Ken Epp

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 2000, May 11th, 2001]

That's the interest.

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 2000, May 11th, 2001]

I am honoured to stand in the House today to speak to Bill C-22, an act to amend the Income Tax Act. Actually it was the Liberal Party election act. Members will recall that the finance minister announced most of the provisions that we are dealing with today just days before the election was called. Of course he had no idea that the election would be called four days later. After he did his economic update and announced these things in the House in October 2000, it came as a total surprise to him that lo and behold the Prime Minister announced an election.

I would like to begin by asking a simple rhetorical question. If there are policies that are necessary just before an election, how come those policies are not necessary between elections? Therein lies a very important question.

We have dealt with it over and over. We dealt with it not long ago when we were dealing with the equalization act. Suddenly it was necessary to lift the cap. It was done because there was an election coming. Believe it or not, the voters bought into it. A whole bunch of them in Atlantic Canada replaced sitting members with Liberal members because the Prime Minister said that the cap would be lifted.

When the legislation came in we dealt with it in the House. We did indeed lift the cap but for one year. We had some questions about the whole equalization process. We thought it should be revisited in order to look at it rationally because it was a very convoluted system. The opposition parties suggested that if it was good for an election year to lift the cap, it should be good policy to lift the cap in the long term. The government said no to that amendment.

All the Liberal members stood on command and voted against the amendment. That is a curiosity to me. If it is good economic policy we should be doing it, whether or not there is an election. If it is not good economic policy then we should be able to communicate to Canadian taxpayers why it cannot be done, and hopefully they would then trust that we would be fiscally responsible in managing their money properly. That is how we would gain their support.

Now we have Bill C-22, an act to amend the Income Tax Act. It goes on from there, but really it is a bill to enact the provisions of the Liberal fall election campaign in 2000. Our party is leaning toward supporting the direction the Liberals are going in. After many years, being a grassroots party and representing the wishes and sometimes the demands of Canadian voters and taxpayers, we brought to the House the wishes of Canadians on fiscal matters.

The Liberal government loves to tax and spend. It loves to take money out of the pockets of taxpayers and then roll it out during an election campaign so that hopefully it can stay in power, which is its overarching principle. Four days before the election was called the Liberals said that what the Canadian Alliance was saying was right on. The polls told them that. If they wanted to win the election, they had to do these things during the election period so that they could get re-elected.

The government introduced a number of measures, some of which are included in the bill. We are now debating what the government promised, just by coincidence, four days before the election was called.

I would like to say a little about those things. First I want to give very low marks to the Liberals but high marks to their communication department. They have spin doctors who work very well. They are able to communicate with straight faces to the Canadian people that there is a $100 billion tax cut. One billion dollars is an awful lot of money and $100 billion is massive. It boggles the mind.

I have sometimes used this example when I talk to students and we talk about the way in which governments spend money, and the way they tax and so on. Sometimes we also talk about the debt. When the Liberals came into power they inherited a debt of around $520 billion. They allowed it to grow to almost $580 billion.

We will be very fortunate if by the end of the government's mandate, say in the year 2004, although the Prime Minister will probably call an election in 2003, but certainly by the end of 2004, we will be back down to the debt level that we were in 1993 when it took power. However, the spin doctors are able to convince Canadians that the Liberals are excellent stewards of the public money. They are telling Canadians to trust them because they will manage our money properly, notwithstanding that the debt is much higher than it was when they took over.

I said that the magnitude is in the billions of dollars. I do not have the exact numbers before me because I was not planning on using this example. However, when I talk to students about $1 billion I ask them how long it would take them if they had to spend $1 million at a rate of $1 per second? Some of them guess a bit and then I tell them the answer. As I recall, if they started at midnight on January 1 it would take them until January 11 or 12 before the money would be gone, approximately 11.5 days to get rid of $1 million at $1 a second.

Then I ask them how long it would take them to spend $1 billion? Again, they guess and then I tell them the answer. I tell them that to spend $1 billion at the rate of $1 per second would take until September, 31 years later. That is how long it would take to get rid of $1 billion.

Here we have a government claiming through its spin doctors a tax cut of $100 billion. That is spin doctoring at its finest. The $100 billion includes a lot of money that it just decided not to take.

I will give another example. Let us say I decided to give my wife some money to spend on a house, which I know she would love, and told her that I was going to give her $20,000 more than I planned to give her. Under my breath I would mutter that I was planning on taking $18,000 away from her. She could say that $20,000 was great but the fact is it would only be $2,000 because it would include the $18,000 that I was going to take out of the housing fund.

This is what the government has done. It is claiming $100 billion in tax relief, but included in that is a whole lot of money that is represented by money that it could have taken but which it has now decided not to take.

For example, a couple of years ago the government announced that it was restoring indexation. There was no mention made of it being retroactive, so perpetually taxpayers were still suffering the removal of indexation on the tax rates over the last number of years because the government flattened the thing out. We were paying a whole lot more taxes because of bracket creep. When the government reintroduced it, it started from the present position and did not go back. Therefore, the errors of the previous years continue to be perpetuated.

One of the things the government is claiming is that due to indexation this is a tax cut. It is not a tax cut at all. The government said that it would take $10,000 from each taxpayer and now it is saying that it will only take $8,000. In that case, the government is calling this a $2,000 tax cut but it is still taking the $8,000. To call that a tax cut is inaccurate.

Furthermore, we have the child tax benefit. It is true that in the legislation the child tax benefit would be increased but that is not a tax cut. It is an expenditure. It is a case of the government thinking of a way to spend some money on behalf of families. In a way, I have some sympathy for that position but it cannot properly or legitimately call it a tax cut. That is spin doctoring and it is not acceptable in terms of the actual message that is being put out there.

The bottom line is that the actual tax cut is not $100 billion. It is actually closer to $50 billion and that is spread over five years.

We have a whole bunch of questions with respect to the bill but the government has decided to go ahead with it. We know its members will vote for it and it will happen. I will concede that families with children would get more money from the spending program and so for them it is an advantage. For families without children, such as in the case of my wife and I whose children are grown up and have left home, there would be no tax cut. It is a spin doctoring myth.

The bill also has implications in the area of tax rates. We talk about the single tax rate. The opposition and some of the other parties, and when I talk of opposition I mean the Liberals who are in opposition to us, totally misrepresented what a single tax rate does.

Our plan was to have one rate of tax at 17% and then subsequently we revised it so that it would apply only to $100,000 of taxable income. That still included all of the present deductions. None of them were to be taken away. However, instead of talking with Canadians and honestly debating its plan versus ours, the government has totally distorted what it said about our plan and then proceeded to knock it.

It is really an unfair thing. It is as if we have two car dealers and one dealer, trying to promote his product, says that the wheels fall off his competitor's cars as soon as they are driven 10,000 kilometres. It is not true but that is what he says would happen. He repeats it over and over again and then asks, with great passion, whether the customer wants to buy a car with wheels that fall off after being driven 10,000 kilometres. The customer says, no, and the car dealer suggests that the customer buy his car.

That is what those Liberals did. I almost used a bad adjective, but thankfully I caught myself. They took our plan, totally distorted what it did, developed animosity against that caricature of what we were proposing and asked Canadians to vote for them.

There are still thousands of Canadians who want to trust their governments. They want to trust their politicians. During an election campaign when these things are said Canadians think that if their trusted government leaders are saying something it must be right so they therefore believe them.

I will take a ten second diversion to say that the same distortions happened when the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration said what she said. That was a hurtful and total distortion for a person like myself whose family members have worked all around the world with people of all kinds of different backgrounds, helping them. To be labelled the way the immigration minister labelled us and then have Canadians say they would not vote for us because we were scary is hurtful and wrong.

If we want Canadians to trust us we have to start dealing openly and honestly with them. We have to tell them the truth and start debating the Liberal proposal versus ours. That unfortunately has not happened. I resent this.

I taught mathematics and computing for 31 years in my life prior to becoming a parliamentarian and when people misuse math I get just about as upset as I do when they describe me in pejorative terms. The government had Canadians persuaded, and this is one thing in the bill, that it would reduce the lower tax rate from 17% to 16%. It had the gall to go to Canadians, say it was reducing the rate to 16% and claim that was even better than the Canadian Alliance proposal.

However, it was worse than that. In every category, including that first category at the low rate, our tax plan would have given Canadian taxpayers a greater tax break. The reason was simple. Even though our rate was 17%, it was on less of taxpayers' income. We proposed, for example, that a two parent family with two kids would not pay any income tax on the first $26,000 of their earnings. The Liberals ignored that. They ignored the fact that we would increase the exemption. All they did was talk about the fact that they would reduce the lower rate to 16% from 17%.

I resent it when people trade on a misrepresentation of mathematical facts. This is what the government has done and this is what we would be passing with Bill C-22. If we pass the bill later today we would be approving the reduction of that rate to 16%. Canadians would get a smaller tax break than they would have had they voted for us because of the fact that the Liberals have a great deal of expertise in messaging, in telling people “this is what is” when in fact it is just the opposite.

In passing Bill C-22 the Liberals ought to send out a press release to say that while they would be reducing the income tax rates and going from three levels to four, while they would be decreasing the 17% rate to 16%, the 25% rate to 22%, the 29% rate to 26%, and retaining the 29% rate for everything over $100,000, there is something else. I would like that press release from the Liberal government to also say in bold letters at the bottom of the page “Please note that Canadians were hoodwinked into voting for a party that proposed this bill and got it pushed through the House and that it gives taxpayers a smaller tax break than, first, they deserve, and second, what the Canadian Alliance would have given them”. That is what the press release should say. I am expecting the Minister of Finance to put that on the bottom of the press release later today or next week when this bill is finally passed.

I am sure that will happen. I see the parliamentary secretary over there grinning from ear to ear, which of course shows compliance with my present request.

The fact of the matter is that a $100 billion tax cut is a $50 billion tax cut or even a little less if we look at how much the taxes are actually being cut. The rest is spin doctoring. The fact of the matter is that this would produce a tax cut smaller than the tax cut we would have provided.

There are some other provisions in the bill with which I happen to agree. There is a disability tax credit. There is also the issue of children. Families have big expenses when raising children. The government is going in the right direction here by making it slightly easier for families, but it does not come anywhere near recognizing the actual costs of raising children. We would have substantially increased the deduction for children. The government has not done that. The taxpayers would still pay taxes on the money and if they qualify they get a tax credit. Most people in the middle income bracket with two earners have the promise of a child benefit for which they are not eligible. Their taxes would stay the same. The government is not reducing the taxes yet is announcing with this bill that taxes would be reduced.

I regret that my time is up, Madam Speaker, but thank you for giving me the time to express my views on the bill. I will vote against the bill for the reasons I have articulated.

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 2000, May 11th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I seek unanimous consent of the House to split my time with the hon. member for North Vancouver.

[Proceeds Of Crime (Money Laundering) Act, May 10th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. We have our communications straightened out now between the parties and if you would seek it, I think you would now find unanimous consent to revert to daily routine of business, presenting reports from committees, so that the finance committee report could be presented by the member for Vaughan—King—Aurora.

[Supply, May 8th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the member has been involved in municipal politics and we are talking today about municipal water supplies. I have a difficult question for him about jurisdiction. These issues should be dealt with primarily among municipalities and perhaps provinces.

To what extent does the hon. member want the federal government involved in organizing municipal water infrastructure?

[Marine Liability Act, May 4th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I would like to address a few items in Bill S-2. I cannot resist the temptation to draw attention once again to the fact that Bill S-2 comes from the Senate. I would ordinarily have no objection to a bill coming from the Senate. I know some members of the Senate. Some are very honourable people and they work very hard. That is fine, but I really wish they were elected.

There is something wrong in a modern day democracy when members can actually introduce bills which affect our lives and they are not even elected. It is like reverting to a time when kings used to tell people what to do. If the people did not obey they were clubbed with a mace, similar to the one we have in the House. That was the original purpose of the mace, to enforce the law of government or the law of the king.

I object that the bill comes from the Senate. It should have been introduced in this elected House. We will not flag in our zeal to have an elected Senate. I have had several conversations with some senators and have urged them to push for an elected Senate. As I told them, I am sure that with their popularity they would probably be elected anyway. They have nothing to worry about. It would give the position a lot more legitimacy.

Today we are dealing with the liability insurance of shipowners. It is curious to me that shipowners of the few ships registered in this country are not required by law to actually carry liability insurance. It is very strange.

I have a couple of vehicles. I am required by law to carry liability insurance, not only for someone who happens to be in my vehicle but if I happen to injure someone in another vehicle.

As a matter of fact, I had a conversation with someone just a few weeks ago about the required liability insurance on my motorcycle. I said it was really unfair that the liability insurance on my motorcycle was almost as high as it was on my car. I said that was really wrong because if I was in an accident, although I am well padded, it would still result most certainly in serious injuries. Yet I had this huge liability. I said my little 400 pound vehicle with a 400 pound rider was not going to cause nearly as much damage as if I had hit somebody with my 6,000 pound Suburban. So that insurance was very unfair.

The point I am making is that I am required to carry liability insurance in the event that something happens, so I comply with that law.

It is beyond me why the government would choose not to include such a provision for shipowners and the protection of their passengers. It really boggles the mind. Every provincial government has required public liability insurance. Taxis have to. Buses have to. Airlines have to. Who does not have to? The shipowners. Again, s stands for senate and s also stands for ships.

I have to digress. I am on the finance committee and so I have great interest in taxes and things like that. It is a curiosity to me that there are some Canadians who actually own ships who do not even register them in our own country. I suppose they think that the tax regime here is unfavourable to them, so they fly flags of convenience, as they are called, registering their ships in some other country where either the taxes are lower or do not exist at all. I am not aware of this, but it seems to me that this particular bill would possibly not even apply to ships which are not registered in Canada. That is a whole other question which ought to be addressed.

There is an amendment put forward by our transportation critic which is a very fine amendment. During the committee hearings on the bill, there were representatives who said we should have compulsory insurance. There were representatives from the insurance industry who said they were ready to provide it, that they would write it up and that everything would be in place. Notwithstanding that, government officials said there was some barrier and that they could not do it. However the insurance people said “Yes we can. What is the impediment?” They said it was all ready to go. The government said in those committee meetings that it would introduce regulations which would make insurance compulsory.

Listen to this very fine amendment. I know it has already been read into the record but it is such a fine one. The motion that our party is putting forward, which must be passed, is just common sense. It says “The Governor in Council”, that is the Cabinet, “shall make regulations by January 1, 2003”, that is over a year and a half from now, “requiring insurance or evidence of financial security be maintained to cover liability under this part”.

I do not see a person in the House rising to speak against the amendment. There has not yet been one. That is because there is no rational argument against the amendment.

My big task then is to persuade the 172 Liberals over there to support the amendment. That is the challenge. I feel that I am doubly offended. First, the bill came into here from the Senate and not from this elected place.

The second way in which I am offended is that I do not know if the Liberal members, who are in the majority in the House, all 172 of them over there, are even hearing my arguments. I am telling them there is no rational reason to reject this amendment. If they would only show that they have an ability to hear an argument, to understand it and show some wisdom when the vote is called and rise unison say that yes, it is a great amendment, it makes sense and is consistent with all other transportation facilities in the country, therefore we will support that amendment. There is just no other way.

In a way I am wasting my time putting forward this argument. Anybody who would read it and think for about .38 milliseconds, because that is how long it would take, could compute that is the only reasonable response.

Will they do it? Dare I express my pessimism about it. It seems to me that for the sole reason that this amendment came from the opposition rather than from the government the members will be told “No, we want to be agin this one”. In unison they will stand up and say that they will not vote for common sense, that they will not vote for a rational argument and that they will not vote for the protection of passengers embarking on trips on ships which originate in Canadian ports. They will do as they are told and vote against the amendment.

That is what I cannot understand. That is where I suddenly have difficulty understanding what goes on here.

I have stated the case as strongly as I can on that amendment. It is absolutely mandatory, it makes sense and it is for the protection of passengers. Furthermore, it is totally doable. The insurance people have told us it is. There is no loss to the government. All it is is a requirement that these shipowners who take passengers on will have the ability to cover a possible loss. That is so standard in the industry all over the world. It is unbelievable that in this country we even hesitate on that.

I have about two seconds to say that the NDP motion is the backup one. It says that in the event that these Liberals do not think on the Canadian Alliance amendment, they have an opportunity to bail themselves out partially by requiring that these shipowners post a notice clearly visible to passengers boarding their ships that there is no insurance on their ships. That also makes sense. We insist nowadays that consumers be informed of what their food contains, so they should be informed of what coverage they have when they go on a ship.

[Multiculturalism, May 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, all she did was express regret for being caught. She said there were cross burnings, but there were not. She said she had a letter, but there was no letter. Access to information requests now give positive proof that the mayor of Prince George was accurate when he denied its existence.

For a minister in her position to make up such a damning and false accusation is in and of itself sufficient grounds for dismissal. However, to deny and cover up exposes an inherent character flaw and total unsuitability for this position.

Will the Prime Minister show that he has some small semblance of ethics left and just get rid of her?

[Multiculturalism, May 4th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the junior minister of multiculturalism shamelessly slandered the people of Prince George in her now infamous accusation of cross burnings. To add insult to injury, she claimed to have a letter from the mayor, but she has been unable to produce the letter because it does not exist.

In most previous parliaments such blatant behaviour would have resulted in the immediate firing of the guilty minister. Will the Prime Minister fire her immediately or is he planning to wait until summer?

[Criminal Code, May 3rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to have the privilege of speaking to Bill C-250, the bill sponsored by my colleague from Surrey North.

He began his speech by lamenting that even though he got his bill drawn the “impartial” committee decided that it would not be voted on. I would like to say two things about that.

First, I lament with him that his bill is not a votable item. It is very unfortunate that the rules of the House permit certain members of parliament to bring forward private members' bills that lead nowhere. It is wonderful to be able to debate a bill, but we should also be able to vote on it. That would allow members of parliament to show by their votes where they stand on an issue such as this.

Second, the member has been in the House for one term less than I. I have never been picked to present a private member's bill. He is fortunate in that regard. He is ahead of me on that one.

Bill C-250 has to do with auto theft. I always take a step back when I think of this type of crime. Auto theft in Canada takes place at two levels, I think, and they are almost quantum leaps apart. At one level it is mostly youths who take vehicles for what is called joyriding.

Another one of our colleagues from British Columbia had a private member's bill on that particular offence, whereby young people for some reason have it in their heads that it is not wrong for them to hop into a vehicle that is not theirs, take it for a ride and abandon it somewhere else. Some of the young people are repeat offenders. They just do it for a lark and yet what they are doing is very wrong and should not be tolerated.

There is another level, if we can classify auto theft as being at different levels. Joyriding is a low level classification even though some offenders are guilty of very frequently committing the offence. The other level, of course, is the organized one, whereby people actually make a living by taking someone else's property.

It is absolutely true that when people steal vehicles we all pay for it. In regard to the total cost, I think I heard a total of $600 million being bandied about. That is a tremendous cost because we have only 30 million Canadians and I am sure that we do not have one vehicle for every man, woman and child in the country. The amount of money is just atrocious and we all pay for it through higher premiums on our insurance.

Besides that, it is just the wrong thing to do. I really wonder why in our society we have people who actually feel that somehow they have the right to take property that is not their own. Some of them actually even get into the business of stealing vehicles, altering serial numbers and either chopping down the vehicles or putting them into containers and sending them to different parts of the world where they fetch a very good price.

We really need to do something about it. As I have said in some of my previous speeches on justice issues, it seems to me that we have to make sure we do not forget what the purpose of the law is. We cannot pass a law that will make people good and prevent them from committing crimes because it changes them on the inside. That is another function and that is something we really ought to be working on. We should be working on changing the personal convictions of people in terms of what they deem to be right and wrong. It is a big job and one that I think takes place primarily in strong families.

The second aspect of this is of course that the law must act as a deterrent, so my colleague is proposing that there be rather stiff penalties for people who engage in this over and over. It is significant that he does not say that the first time a kid takes a car for a ride in a joyride situation we would lock him up and throw the keys away, as some would accuse us of saying. We in fact favour methods that will retrieve and reform the young guy who starts that.

However, when it is a repeat offence, and particularly in the crime rings where they make huge amounts of money by literally ripping off Canadians, by stealing their vehicles and of course indirectly then charging the insurance companies and all of us through our premiums, those are the people who we want to stop with a law, because obviously they are not induced to stop it by themselves. The law must act as a deterrent.

It is a very honourable thing the member is proposing. He is proposing that there be a minimum four year sentence on this crime so that judges do not have the option of being lenient with repeat offenders. That is what should happen.

I know a person who has now moved into the city of Edmonton but used to live in my riding. His name is Ken Haywood. I think he would probably appreciate me saying this. For a number of years he owned a car dealership in the city of Edmonton. When he retired he sold his business and, because of this theft problem, he became interested in curbing auto thefts.

He been working with all levels of government, both federal and provincial. I visited with him when he was in Ottawa. He has a newsletter that he puts out and also a website. I do not know the address of the website but if people used a search engine and looked for Ken Haywood I am sure they could find it.

He is looking at technical ways of reducing auto theft. He is working with automobile manufacturers as there have been some technical innovations in the last little while. Many of the newer vehicles now have key coding, but a skilled thief can still easily dismantle the key column and drive the vehicle away. In some cases a thief will drive a truck up to the vehicle they want and drag it onto the truck. There are different technical ways that can be used to prevent someone from driving away with a vehicle, but it is pretty difficult to prevent someone from putting a hook to it and dragging it onto a truck.

Mr. Haywood is searching for different and innovative methods. He is very intrigued and interested in tracking methods, including electronic methods in order to identify vehicles making it more difficult to change serial numbers and other initiatives like that.

I want to go on record as saying that I support my hon. colleague. It makes no sense for me to ask other members to support the bill because they will not have a chance to vote on it. That is one of the changes, Mr. Speaker, that you were very interested in. We need to change that in parliament to allow all private members' business to be votable, so that we can come to a conclusion and do something about the problems, instead of just talking about them.

[Rocky Mountain College Choir, May 3rd, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, occasionally the competitiveness of this place is interspersed with moments of pure serenity.

That was the case this morning when young people from Calgary's Rocky Mountain College choir gave a short concert in front of our parliament buildings. It was sheer delight to hear their songs of joy, worship and praise.

I thank their leader, Henric Ideström, all the singers and instrumentalists, and Jeremy Siemens who phoned to inform me of the event.

It is young people like these with their sincerity, enthusiasm and faith that give us optimism for the future of our country. I wish that all members of the House could have heard them this morning. It was truly an inspiring occasion.