Yes, 1598. The government was looking for another way to collect more money for the crown or for the treasury, because even in 1601 it had the same insatiable appetite for revenue as it does in 2001. It imposed a window tax. It had assessors go across the land to count the number of windows people had in their domiciles.
Lo and behold, if we go to small English towns today and look at some of the Tudor homes, we will see over and over again these very clear window shaped spaces that have been plastered over and filled in or bricked in. Why? It was because 500 years ago people understood that they could protect their economic best interest by avoiding taxes legally and so they bricked in those beautiful glass windows all across England.
It is just one example which demonstrates how the unintended consequences of bad tax policy can shut out the light and leave people in darkness. That is the kind of tax policy we too frequently see from the Liberal government. We look from a historical perspective at trying to construct a minimal tax regime which allows for maximum human freedom and creativity and does not distort the marketplace.
In that respect we, like many Canadians, have many grave concerns about the whole range of taxes imposed by this place, in particular today with respect to the goods and services tax. We all recall back in 1990-91 when the then Progressive Conservative government imposed what at that time was, and probably still is, the most despised tax in Canadian history. It did so over the overwhelming opposition of the majority of Canadians.
I know you will remember this, Mr. Speaker, because I believe you were a member of this place. If so, you were certainly sitting in these benches vigorously opposing the tax. You ran in the election campaign in 1993 where the central promise was not just to amend the tax through technical amendments such as those before this place today, not just to tinker with its administration and collection, but to kill, eliminate, abolish, get rid of and scrap the GST.
However here I am in the House in the year 2001, eight years after those solemn promises were made and those undertakings were given, and I have in my hand a bill to continue and amend the goods and services tax. It is like Alice in Wonderland. The bill comes forward from the same government which said that the tax, which it is now amending, would no longer exist.
At the outset I will put on the record the dismay of so many Canadians that the government thinks it can get away with, and continues to get away with, perpetuating a tax which it promised to kill, slash, abolish and eliminate.
The third point I will make with respect to constructing taxes of maximum efficiency is that we must have a tax system which allows for accountability on the part of government because, as I said, the taxing power is such an awesome destructive power. Arguably, next to the criminal law power exercised by parliament, the taxing power is the single most weighty and onerous power that it wields. It really can destroy people's economic well-being.
Often that power can be wielded in a reckless fashion by tax collection bureaucrats. I have in my files literally hundreds of cases where law-abiding, well meaning, well intentioned citizens have acted in good faith to try to comply with tax laws like the one before us today and have found themselves harassed, audited, chased down, investigated, abused, and have had their assets frozen by the agents of revenue Canada, now the revenue agency.
That is why my colleagues and I have brought forward a taxpayer bill of rights that would seek to enshrine in legislation, in a very clear way, definitive rights of recourse and appeal and protection for taxpayers in the assessment and collection process.
The parliamentary secretary says that it is already there but it is not. There is a preambular statement with no sanction and no statutory power which is a goodwill statement. We propose to legislate specific standards of performance on the part of the CCRA and its employees and clear items of recourse so that people do not need to go to court to enforce their common law rights for fair consideration under the application of the tax laws.
I will turn to the specifics of the bill. We strenuously object to the fact that the government continues to reject its 1993 election promise. We believe the GST itself collects too much revenue as the government does overall. In fact, we are now looking at very substantial taxpayer overpayments.
The government likes to call them surpluses and pat itself on the back. The only people who deserve credit for these surpluses are hardworking men and women. Notwithstanding the highest personal income tax burden in the G-7; notwithstanding that we have the highest corporate tax burden in the G-7, according to a recent study by KPMG; notwithstanding the fact that the government and its predecessor have burdened them with the second highest level of public indebtedness in the OECD; notwithstanding that we have seen our standard of living, our per capita GDP, fall relative to our major competitors for the past two decades; and notwithstanding the enormous burden of red tape and all of the anti-growth policies of the government; notwithstanding those substantial facts, hardworking men and women of Canada have managed to produce growth. The government by raising taxes has benefited from that hard work, wealth creation and growth, and of course it shamelessly takes credit for it.
That constitutes a huge amount of overtaxation, well over $120 billion of overtaxation, that should be refunded to the people who earned it and overpaid it.
While we recognize that the government has failed to accept its commitment with respect to the GST, that it continues to overtax and that it still fails to bring in something like a taxpayer bill of rights which enumerates taxpayer rights in the assessment and collection procedures, nevertheless there are some technical improvements to the GST in the bill, to which I now turn my attention.
On the first point, the bill's primary goal is to correct some administrative oversights in the February 2000 budget. With the thousands of bureaucrats in the Department of Finance and the 40,000-some in the Department of National Revenue, why do we have significant administrative “oversights” in key tax legislation? That is part of the problem.
When we speak about administrative oversights, I want to comment on the manner by which the bill comes to us. We in the official opposition got notice of the bill about 48 hours ago. It is a detailed technical bill. We have very limited resources at our disposal. It is absurd for the government to expect the opposition properly to execute its oversight function of legislation with 48 hours notice on a major technical bill.
That is one of the reasons we end up with administrative oversights. It is one of the reasons the government always brings in legislation like this one to correct the mistakes it made. It does not give parliamentarians the benefit of time to become properly acquainted with the legislation it proposes.
If we had more time to analyze this, and if the government were more generous in accepting and considering opposition amendments, we would not find ourselves again and again wasting parliamentary time correcting mistakes the government has already made.
Some of the mistakes the Liberals have made, which they now propose to correct, consist of, among other things, implementing new rules to ensure the GST does not impede North American distribution centres in Canada. When businesses import goods from the United States or from any other country, rather than taxing the goods when they are imported and then applying for a GST rebate, they can go through tax free. That is sensible. It should have happened a long time ago. It is something industries have been asking for many years.
Second, the bill ensures that no tax is payable on the importation of defective goods imported solely to be replaced under warranty. If somebody here buys an alarm clock from a Japanese manufacturer and it does not work and they return it, the new clock can be shipped back into Canada without GST applying on it again. That is a sensible administrative efficiency which should have been in the act a long time ago. I see the secretary of state is once again congratulating himself. I am not surprised.
It also seeks to implement the new residential rental property rebate, which is a partial rebate of GST paid in respect of newly constructed or substantially renovated long term residential rental accommodation. This is a measure, which my hon. colleague, the learned and distinguished member for Wild Rose, has long sought to obtain in the legislation. He has fought for it on behalf of constituents for some time, so this section we can call the Myron section. This is a victory for the constituents of the member of parliament for Wild Rose. Let the record show that he is getting spontaneous applause even in his absence.
The bill also continues to enforce the existing GST exemption for speech therapy services that are billed by individual practitioners and not covered by the applicable provincial health care plan. This is also a sensible improvement which should have happened a long time ago under the minister's watch.
The secretary of state who applauds sat without acting for I do not know how many years while this measure was not in place. He should not applaud his tardiness.
The bill also seeks, with respect to education, to ensure that vocational training across the country is provided the same exempt treatment regardless of how vocational schools are regulated in each province. This is an incremental improvement in the tax treatment of vocational schools. I hope the government will also use its authority to bring the provinces to the table to ensure that credentials provided by such schools are recognized from coast to coast. That is one useful role the federal government could play.
With respect to electronic filing, the bill removes the requirement to apply to the Minister of National Revenue for permission to file GST returns electronically and therefore allows anyone to do so provided they meet the criteria set out by the minister. This would streamline the ability of people to file electronically. That again is something that should have happened long ago. There are also miscellaneous administrative amendments clarifying interpretations of the act.
Let me say on that point that far too often the government makes tax policy by news release. The primary power of this place, based on the long history of parliamentary government, is to approve the taxation, the ways and means of the crown. However, over and over again very significant amendments are made to tax law by news releases coming out from either the Department of Finance or the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency.
For instance, we will see in this section a number of administrative interpretations being clarified but which were given the effective force of law by mandate of news releases from bureaucrats months if not years ago.
I want to say on the record that it is time we ended this usurpation of parliamentary authority and brought it back to this place through those kinds of amendments. All in all, we in the opposition have a tendency to be opposed to any amendments to the GST on the clear premise that the government promised to abolish it, not tinker with it.
Having said that, we do support some of the incremental improvements in the bill but we believe it could go a lot further in improving the administration of the GST.
On behalf of the opposition I want to say that until the government finally begins to truly understand—and not just mouth platitudes about it—the negative impact that its tax policies have on our economy, our families and our small businesses, this opposition will continue to be a clarion voice for tax relief and tax reform. While we support elements of legislation like this, we will not support the continuation of an overly onerous, burdensome and destructive tax regime which the government uses to finance its overspending and its wasteful and inefficient practices.
