Dick Harris

[Budget Implementation Act, 2005, May 17th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the final comments of the member from the Liberal Party about the regulatory amendments the government is seeking and is going to be responding to. We have heard these weasel words before from the Liberal Party in many other instances.

Canadians, particularly those in the energy business, believe that the original inclusion of the word “toxic” in the changes the government made to the CEPA programs was part of a hidden agenda so that it would have the authority to impose another fossil fuel tax on energy producers in this country.

We can go back a number of years to the national energy program. A Liberal government brought in legislation which ultimately brought about the national energy program which decimated the energy producers in all parts of Canada. Canadians saw the inclusion of the word “toxic” and the subtle word changes as evidence of a hidden agenda that the Liberal government had to get into a position where it could unilaterally impose a fossil fuel tax. The government got caught, and rightly so, because Canadians are not that far removed from the national energy program which devastated the country's economy, particularly among the energy producers.

I get very nervous when I hear such phrases as, “we in the government are responding to it”, “we are going to seek amendments,” or “we are going to look for broad agreement” for the changes the member is talking about now. There is a big difference between “we should do this” and “we will do this”. The words Canadians are looking for from the government are, “we will make this change to allay the fears of people in the energy industry, and we will not seek to have regulations that will put a fossil fuel tax on energy resources”.

Can the member stand and say that his government will not allow regulatory change that will enable them to impose another fossil fuel tax and deny any type of hidden agenda to do so? Will he stand and be absolutely positive about that?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2005, May 17th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, since 1997, the Liberals, as a result of dramatically increased taxation to both working people and corporations, have had a surplus. They have failed to heed the request from opposition parties, our party, to return a reasonable portion of gas taxes to the communities.

We are talking eight years since the budget was balanced. The Liberals have still not returned one penny of fuel taxes to the provinces and municipalities.

After all that time of ignoring the request for fuel taxes from not only us but from the communities, is there any reason why Canadians can trust the government when all of a sudden the Liberals have had this revelation to return some of the fuel taxes? Is this just election talk and another promise that will be made but broken?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2005, May 17th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to make some comments following the speech by the member opposite.

In connection with the gas tax rebate that the government has promised, it is important that Canadians know that my colleagues, who joined me in the House in 1994 and who have been in the House ever since that year, have been fighting tooth and nail to get the government to recognize that it has been keeping a very large, disproportionate share of fuel taxes and not returning them to the provinces and the communities, as was the original plan when the fuel taxes were added way back when for infrastructure and maintenance of roads.

Every single time we put that motion forward, either in the House or in committee, the Liberals defeated it. Since 1997, following the exorbitant taxation which allowed the Liberals to balance their budget in 1997, they had surplus funding in every instance.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, May 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, during his presentation the Minister of Labour asked why we did not continue to vote for the budget. The answer to that is very clear. It is a different from the budget we supported the first time. We now have an NDP budget.

I want to talk about the seeming hypocrisy of the government when it talks about the heart it has for families. This government has done everything it can to discourage the strong foundation of families, more than I have ever seen over the last 12 years. It has not recognized that the best direction for children in this country is in fact their parents.

By establishing a discriminating tax regime, it has made taxes easier on a two income family than a one income family. It has a tax regime which penalizes families that make the choice of sacrificing to have one parent earning money so the other can stay home and look after the children. The government has not fixed that, despite the pleas from my party.

When it comes to the child care program, the NDP members said earlier that they and the government want to give choices on child care. Let me tell the House what their choices are: that a family can take the kids to one state run child care institution or over to another state run child care institution. They do not have the choice under this program to receive monetary assistance to make a choice as to whether one parent will stay home to look after the kids or to take them to a child care facility of their choice.

This child care program forces Canadian parents, if they want to benefit from the program, into no other option than to put their kids in a state run child care institution run by a big bloated bureaucracy. That is not having a heart for families.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, May 10th, 2005]

You have an NDP budget now.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, May 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the minister talks about the Liberal way. I will tell her what the Liberal way is. The Liberal way is to drag one's feet on something until it gets to a crisis point and then do a little something.

When I came here in 1994, we advised the government that there would be a severe tradeskills crisis in this country. The baby boomers were going to be retiring and there was no adequate apprenticeship program underway in the country. We told the government that it had better address it as quickly as it could because it could become a crisis. The Liberals have done nothing for 12 years and now the crisis is even worse.

What the minister is proposing is just a minute amount of the work that the whole apprenticeship program needs to ensure that we are not going to be simply without electricians, plumbers, pipefitters, carpenters and other tradesmen because the Liberal's apprenticeship program has been a disaster. She knows it and she has nothing to be proud of when she is talking about this new program. Fix the old one first.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, May 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I realize my colleague from Wild Rose has an excellent question and I will defer to him.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, May 10th, 2005]

As adults. They make adult decisions. Apparently the NDP and the Liberals simply do not trust their youth, so they relegate them to a youth wing and then make their decisions come through some sort of vetting process before they get to the main decision making body of the party. We do not buy that. We think youth are important and deserve full status in our party.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, May 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, of course we support post-secondary education. Of course we support child care. We have a version that is a little different from what the Liberals and the NDP support in child care. We still believe that parents in this country have the first right of choice as to where their children go for day care while the government and the NDP believe that the government should somehow build and pay for institutions all over the country and we should send our kids to be looked after by some huge government bureaucracy.

As far as the youth wing in our party is concerned, I am proud that we consider our party a fully inclusive party, open to having all Canadians of all age groups in the mainstream of the party. We do not want to segregate youth simply because they are young. In our party, we treat them as adults and we ask them to be fully inclusive in the decision making. Why would we want to segregate them into a youth wing when we value their input in the mainstream body of our party?

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, May 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member talking directly to me, because now I can respond to that.

When the budget came down in February we suggested that we would be willing to support it. As a matter of fact, we saved the government's butt on two occasions when the NDP and the Bloc voted against it. They did vote against it. We actually saved the government, because we wanted to make the government work. We were going to allow the budget to pass and we were going to try to carry on, watching the government very closely, believe me. We were prepared to carry on. The NDP and the Bloc voted against the provisions of the budget, so I do not know where the member is coming from.

Certainly on the items she just mentioned we do disagree on some. Child care is one example. We do not support state run child care. We support the government returning money to the parents of children and letting them decide which child care spaces they want to send their kids to. After all, it is the parents' money in the first place. Why should they give money to the government when the government will then tell them how to raise their kids? That simply does not make sense in this country.

While the NDP, and the Liberals as well, would love to have a state run, government child care system so they could build up a huge bureaucracy of people working in the industry, which would just fit fine with their philosophy, we on this side of the House in the Conservative Party believe that no one can raise kids better than the parents themselves. That is where the child care money should go.

We should give the parents of Canadian children the option of where they want to send their kids for child care, and not into some state run and state regulated child care service that is more like an institution than a loving home.