Ken Epp

[Supply, December 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, when I speak of debt from birth to death in this country that comprises pretty well every citizen of the country, so I am not concerned about not having that appeal to people right across the country.

The parliamentary secretary talks about the debt reduction. By the way, I should also take a moment here to make a correction. I think I said the debt is now $49 billion more than when the Liberals took office. I was in error. It is just a little less than $40 billion. It is $39 billion, so I made a little error in my mental arithmetic on the run and my apologies for that. That does not happen often, but it did this time.

The member wants me to praise him for reducing the debt. In fact, I reluctantly do so. I am glad that the Liberals have stopped increasing it. I am glad that they did not invent more ways of spending money. They invented enough. I applaud them for at least beginning to reduce the debt.

For the parliamentary secretary to say that they ought to get a lot of credit for this is like me telling you, Mr. Speaker, or anybody else, that at Christmastime I will lose 20 pounds. What I will not say is that at the same time I will gain 30. What I will do is gain a little, lose a little, gain a little and lose a little, and the sum of my losses will be 20 pounds. I guarantee it. In total I will have gained 10 pounds because I gained 30 while I lost 20.

This is what the government has done. I pointed out that in my speech. It started at $508 billion. First, it increased the debt by $75 billion. Now it has reduced it by $36 billion and it wants us to cheer. Of course we will cheer for the government reducing it to $36 billion, but it is not even back to where it started in 1993.

It is also very important for me to say, yes, let us keep on that track. There is a lot of money that the government could have had. Rather, it chose to spend. I believe that collectively it has overshot its own spending projections. If we add up the amount by which it has overspent each budget since it has taken power, it adds up to $20 billion or $30 billion. That should have been used to reduce the debt.

I find it interesting that the $36 billion by which the debt is down from its peak is exactly equal to the amount of cumulative overpayments in the EI fund. In other words, the government has managed to squander all of the other surpluses, or whatever. I do not know what the government is doing with them. In just the EI fund alone the surpluses have paid for the debt reduction and I think that is the wrong source from which to take money for that.

[Supply, December 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, at the outset I would like to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Esquimalt--Juan de Fuca, one of the great ridings in western Canada.

I really hesitate to stand after the flamboyant member who just spoke. I do not have the dress for it. She had a really good seasonal costume and I am dressed so plainly I feel embarrassed standing up after her. However, we will deal with it the best that we can.

I would also like to say that I was shocked to hear the parliamentary secretary for finance say that he was surprised that we would use this supply day for this motion. I need to chide him. That is what supply is about. Supply is the granting of money from the taxpayers of the country to the government so that it can carry on with the business of the country. When we have supply days it really has to do with issues that are meant to hold the government accountable, particularly in the area of supply. For him to be shocked at this is rather surprising.

I was thinking about what to say this morning and I recall that a number of years ago one of my friends told me that I should buy some shares in a company, which I will not name here. He told me I needed to buy those shares. They were only $6.50 and he told me to mortgage my house as they could only go up. About a month later I saw him again and told him I was glad I did not take his advice because the shares were down to $6.20. His response was surprising. He said that if they were a good buy at $6.50, then I should be tripping over myself running down to buy them at $6.20 because then they were really a good buy.

I declined his advice because I did not like the direction in which those shares were going. He said it was an anomaly, that it would turn around and I could be rich if I bought $50,000 or $60,000 worth of shares in that company. I never had any kind of money anywhere near that, but hat is how he spoke. A year later those shares were selling at $18. I guess I missed a glorious opportunity because I did not take advice from a guy who probably knew a little more about it than I did.

Part of my speech today will be a bit of a chastisement to the government for a wasted opportunity. In fact I would call it a squandered opportunity over the last eight years. The Liberals took over when the country and in fact the world were rebounding from serious economic problems. They took over from some changes such as free trade that had been brought into place, which really helped them immensely despite the fact that when they were on the opposition side in the House they railed against free trade.

All members in the House know that our trade with our trading partners has a major positive impact on our present well-being in the country, but the Liberals were against it. Now of course every once in a while the finance minister stands up on this, and I am sure we will hear a great deal of gloating when he presents his budget speech a week from yesterday. It will be about how wonderful the government is, how it did all this stuff. I dread saying this, but I believe that it happened primarily despite the fact that the Liberals were in charge. These things happened and I think we could have done so much better. That is where the squandered opportunity comes in.

I want to focus on one of the parts of the motion today and that is the issue of debt. The government wastes money and has increased its spending way beyond its expectations. It is just not right to have done that. During those years of surpluses that we have had in the last four or five years, I sincerely wish that the government would have utilized more of those unexpected resources to pay down the debt.

There is no better time to reduce indebtedness than when one is in a good fiscal situation. That is when we should reduce the debt. We had that opportunity and the government squandered it. For the record, I am sure that the government will talk about reducing the debt and will say that it has been reduced by $36 billion. That is true, since the peak to which the government brought it. It is down by $36 billion.

I have said before that I regret the fact I cannot use an overhead projector to show some graphs. Perhaps members and those watching on television could picture a graph showing debt going up and up. Finally in about 1997 it levelled off and the debt started to come down. The amount of debt is still approximately $49 billion more than when the government first took office. It is incredible that it has added all this debt. Sure, it brought the debt down in recent times but it could have done so much more.

There is another thing that comes into play here and I think it is really important. We talk about government debt and about the fact that children born nowadays have such a huge debt. I remember our former leader, the member for Calgary Southwest, using this example in his speech. He used to say that nowadays when babies are born, instead of the doctor slapping them on the back to get them to cry all the doctor does is hold them up by the heels and say “You owe us $17,000” and the babies start crying automatically. Obviously they would start to cry. We are doing our young people a huge disservice by bringing them into the world carrying a burden of debt. The fact that our government has been passive in the last five or six years when we had an opportunity to reduce that debt load substantially is a great affront to them.

Then what do we do to our young people? We add to their debt. When they get to go to university we give them student loans galore and tell them they had better pay them back. Other people can get clear of bankruptcy proceedings in three years, but not our students. We nail them for 10 years and make sure they pay back their loans.

I am not against paying back debt, but we load them down with debt instead of arranging affairs so that they can get their education and come out, as we did in our generation, with no or little debt. They now have huge debts. Then what happens? Finally they get a job and the rate of taxation in the country is so high at all levels of government that the poor wage earner gets to keep half of what he or she earns. This is incredible. In the United States people work from January 1 to the first week in May for the government and after that the their income is for themselves and their families. In Canada it is the full half-year. We have Canada Day on July 1. We should celebrate that we finally on that date have paid our taxes for the year. As a result Canadians are driven into personal debt. They are born with debt, we increase their debt while they are in school and when they finally get a job their disposable income is so low that they drive themselves into debt.

I have picked up a few statistics and have found that we now have in Canada an average household debt of some $53,000, compared to only $42,000 in 1990. Because of our huge tax loads and disposable incomes that are so low, people have to borrow to live. In the end they are throwing themselves into the bankruptcy courts in huge numbers and into the tax courts in some cases. That ought not to be. Meanwhile, personal savings are down by some 70% in the last 10 years. I was intrigued to see that Canadians, in just Visa and MasterCard alone, collectively have $110 billion dollars of debt. Why? Because they do not have disposable income.

In conclusion, the government must reduce the debt. That would allow the government to reduce taxes and give Canadians more take home pay. Everybody would be a lot better off.

[Supply, December 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his speech and for his participation in the finance committee.

I have a question relating to the aspirations of people in eastern Canada. In a sense, I think they are similar to those in western Canada in that we feel we are being taxed to death and the benefits that we get from the government on the other hand are being cut back or have been cut back. There is an inadequacy there and also a great deal of complaint about wasteful spending in government. I wonder whether he is hearing the same things in his riding as we hear out west.

[Supply, December 4th, 2001]

There is no vote on this. That is right. This is a non-votable motion, but at any rate, the member says he is against this very good, common sense motion before us today and is designed to give guidance to the government for when it brings in its budget next week.

How can he reconcile the fact that everything he said is in our motion? We basically are reflecting the report of the finance committee, “Securing Our Future”. We are just urging the government to do what Canadians across the country have told us to do. It is reflected in the report.

The Canadian Alliance this time did not table a dissenting report to the finance committee report. We did a supplemental report that states we agree with a lot of what they are doing. We would just like them to go a little further in some areas and maybe in a slightly different direction. I would like the member's response to that.

[Supply, December 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am astounded at the member's speech. First, I would like to say that I appreciate his participation in the finance committee.

We have been listening carefully to what the both parliamentary secretary and the member said. What is incredible is that while they spoke in favour of the motion, since every point they have been making is in our motion, they have said they will vote against the motion and they urge all members to vote against it. I do not want to accuse the member of being paranoid or schizophrenic or anything, but he seems to be speaking for what he will be voting against.

[Employment, November 26th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, when we were kids at camp we used to sing the song “One dumb digger dug into the ditch, the other dumb digger dug out”. That is what the Liberals do with jobs. While they are creating jobs in one place, jobs are being killed elsewhere in the country.

A couple of years ago, when the Royal Canadian Mint was arguing in favour of expanding its capacity to build coin blanks, we argued against it. We said there was an international overcapacity. We pointed out that there were enough private enterprise businesses that could meet international demand.

The Liberals rejected it. They went ahead with their project. Now, thanks to the Liberals, a number of people in my riding are losing their jobs just before Christmas because their work in the Westaim plant has come to an end. That is shameful, and the Liberals should be ashamed of what they have done.

[Computer Hackers, November 26th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise in support of the motion that has been put forward by the member for Saskatoon—Humboldt. It might be appropriate for me to read the motion so that we know what we are talking about.

The motion states:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should immediately amend the Criminal Code to create a separate category of offences and punishments for computer hackers and persons who wilfully or maliciously export computer viruses, both of whose activities disrupt the normal conduct of electronic business in Canada.

I have had the privilege of being involved with computers. I was teaching at the technical institute when we went from slide rules to computers, so I had some experience in that. Being a curious type of guy, I found great interest in these new electronic machines. Much to the chagrin of my wife and family, I sometimes forgot that it was suppertime and I forgot to go home because I was interested in learning how these newfangled machines worked.

Back in those days we did not have laptop computers or desktop computers. We only had the big mainframes. I know that I cannot use props in the House, so I will not show the cards, but I still use the cards that we had at that time. When they were being thrown away I kept some. They are excellent for writing notes. I use them for the original long term memory; that is paper and pencil to write down things and they fit into the pocket very nicely.

I went through that transition and was involved when we had to boot up computers the long way, by flipping toggle switches on the front , then hitting a button so that it would start the process of getting itself organized and then from there on it would proceed in a logical fashion.

Since then, I suppose we have progressed, although some would say we have regressed, to the point where we now have pocket computers and all sorts of devices, including pocket machines that communicate via the Internet.

I find this intriguing. I can be anywhere in the world just about with a little hand held machine, type in a message to my staff or even my family and if they are properly wired they can receive that message where ever they are. Sometimes of course, they are in an office where there is a computer. My son has text messaging on his machine and he is just an ordinary guy. It no longer a big business thing. Any time of the day or night I can send him a text message that appears on the screen of his digital phone. It has been a remarkable transition.

What we are dealing with today is those who would subvert the system. We have had a number of high profile examples. I guess mafiaboy is one that most of us remember. Through his own malicious work, he disrupted the economy of the United States on e-mail, eBay and some of the other things. Some estimated that the total cost of that malicious behaviour was in excess of $1 billion.

I am sure all members of the House would agree that is not a petty cash, small change crime. That is not exactly like pick-pocketing. That is a very serious crime.

I am not able to compare it to anything because it is not possible in most instances to cause that much of a disruption unless we look at the terrorist acts of September 11. Those were huge disruptions to the economy.

However computer hacking can have the same effect and can actually, if targeted, bring down businesses. This private member's motion seeks to recognize that it is a very serious crime.

Those who have been watching this debate on Motion No. 80, will remember that the member for North Vancouver said that the present penalty had to do with mischief and it was covered under mischief. He said that it was mischievous to call it mischief, which really was an understatement.

The parliamentary secretary and two Liberal members spoke on the motion when it was debated previously. They said that it was already covered in the legislation from 1985.

With all due respect, it really does not. When a person is apprehended, having created a computer virus to disrupt commerce and to mess up computers of individuals and businesses, the only thing we can do now is charge them under the 1985 act, and it is simply called mischievousness. It is really an inadequate classification of crime.

When the Liberal members say that it is already covered and that they will vote against it because it is redundant, I believe very strongly that they err. Whereas this is private members' business, and by tradition private members' business has been a free vote, I encourage Liberal members and all other members to dissociate themselves from party control and use their own heads to decide that this is a motion which should be supported.

The very fact that the private members' committee deemed this motion votable means that it considers it an important issue for Canadians. We should all support the motion and I strongly urge members to do this.

There is also a problem that cannot be solved by legislation. I have said often in the House and in some of my other public speeches that there is not a law that we can pass which can make people good. I am concerned about the fact that there are people who use their considerable talents for these very destructive ends.

Having worked in computer machine language way back in the earlier years, I recognize that it is not just everyone who can create a virus. It requires that one have considerable knowledge. I have done a bit of work in this regard in terms of writing computer language programs and operating disk systems. It is not difficult to change the code so that the disk speed, the way it reads the sectors and the tracks off disks is altered on the disk operating system. Those are simple parameters that can be put in, but they can cause havoc.

To write a program or create a file which inserts these variations into the very structure of the disk operating system and thereby disrupt the operation of the computer and destroy files or totally destroy the management of the hard disk on a computer is very malicious. I am really nonplussed when I consider that people can somehow convince themselves that it is okay to use their talents and abilities to write such machine language programs that would cause these problems.

I strongly support this motion that would create a separate category of crime with separate and more stringent punishment for violations in this area. I would also like to see us really beef up that part of our education component in our schools, homes and churches which would help people to grow up and recognize that their primary responsibility is to seek the well-being of others, not to see how much trouble they can cause them.

I would simply repeat myself by saying that I urge all members, notwithstanding the fact that the parliamentary secretary has said this is not necessary, to think about it, recognize and acknowledge that there is a problem here and that this motion should be supported. Let us please ignore the fact that it comes from the opposition side. Let us look at the merits of the motion. Let us vote for it so we can move forward and get with the 21st Century and the needs of it in terms of our justice system and computer hacking.

[Ukraine, November 22nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, it was 69 years ago that Stalin unleashed his fury against millions of innocent Ukrainians. This was a holocaust which is largely ignored, mostly forgotten and very seldom mentioned in what we call polite society. People want to put it away and forget that it happened.

What happened was that Stalin decided these people would be put away and that farmers would be collectivized. There were many who objected to having their property taken away and as a result they were systematically shot. Stalin brought in individuals whose job it was to exterminate these people. Many intellectuals were killed.

The number was not known, but with the archives in Russia now being opened it is confirmed that at least seven million Ukrainians thus died very sadly.

[Business of Supply, November 21st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to rise in the House today to speak about my favourite subject: the accountability of parliament to Canadian taxpayers on how their money is spent.

My colleague from St. Albert has brought forward an important motion. It is worthy of the support of all members of the House. The report is one that was put together by a committee which was dominated by the Liberal Party as all committees are. The final committee report was tabled a couple of years ago and the motion calls for the government to implement that report.

Our democratic system has a circle of accountability and it occurs over and over again except when it comes to the expenditure of public money. Every citizen is responsible to obey the law put together and passed by parliament.

On the other hand, in the circle of responsibility parliament is accountable to the citizens. We in parliament must ensure that the laws we pass have the support of the citizens. There is a gigantic circle of accountability where we are accountable to them and they are accountable to us.

That is a good principle because with a circle of accountability we can prevent the tyranny of any individual with excessive power or a powerful majority in the House. Eventually the majority has to be accounted for.

My favourite example about the circle of accountability happened on October 25, 1993, when a government with a majority got the ultimate message of accountability. It was reduced from a majority government to two members. That was done by the people and rightly so.

The people cast their judgment, said the Liberal and the Conservative governments of the past had driven them into ever increasing debt and held them accountable. The people did not like the taxation policies, the management and arrogant style of those governments. The Progressive Conservative Party moved from being the majority to holding its caucus meetings in phone booths.

By voting for the motion we have an opportunity to improve the circle of accountability with respect to money. It is true that members of the public elect their parliamentarians. I have heard many times that Canadian taxpayers are discontented with the fact that there seems to be no accountability.

This occurs when government waste comes out. My colleague from St. Albert is now famous for his waste reports where he highlights silly spending by the Government of Canada. It is maddening to taxpayers when these things are made public.

Government members can say that it does not really matter because it is only $50,000 or $60,000. I hope that I never stop thinking of $50,000 or $60,000 as an awful lot of money. We should think about students who can hardly make ends meet and who must pay income tax on their meagre earnings. It is their money that is being wasted. We should think of the many families having trouble making ends meet and who cannot pay their bills adequately to provide for their families the way they would like to do.

Some are being taxed at $100 or $200 a month, some at $1,500 a month and some higher than that. Usually if people are paying more than $1,500 a month in taxes probably, they have an adequate income to pay most of their bills.

Thousands of Canadians who are in low income brackets are still being forced to pay $100, or $200 or $300 a month of income tax. When they hear about how that money is being wasted, my choice would be to let them keep their money and stop the government waste.

The motion we have before us asks the government to accept and to implement the report that was put out by this subcommittee, entitled “The Business of Supply: Completing the Circle of Control”. To give a very quick summary, it proposes to create yet another committee of parliament.

Before everyone reacts and says that the House of Commons has enough committees and does not need another one, I would like to venture a guess that if we passed this motion and if such a committee were formed, we would find out very quickly that it would be deemed to be the most important committee of parliament. I am a member of the finance committee. I almost hesitate to say this, but I think it would be considered, if not greater than, at least equal in importance to the finance committee because it would have so much influence in controlling and exposing the expenditures of government.

The number of recommendations in the report are quite large and I will comment on a few of them. This is a private member's motion and it is votable. I urge all members who stand up to vote on this not to follow the instructions from their party bosses because by tradition this House has become a House of free votes. In other words, each member uses his or her own intellect instead of going on in blind obedience when being told how to vote. I would encourage each member, especially those Liberals who have a lot of control here because of their numbers, to vote in favour of this important bill to establish this committee and put the financial accounting of our country back on a sound basis.

I remember when we first came here we tried to do this in a rather innocuous way. The estimates were tabled in the House and then we would get to vote on them. We had those all night sessions, usually late in June, when we would start voting at 10 o'clock. We would vote and we would vote from 10 o'clock until 2 o'clock or 3 o'clock in the morning. By the time we would sat down, we had voted in expenditures of maybe $25 billion or $30 billion.

I made a point the other day in the finance committee that the government spends approximately $6,000 per second, every second of every day, every day of every year. That is 86,400 seconds in a day and we spend $6,000 every second. Every snap of my finger right now is another $6,000 down the tubes. It is about time that we, as parliamentarians, demonstrate to Canadians that we are spending that money wisely and not frittering it away.

The set up of that committee would give it great powers. It would have the power to call in front of it, not only members of the committees themselves but the chairmen of the different standing committees whose job it is to check the estimates for each department.

A great improvement in this system which is being proposed is that parliament would scrutinize all government expenditures not just the non-legislated ones. Right now we only get to vote on about one-third of the amount of money that is spent because the rest of it is called statutory spending and is in the statutes. However this committee would scrutinize that expenditure as well. It would bring into its sphere of influence and accountability issues like the HRDC spending.

Billions of dollars are spent on pensions, on Canada pension, on the supplementals, on child tax credits and things like that. That does not go through HRDC. That is a tax credit, but there is another area where we have lost accountability and we need to bring it back.

I regret that my time is up because I pretty well only finished my introduction. If no one else stands again to rise, I could perhaps stand up again and use the next 10 minutes on someone else's behalf, by proxy if you permit, Mr. Speaker.

[Criminal Code, November 9th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my NDP friend who has so graciously agreed to split his time.

I have a few things I need to add to the debate. I listened very carefully to the member for Vancouver East and I agree 100% with her commitment to protecting children. I would even add that we, as parents and teachers, should have a genuine love for the long term well-being of children as they are growing up, otherwise we are disqualified from the position. I am speaking specifically here of teachers.

When I was a youngster I remember that our teacher had a strap in her desk. It was a hunk of a belt. I am also proud to say that I went through my entire schooling without ever having had the belt applied to me. Just knowing that it was there was more than sufficient to guide my behaviour where perhaps there might have been a lapse.

I must also confess that my own beloved dad applied the rod of correction twice, that I can remember, to the seat of understanding. In both instances, and I have clear recollections of this many years later, he explained to me that I had erred and that he was doing this to help me to become a responsible, decent person and to not show disrespect. In one case it was disrespect for a teacher and in the other case it was misbehaving in church, believe it or not. I was disturbing people around me so my dad took me out and explained to me that it was his duty to do this or I would not turn out to be a good kid.

Today, despite the fact I received two spankings, not whippings or beatings, delivered by a loving parent in a rational way, I believe I have a well rounded personality. Members can take that two ways if they so choose.

I find it abhorrent to think that in this parliament we would consider taking a parent like my dad and saying that he was guilty of a criminal sanction because of his excessive love for me and wanting to correct me. I cannot believe we would contemplate that.

At the same time, I underline that the abuse or beating of children is wrong. I believe that anyone, be it a parent, a teacher or anyone else, who abuses a child should not be allowed to hide behind section 43 of the criminal code. There is no judge in the land who would let a person get away with that.

I think of the long term effect. What do we do with a youngster in grade two or three who is using excessively bad language in the schoolyard? We can talk to the youngster and try to persuade him or her not to continue but eventually we must stop the behaviour. Although I was not involved directly, I have seen a situation where other parents were saying that they did not want that youngster to be teaching their children bad language. This was in grade two. How do we correct the behaviour if we cannot persuade the youngster? A good, gentle and loving spanking, at the same time as a good clear explanation of what it is for, could retract that behaviour.

Unless people are socialized properly and they learn to live with each other in kindness and consideration we will have youngsters growing up on the other end of the spectrum. We will then have to deal the ultimate sanction to them which is to take away their freedom.

One of the saddest times I have had since becoming a member of parliament was visiting the youth detention centre in my area. I saw 12, 13 and 14 year olds in detention because they had assaulted someone in the schoolyard with a knife. Whatever we can do to train them and to train them properly is good in the long term. I would much rather have my children get a good, careful, and loving spanking than have to visit them in jail.