Jason Kenney

[Motions For Papers, March 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, on December 8 of last year I placed a question on the order paper with respect to the taxation of tobacco products in Nova Scotia.

Some three months have elapsed since it was placed on the order paper. I would like to request that the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Government House Leader expedite the response to this order paper question.

[Taxation, March 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member of the Liberal cabinet whether or not she is going to apologize to stay at home parents for characterizing them demeaningly as being barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen? Will she apologize for her colleague from Vancouver—Kingsway who said that they were taking the easy way out? Will she apologize for the member for St. Paul who said that they were characterized as elite white women, or will she continue to perpetuate these slurs and these stereotypes?

[Taxation, March 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the finance minister keeps talking about committee hearings on family tax credits.

I have been at hearings of the finance committee where this issue was raised by stay at home parents. Does anyone know how they were received by Liberal members? The member for Vancouver Kingsway told them that they were taking the easy way out. The member for St. Paul's characterized them as elite white women.

We now hear the Secretary of State for the Status of Women saying that they are barefoot and pregnant. Does the Minister of Finance agree with these demeaning characterizations of stay at home parents?

[Taxation, March 9th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the minister responsible for the status of women followed the lead of the junior finance minister and suggested that single income families are actually further ahead under the current system, ahead of dual income families.

I have a very simple question. Does the minister for the status of women not recognize the opportunity cost and the forgone income absorbed by single income families? When she said that we should consider raising the child care tax deduction, does that represent the policy of her department and the government? Will that be the policy reflected in the report of the finance committee hearings?

[Taxation, March 9th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the finance minister, whom I have considerable respect for, knows that is a lot of nonsense. He knows that what we are talking about here is the discriminatory impact of the child care tax deduction which says that people who pay someone else to raise their kids get to claim a $7,000 deduction, while those who give up a second income get to claim precisely zero.

Yesterday the minister for the status of women said that single income families are actually ahead of double income families. Does she not recognize the opportunity costs, the forgone income and the lower standard of living of single income families who do what they think is best by their families?

Will this government tell the finance committee to increase the up—

[Taxation, March 9th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the position of the Reform Party is that we ought to raise the spousal exemption to be equivalent to the basic personal exemption so that there are no second class citizens in this country, and that we should take the discriminatory child care tax deduction and turn it into a refundable credit available to all parents regardless of their child care choices.

Yesterday the minister for the status of women said that we should actually increase the child care tax deduction to increase the unfairness against single income families. Is this the lead the government is giving the finance committee, to increase the unfairness against single income families?

[Taxation, March 9th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, not surprisingly, the Minister of Finance has been misrepresenting the Reform position on this issue today.

[Taxation, March 8th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, last week's gaffe by the junior finance minister who said that stay at home parents really do not work was just an honest reflection of the government's tax policy which treats at home parents like second class citizens and which, in the words of the C. D. Howe Institute, accords to children the same value as disposable consumer items.

His comments were all too reminiscent of statements made by other Liberal MPs such as the MP for Vancouver Kingsway who said that stay at home parents were “taking the easy way out”, or the member for St. Paul's who said that full time moms were “just elite white women”, or the last Liberal candidate for Calgary West who characterized stay at home parents as “barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen”.

These hurtful stereotypes would not be so cruel if they were not reflective of a tax code which penalizes parents that make real economic sacrifices to do what they believe is best for their kids.

Tomorrow we will get a chance to end this discrimination against single income families whose tax bills are 60% to 100% higher than their dual income counterparts. Tomorrow all those Liberal members who profess a commitment to the family will have an opportunity to put themselves on the record.

Will they bend to the whip or will they do what is right? Canadians are watching.

[Division No. 327, March 8th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, to clarify, the hon. member for Kamloops suggested that the Reform Party would like to decimate the Department of Canadian Heritage. It is absolutely true that we want to cut substantially the waste in the kind of programs administered by the Minister of Canadian Heritage.

We believe that Canadian heritage and our cultural identity can better be protected by Canadians than by bureaucrats and politicians in Ottawa. We believe that free flag giveaways and handouts to interest groups seeking more cash are exactly what is wrong with this government. We think the huge subsidies to bloated crown corporations with their enormous waste and bureaucracy and middle management produce very little in terms of concrete results.

Those things are very low in the priorities of Canadians with respect to public spending. We do not apologize for a moment in saying that tax relief and health care for hard pressed Canadian families come as higher priorities to Canadians than grants and handouts to interest groups through Canadian heritage. We are proud to be in line with the public's priorities in this respect.

I stand today to speak to this latest folly by the Minister of Canadian Heritage. She was a very effective member of the opposition but she really has become something of an embarrassment to the cabinet, the government and I submit, this parliament when it comes to the kind of extremism in policy she promotes.

Bill C-55 is an effort to draw Canada back decades into the era of protectionism, an era when countries looked inward instead of outward, an era that is reflective of the kind of campaign the Minister of Canadian Heritage led against the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1988 election.

When the Liberal Party sat on the opposition benches, it told Canadians that the free trade agreement would be the end of Canada, that it would be the end of our economic sovereignty and hence the end of our cultural and political sovereignty. I remember the cries of Chicken Little from the Minister of Canadian Heritage and her colleagues at that time suggesting that to allow free trade between these two great partners, Canada and the United States, would lead to economic disaster. As we all know that has been proven to be completely specious.

The one element driving Canadian economic growth over the past decade overwhelmingly has been our bilateral trade with the United States, a country with which we conduct some 80% of our trade, about $1 billion in trade a day. Bill C-55 seeks to address one very small element of the huge $350 billion plus annual exchange between these two countries, the $400 million magazine advertising market.

I must tell members that since deciding to run and since being elected on June 2, 1997 I have spoken with literally thousands of people in my constituency as well as thousands of others outside my constituency, going door to door, meeting people at town hall meetings, listening to their concerns, speaking on open line radio shows, and I can say that of the thousands of conversations I have had with Canadians not a single one has ever suggested to me that they had the least bit of concern about the sovereignty of the Canadian magazine industry.

I cannot recall a single ordinary Canadian outside the strange and twisted political hothouse of Ottawa and the Liberal caucus who suggested that we need to move decades backwards in economic policy to enshrine protectionism, as in this bill, in order to create restrictions on freedom of speech by penalizing American publications which accept Canadian advertising. Not a single Canadian has said that to me.

I look at the priorities that we face as a country, priorities I hear about every single day from ordinary Canadians. Priorities such as the need to put health care first in our public spending. Priorities such as the need for tax relief for working families. Priorities such as the need to democratize this institution to make Canada a more vibrant and representative democracy. Those are the priorities Canadians are concerned with. When I look at the government's legislative agenda I do not see those priorities addressed anywhere. Instead I see Bill C-55 which deals with an obscure concern of a relatively small interest group of enterprises.

What I have heard from my constituents is outrage that this government is proceeding with this bill. Calgary, which I represent in part, has a large and growing plastics industry. Our American friends, through their trade representative Madam Barshefsky, have indicated that the plastics industry in Canada could be subject to countervailing measures were we to adopt and implement the measures proposed before us in this bill. What would that mean? It could mean potentially devastating tariffs for the plastics industry and for people who reside in my constituency.

I have not had a single one of my constituents call me to ask for this kind of protectionism. But many have called to say “Please do not let this crazy effort by the minister of heritage destroy our jobs and impair our industry by provoking the Americans into a bilateral trade war”.

This bill is plainly and simply irresponsible. The government claims it is necessary. It throws twisted and completely inaccurate statistics to the effect that 80% of magazines on the stand are foreign magazines, implying therefore that the Canadian magazine industry is a marginal part of what is consumed by readers, which is completely irrelevant because 75% of all magazines read in Canada are received by controlled or paid circulation and about 94% of that segment of the market is Canadian owned. That is not an issue.

But even if it were, I submit that it is a question of freedom. I suggest that we need in examining legislation to make reference to first principles. The first principle that I would propose for all government action would be to maximize freedom; namely, liberty. I know it is a dirty word. It sounds like an American word to some of my friends opposite. But I happen to think that liberty is a concept deeply rooted in our parliamentary heritage.

I think Canadians ought to have the freedom, the liberty, to choose which magazines they read, which publications and periodicals they patronize, without having the government decide for them which of those magazines is acceptable and in which format.

It is really the classic 1960s retro, back to the past, protectionistic, inward looking, parochial liberalism which is rearing its ugly head in this bill.

I support the amendments put forward by my colleague from Dauphin—Swan River which seek to delete the various clauses of this bill because I propose that this is an assault on the freedom of Canadians. Why do we not let Canadians decide for themselves what they want to read? If a Canadian wants to order the split-run version of Sports Illustrated , why do we not let them buy and read it? Where is the harm in that? What damage is done to the Canadian cultural fabric by allowing people to exercise their free choices in deciding what they will consume in terms of reading materials? I simply cannot grasp the rationale for this bill.

To try to impose government sanctions essentially on those who would consume such materials, what we are doing is not only violating their freedom of expression, we are clearly threatening a significant portion of our economy and our economic growth.

I have heard no compelling response from this government to the very serious threats of our American allies to respond through negative tariffs and countervailing measures if we proceed with this bill as the government now seems to be intent on doing.

I know that this bill is very similar in form and content to similar legislation which was passed in the last parliament but which was found by the World Trade Organization to be contrary to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. What I can say is that Canada as a trading country ought to be a champion of free trade. We ought to clearly abide by the rulings of the World Trade Organization. We ought not to be trying in bills such as this to skirt around the rulings of the WTO and other dispute resolution bodies. By doing so we are impugning our credibility as a trading nation in the community of nations. For that reason I think we are doing even greater international damage to our economic base as a trading and exporting nation.

For all of those reasons I, on behalf of my constituents, will vigorously oppose this bill. Notwithstanding the fact that the government is ramming it through this House with a closure motion today, I will oppose this bill and support the amendments of my colleague from Dauphin—Swan River.

[Taxation, March 5th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, if the minister wants to talk about progressive taxation then he has to explain to $30,000 income families why they are facing a 70% marginal rate with his vicious clawback of the renamed family allowance.

I look at the figures in his own budget which say that a family with $35,000 with a single earner is paying $1,700 in taxes, $2,200 more than what a dual earner family would play. That is a low income family.

Studies are fine. Talk is cheap. When will the government act? When will it address the concerns of single income families and provide the kind of equity they have been demanding for years?