Dick Harris

[Bill C-234, December 12th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, what we have heard today is evidence of the Liberal philosophy. As a matter of fact, Canadians were astonished not more than a couple of months ago when the Minister of Justice, in the face of the people's cry for justice and in the face of all the victims of crime, tell them that the prime consideration of the criminal justice system must be the rehabilitation and reintegration of criminals back into society.

What about the millions of Canadians who are talking about the protection of society? What about consideration for the millions of victims of crime? The government continually supports the criminal. It does not give a whit for law-abiding Canadians. It does not give a whit for the victims of crime. The member for Ottawa Centre and the other Liberal members who are cheering him on today are evidence that the Liberal government cares only about its weak-kneed philosophy toward crime. It does not care about the cries of Canadians or the protection of Canadian society. Its system of justice stinks.

[Finance, December 11th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I have great respect for the hon. member who is speaking. I cannot imagine he implied that the Reform Party was spreading malicious lies. Out of respect, I would love to have him withdraw that statement.

[Peacekeeping, December 10th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Motion No. 31 put forward by my colleague from Red Deer. The motion asks that our peacekeeping commitments, which involve 100 or more personnel, be put to the House of Commons in a manner that would allow a free vote.

This motion has a lot of credibility because, if there is one single issue that I have had a lot of calls from my constituency about, it has been the sending of our troops to different parts of the world to be involved in peacekeeping activities. The opportunity to have free votes on this issue is certainly justified as a result of the input I personally have had from the people of Prince George-Bulkley Valley.

Also, on page 92 of the Liberal red ink book, the Liberal Party promised more free votes in the House. However, these Liberals have not allowed very many free votes.

We do have debates on certain peacekeeping missions. When it comes to peacekeeping and the lives of our Canadian soldiers, it is absolutely essential that Parliament as a whole is able to have meaningful debate and provide input in these matters. But the fact is that cabinet and only cabinet has the ultimate authority to designate soldiers to peacekeeping activities.

That is an awesome power for the cabinet to have. Regardless of what our constituents may have to say about it, regardless of what the Canadian people may feel about it, the small group in cabinet can make the unilateral decision to send our soldiers abroad. And that has been done. It has been done over and over again. There is no requirement to hold a debate on these matters. It is only required that Parliament be reconvened within a 10-day period following the decision to commit troops in the first place. That is sort of the reverse.

I would think the proper way to handle these matters would be to have a debate and after the debate cabinet would make a decision based on that input. It can make a decision with the confidence that the concerns and the voices of the Canadian people have been heard in the House. But that is not the case.

It is interesting that in the fall of 1994 a special joint committee released a defence policy paper. Lo and behold, the paper had the support of all the parties in the House. Liberals know very well that one of the recommendations stated "nor should the government commit our forces to service abroad without a full parliamentary debate and accounting for that decision".

As we have seen on the GST issue, the Liberal government can take a promise to scrap the GST many different ways. I would imagine the way it has taken this is that there will be a full parliamentary debate in the accounting for that decision but it will come after cabinet has already made the decision to commit troops. I stated earlier that is the reverse of the way one would assume things should operate in this House. Mr. Speaker, I am sure you would agree with me on that point. We have had token debates on peacekeeping and cabinet does what it wants anyway.

If we want to have a full accounting of our peacekeeping decisions as recommended by this policy paper which all the parties agreed on, then MPs must have the opportunity to debate these matters in the House of Commons.

This motion in no way attempts to limit our international obligations; it does not do that. It in no way attempts to somehow remove Canada from its very distinguished role as a peacekeeper.

We have much to be proud of when it comes to peacekeeping. We have done a good job. Since 1947 over 100,000 Canadians have served abroad in over 30 peacekeeping and related operations. We are the only country that can legitimately claim to have participated in almost every peacekeeping mission organized under the UN.

When countries are in need of someone to enforce ceasefire agreements or provide humanitarian aid, they come knocking at our door. We should be proud of that record. The international community is very aware of Canada's professionalism and its commitment to neutrality and evenhandedness.

In helping other countries we are also helping ourselves. A safer and more secure international environment is key to our very own security and prosperity.

While our record on peacekeeping speaks for itself and while we are anxious to assist other countries in dire need of our soldiers' services, these Liberals have not given the military the support it needs and deserves and the lives of Canadian soldiers overseas have been put in danger because of that.

The Liberals have committed our troops to war zones with antiquated equipment. Stories came out of Bosnia of Canadian peacekeepers trading helmets and flak jackets with their replacements at the airport because there was not enough gear to go around. That is an incredible thing to comprehend.

Furthermore, the armoured personnel carriers they were using provided our troops with inadequate protection against bullets and land mines. That is frightening. These are Canadian soldiers. It was only last summer that the Liberals announced that the armoured personnel carriers would be upgraded. That is some consolation but we did have those dangerous situations prior to that.

Outdated equipment at the department of defence should come as no surprise since it has faced continual cutbacks under the Liberal government. As a matter of fact the 1996 Liberal budget predicts that expenditures at national defence will be cut by 20 per cent in 1998-99.

That leads us to this scenario. While the government is committing our troops to more and more missions, they are being sent off with poorer and poorer equipment. That is not a mission a Canadian soldier really wants to go on. This is why I say that the policies of the Liberal government are putting the lives of our peacekeepers at risk, sending them into areas of peacekeeping and providing humanitarian aid without being properly equipped or properly prepared.

We can see that in the most recent issue as we have been talking about sending our peacekeepers to Zaire. There was no real plan. As far as I know, there is still no plan but the government has been intent to send our troops over there.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs himself has stated that we need to have the views of members of Parliament. The views of members of Parliament are what this motion asks for, nothing more than that. It is not designed to impede our peacekeeping activities. It simply asks that members of Parliament be given a chance to have meaningful debate in the House to put the views of their constituents forward in this House before a cabinet decision is made to send our troops abroad.

I urge all members of the House to support this most worthwhile motion put forward by the hon. member for Red Deer.

[Excise Tax Act, December 10th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I am not questioning your ruling but I would like some clarification on it. The motion was very straightforward. In our opinion it was in order. Could the Speaker enlighten me as to why he wanted to consult on this motion so I will have that for future reference?

[Excise Tax Act, December 10th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, we have had a lot of the truth spoken here by the Reform Party members in the last couple of hours, as usual.

I heard a most astonishing thing in the House. A day or two ago the Minister of Finance said in the House, on national television and in front of all members, that the Liberal government had not raised personal income taxes one cent since it formed the government in 1993. A lot of words went through my mind when he made that statement. The closest description to a term I cannot use in the House would probably be something like stable waste. It was such an outrageous statement. The Reform member has just pointed out in clear terms that the Pinocchio syndrome is present in so far as the Minister of Finance is concerned and other Liberals who harmonize with him on that theme.

There are two things I want to talk about today. One is the recurring scenario of the Liberal government limiting debate on this most crucial subject.

We all understand that the GST is probably the most hated tax, the most railed against tax, the most despised tax in all of our taxation system. That was clear from the minute it was brought it. I wish I could say that it was the Liberals who brought it in. That would make my day. However, I cannot do that because we know that it was the Conservatives who brought it in, under Brian Mulroney, who incidentally still has his protege sitting in the House, the hon. member for Sherbrooke, who now leads the Conservative Party.

We have all heard the hon. member for Sherbrooke say that some day Canadians will realize what a great Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was. We hope he keeps on saying that because we will keep reminding Canadians that it was the Mulroney Conservatives, and the hon. member for Sherbrooke was part of that government, that rammed the GST down the throats of Canadians without a question of whether it was fair or honest or whether the way it was done contained a hint of integrity.

In spite of all the things that Canadians hated about the GST and the Mulroney reign of terror in Parliament, the one thing that they hated the most was the way the Tories used to shut down debate on crucial issues. They used to limit the time that MPs would be permitted, on behalf of their constituents, to put forward their constituents' views.

We watched in absolute astonishment as the leader of the Tory Party did that. He did it time and time again, with the full support of the hon. member for Sherbrooke, who was part of the cabinet and who now leads the Tory Party. He continues to say that the former Prime Minister, Mr. Mulroney, was a great leader. We will remind Canadians of that.

The amazing thing is that the Liberals, when they were in opposition, used to speak in utter outrage at the way the Tory government limited debate. Time and time again Liberals rose, individually and in unison. They railed against the government for this trampling of democracy. They were so self-righteous. They called the Tory government the worst dictator that this country has ever seen. They would rail against it.

I want to make a statement that the number of times the Liberal government has brought in closure on debate since it moved from one side of the House to the other would make Brian Mulroney look like a saint when it comes to putting closure on debate in the House.

I think it is such a perfect example of hypocrisy when the Liberals spent day after day slamming the Mulroney government and now they are doing it themselves, only twice as bad. It is almost an embarrassment to sit in the House and watch democracy be trampled on. I said before that the ghosts of the great parliamentarians who once sat in this House and represented the great Liberal Party of years past and who knew about democracy must be hanging their heads in shame when they see these Liberal members trample on the sacred ground they laid here. And let us make it clear that there was a time when that party understood the fundamentals of democracy. They fought for that state of democracy only to see this Prime Minister throw it aside like yesterday's

garbage. It is almost an embarrassment to sit in the same House with a party that does that sort of nonsense.

I think we will move on now to the harmonization plan and talk about some of the comments from the provinces about this great Liberal harmonization plan.

The province of Ontario said that if the plan were implemented in Ontario it would cost Ontario consumers from $2 billion to $3 billion more a year in purchases. The Canadian people have seen a decrease in their disposable income over the last 25 years like they could never have imagined or dreamed would happen. They have seen personal income taxes raised by the government in the last three years. They have seen our national debt go to about $600 billion. They have seen our health care and our social safety net gutted, having the heart ripped out of it by the $50 billion we are paying to service the debt. And now the Liberal government has the audacity to present the harmonization plan which is even going to make what disposable income is has left appear to be even less. In fact, it will be less because a tax is a tax is a tax, no matter where it is put or where it comes from; it can only come from one place, the Canadian people.

I share my colleague's thoughts about this harmonization plan. I share the thoughts of the great Parliamentarians who have gone to the great House of Commons in the sky and who look down and see the way these Liberals are trampling on democracy.

All I can say is again, as with many bills in the House, it is truly a sad day for democracy, a sad day for the Canadian taxpayers. We will stay here and fight for the Canadian people. We will fight for their freedom and their tax freedom.

[Finance, December 9th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member for the Bloc talking about the prebudget run-ups. I just want to get a clear understanding what the member would say to this question. If there were one thing the Government of Canada could do to help the unemployment situation in his particular riding and in the province what would that one thing be? Would it be to pour millions of dollars into the province and into his riding by way of job creation projects, or would it be to give the private sector in the province of Quebec and in his riding an incentive through the lowering of taxes and the lowering of costs of doing business so that the environment of the business community would be such that it could flourish and prosper, thus creating more jobs? I want to be clear on exactly which one he would choose.

If the province of Quebec was in fact a separate state or nation, would the member ask those running the country to do exactly the same thing?

[White Ribbon Campaign Against Pornography, December 9th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House today to draw the attention of members to the white ribbon campaign against pornography. The campaign is a national effort aimed at combating and eliminating the destructive influences of obscenity, pornography and indecency.

We must be concerned about the effects which pornography produces on individuals, families and upon society as a whole. We must be particularly concerned about the effects this type of material may produce on sexual predators and others who may be inclined to commit sexual offences.

I know that all Canadians are opposed to the exploitation of women and children for sexual, economic or any other purpose. I have been contacted by and have been in touch with a number of groups and individuals within my riding. They have urged me to promote the white ribbon campaign.

It is therefore with a great deal of pride and sense of social responsibility which I know all members share that I draw this worthy cause to the attention of this House.

[Employment, December 6th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the Canadian people are not going to be fooled and the Reform Party is not going to be fooled.

We know that the only reason the deficit figures are looking good is that the Liberal government has wrenched out of the pockets of Canadians an extra $25 billion in increased taxes which the Liberals have raised 35 times since they have been in office. As a matter of fact they have only lowered taxes, lowered the deficit, lowered spending by about $3 billion. If you have an endless money tree you can shake down any time, any deficit can look good.

The minister can bluster all he wants about what the Liberal government is doing but I ask the minister: Why has the Liberal government and the minister failed to deliver on what Canadians are asking for: lower taxes; real, long lasting, good paying jobs, not part time jobs to replace the full time jobs that they are losing; and a balanced budget? That is what is really needed. When is the finance minister going to listen to Canadians and do the right thing?

[Employment, December 6th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure the Minister of Finance is aware that if we compare Canada with what other countries are doing, perhaps we do look good. The fact is we should be considering where Canada could be if we had a responsible government running the country. Let us compare it to where we could be.

The association of Certified General Accountants has said that we could create 108,000 new jobs if the Liberal government would lower taxes by only $4 billion. Just think of the jobs we could create if the government took the Reform Party's lead and lowered taxes by $15 billion. It is obvious that the Liberals' approach is not working because jobs are scarce in this country.

I ask the minister again: Why will he not create real jobs by balancing the budget and lowering taxes?

[Employment, December 6th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, Statistics Canada announced today to nobody's surprise that the unemployment rate for November was stuck at 10 per cent.

For the benefit of the Minister of Finance who seems to love creating lists, here is a list for him created by three years of Liberal government: 1.5 million Canadians unemployed; a youth jobless rate of over 17 per cent; two to three million Canadians underemployed; and 25 per cent of all Canadians worried about losing their jobs. So much for the Liberal promise of jobs, jobs, jobs.

Why will the finance minister not create real jobs by balancing the budget, lowering taxes in this country and making government smaller?