could we come up with something better. I am very proud to say, and I think I had some leadership influence, that some very fine people worked on that original collective agreement. One of them was a guy by the name of Percy Bell. There were others as well but Percy in particular really leaned into the problem.

In our first collective agreement we had a provision that took away our right to strike. Many people in the union camp would say that was a huge error, but the fact is it was done by mutual consent. It was not forced by one side. We were able to persuade our members that under that regime we would be better off than if we were to have the right to strike.

We built into our collective agreement a very rigid process for resolution of a dispute at the time of contract negotiations. It was right down to the day. I do not remember the details but we said that so many days before the expiry of the contract each party had to present their opening positions, which clauses of the contract they wanted to open. Two weeks later they would give their positions on those contracts. There was a time line for arranging for meetings. There was a time line on how frequently those meetings could be held when people were named to meet and so on. It was all spelled out in the agreement.

I am proud to announce that it worked very well, at first. Now I will drop the bombshell. For the most part over the years the Government of Alberta has been a good government. Unfortunately, the government threw a monkey wrench into this process. We usually had a collective agreement before the old one expired. We would come to an agreement. There was no arbitration. There was no mediation, but when it finally came to that, we had the time lines set out for naming a mediator and the mediator's decision was binding and final. It was all spelled out.

What happened was the Alberta government made a mistake. It passed into its labour legislation a little clause that said that in the event that an arbitrator or a mediator is required to make a decision on a collective agreement, he is required to take into account government policy. That annoyed me because it totally skewed and really nullified a very good process.

What happened was that before the negotiations began, the government would simply make an announcement. For example, it would simply say that this year its policy was no raises more than 2%. We then knew that if we ever went into arbitration we would get 2% because the arbitrator was obligated to take into account that government policy.

That was a very unwise decision because it took away from the process the element of fairness which makes it trustworthy.

I wish we could do that with the post office and with PSAC. I wish we had a better way of resolving a dispute in the final agreement than simply clawing at each other with the power of strikes and all of the bad feelings that generates, the impasses which are brought along and the tremendous implications to so many innocent bystanders, like the farmers or the people waiting for their income tax refunds. It is long overdue.

I am very proud to say that one of the reasons I like the Reform Party and its policies is that in our policy for labour management we are promoting the idea of final offer binding arbitration. It is a mechanism which I am absolutely convinced will work because I have been in an environment where it did work.

I emphasize that it needs to be brought into being by consensus and not by a forced vote. A convincing case needs to be put forward to both sides that they would be better off under that regime than under a strike regime. If they buy into it and accept it, then it will work because the parties will be amenable to it. If they have agreed to it, they will make it work. If it is imposed on them, they will not.

I am so dead set against the high-handed government imposing its will on workers and other citizens simply by pulling the string of a majority government. It is wrong, anti-democratic and does not serve the best needs of Canadians.

When we come to the vote, we are asking to get the show on the road. I regret to say this but unfortunately I think it is necessary to get these people back to work while we solve this problem. However, I for one am not going to rest until we have a long term solution so we do not have this problem recurring over and over again. There is a better way.

[Government Services Act, 1999, March 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to enter into the debate today. In the event that members present or individuals watching on CPAC are not aware of what is happening, we are debating whether we should press a bill through in one day. It is called closure. It is called “Let's not debate the issue, let's just do it.” Of course that brings us to a real solid dilemma.

There are a lot of people in Canada whose futures depend on what is happening here. There are some people whose futures will only be marginally affected and there are others who will be affected in a major way.

I was just trying to think of some sort of analogy. Why did we get into this? It was a little over a year ago that we had a problem at Christmastime when the post office workers were no longer willing to work without a contract because their contract had expired. They went on strike.

It was not long before the government decided that it was time to take action, and it did. It brought in legislation and very quickly we, collectively in this House, legislated them back to work, even though they did not then have a contract and, incredibly, still do not. It is 16 months later and we still do not have a solution.

What do we do when there is a collision of interests?

I really have a soft spot in my heart for the farmers who are facing such a financial crunch these days. This has been such a tremendously difficult year for them. They are facing the next year with great trepidation. There are a lot of farmers who just simply do not have the cash flow to keep on farming. When that happens, not only can they not keep their farms going, the value of those farms really goes down because of the whole situation in the agriculture scene. What they have worked for all of their lives, and in some instances for more than one generation, is at risk. Their land and their farming operations are at risk.

Of course farmers have to put up with so many variables. They have the weather. They have the prices of grain. They have all of these different kinds of issues that affect their—

[Tax On Financial Transactions, March 23rd, 1999]

A nice fellow indeed. I asked him how much he gave to charity the previous year and he said nothing, that it was not his responsibility but the responsibility of the government. I said to him “Therein lies the difference betwixt thee and me. I believe in being generous with my money; you believe in being generous with everybody else's money”. That is what is wrong in the whole premise of adding yet another tax on to people who are trying to make money.

Here is an interesting twist, though. A New Democratic member has proposed the motion and the motion has been amended by the socialists on the other side of us here. The motion says that the government should enact a tax on financial transactions in concert with the international community.

This tax on financial transactions has been taken out in the wording of the amendment by the Bloc, so we will first be voting on whether or not to promote the implementation of a tax aimed at discouraging speculation on fluctuations in the exchange rate.

This was put forward by an eminent scholar, an economist, a Nobel prize winner who knew a lot, but I seriously question whether a small tax on a transaction will make any difference at all. Everybody who deals in the market, whether it is the money market or any other market, is quite willing to pay the transaction fee which accrues to the dealers. It does not discourage it at all. As a means of discouraging speculation, it is a wrong headed idea. We would have to put such a high tax on it to actually discourage the process that it would basically cause economic chaos around the world, as if we do not have enough of that already.

I would like to make a few comments on this tax. Generally what we tax we discourage. That is just simple human nature. I often think of my father who lives in a tax ridden province run by the NDP. He said when it brought in the GST, which was added to the PST, that it was one tax he could avoid. Whereas my father used to buy a new car every four or five years, he drove his car for ten or twelves years after that. I do not remember exactly how long it was before he traded it, but he said that he did not have to buy a new car.

As a result the GST and the PST discouraged him from entering into the marketplace and getting a new car. He just drove his old one. I think that was a good decision anyway. It was a perfectly good car. I will not do any free advertising for Oldsmobile here.

I remember reading about the Brits who at one time thought they were would tax rich people like NDP members always wanted. They say let us tax the rich so they leave the country like the finance minister does. He takes his business out of the country because he can get regime for taxes which is much more favourable. Let us tax these rich suckers so they leave and that way we will not have any jobs in this country. Everybody will be happy. This is NDP style.

The Brits came up with a wonderful measure of a tax for rich people. They would base it on the size, the total area, of windows in their houses. What should surprise us is that all the rich people who had homes with big windows boarded them up. The windows were not needed if they were to be taxed on them. That is so obvious.

What we have here is an attempt to manipulate human activity, whether it is an investment or elsewhere, by taxation. As far as I am concerned that is an unwelcome, unnecessary and immoral intrusion of government on our personal freedoms. We should be able to move in these areas without having government, through taxation or other means of coercion, try to influence, determine and prevent us from doing what we want and instead try to tell us what to do.

There is another big problem with this tax. I have already mentioned the finance minister and his steamship companies. These companies are registered offshore. There are advantages that way. How can we ever presume that a Tobin tax will be accepted by every country? If all countries agree to do this, except 5, 8 or 12, then those are the countries that will become havens for the investors. Investors can go to these countries and do financial transactions without being taxed. That is exactly what they will do. That is human nature. I cannot blame people for making those decisions when greedy governments insist on taxing us to death to the point where we can hardly survive because so much of our income is confiscated from us.

There is another very important aspect to this. How do we ever get agreement among countries to co-operate on this in terms of how they are to collect the tax and how it is to be distributed?

We have this insane move by the minister of culture who thinks she will help the country by putting a tax on magnetic tape, notwithstanding that a lot of it is used for purposes totally unrelated to the recording of artists' materials. She will take the tax from this and have a whole bureaucracy. The government will soon announce the rate of this tax which will be retroactive. That will make people every bit as happy as the GST ever did.

The minister will take this tax and redistribute the money. That is an absolutely insane idea. We have taxes on taxes. We have great difficulty in coming up with a bureaucracy that is big enough and efficient enough that it actually earns more money than it costs to administer. What is the point of having a tax that returns nothing to the government or to the people of the nation because the cost of administration is so high?

This member certainly has his ideas. He is welcome to them. That is the wonder of democracy, the wonder of freedom of speech and I hope we can keep it. I have my doubts in this place because of the high handed government on the other side. It is the member's right to put forward this motion. He has done that. I recommend that all members think hard before they support this motion because it is wrong headed, going nowhere and will not be successful. It is a bad idea. Let us all be sure that it is firmly defeated.

[Tax On Financial Transactions, March 23rd, 1999]

Madam Speaker, all we need is the NDP to come to this place and suggest to these Liberals a new way of taxing us. As if we are not taxed enough, now there will be a new tax, and tax on tax on tax on tax.

I use that as my introduction because I think this is a wrong headed idea. We need a government that learns to live within its means, that perhaps stops subsidizing all the buddies of the politicos over there and giving them a bunch of our taxpayers money. The government just wastes it and avoids dealing with the real problems of the country, and that is jobs.

Jobs are created by having less taxation on economic activity, less taxation on the people and the families of the country and less taxation on businesses, not more. We do not need more taxation.

What we have here is a motion by the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle. I will not question the hon. member's motivation. As a member of the New Democratic Party, the overt socialist party, he is very interested in seeing how he can get money from somebody who earned it—maybe it was not earned; maybe it was by speculation, which is part of the way of earning money—and give it to somebody who did not earn it. That is the whole agenda of the NDP.

I remember a number of years ago I had an interesting debate with a member of the New Democratic Party. We talked about helping poor people. I said to him, and I will not use his name here because he probably would not like it—

[Division No. 358, March 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, since I would have voted exactly the opposite, I request that my vote on Motion No. 21 be reversed and I be recorded as being against that motion.

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, March 22nd, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

I am sure the member knows and you know that it is not within the rules of this House to impugn motive. When the member speaks of what we are doing here and attaching motive to it, it is wrong.

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 1998, March 18th, 1999]

Certainly, Madam Speaker, all my life I have been a positive person. I have always said there is a little bad in the best of us and a lot of good in the worst of us.

Yes, there are some things in this bill which are good and which are commendable. If the hon. member opposite requires the ego trip of having a Reformer commend him, I would say I commend him. I commend him for making some of these changes because they are in the right direction but fundamentally the whole philosophy is still wrong.

If $1,000 has been taken away from a family every year, why should the government be patted on the back because now only $500 will be taken? I know it is taxation and it is legitimate. It is legitimate to have a level of taxation but what we have here is the government intruding into the minute details of our lives and I would like to just get the government out of my face.

In terms of financial positions, our overall philosophy is very clear. We believe in leaving more of the money that individual taxpayers have earned in their own hands. That is the overriding philosophy. I believe in that very strongly.

I do not believe we should coerce Canadian citizens into an act of submission and say to the government that they will give it half of their earnings.

Members may want to check Hansard for one of my previous member's statements where I talked about a theft. A guy came into my house and took half of everything I had. I phoned the police but they would not help me because the guy who took half of everything I had was the taxman. I would be the one who would get into trouble if I did not help him load. That is what is happening here.

The taxation levels are way too high. That is why families are in financial distress. Their total family income is adequate but the total tax bite is so large that they cannot make ends meet. That is a reality. I think it is time that this government woke up to it. At the same time there are some measures here which will slightly lessen that onerous load. For that I guess we ought to get down on our knees and say we are grateful.