Gerry Ritz

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, June 1st, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, it was said earlier, I believe by the member for Churchill River, that this bill is not perfect and we certainly agree with that. As I said in my speech, we will be supporting the bill with caution. We would still like to see some changes. We would like to see further things done. This is an ongoing debate and it will be an ongoing process.

The biggest thing we need to see in any legislation like this is balance. Let us look at what the stakeholders are involved with. We saw that with the economic impact Kyoto had in my part of the country and the uncertainty that it creates for industry and so on. Industry is what creates jobs.

When we talk about environmental impacts we have to look at the economic environment and the impact on that as well. There has to be balance in everything we do. Right now a lot of the chemical companies and so on are almost in limbo waiting to see what is going to happen with this legislation. Certainly they lobbied hard to keep the status quo in some cases.

There are some cases where things need to be changed and others where we need to take a more moderate phase-in approach as the member has said.

All of the actions in the reports must be based on scientific reports, not politics. That is the basis where we are coming from. It has to be a balanced approach.

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, June 1st, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his clarification. I did say the auto industry was against MMT, not for it, because of the diagnostic problems that would result.

[Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999, June 1st, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Surrey Central.

I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak to Bill C-32, an act regarding pollution prevention, protection of the environment and human health in order to contribute to sustainable development in Canada.

Though other concerns have replaced the environment at the top of Canadians' list of issues, I am sure we will all agree that the environment will always be a serious matter across the political spectrum both federally and provincially. Canadians who are unfortunately the most prolific users of water can be called upon to do the right thing to clean up and protect that resource. They look to governments to provide leadership in that area.

Like recycling and conservation efforts in solid waste management, Canadians have shown themselves to be responsible, concerned and enthusiastic. However, I do not think they have much respect for big buck, one size fits all, government imposed solutions that feature the federal government competing against and overriding provincial and local initiatives.

My colleagues in the Reform Party have dispelled the notion that our party does not care about the environment and have made it very clear that successful programs to clean up the environment and keep it that way have to use a balanced approach.

As on so many issues that have a direct impact on the citizens of the country, the idea that one party or philosophy is against and their opposite numbers are for a certain item is simplistic and outdated. There is nobody here in the House or in the country who is for dirty water or dirty air, or somehow in favour of the chemicals in our food and in our soil.

In my corner of the country we struggle daily to grow the best quality food to feed Canadians and the world. We are more than aware that water is a precious resource. We are also aware that many government initiatives meant to clean up or control problems simply end up making things worse or creating new ones. That is why we look at these massive bills and all their amendments very carefully. Quite often it is more important to put the right system in place than to have no system at all.

The title of this bill suggests that all the elements are here to address this issue properly. But titles, like book covers, do not always tell what is inside.

This act is meant to address prevention of pollution and that is a noble effort by all measures. It would make our job so much easier if we had been successful in regulating chemical use in the past. We want to protect the environment and human health which cannot be more important. Then we see a reference to sustainable development which has become a bit of a political football between industry and environmental lobbyists.

To have successful legislation, we believe that all these elements must be included and that they must be addressed in a balanced manner. One way to do this is to ensure that what regulators and industry have at their disposal is good science.

We have seen with the health protection branch that when big money interests combine with butt-covering bureaucracy the result is often the political use of science on a selective basis and the undermining of credibility for the whole process. When we are dealing with chemicals used for industrial and agricultural purposes, we have the potential for the same thing.

With billions of dollars at stake, it is vital that players on both sides and the consumers who have to live with the consequences are confident that the process of identifying, regulating and approving substances be open and accountable. As with the tax system, when producers and consumers lose confidence they resort to avoidance and to reactions that might make problems worse rather than better.

It is no better when we have a powerful lobby on one side or the other. The perception that big industry has government in its pocket is contradicted when environmentalists step up to the plate.

I remember a few years ago when there was a panic in the U.S about the chemical alar. This was sprayed on apples and other orchard fruit to keep them on the branch longer. I am sure the developers of the chemical felt they had a good thing. The fruit would be better developed and more nutritious the longer it grew on the tree.

Nobody sets out to invent a chemical to cause human cancer but before long there were scientific tests that suggested that is what that chemical did. Very quickly there was a panic. Millions of mothers stopped buying apples and a year's crop had to be destroyed at a loss of billions of dollars to the producers. Farmers in the American northwest were devastated and it took years to get their customers back.

What was the so-called scientific basis for this panic? Like saccharin just a few years earlier, doses of alar so high that a child would virtually have to eat the stuff by the plateful were fed to rats until they developed tumours.

Because of a clause inserted in the Environmental Protection Act in the 1950s, any chemical that even hinted that it had anything to do with an illness of any sort had to be banned. It did not matter that the chemical had to be ingested by the truckload, it was just enough that one rat in a hundred seemed to get sick as a result. Saccharin by the way is back on the market, although it will never catch up to some of the other products after its fiasco.

Somebody might say “If it was your kid being saved, you might think it was worthwhile to ban certain chemicals before they got going”. Maybe, if anybody could ever pin down exactly what the relationship was between any one chemical and any given illness or combination of those.

We know that there are tens of thousands of chemicals in the environment. This fact is one reason for updating CEPA through Bill C-32. We should also be aware though that there are millions of natural chemicals everywhere we look. Just because they are from nature does not make them benign.

Tobacco for instance does not contain nicotine for human enjoyment. It is in fact a pesticide produced by the plant itself to ward off certain organisms. Try as we might to tell people of the terrible damage that this chemical and the hundreds of others found in tobacco smoke can do to their health, millions still light up daily. From that billions of dollars go to governments and multinational companies which shows what we are really up against here.

Would it be balanced to simply take the so-called right to smoke away from people? There are plenty of non-smokers who might like to go that route. But prohibition usually leads to increased use rather than the intended results, and governments would be forced to pay for an anti-smoking campaign at the same time as they were missing out on all those excise revenues they have come to enjoy. I am not suggesting that tobacco is a good example for Bill C-32; it is just an example of the jumble of health and economic issues that comes with most human activities.

When we consider what to do about thousands of chemicals, we cannot assume that blanket prohibition based on an agenda driven science and backed by the arbitrary powers of ministerial orders in council will be the answer to environmental problems. We need only look at the recent MMT fiasco to see where this leads.

The auto industry did not want MMT. Some lobby groups did not want MMT. But the producer of that chemical claimed to have extensive evidence that MMT was not the bogeyman it was made out to be. Millions of tax dollars later, the member for Hamilton East has another blunder on her record and the public is no closer to knowing whether or not there is anything wrong with this gasoline additive.

I am sure there are other gas additives out there that deserve closer scrutiny as well. There are environmentalists who would approve of banning the use of gasoline altogether. But unless we line up industry, consumers, scientists and regulators into a co-operative open system of examining chemicals and the processes that they are used in, the system will not work. It will break down.

We may think it is good enough to put arbitrary powers in the hands of a minister, but ministers can be influenced by powerful friends. We may think it is enough to hire scientists to do studies, but we have to be clear about what we are asking our scientists to look for and who is funding those results. We may think it is good enough to shut down agriculture or industry because a few are not being responsible, but the suffering throughout the economy would be enormous.

After Bill C-32 we still have disagreements about who is responsible for what. Industry hates uncertainty, and yes, that is important. Empirical studies indicate economic prosperity leads to a cleaner environment. When there is a profit to invest in better processes, there is less pollution, less waste.

Governments with successful economies can devote more money to infrastructure, like new water treatment plants and water transmission systems that do not leak water at the rates we see in many jurisdictions.

Agriculture and industry need profits to research and develop new products and technologies that will be more efficient. Anyone who thinks profit is a dirty word should think twice about what they are asking Canadian businesses to do or do without. We all want to clean up the environment and we should all have input into how that is done.

My party and I will be voting in favour of Bill C-32 with some caution. The version of the bill that went to committee we feel was on the right track. We want to see an environmental regime that reflects a multiparty approach to environmental issues. Ask all the stakeholders.

We can leave a cleaner country to our grandchildren than the one we inherited but we cannot ignore other responsibilities as well. We have to leave a record of responsible research, a model of intergovernmental co-operation, an economy that provides the greatest good for the greatest number and a tradition of open participation and involvement of all the stakeholders.

[Taxation, May 14th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the taxaholic Liberal government is sitting on a huge surplus. Half of that surplus has been ripped right out of Canadians earning less than $20,000 a year. That is $6 billion a year.

The Liberal government's heartless tax appetite has become a major cause of poverty, killing productivity and driving down our standard of living.

How can the tax rich Liberal government continue taking $6 billion a year from the Canadian working poor?

[Division No. 425, May 13th, 1999]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for clarifying that.

The member for Waterloo—Wellington talked about some of the amendments which redefine spouse, survivor and so on. He indicated that parliament was merely keeping pace with court actions. That was quite a statement. On this side of the House we would call that judicial activism. The government of the day abrogated its responsibilities on politically correct or sensitive issues to the unelected courts. It is back door democracy.

I will refer to some comments made on Tuesday by the member for Mississauga West. At one point he said the $30 billion pension surplus was generated primarily through good management of the pension fund. That is a real oxymoron when it comes to government generated returns on anything.

I wonder how he would define the $13 billion taxpayers had to put into the fund at one point to make up for shortfalls, or the fact that the surplus was the result of a disastrous economic philosophy in the 1980s to fight inflation with high interest rates and wage freezes.

Does he also think it is good management, especially in light of future possibilities of shortfalls or setbacks in financial markets, for his government not only to arbitrarily seize a $30 billion paper surplus but also to have used accounting tricks to date to drain off $10 billion before now?

He claimed yesterday that his government should identify surpluses in each and every plan, in each and every department, supposedly to pay down the debt. We know it will not go there.

There may be merit in doing that, but what is the government doing instead? I direct the member to the budget figures which show a $4 billion overdraft on the spending projections and a debt frozen at $580 billion into the foreseeable future. If the shuffling contingent of Liberal backbenchers from Ontario had any clout or economic sense, they could convince their future leader to freeze spending and actually reduce the debt rather than let it sit there like a leech sucking the lifeblood out of the Canadian taxpayer. It amounts to $42 billion a year in interest payments and it is not going down.

Bill C-78 deals with a very contentious issue for which governments across the country have never shown much enthusiasm. Who owns any pension surplus? Since employers and employees contribute to the original funds it would seem fair to divide it between the two parties somehow. An alternative could be to reduce the contributions and/or raise the benefits, or perhaps arrange for some kind of one time payout to both side, something that is equitable. The federal government says no. It has its hands on the purse strings and claims the spoils for its own purposes, whatever they might be.

Members opposite have tried to question our integrity on this side for not wanting to back the government on this matter, but let us look at what it is really doing. It froze wages for six years so that anybody still in a particular job classification has not had a raise for a while. That depresses the liability for their ultimate pension level.

In 1996 we recognized a growing surplus sitting on the government books, certainly not sitting in a vault somewhere. There is no cash pool somewhere as some would have us believe. The wizards at finance waved their magic pencils and turned red ink to black. Some $10 billion in liability disappeared without debate or vote, or any consultation with the people involved.

Members opposite will rightly give us credit for being in favour of reducing government liabilities, but the way to do it is not in the backroom, without consultation and, worst of all, in a one shot deal which does not get to the root of what is wrong with government, excessive spending.

We see the finance minister raid the so-called EI fund. We see him lay claim to the public pension surplus. We see him prebook future expenses to hide taxpayer surpluses today. That is not the way to balance the books. That is not fair because he will run out of unguarded accounts to claim. Inevitably there will be dips and bumps in the road that will cause our economic performance to fluctuate in the days ahead.

What if the interest rates rise as they seem poised to do in the States? The burden represented by that festering debt will grow in leaps and bounds just when the North American economy slows down, as it surely will. At that point will the Liberals be prepared to give up their support for porno films and kite flying projects?

Even with Bill C-78 on the order paper the finance department projections leave the $580 billion debt untouched. In other words, it has not committed to subtracting this $30 billion windfall. Left as it is, interest payments drain over $40 billion from the government's books every year before it has paid for a single mile of road or another hospital bed that is so badly needed. That is not prudent or responsible. The fundamentals are not right.

Members opposite will claim that the pension surplus will be devoted to debt reduction but we have no assurance of that. We suspect the $30 billion will be used to finance pre-election goodies and canoe museums. The Liberals have to admit their track record would suggest that this is a more likely outcome than debt reduction or that much cried about tax relief.

The opposition parties have put forward over 50 amendments to bring accountability and openness to the process of reforming the public service pension system. Let us be clear on this. The pension system was out of date and the unions and the pensioner associations agreed that something needed to be done. I am sure they can see that it was time public service employees accepted their share in CPP premium increases and re-balanced that proportion between the public pension and the government pension premiums. I understand that the employee representatives also agreed on the mandate for the new pension investment board.

The question before us is not is it good or bad to have a new investment regime for public service pensions or is it good or bad that it should be done by an arm's length investment board. The question before us is simple. Has the government been open and up front about how it has managed the previous system? I do not think so. Has it developed the best possible new system and is it entitled to walk away with $30 billion to squander on programs that it likes? I do not think so and the majority of Canadians agree.

The Reform Party, particularly through the strenuous efforts of the member for St. Albert, has tried to wrestle this massive bill into some sort of responsible direction. Our amendments would bring accountability to the process.

For example, we recommend that the board of directors of the new investment board maintain contact with the actuaries of each fund under their management. It sounds like a simple business procedure. We want appointments to the board as well as those to the investment committees to be tabled in the House. We want to delete the clauses which allow the government to make off with the surplus in the first place. We also want a separate act to set the contribution rate for the RCMP superannuation fund, not have it determined behind closed doors.

We also have a problem with the vague and unnecessary interference with personal relationships. A number of amendments in Group No. 2 refer to the problems that will arise as this government fumbles its way toward accommodating special interest lobbies.

The Liberals have attempted to socially engineer the public service pension system by introducing the vacuous term, survivor, 249 times in this bill. They also introduced the qualification, relationship of a conjugal nature, to modestly describe same sex partnerships. Who will keep score? How will we stay on top of that? Or at least that is what we are left to assume. The terminology is vague and will no doubt open up a whole new can of worms when some other groups decide they have been left out.

It has been estimated that the cost of recognizing same sex partners in Bill C-78 will be quite small, but this is not the issue. If the government wants back into the bedrooms of the nation that it supposedly vacated 20 years ago under Prime Minister Trudeau, then it should bring the issue to the floor of this House, not the courts. It should offer genuine and open debate and create legislation that addresses what needs addressing, not drop confusing hints and ambiguous references in this omnibus legislation.

The Reform Party recommends the surplus be left where it is to smooth the transition to a new and better administered pension system than we presently have. We are in favour of reduced government liabilities and better returns for our Canadian pensioners, but we cannot support slippery, open-ended and underhanded methods of financing re-election campaigns that we see in this bill.

As my colleague from Medicine Hat has said in the past on the EI grab, why does the finance minister not just leave the money where it is, put his hands where we can see them and back away slowly?

[Division No. 425, May 13th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to reiterate some of the points my colleague from Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore made so well in the last few minutes.

I thank the Liberals for giving me the opportunity to say a few words today about Bill C-78. Without their dedication to limiting democracy we might even have a few more words to say. This is about 50-plus times we have seen closure in the House. It makes us wonder about the capitulated democracy which was talked about earlier.

This morning we saw a bit of tinkering with some very good amendments that needed to come forward. We heard quotes from the member for Waterloo—Wellington and his quote was—

[Taxation, May 11th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the finance minister has record surpluses because 2.5 million taxpayers have been pushed into higher tax brackets and 840,000 low income families have been dragged onto the tax roles with bracket creep.

Is this the finance minister's answer to brain drain; tax until they cannot afford to leave?

[Taxation, May 11th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the government's balanced approach has raised taxes 60 times in the last 6 years. Revenues have grown by over $40 billion a year. The surplus has never been bigger.

For all our hard work, Canadian taxpayers get a health care system in jeopardy, increased student debt, high unemployment and reduced coverages, Canadian agriculture in crisis, east and west coast fisheries that are dying and no national highways program.

Where has all the money gone?

[Youth Criminal Justice Act, May 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to finally get a chance to speak to the government's attempt to revise and update the Young Offenders Act. Contrary to popular belief, this is something for which Canadians from coast to coast to coast have been calling for years, not just cowboys from western Canada.

I find it ironic that my party gets abused for this. We are portrayed as insensitive and tough minded when it comes to criminals, yet the first thing the Liberals do when they trot out their latest effort is to brag about how tough minded it is. I guess we could say that it is pretty insensitive too, but in this case it is insensitive to the wishes of a majority of Canadians and certainly my constituents who are looking for a little more meat on the bones.

The youth criminal justice act like other legislation that has percolated up through months or years of consultation and study contains a germ of good intentions. Section 6 formalizes the role of police to correct the actions of young offenders who have committed minor infractions.

Over the last few years our justice system has been bogged down with the rights of the criminal to the point that police find themselves on the defensive after carrying out their duties. What was acceptable on one occasion is found unacceptable by a later court. This process has made the officer's ability to deal with people frustrating and time consuming.

At a town hall meeting one year ago my constituents told me that for first time and minor offences rehabilitation is the top priority. Local authorities must have the option of running programs that suit local conditions and that bring young offenders face to face with their victims and the impact of their thoughtless actions. It is kind of based on the sentencing circle model we see being used in the aboriginal communities.

I was told that young people must have respect for the justice system. I believe that is something which cannot be started young enough. The problem with Bill C-68 is that it leaves this concept up to a variety of jurisdictions, a lot of them overlapping, and it includes no money to encourage a system of diversionary programs.

We are all in favour of civil rights and no one wants to see anyone victimized by overzealous authorities. Unfortunately what we too often see these days is the concept of human rights being twisted and reinterpreted to what is more acceptable to special interest groups and their particular needs rather than the acceptance of everyone as being equal under the law. This undermines the job of the police which is to keep the general peace and apply the law equally to anyone who breaks it.

Young criminals see that concept operating and lose respect for the law while they take advantage of the loopholes. I realize these are qualifications. There is such a thing as diminished capacity that suggests younger people cannot frame the moral implications of what they are doing with the same sophistication as a mature adult, but this does not mean there should be no consequences, only different ones. I would hope the young people of the country still have enough respect for the police to listen and alter their behaviour when a man or a woman in blue comes calling.

In rural areas, allowing police to use discretion and deal openly with the young offender and his parents may save a lot of time and trouble. The problem then becomes whether we can be assured there will be enough officers to go around. With the financial abuse suffered by the RCMP at the hands of the government it is not a hopeful picture. Bill C-68 does not promise any relief for hard pressed police forces in this respect, or community programs for that matter.

It is ironic that the justice minister would choose to number this bill with the same designation as the previous gun control bill. We see over $200 million being wasted there when it could certainly help prevent crime by being invested in our youth.

I congratulate my colleague from Crowfoot for his excellent work in bringing forward the perspective of frontline police officers. His name is not on the bill but his ideas are certainly stamped there. Maybe in his lifetime we will see real change in the country, in the words of the minister, “in a timely fashion”.

I notice in section 8 the crown prosecutors may likewise be authorized to issue cautions rather than proceed with court action. This can be different from province to province according to the whims of each attorney general and can undermine the work of the police. I realize that criminal cases cannot go forward on the exclusive say-so of the police, but we do see instances where overworked crown attorneys trade off low profile cases for higher ones to the frustration of the frontline officers. I also note there is a great deal in the bill about diversion or, as the government terms it, extra judicial measures.

Contrary to government spin, I do not believe that any of the Reformers or the two million Canadians who voted for us are interested in filling our jails with young people. That is not the answer. We had the unfortunate spectacle of the justice minister claiming we want to jail 10 year olds and I am sure even she regrets playing these political games in order to score points.

The entire justice committee heard and put forward in the report the need for action expressed by Canadians. My constituents said that 16 and 17 year old repeat violent offenders should be treated as near adults rather than near children. I will repeat that. We are talking about repeat violent offenders being treated as near adults rather than near children.

Young children are being targeted for participation in criminal activities by older youth offenders and career criminal adults who believe they are untouchable and maybe will remain so under this redecorated bill. Unless 10 year olds are taken under wing by the justice system, especially a stronger system than we see today, they will be headed for future problems that all of society ends up paying for.

The member for Surrey North has logged countless hours with diversion programs that work. Every clear-thinking Canadian would like to see young people corrected before their misbehaviour leads to serious jail time.

The Liberal version of extra judicial measures has enough holes in it to drive a stolen car through. The definition of offenders who will be eligible for diversionary programs can include those very car thieves, drug traffickers and break and enter criminals as long as they do not “cause or create a substantial risk of causing bodily harm”. That is a loose term.

Like so many other statutes in law, this is open to interpretation. I can imagine courts taking up time defining what has happened before ever getting around to deciding what to do about it.

I wonder if teenagers out on a joy ride in a stolen car represent a substantial risk of causing bodily harm or an insubstantial one. I guess it depends on whether they run over anyone or not. Does whacking another fellow on the head with a lead pipe constitute more of a risk causing bodily harm than whacking him on the knee? I guess it all comes down to interpretation.

In section 9 we see that evidence of an offender having received extra judicial measures or special status on previous occasions is not admissible for proving prior offending behaviour. Like the closed file that we have now, the record of trouble with the law cannot be entered as evidence that the person is a repeat offender. The youth is safe again. This means that young offenders and drug traffickers could be diverted from serving jail time over and over again. They will not be called repeat offenders, never having been designated as repeat offenders, because each case will be or may be treated as a one time event. We can hope that this will not happen in practice but the opening is definitely there to be tested.

The definitions are all open to interpretation and challenge. As I said, our clogged court system will spend more time chasing its own tail and it will vary from province to province.

My constituents at the town hall meeting said that the central concept of the youth justice system must be that actions have consequences and that legal actions will bring swift and appropriate punishment. Instead, Bill C-68 brings more arguments between judges and lawyers. I guess that is a perverse Liberal job creation.

It is in the area of definitions and interpretations that gets us most in trouble. The justice minister has said that there are competing visions for competing cultures in law. She seemed to suggest there is a simplistic vision which wants to jail all transgressors and a more compassionate vision which wants to be flexible and helpful.

As every parent knows, there is room for both of these approaches when bringing up our young people. Parents know that sometimes we have to be firm and say no. When the line is drawn, the consequences for crossing it must be immediate and relevant, scaled up or down to fit the nature of the situation. My constituents were clear on this very distinction.

It is ironic that a government that keeps claiming a role in raising the next generation refuses to make the tough choices that parents must do every day. We do not see clear lines drawn in the bill so much as circles. We read about what may be done or what should be happening in a variety of cases and in different jurisdictions. This could be interpreted as flexibility, but in light of the present state of underfunded, overworked and handcuffed police forces in the country, I think we can see it as an abdication of a government bent on being politically correct and offending as few groups as possible while turning the whole mess over to the courts. That is simplistic; just pass the buck but not the money.

The old adage, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, certainly defines the direction we must entertain regarding our youth justice.

[Income Tax Amendments Act, 1998, May 10th, 1999]

Madam Speaker, ordinary members rise in the House to describe how proud or pleased they are to speak to a particular bill. However, today I can only say that I am disappointed with the thrust of Bill C-72. Actually, it is more of a short stab in the dark.

The parliamentary secretary talked in glowing terms of long term tax relief. The bottom line is long term. Will anybody live long enough to actually see tax relief?

My disappointment arises from what is not in this bill, as much as what is. We do not oppose certain measures such as the reinstatement of the $5,000 credit for investments in labour sponsored venture capital funds. That simply brings it back up to where it was before the government tinkered with it.

We understand the finance minister cut that amount in 1998 because certain funds were not doing what they were supposed to do. Fair enough. But in some regions of the country these funds are performing a valuable service.

We realize that we cannot simply open the floodgates on investments and accept accountability and viable opportunities for every dollar that is offered. That is why the Reform Party has long advocated increased competition in the financial services sector and a removal of foreign asset restrictions on RRSP accounts. This country needs a diverse pool of investment money and the widest possible range of opportunities for that investment.

The truth of the matter is there are clauses in this bill that can be commended in principle. The life learning plan allows Canadian residents to take money out of their RRSPs to pay for full time training for themselves or their spouses which is basically a good idea. I do not know if everyone in that situation can afford full time training—and that is the loophole, the catch—as opposed to something a little more flexible, but it is a noble effort.

We are aware that RRSP contributions have fallen off in the last two years. People just do not have the cash to buy those RRSPs. There is something like $126 billion in unused contribution room outstanding. As I said, it is a noble effort and let us hope there are a few Canadians out there who can actually afford to get retrained and plan on using that training here in Canada rather than being forced to go to other lower tax jurisdictions.

That same analysis applies to another program concerning part time education. Eligible part time students can use education tax credits and child care expense deductions to go back to school. I presume that helps young single mothers in particular. There is a lot of merit in doing that.

We can characterize this as a housekeeping bill. We are a few days late in getting the parliamentary rules in place. Revenue Canada's cutoff was about a week ago, but we still have not made into law the restrictions and so on that are actually in place for last year's Revenue Canada forms. It is a cart before the horse scenario.

Why not fill out the skeletal legislative agenda with bills that show vision, imagination and courage rather than something that is last year's business? I guess we would be treading on the Liberal's electoral secrets for success: say little, do less, keep your head down. This is a major disappointment for Canadians who are poised to grab their share of the future and find themselves regulated to death by their government.

What we do not see in Bill C-72 is any admission by the finance minister, his bureaucrats or any of the Liberal members of the finance committee that their tax system is out of control. We see a clause that reduces the individual surtax by a couple of bucks. Who on the government side would dare stand up and defend putting taxes on taxes in the first place? This goes on year after year and Canadians still wait for the government to wake up and straighten out the mess in the complex tax code it has made.

The 5% surcharge which remains untouched falls on incomes as low as $60,000, not a lot of money in today's economy. There are thousands of workers in high tech industries or specialized manufacturing who easily make that much, and what do they do? They take their skills and their incomes and they maximize them south of the border.

The Liberals maintain their punitive tax structures while Canadian artists, entrepreneurs, doctors and scientists head for friendlier climates. Worst of all, they table bills like this one to announce all over again what Canadians already heard about and paid for in last year's budget. They are so hungry for any positive PR spin that they keep talking about all the good things that really do not add up to any dollars at all.

We have heard the finance minister claim that the country can only afford this style of nickel and dime tax adjustment, that it costs the government to give people their own money back. What a ludicrous premise. We know what it costs because year after year the finance minister announces that his programs will cost the treasury so many billions of dollars, and he goes ahead and subtracts that amount from the nation's books or the taxpayers' pockets, whichever is handier.

There is another reason for my disappointment. This government bill takes the opportunity to fiddle with the tax act, but instead of simplifying it or even simplifying the language, it merely piles more complexity on to the impenetrable pile it started decades ago. Members have risen in this House and read out passages from this bill, or have referred to this and other bills as being as thick as phone books. I have said that if the tax code was piled up it would be taller than any individual. I can also say that the tax code when piled on the back of a taxpayer can drive him to his knees.

Does Bill C-72 address the complexity or incomprehensibility of the tax code? No it does not. It merely carries on the age-old tradition of defining the taxpayers' responsibility to the government and not the government's duty to lighten the burden of taxes and to reveal clearly why they are needed and how they will be spent. Accountability, quite a concept.

In the revised explanatory notes that accompanied this bill and which were published in March, there are several pages of anti-avoidance rules that chase taxpayers into their home offices to make sure they are rendering unto Caesar what Caesar decides is his.

Ironically, they also include exceptions which allow clever tax lawyers to again avoid the taxes that are being chased in the first place. We know from the auditor general's report that billions of dollars in potential taxes continue to elude governments. We are aware that despite promises there are still loopholes for the well to do to cart off family trusts to lower tax regimes around the world. So much for our complex tax codes.

The Liberals have made it clear that they believe the myth that high taxes result in high revenues and that excessive spending leads to better service. We would not have to dig too deep to expose how this logic breaks down in the real world. It is human nature to resist when being pushed where we do not want to go. When the price of a good or service rises, we look for a bargain or reduce our consumption of that article. If taxes become too much of a burden, we seek relief any way we can either by avoidance or by going where a more enlightened tax regime offers a better deal for our tax dollar.

Lower taxes are not the only thing that influences people but it starts a cycle of prosperity that solves many other issues. Increasingly higher taxes reduce economic activity until there is less and less to tax. Governments see decreasing returns and cannot afford the services they claim to uphold. We have seen those cuts to the bone in health care. This is the opposite of what some in the House will say. They are convinced that high taxes alone provide a foundation for services. They follow this logic to its faulty conclusion, a complex tax code, taxes on taxes.

On the other hand lower taxes do not lead to a lack of services for the following reasons. Given a limitless amount of money to spend, it is also human nature to continue to demand limitless services to go along with it. It is human nature for bureaucrats to continuously try to satisfy those demands. What we have seen in the last three decades or so is the explosion of government spending in an effort to micromanage every aspect of our economic and social lives.

Government is everywhere trying to be all things to all people and failing at most. It tries to be charitable but ends up subsidizing self-defeating behaviour. It tries to stimulate a business on one side of the street while putting another one out of business through higher taxation and artificial competition.

The government creates monopolies and then finds itself in an endless process of paying inflated sums to keep the market under control. The old adage is if it moves tax it. If it moves again tax it some more. If it stops moving the government subsidizes it so it can tax it when it starts to move again. That seems to fit in very well with this logic.

In the 1999 budget we saw an increase in the child tax benefit and an admission by the finance minister that the clawback provisions are a disincentive for parents to earn more money. According to the C.D. Howe Institute, even with the tinkering, single earner families with two children with earnings in the $20,000 to $30,000 range, which is right around that poverty line that has been arbitrarily set, would keep less than $35 from an additional $100 earnings. This is true of the worst provinces. I define those as the ones where there are so many overlapping federal and provincial programs that Canadians have no choice but to sit and wait for the government to tell them what their income is going to be.

In Bill C-72 we see the same tinkering at work. The child care expense deduction has been increased to $7,000 but it only applies to parents who hire people to take care of their kids. This has become a fairly common situation in Canadian households. Many people are of the opinion that one of the strongest reasons for this is that the government takes too much money.

Canadian couples should have the decision as to how they are going to raise their children. It has been snatched from their hands and placed in the cold dead grip of a disinterested bureaucracy with its own social agenda.

Taxpayers' money not only goes to finance programs to relieve a situation that governments create, but it also goes to finance lobby groups to perpetuate the myth that Canadian families would be in stress without the government rather than because of it. Even so, tens of thousands of brave parents make the courageous decision to re-order their lifestyle to fit what is best for their young children.

Bill C-72 fails to address another situation that is obvious to everyone except the Prime Minister. On May 3 the Prime Minister got up and said the government wiped out bracket creep by increasing the personal exemption by a whopping $50 a month. He failed to mention several facts of which the government should rightly be embarrassed.

Not only should the basic personal exemption be in excess of $8,000 a year, but the Liberals are only going to phase in their tinkering over the next two years. It will only go to a maximum of $7,131, not nearly enough in today's economy.

They like to brag on the other side that somewhere between 400,000 and 600,000 Canadians have been pushed off the tax rolls with their generosity. They fail to mention that 1.4 million people have been added back on through the back door to these tax rolls because the Liberals have not got around to adjusting the tax brackets for inflation. We call that bracket creep. That is according to the OECD study.

A KPMG study, and we know how much the finance minister likes those when they are in his favour, has shown that the low to middle tax bracket of $29,590 should be almost $37,000, an increase of over $8,000. If anybody in the finance department had bothered to keep up with the times, the higher tax bracket of $59,180 should be over $73,000 just to keep up with inflation. That might convince many of our valuable scientists, engineers and skilled workers to stay here and add that value to our country and our economy.

The Liberals would tell us that they cannot afford real tax cuts, only the nickel and dime stuff they have been feeding Canadians. In Bill C-72 there is another instalment of surtax reduction, although we always hear that it is $500 a year when in fact it was $250 last year and $250 this year. Again, the numbers are better when we add them altogether. I wonder if many Canadians will actually notice that change in April 2000.

There is a tax credit for interest paid on student loans which is a good thing, but it only applies to the federal government student loans, not to the bank student loans. There is a real disparity. The students who are still going to school can write off the federal government part but not the bank loans. As the federal government withdraws from programs such as that, these same students find themselves caught on the horns of a dilemma.

I wonder how much better off we would all be if the finance minister had not wasted time with the millennium scholarship fund and simply had gone to the source. That was really the taxpayers' hard earned surplus in 1998. If he had turned the money back to students who really need it, I think we would have got a lot more bang for our buck.

Eliminating bracket creep for instance would have put a $900 million ding into the finance minister's slush fund but would have put hundreds of dollars back into the hands of low and middle income Canadians, right where they need it.

We also see provisions for people to use their RRSPs for something other than a hedge against government incompetence in mismanagement of the CPP fund. People can withdraw money for education, which is good. But since it is their money anyway, it is a bit of a shell game as to what they should be able to do with it.

I come back to the question of why the government cannot do anything more substantial or imaginative than this tinkering we see in Bill C-72. This government will try to use two excuses. It will say that it will not cut taxes and it will not tax us back into a deficit the same way it taxed us into the high spending it did in the first place. It will also say that it wants to be fair to the poor or maintain services that Canadians are so proud of, part of our Canadian mosaic, or that it apparently represents what we are as a people.

We have seen government spending go up the last three years and projections that it will continue to do so. This is hardly a prudent way to manage the future. Our fundamentals are supposedly right, but in our minds they are not.

We have also seen the insatiable desire of this government to hold control of every aspect of health care and social spending in its grip, even in the face of the Liberals' proven incompetence.

As I said before, we have the cart before the horse with this legislation. We are working with provisions in this bill that were actually implemented last year. The funding was set aside last year.

The parliamentary secretary in his address earlier this morning talked in glowing terms about people below $20,000 being in a tax free zone. I ask what is the big deal? That is still well below the poverty line that is arbitrarily set in Canada, so that is really not a whole lot to crow about.

People in Canada are looking for real tax relief. The industry minister, with supporting statistics from his own department, Industry Canada, has acknowledged the realities of a high tax system in Canada and what it is doing to our economy here, our productivity, as it were.

Again the parliamentary secretary talked about the RESPs. As I said before, if we are talking to finance people, a trust fund is far more manageable in the RRSP portion of it. It gives us lots more flexibility. Students can do different things with that. They do not have to go to the same type of college or facility that the RESPs would direct them to. It is much more easy and much more flexible to put that money into a trust fund.

The caregiver tax credit of $400 that he so eloquently spoke of appears at $11,000 worth of income. It is nickels and dimes again. It does not go anywhere. As a caregiver, $400 a year does not begin to cover a week's cost when one is caring for an invalid or a handicapped person. It is an insult to these people.

The parliamentary secretary talked in glowing terms and his words were that the winds of tax relief were blowing across the country. I would say that the reality is it is not even a gentle breeze.