Derek Lee

[The Budget, January 29th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the united steelworkers are in Ottawa to make a contribution to the debate on the generation of new infrastructure for security measures at airports and in other places. The hon. member is quite right. We need to look at the federal role in this and at upgrading the training infrastructure of security guards across the country. The debate is ongoing. The transport minister has an eye on the issue as well.

[The Budget, January 29th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, it will not be a surprise to you to hear that I never thought for a moment I was not dealing honestly with Canadians. Nor was the finance minister ever in that position.

The hon. member raises the issue of the increase in Canada pension plan premiums. That is there. It was projected about three years ago that there would be a gradual increase in Canada pension plan contributions from employers and employees until they reached a plateau where the pension plan would achieve and maintain its viability. It was voted on. The hon. member may have voted for or against it but the measure came through the House approximately three years ago and is in place.

I think he is suggesting that tax reductions going into place in the first half of this year and later this year will be absorbed in part by increased Canada pension plan contributions. That is in part true. However I ask the hon. member and all members to look at the reductions as part of a four year program. Over the four years the tax reductions will total $100 billion. If the member wants to add them up differently and discount and leave things out he is welcome to do that. He has every opportunity to get out the calculator and do that in the House.

My speech is based on how the finance minister calculated this. This is how he calculated it for the whole country. He has been doing it well ever since he has been in the ministry. Canadians have confidence in how he operates his calculator and how he is bringing the country forward.

[The Budget, January 29th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague on this side. Today I want to talk about the budget brought into the House by our finance minister.

Some members opposite were a little disappointed they were not engaged in questions and comments in relation to their own remarks. We sometimes grow weary on this side of the House in hearing how the glass is always less than half empty and constantly being told that things are much worse off than they really are.

The hon. member indicated that we are in a recession, which I believe is not true. I know it is the career objective of most of the members in opposition to predict that we are all going to hell in a handcart, and doom and gloom is nigh, but the Canadian economy seems to have a bit of bounce left in it. With consumer spending and other initiatives including the fiscal initiatives of the government, we may actually avoid a recession even though our American neighbours may actually experience one. Even that is not 100% clear yet.

However, being that as it may, our fiscal initiatives on the government side, under the leadership of the Prime Minister and the finance minister, are placing Canada and our economy precisely where it should be for the benefit of all Canadians. We must remember that the budget and the debate we are having now is part of a larger financial piece that began a couple of years ago after all Canadians had succeeded in placing our government finances in order. In other words, by 1997 we had stopped spending more money than we were raising in tax revenue. That was a huge benchmark. We can all take some pride in having achieved that as Canadians.

There were careers, as you know Mr. Speaker, lost in this House as a result of the need to reduce government spending. Some areas of the country reacted negatively to that. That was perhaps expected but there was no easy way to bring us back into a balanced or a surplus budget without reducing government spending.

There was an attempt to ensure that Canadians better off than others shared that spending reduction right across the country. Inevitably Canadians everywhere had to carry that. We in the House, no matter what side of the House we were on, voted in favour of those appropriations, those spending plans, those estimates and there were political implications for that.

In any event we have come out on the other side and Canadians feel good that we have. The budget is part of a larger piece. We have an ongoing program of conspicuously good fiscal management, tax relief, low inflation and low interest rates. These are all playing their part in the larger program of ensuring our Canadian economy is doing well.

We are succeeding as Canadians and we are on course. We are investing in health care, in research and in security measures, all of which were described in the budget speech.

I want to focus on the fiscal management side. We have not had a deficit in Canada since 1996-97 and for the past five years we have had a balanced budget or better. Our program spending has been reduced to 11.3% of GDP. That is the lowest level in over 50 years. Some people may say that is not a good thing. Some people say government should be spending more on different things. There are lots of things we can spend money on but as a measuring stick we have reduced that spending level as a percentage of the size of our economy to 11.3%. That is the lowest since 1949.

The reversal in Canada's fiscal balance, that is the amount of money we have above or below the line or whether we are in the red or the black, was the most dramatic of any country in the G-7. Since going into a surplus or balanced budget we have been able to pay down about $35 billion in net public debt. That is significant.

Our debt to GDP ratio, the measuring stick used most often by economists, dropped from a high of 70% to 51.8% last year. As we speak the ratio may well be dropping below 50%. That is our target. It will continue to decline on a permanent track. The benchmark used in the European Economic Community for acceptable levels of debt is the 50% mark. We are now just going below that and heading downward. We can take pride in achieving that. It was not easy but we have all as Canadians gotten there.

I will focus a bit on trade. It is the lifeblood of the Canadian economy. Trade is a huge component of our GDP. It is something like 70% to 80% of our gross domestic product. It is our lifeblood. Our two way trade in goods and services with the United States exceeds $2 billion a day. There is no trading relationship in the world of that size. Each country, Canada and the U.S., is the other's biggest customer.

We often take a lot of that for granted. That is one of the reasons it was a surprise to some people on both sides of the border that we had to take prompt measures to deal with border traffic during the security problems we have had over the last few months. The Canadian and American governments have responded extremely well. Measures are now in place and in progress to improve border passage and trade procedures to levels that are better than before the awful day of September 11.

Be that as it may, our global trade is improving. Our current account is in a positive balance. It has been for two to three years. It is running at an average of 2.1% of GDP. That is an extremely important indicator for our overall trade and current account health. Economists look at that. I am not so sure traders in Canadian dollars are looking at it directly these days, but if they did they would be more sanguine and positive about the value of our dollar relative to other currencies.

I reiterate the importance of tax relief in the overall scheme of the budget. Tax relief is a stimulant to the economy, especially when it may be weakening. We are in the middle of a four or five year tax relief plan. I think the Minister of Finance is moving it up to four years from five years, but it is truly a $100 billion tax relief initiative. It is huge. Proportionately speaking it is larger than the plan for the U.S. economy which is our largest trading partner. It will be spread over four years. As I say, we are in the middle of it. The opposition says there is not much in the current budget about tax relief, but the program was announced in the previous two budgets and it is in progress.

About all the Minister of Finance can say when he comes into the House is precisely that. It is in progress. Tax relief measured about $17 billion last year and will be $20 billion in the next fiscal year. Overall tax relief measured by percentage for individuals over the tax cut plan will be a 21% reduction. The average is higher for families with children. The average tax reduction for a family with children will be 27%.

There was plenty of stimulus in the government's fiscal position and in the budget if one takes the time to read it. I know members opposite and members around the House have done so. We have low interest rates and low inflation. The environment for business creation and expansion is there. The budget was exactly what the country needed.

[The Budget, December 12th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, no one out there should think anything other than that we had to cut spending to reduce our annual deficit. We have cut spending so much now that Canada's program spending is the lowest it has been in my lifetime. I will now have to say how old I am. This goes back to the year 1948-49. The percentage of GDP program spending is the lowest it has been in 52 years.

No terrorist incidents occurred in Canada as a result of anything Canada did or did not do or as a result of cutbacks to our policing and intelligence gathering. However now we need to reinvest along with our allies for the global purpose and we are doing it to the tune of many billions of dollars.

[The Budget, December 12th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member will be pleased because I have a fairly good answer for her. As I mentioned before, not everything we spend shows up in the budget. The budget speech is intended to show new spending initiatives.

The hon. member makes reference to $300 million or whatever it was. The base funding for Canada's military in the current fiscal year is $11 billion.

There have been other amounts added to that. Over the next four years the annual additions for capital funding for boots and other equipment purchases that are being made separately from the base funding will total $7.6 billion.

The hon. member may like to focus on $300 million but the budget has an additional $1.2 billion. All we have to do is add the other $900 million to the $300 million for this year.

Over the next five years, Mr. Speaker--please read my lips and listen to the numbers--it is $7.6 billion for Canada's military. Our men and women overseas will not go without, whether they are in aircraft, on ships or on the ground.

[The Budget, December 12th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to engage in this debate. Somewhere in the middle of the debate the exchange of rhetoric on both sides of the House was somewhat surprising to me. I do not know how readers of Hansard or viewers of the proceedings are taking this but from time to time I get lost in the great gulf between the rhetoric of what seems to be on one side of the House and what is on this side.

For the benefit of my own constituents in Scarborough--Rouge River I will try to focus my remarks on something where there are not great gaps in credibility and understanding.

We have gone through a budget presentation. The budget records a number of landmarks around the budget year. The budget year is the year that will follow the budget, not the fiscal year ending in March 2002.

There are two or three landmarks I have taken pleasure in viewing. I would say the same no matter what side of the House I sat on. First, I have taken pleasure in the reduction of our public debt. We can measure public debt, net debt and foreign debt seven ways to Sunday, but to make the matter simpler we have managed over the last couple of years to pay down our net public debt by some $35 billion.

Someone in the House was inquiring what happened to the $17 billion surplus. Most of it went to pay down the debt. We did not pay down $35 billion in debt by losing money somewhere and not finding it. It had to be paid down with real money. It was paid down with real taxpayer money scavenged from the surplus we had accumulated over the last couple of years. Our debt now stands at about $547 billion by the simplest measure.

Second, our debt to GDP ratio has moved down from approximately 71% to 51.8%. Next year, the year beginning next April 1, it is anticipated that our debt to GDP ratio will fall to under 50%. That is particularly pleasing because most of the industrialized world uses the 50% threshold as the benchmark for affordability of national debt no matter how we measure it.

I will not get into a debate about the various components of our public debt, some of which are more manageable and repayable than others. However once we are under 50% GDP we have a very manageable portfolio.

The budget documents contain quite a bit of information about how the government intends to manage and diversify our debt to ensure Canadians pay the lowest interest rates and reduce the debt in an appropriately orderly fashion over the years to come. That will happen.

Third, there was a time a few years ago when it was said that we paid 36 cents of every tax revenue dollar on interest. The budget records the fact that this year, the year ending this coming March, we are only spending 23 cents of every revenue dollar on interest. Some will say it would be better if we did not have to spend 23 cents of every dollar, but that is a heck of a lot better than 36 cents of every dollar. That is where we are now. That is how far we have come. We are continuing to make progress.

The budget follows through with a number of other commitments the government had made previously. A lot of the rhetoric and discussion here today is about things that were not in the budget or should have been in the budget. The tax cuts that have been described as cuts of $100 billion over five years were announced previously. They were not in the budget. They did not need to be in the budget. They are already part of government policy.

The number for the fiscal year we are in is some $43 billion, but the tax cut over five years is continuing. It is in the pipeline. It does not happen in one year. Whether we measure it at 20, 40 or 100, no matter how many billions of dollars or how we slice it up, the tax reductions are in the pipeline for all Canadian taxpayers.

The budget was intended to address a weakening economy as well as the September 11 incidents. It is important to note that two things are happening already which most economists would agree in large measure do as much as possible to address a weakening economy: fiscal stimulus and monetary stimulus.

The fiscal stimulus is the current $17 billion of tax cuts which will find their way back into Canadians' pockets this year. That is already is the pipeline. That money finds its way back into the economy as fiscal stimulus by a reduction in taxes on paycheques for all who pay at source or for those who pay their taxes in other ways.

The monetary stimulus comes from the very recognizable reduction in interest rates across the country. Not that long ago we were all paying 10%, 11% or 12% interest on various things such as consumer debt, mortgages, business loans and the prime rates. Those rates have all come down to 3%, 4% and 5%. That is a huge difference to Canadians. These low interest rates are providing the monetary stimulus. There is not an economist anywhere who will not agree that they are mega, major stimuli for our economy. These things were already in the pipeline when the finance minister delivered his budget.

I cannot address the many other elements of the budget in the few minutes I have, but there is a huge emphasis on security. What happened on September 11 changed our perception of what is happening in the world. The threats manifest in that incident were quantitatively and qualitatively beyond anything we have experienced outside of wartime.

We know there is an enemy out there and the enemy is pretty much unseen. In true gamesmanship theory, when we have an enemy we must find and liquidate the enemy before the enemy gets to us. Without going into details about how we must do this, it is imperative that we do. It is arguable that this enemy is intent on blowing us into the dark ages. No one in the House will permit that to happen.

We must now invest in security and intelligence in a way that will let us find and root out the enemy. Some of that is happening today in Afghanistan as we speak, but there are many other things ongoing and many other threats related to that, not just in Afghanistan but here and in our neighbouring countries.

It is not always possible to go into detail about all the threats. Canadians understand that we cannot do it because there are ongoing attempts to find the enemy. If we tell the enemy we are looking for him the enemy then changes the players on the chess board and we make our success that much harder.

These things are going on now but there are huge risks out there. We do not know when the risks will reduce. There is no reason to believe they are any less today than they were on September 11. They will continue for some time.

In that process, it is possible that all of us as Canadians will be asked to rethink our own civil liberties from time to time and invest a bit in our own collective security. These issues have been discussed elsewhere in relation to Bill C-36 and Bill C-42. Where we will be a few months from now I am not sure.

I come from a riding which has a large representation from each of the five large Islamic groupings: the Sunni, the Shia, the Ahmadiyya, the Ismaili, the Bora and others. These groupings of the Islamic faith are embarrassed and unhappy that the terrorists have in a sense hijacked their faith and pretended that the Islamic faith is the reason for the terror.

This is not the case. We must all be sensitive to that. As we move along we must ensure that all Canadians are treated fully as Canadians and accorded all their civil liberties with great respect.

[Anti-terrorism Act, November 27th, 2001]

moved:

Motion No. 7

That Bill C-36, in Clause 43, be amended by replacing lines 8 to 10 on page 82 with the following:

“proceeding” means a proceeding before a court, person or body with jurisdiction to compel the production of information.”

[National Security, October 19th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, in the face of recent news of anthrax scares and terrorist threats around the world, I would like to take a moment to emphasize the importance of a calm and rational response.

It is understandable that at a time such as this individuals might give in to fear and panic. It is crucial that we all remain alert but it is equally important that we not succumb to the temptation to see the world only through the lens of our fear, amplified by repeat media broadcasts. This is exactly what the terrorists would want.

Common sense is our greatest ally as we struggle with the new realities of the world around us. The government has sought a reasoned and measured response to the threat which balances security needs with the individual rights of our citizens. We have taken strong measures to ensure the safety of all Canadians.

Once again I urge Canadians to remain strong, rational and level-headed as we all work together to confront this new world reality.

[Division No. 138, June 13th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, following consultations including the hon. member for St. Albert, I think you would find consent in the House to see the clock as 6.30 p.m.

[Division No. 138, June 13th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on two very short points of order. Will you seek to determine if there is unanimous consent to deal with a routine travel motion authorizing travel by the Standing Joint Committee for Scrutiny of Regulations over the summer?