Ken Epp

[Income Tax Conventions Implementation Act, 2001, November 9th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am again pleased to participate in debate in the House of Commons. It has been a little over eight years since I was first elected with the class of 1993. My hon. friend from Edmonton North used to tell us that we would probably wonder for a long time how we ever got here. We also wonder from time to time how some of our colleagues ever got here.

It has been a very interesting time. I feel particularly honoured and privileged to represent not only the people of Elk Island but hopefully the views of Canadians across the country as we discuss various issues.

I hope in my short intervention that I will be able to get past the first letter in Bill S-31. When I hear the letter S I think of various words. The letter S means that the bill originated in the Senate. I pretty well take every opportunity I can to put in a little barb in this regard.

The member from the NDP spoke about the Senate in his intervention. That party has the erroneous idea that it would like to eliminate the Senate. I would like to retain and strengthen it. I would like to see the Senate have a genuine democratic role to play in parliament. I wish its members were elected so they would have a high degree of respect and legitimacy in our parliamentary system instead of being, as so many have said, a source of patronage appointments. That is very unfortunate.

Some of our colleagues in the Senate probably work as hard as some of the lesser working MPs in this place, so we ought to be very careful.

The standing orders state that I am not supposed to say anything to denigrate any other member of parliament, including those in the Senate. I am very careful not to do that. However the fact that those individuals are not elected is a flaw. The bill is diminished by the fact that it originates in the Senate and that senators are not elected but are instead appointed at the will of the prime minister.

When I think of the letter S I also think of some other priorities that the government should have. Softwood lumber is an example of a high priority issue. The conflict in this regard is costing people in British Columbia and Alberta jobs on an ongoing basis. I would like to see our time in parliament spent on high priority items such as this one.

Another issue which is consuming Canadians and North Americans these days is the issue of security. I wish we would pay more attention in the House to the issue of security.

I think of Shawinigate and the fact that there is not enough accountability in government. I had a conversation with some people the other day from Alberta, not from my riding, about how we could make government more accountable. We had a pretty good indepth discussion on this subject. I said that one of the things we ought to do was to have more openness and public disclosure.

Government expenditures are subject to loose privacy laws. If taxpayer money is being spent, taxpayers should be able to see what it is spent on. We want to guard people's privacy, but at the same time we must be aware of some of the mismanagement that has occurred in government not only under the watch of the present Liberal government but also under the watch of the previous government.

There would be a much greater appetite for accountability if parliamentarians, cabinet ministers and bureaucrats knew that these things would become public, if not now, three or five years down the road. Disclosure is one of the things we all recognize as being an important feature. Other things came to mind when I saw the letter S. However I must move past the first letter and get to Bill S-31 that is before us today.

I do not hesitate to compliment colleagues when they do some really good work even if they are not from my party. I listened intently and with great interest to the speech given by my Bloc colleague, the member for Saint-Hyacinthe--Bagot. I recommend to individuals who happen to be reading this part of today's record in Hansard 10 years from now that they page back to that speech because it was an excellent one. I commend the member for it. He made many interesting points that were relevant to the bill.

We had a great time with the teachers this week discussing parliament, democracy and how government works. One teacher asked me how we get along with members of other parties. I said that we treat them with respect as friends and colleagues even though we may differ with their ideas. We are like a hockey team: When we are on the ice we fight like crazy but when we go to the restaurant after the game we are colleagues and friends.

I would say the same thing about the Bloc members even though we disagree very strongly and emphatically with the main reason for their being here. They have softened their stance a little bit in the last couple of years but they want out of the country. I disagree profoundly with that concept but at the same time they are wonderful people and I respect them. I have no hesitation giving an accolade to the member for Saint-Hyacinthe--Bagot for his excellent speech earlier today.

One of the things he talked about was the taxation agreement. He did not use the word tax avoidance, or at least it did not come through that way from the interpreters. The purpose of the bill is to make agreements with eight countries.

Canada has two reasons for making agreements with respect to taxation.The first reason is to avoid double taxation. It is not fair for people to pay taxes in the country where their business operates or where they may have investment income and also in Canada and vice versa. Someone who is from another country who has business interests or investment interests, or somehow earns income here should not have to pay taxes on both. This would make it impossible because if we take federal, provincial and property taxes into consideration, Canadians work approximately half the time for the taxman. Our total cumulative tax rate is about 50%. This is underlined by organizations such as the Canadian Taxpayers Federation proclaiming June 30 as taxation freedom day. We work for the taxman from January to the end of June and for the rest of the year we work for our families to provide for them.

If we had two countries that had similar tax rates, 100% of everything that one earned would go to the taxman. Double taxation is something to be avoided. That is one of the purposes of the bill. It would provide for agreements between Canada and the other countries so that only one country would tax the individual.

There are, however, exceptions. I do not know how many members have read the bill but it is a lengthy one. There are many different clauses in it that indicate a few exceptions where both countries could get a portion of the tax from earnings. I noticed one interesting clause that dealt with certain pension income.

I forget which country it was. It may have been with all of them, but I did not have time to check the similar clause for all seven or eight different agreements with respect to certain pension income. However I found it intriguing though, that with respect to certain pension income, the first $12,000 of income is considered tax free. There is no tax on the first $12,000 of pension income from the other country. When tax is paid on the amount over $12,000, lo and behold it is a single rate of 15%. I feel sort of good about that because as members know we have tried to work on reducing the punishment of people who earn money.

We say that if a person earns twice as much, let them pay twice as much tax. However under the graduated system, a person who earns twice as much could pay five or eight times as much tax, depending how much of that proportion they are hitting before they have used up their basic exemption.

It is very important for us to recognize that there is an important principle here, and I commend the government for utilizing that principle in this particular instance.

I could carry on at length about the bill. In principle, it is good because it solves the problem of double taxation for people who have business interests and who have earned income from more than one country.

The second one of course is the issue of tax avoidance. The actual preamble in the bill states that the purpose of it is to prevent fiscal evasion. That is basically a case of doing what we have to do so that we do not have to pay taxes at all. That is when Canada might think the person is being taxed in Slovenia and Slovenia thinks he or she is being taxed in Canada. Without an agreement that is specific, it could be that the person gets away with being taxed no where.

In conclusion, it is very important for us to have these tax agreements. I would like to see them enlarged, as my hon. colleague from the Bloc stated, so that we do not have people avoiding taxes or hugely reducing them by registering their companies in tax free havens and thereby avoiding their share of being part of the Canadian citizenry.

I would be remiss if I did not really emphasize that. We all know of some significant examples of individuals who have said taxes in Canada are too high and we agree with that. However they have a mechanism to avoid the taxes by simply moving offshore. We think that all citizens, including all members of parliament, should pay their fair share of taxes to fund a very good government that we should have, which would be one that spends taxpayer dollars in a careful way.

It is my intention to vote in favour of Bill S-31.

[Monetary Policy, November 9th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the numbers I have read show that our employment rate has gone down and unemployment is up. I do not know where the minister is getting his numbers from.

I have a further question. He brags about having paid down the debt. The fact of the matter is that under this government's watch the net debt has gone up $39 billion since 1993. It has not been responsible. It had an opportunity during the good times of the last four or five years to reduce that debt and it did not do it nearly enough.

[Monetary Policy, November 9th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary seems to want to persuade us and Canadians that the fundamentals in Canada are strong. If that is true then my question is a very obvious one. How come, relative to the Americans, the value of our dollar keeps going down? It has reduced dramatically since the Liberals took power in 1993.

[Canada National Marine Conservation Areas Act, November 8th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, again I am honoured to stand in my place and enter into what I believe is a very important debate on Bill C-10.

This is an environmental bill. As people who have been paying attention all day know, it has to do with marine areas. We are speaking of water and the land underneath water bodies. The purpose of the bill is to establish some of these areas as being protected in a similar way to our national parks on land.

I begin my intervention today by expressing a bit of sadness at the stereotyping which has occurred in many instances regarding members of our party. We have been characterized in various ways. The generalizations that have been made from time to time by various members of the governing party are very offensive. I think particularly of during the election campaign when the minister of immigration made very scurrilous remarks regarding all and any members of our party, attributes and characteristics that just were not true. It was done very flippantly and was designed to have an electoral effect. I was very offended by that.

The same thing has happened with respect to environmentalism. There is a myth that if one is a fiscal conservative, if one is a social conservative, then by definition one does not give a hoot about other people or about the environment. Both of those statements are patently false.

I did not run as a member of parliament for any reason other than the fact that I care about people. I care about our country. I care about our future. I care about our environment. To be characterized, as we are from time to time, as being opposite to this is very unfair, inaccurate and does not give proper respect to members of parliament on this side of the House who have deep concerns in these areas.

I have mentioned before that I have taken the opportunity to do what I could to preserve the environment. Some members may have heard me relate some of these things before. I used to ride a bicycle to work. Members may think that would be quite a sight, a guy my size riding a bicycle, but I did it before it was fashionable to do so. When I first started riding my bicycle to work a number of years ago, there were no bike racks on the campus where I worked. I had to park my bicycle up against a power pole and lock it with a chain so that some vandal would not take my method of transportation.

I always felt very good about that. I was saving money. With the huge taxes we were paying I had to do everything I could in order to provide for my family. But I was also reducing the amount of pollution and the use of the non-renewable resources in our country.

That is one example which shows that I am an environmentalist. I believe in preserving a healthy and safe environment for future generations and for our present generation, not only for Canadians but for inhabitants right around the world.

All my life I have driven energy efficient vehicles. I should not say that; I had a few vehicles that were guzzlers way back. I have driven the little econoboxes that yield much less pollution and are very preservative of the non-renewable resources because they are very small and practical. I drove a motorcycle for a while which gave me 100 miles per gallon for the same reason.

I say that in preamble simply to say that I do believe very much in conservation and in the care of our environment.

Bill C-10 proposes to preserve both the cultural and the environmental attributes of some of our water resources. It is a marine conservation bill and the bill is designed to actually set up and enforce rules governing that. The preamble states:

to provide opportunities for the people of Canada and of the world to appreciate and enjoy Canada's natural and cultural marine heritage,

I accept that as a purpose. I sometimes wonder why the bill has been sponsored by the Minister of Canadian Heritage, whose record in this regard is less than stellar. I think of some of the land parks in Canada where many attempts have been made not to educate and help people enjoy the environment there, but actually to exclude them from it.

Believe it or not, the government has used the club of high entrance fees to prevent ordinary citizens from enjoying our parks. Some of the entrance fees in our national parks are at the point where ordinary citizens, single earner families with three or four children and a tent in the back of the vehicle cannot afford to even go into the parks.

There is this phenomenon in Alberta where increasingly families are camping outside Banff National Park and Jasper National Park. Why? They cannot afford to enter the parks. It is too expensive. The costs per day are excessive. It is the government and its mismanagement and sometimes its misguided priorities that have driven the costs up in such an exorbitant fashion.

When I was a young man with a young family, we took vacation trips into the parks. It was affordable. We could not afford to stay in a hotel, but we could afford to camp and we did it. Now I look at similar families, including our own children who now have their children, our wonderful grandchildren, and they are finding it very challenging and difficult to stay in the park for more than a day or two at a time, simply because of the increase in fees.

Even though the preamble says that the reason is to provide these areas for the enjoyment of Canadians and people from around the world, it seems to me that hidden behind that wonderful sounding statement is the true objective of the government, which is to fleece Canadians who go into these areas and make it impossible for those with average or low incomes to enjoy them.

I will also say on the whole issue of establishing these parks that in principle it has merit. There are some people and perhaps even some businesses that would abuse our environment in pursuit of profit or other objectives. I have a problem when instead of sticking to that theme, the legislation before us differentiates between the groups of people who might want to make use of the designated area. We ought to make very sure that things are done equally and fairly for all Canadians.

I am speaking particularly of clause 2(2) in which there is special emphasis made that:

--nothing in this act shall be construed so as to abrogate or derogate from the protection provided for existing aboriginal or treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada by the recognition and affirmation of those rights in section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982.

I appreciate that we are trying to be fair to the natives of our land, but we ought to be very careful, when we have rules and regulations which protect our environment and the enjoyment of these areas for future generations, that we not put into bills and acts clauses which would allow one portion of our population for whatever reason to be exempt from part of those regulations and laws which are passed for the benefit of us all.

Furthermore, I hope that our aboriginals would wish not to be excluded. I hope they too, and in general I believe they do, participate fully in conservation efforts. From time to time we hear, read and see on television examples of total disregard for true scientifically based conservation principles being applied by aboriginals.

I would ask the government that: first, it not make rules that exempt aboriginals; and, second, it appeal to the natives to willingly, forcefully and fully participate in the protection of our environment for the future. This means that they have to not only respect their culture, heritage and history, but they also must respect the scientific data which occasionally shows it is necessary to comply with certain prescribed behaviour to achieve that result.

I am looking at other parts of the act. When I scanned it, I saw some things that were rather significant to me. I took great interest in the administration section which begins at section 8. I will read the first few words of a few subsections in sections 8 to 11. They goes like this: subsection (1) says “The Minister is responsible”; subsection (2) says “The Minister has the administration”; subsection 3 says “The Minister may maintain and operate facilities”; and subsection (4) says “The Minister may enter agreements”.

Every phrase for about two and a half pages of the act begins with “The Minister may” or “The Minister shall”. I have a large concern about the degree to which we are reverting the control of these things to the minister without proper accountability. Obviously, the bill gives him the authority but there is no accountability. Some of these things I find expressly offensive.

It says for example:

The Minister shall consult with relevant federal and provincial ministers and agencies, with affected coastal communities, aboriginal organizations, aboriginal governments and bodies established under land claims agreements, and with other persons and bodies that the Minister considers appropriate...

Then it goes on to say of course that it has to do with the development and designation of the conservation area.

I have no problem with consultation, but too often we have just observed. I personally have observed over the last eight years that the government consults in name only.

It is a formality it goes through. I will put it this way. It is there but it does not hear. It listens but does not hear and does not act on what it hears.

It is regrettable that the clock says I need to quit because I am just on a roll and I am just really on the first part of the things that I wanted to speak about. I presume when this resumes I will be able to get the rest of my time.

[Prebudget Consultations, November 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to respond to the member's thoughtful question. We would have done just what our plan suggested. I do not know if the hon. member remembers, but in 1993 our election platform included a plan to get rid of the deficit in three years. Zero in three was the plan. That is what the government happened to do.

Our projections were more accurate than those of the finance minister. At the time the government said it could not be done. It said it was bad, anti-Canadian and so on. Our plan was methodical. We would have continued to meet the needs of Canadians in social areas just as the Liberals did when they adopted our plan and implemented it in three years.

The election was in the fall of 1993. That parliament started in the fall of 1994 and lasted three years until 1997. During that time the government did exactly what we would have done and what the hon. member has now suggested.

However we would have done it differently from 1997 until now. That is what I was talking about. A great deal of surplus money was available. All the government did was take money out of EI and pay it against the debt. It managed to spend all the rest.

That is like a family with bills that exceed its income. The budget was finally balanced and the government was earning more than it needed for all the necessities of life.

What did it do? Did it pay down its mortgage as rapidly as it could so it could manage it better when things turned tough? No, it did not. It found new ways to spend it. The kid wants a TV in his room. Another kid wants new hubcaps for his car. The government wasted the money on a bunch of frivolous things Canadians do not generally support. As a result the money used to pay down the debt was about half what the government could have used.

We could have been back down to at least the debt level of 1993. We would not still have to pay, as we are paying this very day, some $40 billion a year on interest. That is a huge drain on government coffers. It prevents us from doing what we should be doing in terms of helping to fund education and health care. It prevents us from looking after the defence of our country, which is such an urgent matter these days.

[Prebudget Consultations, November 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Renfrew--Nipissing--Pembroke. It is my delight to be able to rise in the House to enter into the debate about the most important function parliament should be providing: oversight of the expenditure of taxpayer money.

We are talking today in a prebudget take note debate. The motion of the government is that we simply take note of the debate. That leaves it pretty wide open. Our leader, the leader of the official opposition, has moved a significant amendment. Besides taking note of ongoing prebudget consultations the amendment says:

and in particular, the need to increase spending on national defence and public security by reducing waste and spending in low and falling priority areas, such as the proposed new Industry Canada-HRDC strategy paper, preserve and accelerate scheduled tax reductions, restore confidence in the Canadian dollar, and avoid falling back into a fiscal deficit.

The hon. Bloc member for Drummond has moved a further amendment. She has added the words “while improving the employment insurance system” to the motion and the amendment. That is what we are dealing with today and I will add a few comments about it.

It is a man thing. We do not like to ask for directions. We will drive around looking for a place. If we happen to find it that is great and if we do not that is too bad. I must confess that another man thing has caught me a couple of times although now that I am in my mature years I am finally over it.

I had a habit of driving my vehicle until the gasoline tank was almost empty. This happened on several occasions. On probably three or four of these occasions my wife asked why I did not stop for gasoline. We were going through a town which had service stations and the gauge said the tank was near empty. I told my wife there was no problem and said we could get to the next town. On three or four sad and, shall I say, emotional occasions I ended up walking for gasoline.

The reason I say this is that when we drive through a town where service stations are ready to serve and then get out into the country and run out of gas, we have missed an important opportunity. That is what I want to emphasize today. The government in its budgetary practices of the last seven or eight years has missed a golden opportunity. I mean that in the truest sense of the word.

There is no better time to pay down debt and get our fiscal house in order than when times are fiscally good. They have been good in the last four or five years.

The finance minister, the Prime Minister and all other members of the government like to gloat and say they are the ones who were so great at managing the economic and financial affairs of the country. They say they have surpluses and have paid down the debt.

However they have dropped the ball big time on this issue, an issue we have heard about in the finance committee over and over again: the need to reduce our debt.

It is important when times are good to get rid of the debt. However the Liberal government, while gloating that it has managed the financial affairs of the country so well, has failed miserably. It has driven through town when fuel was available and run out of gas in the country. How did that happen?

If we ask Mr. Average on the street whether we have less debt now than we did when the Liberals were first elected in 1993, most people would say yes, they have paid down a whole bunch of debt.

I will point something out for Canadians who happen to be listening on CPAC or in the hope that the people in the press gallery will report it. When the Liberals took power in 1993 our net debt was $508 billion. Under their watch the debt grew. Four years later in 1997 it reached a peak of $583 billion. In the last couple of years the Liberals have paid down a bit of it so our net debt is now down to $547 billion.

This is my old teaching career coming out here but I wish I had an overhead so I could show this on a graph. The best I can do is make a picture. The debt grew until 1997. It has since come down a bit. However if we compare our situation now with our debt in 1993, we have a net debt which is $39 billion more than it was in 1993.

We have almost $40 billion more debt now than in 1993. It would not have been possible for any government, no matter how well intentioned, to have stopped borrowing immediately on the day of election. I concede that. It would have taken two or three years for even a prudent government to stop borrowing. However the Liberals drove through town without filling up the tank. They failed to pay down the debt when we had substantial surpluses.

I am miffed about this. When I look at the numbers, I am upset that the Liberals have paid down so little of the debt. By now it should have been down at least to what it was in 1993. It was achievable.

An interesting number threw itself at me when I looked at this. It so happens that our peak debt in 1997 went down by $36 billion to reach the level it is at now. I thank the Liberals. I praise them. I congratulate them for doing at least that. They have reduced the debt by $36 billion.

Do members know what number surprises me? During the same interval the amount of money the government took out of EI contributions minus what it paid in EI happens to be $36 billion. The amount of money the government used to reduce the debt happens to be, to the nearest billion, the same as the amount it took from employers and employees through excessive contributions to the EI fund.

The economy has been rolling. Income tax revenues are way up. Despite its highly effective communication skills the Liberal government has managed to spend all that extra money while taking EI money to apply to the debt. It should have done a great deal more. It should have reduced the debt substantially more than it did.

There is another thing we ought not to forget. During this term of office the government has taken some $30 billion from the public servants pension fund which it managed to spend. It did not apply it to the net debt. It managed to spend it.

Perhaps not all of it belonged to the employees. I argued when the bill was in front of the House that it should have been shared because the employees contributed to it. The taxpayers also ostensibly contributed via the government. However the government took all $30 billion. Where is it now? It is down the tube.

I charge the government with financial mismanagement and missed opportunity.

[Points of Order, November 7th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I have something to add which should be helpful to you when you deal with this issue. I faced this earlier in the week when I was speaking on a private member's bill to do with divorce.

I mentioned something about a family who would have been married earlier when I should have said divorced earlier. The electronic record clearly says I used the word married instead of divorced, but I did not intend to say that and it makes no sense. I was able to change the word by sending it to Hansard so at least those who would read it in the future could make sense of my intent.

Here is where I want to be helpful. I feel somewhat guilty about altering a record like that and yet it did not express what I intended to express. I would like to suggest that the procedures be changed so that an editorial change could be put into Hansard in square brackets, clearly indicating that this is what the member intended to say but in fact did not, as a way of explanation.

In that way the record would be accurate and we would be able to communicate to future generations what we actually said.

[Children of Divorced Parents, November 2nd, 2001]

Madam Speaker, my introductory story is about an older couple. He was 92 and she was 91. They showed up in court and said that they wanted a divorce. When the judge asked them why they would want a divorce after 67 years of marriage, the lady said that they would have divorced years ago but that they did not want to hurt the children. She went on to say that the children had all passed away so now they could get divorced.

My story just shows how important it is to put the children first, as that couple did, by hanging in there, settling differences and keeping the marriage together. I commend the member for putting children first in a very difficult situation.

[Questions on the Order Paper, November 2nd, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I do not know what it is we are giving consent to right now. I may have missed it.

[Firearms Act, November 2nd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the cost of implementing the Liberal boondoggle firearms registry now exceeds $650 million. It just threw in another $150 million. Amazingly, it snuck half a million dollars in through the National Parole Board.

In light of the huge new pressure on the budget and the urgent need for resources to fight the real threat of terrorism, the government should abandon this bottomless, ineffective sinkhole. It should get the terrorists and let duck hunters go free.

Will the government put former Bill C-68 on permanent hold?