Dick Harris

[Land Claim, March 17th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, the Six Nations Indian band in Ontario recently filed a legal action against the province of Ontario and the federal government seeking compensation for land, money from land sales, revenue from mineral rights and compound interest on any money owed.

This claim, which relates to all transactions in the province since 1784, is estimated by one of the chiefs to be in the neighbourhood of $400 billion.

I hope we get one clear answer from the government today. Will the government or someone from the government confirm to the Canadian taxpayer if the federal government has in fact advanced any federal funds in support of this legal action?

[Supply, March 17th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I sat here in utter amazement as I listened to the hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell ask how people were going to squirrel money away when they do not have any money.

That Liberal member could have answered his own question. He knows very well that over 60 per cent of the income of average working middle class Canadians is being paid out in taxes of all forms. It was a predecessor Liberal government that started the deficit and debt spending which was carried on by the Tory Party. Now we have almost a $500 billion debt and we are servicing that debt with about a $45 billion interest payment. If the incompetence of the Liberal Party back in the mid-seventies had not started this downward slide, Canadian taxpayers would have money left in their paycheques to provide for their own personal security.

It goes back to what we have been saying. It is not fiscally responsible MPs like the Reformers that are the biggest threat to social programs. It is the incompetence of previous governments and the high taxes we pay in the country.

[The Budget, March 14th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, in answer to my hon. friend from The Battlefords-Meadow Lake, this is a time when the country is in a financial crisis. It is a time that can be compared to a financial crisis in the family home. The time comes when the family does not have enough money to live the lifestyle which it had grown to like. It is the time to separate the wants from the needs.

There are so many different areas in which we spend money which clearly could be described as needs. There is also a tremendous amount of ways in which we spend money that clearly could be described as wants. If we are ever going to get our financial house in order we have to make a clear distinction between our needs and our wants.

[The Budget, March 14th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, for the umpteenth hundredth time in the House, it is amazing that so many members have not been listening to what we are saying. We have said over and over it is not fiscally conscious members of Parliament who are the big threat to our social problems in this country. It is not fiscally responsible MPs who are the threat to the unemployed, the seniors and the needy, as the hon. member said. The biggest

threat is our $500 billion debt and our some $50 billion interest payment on that debt.

Imagine if we did not have this huge half a billion dollar debt created by the Liberals and the Tories before them. Imagine if we did not have this $45 billion or $47 billion interest payment what that interest payment could represent in the way of providing services and programs for people and Canadians who are in need.

That is the threat to the social programs in this country, not fiscally conscious MPs like the Reform Party. That has to be understood.

[The Budget, March 14th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak today on this budget. I certainly spoke on it a number of times in my riding. The many hundreds of constituents who turned out to the town hall meetings concerning this budget certainly support the Reform position that this budget is as weak kneed as a Liberal Party can possibly get.

The budget will ensure that before the next election the Liberal government will add another $100 billion to our national debt. The budget by the Liberal government will ensure our interest payments on the national debt will rise to $50 billion-plus. All of this will occur before the next election. The Liberal budget attempts to put a happy face on a deficit target of $25 billion in 1997.

In examining all of these factors it is difficult to see how any fiscally conscious Canadian could consider this a tough budget as the Liberal Party purports it be or a budget that will, as the Minister of Finance has said, break the back of the deficit. We have heard this break the back of the deficit statement from finance ministers for over two decades. Yet somehow the government remains committed to a position of spending more money than it takes in in a year.

Finance ministers have consistently projected deficits which in reality turned out to be far higher than their forecasts. I would never go so far as to accuse the government and the finance minister of creative bookkeeping or even fudging the numbers. My confidence in the veracity of the numbers in this 1995 budget is about the same as my confidence in the Liberals reforming social programs before there is a referendum in Quebec.

Speaking of numbers, this necessarily brings me to this notion of targets that the finance minister has been so free with. We have listened day in and day out to the Minister of Finance emphatically declare: "We have hit our targets and we will continue to hit our targets in the future".

I guess when your target is the ocean and you are standing on the end of a pier and jump in, it is easy to say that you hit your target. What is meant by that is the target is so broad and so easy to hit. You cannot miss when you put your target so low.

Simply put, the target is low. This 3 per cent deficit to GDP the Liberal government has been so proud of is insufficient. It was labelled so by the IMF, the OECD and the entire Canadian business community. The Liberals know this. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce was arguing for a zero deficit budget by 1997-98 but the Liberals did not have the political guts to commit to a target like that.

Therefore it was up to Reformers to address the real concerns of the Canadian people. That is exactly what we did in our taxpayers budget. That budget was conceived out of input from the Canadian people that was listened to. It was a budget committed to eliminating the deficit in three years and thereby a budget committed to protecting the viability and the core of our social programs.

The Minister of Finance, despite stating before the finance committee that a balanced budget is the ultimate goal, has refused to lay out any plan that details when Canadians can expect a balanced budget. There are no plans and yet he said it. Could it be that like his predecessors, the minister is really not sure of what the actual deficits will be in the future?

We have heard of targets before and we have continually seen them missed before. So let us hear no more pontification from

the government benches about hitting targets. A deficit target of $25 billion and a debt target of $650 billion are certainly nothing to be proud of.

To demonstrate the effectiveness of prebudget consultations held by the Liberal Party, we saw witness after witness in committee. Individuals, associations, business groups and the like appeared before the committee and testified repeatedly day after day, hour after hour against any further tax increases by this government.

After all this consultation process, which the Minister of Finance still is very proud of, which the Liberals also find time to pontificate about, what do we discover in this budget? New taxation measures.

Despite the absence of pro-taxation testimony in the hearings, the Liberal majority on the committee concocted a dozen more possible tax options. They were obviously very good at reading between the lines and listening to what these anti-tax people really meant. They said: "We do not want any new taxes," but what they really meant was: "Yes, please hit us with another tax". So much for consultation. So much for listening to the views of Canadians.

It is shameful that the Minister of Finance, knowing full well that much more substantive cuts must come in the future, allowed this key budget-and it was a key budget. There was a window of opportunity to really break the back of the deficit, but the Liberal government and the finance minister missed that window of opportunity by a mile. They allowed this key budget to be watered down by the soft pedalling socialists in the Liberal Party.

In all, this budget will snatch $3.7 billion out of the economy through taxation in the next three years despite the fact that an OECD job study, a C.D. Howe report and a survey by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce demonstrated clearly that high taxes destroy job creation. The Liberals raised taxes despite the fact that the Prime Minister in June 1991 when in opposition stated, and this is interesting, that taxes on individuals were higher in Canada than in any G-7 country. Although he said that in 1991, the Liberal government raised taxes.

The Deputy Prime Minister when in opposition in 1991 demonstrated a rare concern for the Canadian taxpayer and revealed a suspect sensitive side when it came to their plight. She stated that Canadians are paying too much tax. Despite that, the Liberal government raised taxes in this budget.

That $3.7 billion should have been left alone to create growth in the economy, to create jobs, not rip it out of the economy in taxation. Now the government will say that these new taxes were fair taxation measures. What is fair about a 1.5 cent per litre tax increase on gasoline? This is simply a $500 million tax grab to offset the revenue the government lost when it lowered the cigarette taxes. If the government had the guts to enforce the law when all that cigarette smuggling was going on, it would not have to rip another $500 million out of the economy in a gasoline tax.

I want to wind up by quoting a Liberal. This is really something and members will recognize this: "Once a nation parts with the control over its currency and credit, it matters not who makes the nation's laws. Usury, once in control will wreck any nation. Until the control over currency and credit is restored to Parliament and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of democracy or freedom is idle and futile".

The Liberal government has ensured the control over our currency and credit is in the hands of our lenders, not in the hands of Parliament and the government where it should be.

[The Budget, March 14th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I compliment my colleague on her presentation. The Liberal member opposite asked about the Reform Party's cutting OAS payments to seniors.

The Liberal members have not read the taxpayers' budget. If they had listened to the responses to the question they have asked over and over again in this House about how we are going to treat OAS, they would have heard us clearly say time and time again that seniors who have household incomes over $50,000 a year would be the only ones affected by the Reform Party budget. It would not be the seniors on lower income, as this Liberal member well knows.

[The Budget, March 14th, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I listened to the hon. minister's presentation. I appreciate a lot of things she had to say, particularly in the opening part of her statement where she said that women have a very good understanding of fiscal restraint and what it takes to run a business or a household.

My wife is a person who does understand. It is a shame my wife is not here to hear the comments of the hon. member for Halifax. I am sure she would take issue with that. Perhaps she is watching this on television. My wife does understand as the minister rightly said the need for fiscal restraint. My wife also is 100 per cent supportive of my opting out of the gold plated MPs pension plan. Why? Because like millions of other Canadian women who understand the need for belt tightening in these times of financial crisis in order to get our country's finances on the road she believes that leadership should start right at the top, here in the House of Commons.

If the women Liberal government members do support leadership by example, then why do they still cling so fervently to this still gilded MPs pension plan?

[Points Of Order, March 14th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. On March 1 in the House I mistakenly stated that the member for London-Middlesex had made unacceptable comments about the children of the member for Medicine Hat.

It was the member for Victoria-Haliburton who made these remarks and not the member for London-Middlesex. I wish to apologize to the member for London-Middlesex.

[Forum For Young Canadians, March 14th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to give tribute to the Forum for Young Canadians and its participants who, as hon. members will know, are in Ottawa this week to learn more about the process of government at the federal level.

I know all members will join me in praising the organizers, the sponsors and the many volunteers who make this annual event possible. Special tribute goes to each one of the participants, our future leaders and in particular to my young constituents, Tashia Davalovsky and Lisa De Hoog.

I am sure all members will join me in welcoming them and wishing them the best in their visit to Ottawa.

[Indian Affairs, March 2nd, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, let us be clear about this. Mismanagement is the problem, not money. Both the Auditor General and the Indian affairs department's own internal audits have reported a plague of serious financial mismanagement both at the departmental level and at the band level.

How can the minister of Indian affairs stand and defend this $447 million increase in his budget without first getting the mess in his department cleaned up?