Gerry Ritz

[Taxation, December 5th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, we have had 86 months of 9% unemployment and the highest income tax rates in the G-7. These might be just numbers to members opposite but back home in our ridings families are hurting.

Excessive Liberal taxes make it impossible for Canadians to compete in the global economy. They make it impossible for ordinary people to find employment. Canadians have spoken clearly.

Will the government stop tinkering with its agenda and give Canadians income tax relief now?

[Taxation, November 21st, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, the finance minister is deaf to his colleague's admission the other day that the Liberals are “very familiar with the fact that our income taxes are very high”.

Will the government do the responsible thing and bring tax relief to millions of working Canadians who have been impoverished by bracket creep, or the one million small business owners whose small business deduction remains unchanged for 15 years?

Where is the tax relief for all Canadians from the government's insatiable tax appetite?

[Criminal Code, November 20th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, a bill has once again been introduced in this House to repeal section 43 of the Criminal Code. That section admits that parents and guardians may use corporal punishment if the situation warrants. Although opponents of section 43 would have us believe they have the interest of the child at heart, it is our responsibility to examine the motives and logic they bring to this debate.

The United Nations sponsored convention on the rights of the child has been mentioned as a document that prohibits corporal punishment. Our own charter of rights and freedoms has also been mentioned although the reference is less clear. In either case the intention is to say to parents that special interest groups and politicians who hide behind their self-described expertise are much better qualified to raise your children than you are.

Canadians do not condone family violence but they are sick and tired of hearing the outrageous abuse of facts that come from government subsidized conferences held in foreign countries. I urge all parents to love their children and to look critically at any statement that begins, the convention—

[Canadian Wheat Board Act, November 20th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today as a western Canadian farmer certainly concerned with the future of our grain industry.

The quality of life on western Canadian farms is definitely tied to the power of this unaccountable wheat board. There is a growing dissension with the market status quo on the prairies today.

If the minister were to hold meetings in the west, he would find the people attending would most certainly have different things to say. Our input costs are rising. The end of the Crow drastically increased our transportation costs. Canadian Wheat Board grains are backlogged and plugging the system.

As a result, farm returns are now non-existent. As a result of wheat board policies, we also find that we are not allowed to bring our feed grains and so on into different marketplaces. Interprovincial trade and access to these markets is not there for us.

The hon. member from Manitoba talked about using the port of Churchill. That may also give us cheaper access into the maritimes with our feed grains for their poultry and hog industries. Those types of things are not done now under our wheat board system.

There are many sections and subsections of Bill C-4 that farmers in my riding on both sides of this issue agree are fundamentally wrong, mainly the continuation of the unaccountability to producers of their board.

The cash purchase clause that they are trying to put in through Bill C-4 circumvents the final payment values derived through the pooling system that we have now. The board, as it is shown in Bill C-4, would consist of 15 directors, 10 elected and placed at the discretion of the minister. That is a major point. Four are then appointed by the minister to sit on this board and the president or CEO is appointed on the recommendation of the minister.

All these people are there at the discretion of the minister and can be removed at any time should they go against the minister.

The Canadian Wheat Board also may indemnify from, in layman's terms remove, any legal liability or responsibility for the actions of its employees. This section goes on to say that this also covers the employees' heirs and legal representatives and would cover all costs, charges and expenses included in amounts paid to settle or satisfy a judgment. No one is accountable. This clause certainly protects the board over the producers it serves.

The Canadian Wheat Board annual operations plan will be submitted to the minister and will require his approval before it can be implemented. This certainly would seem to circumvent the elected portion of this board.

For the record I certainly do not oppose the Canadian Wheat Board concept in principle. However, when I see the entrenched lack of accountability of the board in this bill, my constituents, through me, can do nothing but oppose it until it can be amended for a positive impact on the depressed industry we see in western Canada.

[Taxation, November 19th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Secretary of State for International Financial Institutions admitted something that ordinary Canadians have always known. He said that the Liberals are “very familiar with the fact that our income taxes are very high”. This is quite an admission from the Liberals.

Now that we all know our taxes are very high, when will the government do the responsible thing and bring in some tax relief?

[Supply, September 30th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the comments from my esteemed colleague. He talked specifically of help to Atlantic Canada. In our election platform and again here in the House we talk about equality of opportunity for everyone.

The member for Medicine Hat earlier today stated that cutting taxes helps people at all ends of the country. It creates jobs, lets small business become the small engine of the economy that we know it to be.

Subsidies and grants have proven not effective over the last number of years. There are too few dollars for too many people. We would also like to see a review of the infrastructure system in Atlantic Canada to help it facilitate the worldwide market that we are finding more and more out there. Those types of things will have to be addressed.

There is a fisheries crisis in Atlantic Canada. He talked about us being regional. We have an agriculture crisis in the prairies. We are not alone in coming to this House with regional viewpoints. That is much of the reason for the make-up of the House as it is. People are sending us here to address issues that are common to them.

[Supply, September 30th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his questions. He mentioned the Canadian Business Development Bank and Farm Credit Corporation. Certainly we welcome any positive conditions that they will introduce to further business in Canada. However, the one thing that usually flies in the face of anything that happens through developments like this is that they never really consult the people that they purport to serve.

I know in my instance, the Farm Credit Corporation having just gone through a major shake-up and a major reorganization in my area, has not really seen any dramatic growth or have I heard people saying “You are doing a much better job”. We just do not see that out there.

Regarding health care in my province of Saskatchewan, we have seen hospitals closed at a record rate. The line-ups are definitely longer. People are waiting longer and longer for less health care. It is unfortunate.

Of course I do not have all the options and answers. We are here in this House to discuss them. I think of some of the things that we are going to have to do. We need a much more preventive medicine situation out there. We are going to have to allow some alternative treatments and so on like that.

We need to assure that people have the right to basic health care and make sure that we can sustain that into the next millennium.

[Supply, September 30th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, congratulations on your appointment. The job looks good on you.

I would like to thank the voters of Battlefords—Lloydminster for their support. I speak today on their behalf in support of the motion to condemn the government for its empty promises.

My riding is a large rural riding with a very active and diverse agricultural sector and a thriving resource industry. I would like to say that my constituents were very disappointed when there was no mention of their issues and concerns in last week's throne speech.

As a matter of fact, we are obviously not alone if we judge by the comments that came out of British Columbia last week. To my knowledge no one in Saskatchewan is entertaining the notion of separation, but we can certainly sympathize with the frustration that is contained in that expression. Even if much of that frustration is based on perception rather than reality, it still grows as Canadians beyond this central region see their concerns ignored and in some cases brushed off as insignificant.

On the prairies today grain piles up in the elevators, trains sit idle on their sidings and government monopolies continue to tell farmers what to do with the products of their labour.

Back in Ottawa the government announces new spending initiatives to satisfy a few narrow interests as it claims a balanced budget will soon arrive and perhaps then it will take a look at letting Canadians keep more of their own money.

Has the government ever really asked what is the number one concern of all Canadians? If it did, the answer from the left and from the right of the political spectrum would be jobs, long term sustainable jobs.

When an individual has a secure job, all the other facets of their life fall into place. They can make plans, develop skills, raise families and put their wages into the marketplace to the benefit of their fellow citizens. When people feel secure they can more easily turn their attention to the wider concerns of a regional or national scale.

Reformers believe that Canadians are generous and compassionate and given the chance will make decisions with their money that will benefit their fellow citizens everywhere.

We believe that if governments create the conditions that offer opportunity and security in the economy, then prosperity will alleviate many of the social concerns we are struggling to deal with here in this place.

For example, if the government would create the conditions that encourage business people to hire workers, then the benefits to everyone would be obvious. If someone is lifted from a social program, becomes a taxpayer and is given the opportunity to make decisions, it will help their fellow Canadian.

That is where we run into trouble. Some people still believe in the grand schemes that call for massive amounts of tax dollars and assume that a handful of bureaucrats making decisions in central offices are somehow superior to the choices made by ordinary Canadians.

Reformers and people with different perspectives from many countries have shown over and over that this philosophy is both wasteful and ineffective.

Taxpayers do not need more grand schemes. We need to let Canadians, including Canadians who choose to invest in their future, create businesses and hire their neighbours, to make their own choices.

I am not going to stand here and say that average Canadians have all the answers. When we consider the risks involved, the headaches and the aggravation of owning a small or medium size business, we have to wonder if wise choices are being made out there. There was a joke going around a few years ago which asked: How do you make $1 million in Canadian business? First you start with $2 million.

When we consider the number of obstacles which stand in the way of a Canadian entrepreneur, the regulations and red tape, taxes, fees, licences at three levels of government, including all the agencies and commissions, the regulations and fees of the banks, the suppliers and the competition, it obviously takes a special breed of people to want to have their own business.

To be fair, we are not unique in the world for this. There are just as many regulations meant to protect as there are to interfere. However, when we consider that there are nearly one million businesses with paid employees in Canada, of which 97 percent have less than 50 workers, and 1.1 million Canadians who describe themselves as self-employed, surely there are a few basic things that can be done to encourage those people.

Consider that 75 percent of all businesses in Canada have less than five employees. By convincing even half of these employers to hire one more worker on average, we would see 360,000 jobs created in a relatively short period of time.

The question becomes: What would it take to convince someone to hire that new worker? Quite simply, companies will hire only if it is in the interest of their profitability to do so. It is naive to think otherwise.

We often hear in the House that the measure of a country is how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. Where the debate goes off track is when some of our colleagues assume that the only measure of how we treat these citizens is how much money the government spends to deal with them. We forget entirely that citizens can help each other and that the choices of our fellow citizens must be part of this measurement.

Governments can better increase the profitability of businesses by reducing their costs, rather than by subsidizing certain activities. Labour is one of these costs and government can have a negative influence on this by, for example, keeping employment insurance rates higher than are necessary or by jacking up premiums on pension plans to compensate for 30 years of mismanagement.

Taxes of all kinds can also have a negative impact. Nobody has yet found a way to run a country without them, but it is the rates established in Canada that need serious adjustment. Taxing capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income ignores the element of risk that an investor or entrepreneur brings to business, without which our economy would be stagnant. Taxes drive up the cost of nearly everything, and by so doing suppress purchasing and pass the costs on to the people least able to afford them.

We can see that potential entrepreneurs in this country are hit with a triple whammy. Government raises the cost of supplies and products without consultation, thereby affecting sales. If they succeed they are then hit with premiums, levies and taxes on the employees they try to hire to help them produce more.

Finally, if the struggling businesses manage to overcome all of this and show a profit, the government again comes looking for a share. There is of course the small business tax deduction, but it has not been adjusted since it was introduced in 1982.

Governments have compensated for inflation by increasing their tax take, but have done nothing to protect the people who generate those taxes. I do not wish to be dramatic. Clearly Canadians are creating businesses and, though not very often, are even pocketing some money and prospering.

The question that we have before us is this. How can we make more people more prosperous? The Reform Party discussion paper Beyond a Balanced Budget provides a great deal of statistical information and arguments on why we must address the issues of tax burdens and entrepreneurship in Canada. We invite informed discussion from all Canadians on the future direction of this country.

We stand at a threshold, as we did in 1970 when the government last had a surplus budget. What we decide to do in this House will not only affect ourselves and our children, it will affect Canadians for generations to come. I trust we can be much more prudent and thoughtful than our predecessors.