James Moore

[Supply, September 16th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the speech from my colleague from Burnaby--Douglas. I certainly understand that he is a man of consistency and conviction on this issue. However for the sake of clarity for all those who are in the House and for Canadians who are paying attention to this debate, I have a question.

We know the Liberal Party will have a free vote on this issue. We know the Canadian Alliance leader has said that we are free to vote on this issue. The Bloc Quebecois has said the exact same thing. The leader of the Progressive Conservative Party has said the same thing for his party. I am not so sure about the NDP. That has not been clarified. Therefore, can the member can clarify that for the House?

He has said that to deny gay marriage is to deny the basic equality of gays and lesbians. It is bigotry, it is intolerance, it is denying fundamental human rights and it is a fundamental issue of justice. The member for Churchill has said that she will vote in favour of our motion. Is she a bigot?

[Criminal Code, June 13th, 2003]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-444, an act to amend the Criminal Code (weapons trafficking).

Mr. Speaker, this is my second of two private member's bill that I am introducing this week as a response to the government's inadequate response with regard to firearms laws in the country.

The bill I introduced on Tuesday bans gun ownership for life for anybody convicted of a violent crime. The bill I am introducing today doubles the minimum sentence and dramatically increases the maximum sentence available for anybody caught illegally trafficking in weapons and ammunition in and out of our country.

This is the kind of step that goes in the right direction, and the kind of stuff the Liberals do not do the Canadian Alliance will do to save and protect Canadians.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Viking Millennium Celebration, June 13th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, there is a difference between a private organization and a public official using public money under the veil of public office.

The problem with this is that at the time we have a government that is supposed to be cleaning up its scandals, we have a backbench Liberal member of Parliament who engages in behaviour that has a clear appearance of corruption. Then what is the Liberal government and the executives--

[Viking Millennium Celebration, June 13th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians must have faith in the cabinet in terms of how it manages the public purse, but when questioned about the fundraising with regard to the Viking commemoration event the Liberal minister for ACOA has given three different answers to how this unfolded.

If the minister cannot give the House and Canadians a straight answer about a straight problem and a straight, clear conflict of interest, how can Canadians trust him to manage a department that has a budget of $1.4 billion?

[Infrastructure, June 12th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the government has it in its power to correct the problem. The province of Alberta has twinned the Trans-Canada Highway from its border with Saskatchewan all the way to the gates of Banff National Park. It wants to twin it within the park but it cannot because twinning the highway in the park is 100% federal jurisdiction. It cannot do it.

Nineteen people have died on this stretch of the highway and the government has done nothing to fix it. Why has the government done nothing and why is it not committing to fix this stretch of highway so that people will not die?

[Infrastructure, June 12th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, recently the transport minister reminded the House and all Canadians that the Minister of Canadian Heritage was entirely responsible for the maintenance and improvement of highways located inside of national parks.

For years the Canadian Alliance has been calling for a dangerous stretch of highway in Banff National Park to be widened to avoid further fatal accidents. Nineteen people have died on that stretch of the highway in the past four and a half years.

When can we expect funding to twin this section of the highway so that people will not die?

[Supply, June 12th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments from my transportation colleague, the member for Churchill, who is again in good faith expressing her opinions effectively but also again proving that the NDP members are the masters of dramatically oversimplifying complicated public policy.

I have a question for the member, given the fact that over 98% of every single road that Canadians drive on is engineered, built and maintained by municipal governments and provincial governments, and given also the second fact that in her presentation the member said the provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, where she is from, are doing such a marvellous job of reconstructing those provinces coming out of the depths of Conservative governments. They are being reconstructed under the socialist panacea of her provincial parties. If their provincial parties are doing so great and the reality is that 98% of our roads are engineered, built and maintained by provinces, why is she opposed to a motion that would entrench in law stable funding to those levels of governments that she so trusts to continue rebuilding her province?

[Supply, June 12th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, that is easy to do. It is done all the time. The federal government did it last fall with regard to health care. It has done it in all kinds of agreements. It happens all the time.

In fact, the province of British Columbia, a Liberal administration, has allocated the gas tax room to the municipalities where the municipalities have used it.

I want to back up and comment on the member's original comments at the beginning of his question. The fact is that when he said that the Canadian Alliance members are Johnny-come-latelies, if he thinks he can posture that the Liberal Party actually believes in this policy, I very much look forward to his vote and the Liberal Party vote. If he is saying that we are Johnny-come-latelies to a position that the Liberal government has had, I look forward to the Liberal government voting in favour of our motion and in fact seeing this come to pass.

The Canadian Alliance members need to take absolutely no lessons with regard to fiscal responsibility from the Liberal Party of Canada. The Liberal Party, which broke its word with Canadians with regard to the GST, which takes the air security tax and puts it into general revenues, rips off the air industry, continues, in terms of infrastructure and putting money into roads, to rip off Canadians at the pump. If the Liberals believe in fixing it, they can fix it. Paul Martin had his chance and he did not do it.

[Supply, June 12th, 2003]

My colleague from Nanaimo is quite right. According to a chart I have here, if we go back to fiscal year 1992-93, which means it was a government budget under the Progressive Conservatives, of the $3.4 billion that was collected in gas taxes, only $100 million went into roads. This year it is $4.7 billion and $119 million going into roads. Under either administration there has not been much improvement.

We hope that there is a shift across the country with regard to all political parties in terms of having more accountability and responsibility with regard to fuel taxes.

My colleague is quite right. There are two other examples both of which fall under the previous administration and the current administration. In the final budget of the former finance minister and the leadership frontrunner for the Liberal Party, he introduced the infamous $24 air security tax. That tax was supposed to go into air security. It did not. It went into general revenues. It was supposed to be channelled from general revenues into air security. We still have not had a clear base line accounting on how that money was collected and spent. This is an example again of the Liberals saying that they are imposing a tax for a purpose and the tax does not go to the purpose for which it was imposed.

The most infamous example perhaps of the last decade was imposed under the Progressive Conservatives and which the Liberals said they were going to deal with but they have not dealt with. They said that the goods and services tax was supposed to go specifically to paying down the debt and that it would not go into general revenues. That was in fact not true and it was deliberately not the truth. That is not the kind of fiscal responsibility that was expected by Canadian taxpayers.

If a tax is imposed for a purpose, taxpayers expect politicians to keep their word and make sure those dollars go to that purpose. The GST did not serve that purpose, the $24 air security tax did not serve that purpose and gas taxes day in and day out are ripping off Canadian travellers.

[Supply, June 12th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, while members of the committee are in that region, perhaps they could take a detour over to Indonesia where Paul Martin could see some of his employees for Canada Steamship Lines. While they are in the region, they may as well.

As I was saying, it is important to note that of the over $4.7 billion in gas taxes that are collected by the federal government, only 2.4% of that amount is actually spent on roads. Of the 100% of the 2.4% spent on roads, 99% was spent east of the province of Ontario. There is a dramatic inequity and it is something that needs to be considered. I am citing a report from Walter Robinson, a good friend of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. He reminds us of an important fact, that Canada is a confederation, that it is a unity of provinces each looking out for their interests, united together for the common purposes of a national identity and national interest. We need to keep that in mind.

Canada's road system is comprised of a total of 900,000 kilometres of roads, highways and bridges. Of those 900,000 kilometres 15,000 are federally owned, which is only 1.7%; 231,000 are provincially owned which is 25.5%; and 655,000 are municipally owned which constitutes almost 73% of all the roads. If we take that in total, of the 100% of the cost of a litre of gasoline, about 50% is taxation. Half of that taxation is federal and half is provincial.

Ninety-eight per cent of all the roads are engineered, built and maintained by provinces and municipalities but half of the tax gouge on gasoline is going to the federal government. The federal government is only returning 2.4% of that into roads and of the 2.4% that it turns back into roads, 99% is spent east of Ontario.

It may sound like a lot of numbers but it is an extraordinary gas tax ripoff that is happening for Canadians. What we are trying to do in the Canadian Alliance is to stand up for Canadian travellers, to stand up for Canadian taxpayers and to ensure that they are getting a fair deal for what they are paying at the pump.

Here is another number. Only 2.4% of gas tax revenues on the federal side is spent back into roads. Here is the reality: 91.6% of all provincial gas tax revenues that are collected are invested back into roads. That is what the accountability mechanism of this motion we are debating today is all about.

While 50% of the price at the pump is taxes, half of the taxes go to the federal government and half of the taxes goes to the provincial governments. Ninety-one per cent of the revenue collected by the provincial governments is going into roads, 2.4% of the revenue by the federal government is going into roads and 99% of that amount is only going east of the province of Ontario.

What we are endeavouring to do with this motion is to turn over to the provinces a portion of the gas tax revenue. The provinces have demonstrated clearly by the statistics I have cited to be more fiscally responsible and more accountable with regard to engineering, building and maintaining the roads that they are responsible for, in over 98% of the roads that we drive on in this country.

We have a broad problem in this country with regard to fiscal responsibility. There is one level of government that has to provide a service; a second level of government that taxes money away that would provide that service; and then there is bureaucracy between the two levels of government that causes confusion and a lack of straight line accountability for Canadian taxpayers.

We see this with regard to health care. The fact is there is not a single provincial government, not Mike Harris, not Ernie Eves, not Gordon Campbell, not Ralph Klein, not a single provincial government has ever cut from one year to the next the net amount of dollars spent on health care. It is only the federal government that has ever cut health care but because of the way that taxes are collected and spent, there is not a clear line of accountability. The Canadian Alliance with this motion is trying to create that sort of accountability.

I understand that I only have one more minute left to speak which is unfortunate because there is a lot to go into. As the leader of the Canadian Alliance, the leader of the official opposition, said in a speech just a week ago, what we are proposing is that the federal government permanently vacate a portion of the federal gas tax, say 3¢ to 5¢ a litre, and allow provinces the option of collecting that revenue. In order to ensure that this money is not used for other purposes, the transfer of these revenues to provinces and on to municipalities would be conditional on signed agreements that these resources would be used for infrastructure.

That is what is needed for accountability. It is what is needed to stop the gas tax ripoff. It is what is needed to ensure that the taxes that are collected for a certain public purpose are used for that purpose, which is the building of roads. As 98% of all roads are engineered, built and maintained by provinces and municipalities, those levels of government need to have the tax dollars necessary to ensure that this important element, not only of infrastructure but of nation building is maintained into the future.