Jason Kenney

[Taxation, November 18th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, if the provinces are interested it must be something like the Prime Minister's homeless friends because they do not exist. They are a figment of his imagination. I would like the minister to name one province which is committed to participating in this IRS style tax agency.

Why is the minister pressing ahead when he has been criss-crossing this country and not a single province has indicated its willingness to support this plan? The provinces in fact are going in the other direction. Why does the minister not stop, take a minute and consult with Canadians before he makes a terrible mistake in adopting an unaccountable IRS style tax agency?

[Taxation, November 18th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, this government's planned proposal to replace Revenue Canada with a mega tax agency is unnecessary, expensive and could become an unaccountable mess like the IRS in the United States.

I have a question for the revenue minister. If the public service hates it, if the provinces do not want it, if Canadians do not want it, why is the government imposing an American style tax collection agency on this country?

[Canada Small Business Financing Act, November 17th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in debate today on Bill C-53 with respect to Motion No. 1 which was put forward by my hon. colleague from Mercier, that the purpose of this act is to increase the availability of financing of small businesses, which would not otherwise have access to financing.

Let me make it perfectly clear at the outset what my caucus colleagues have already said. The official opposition strongly supports small business, the principal job creator and generator of economic activity in this country. There is simply no doubt about that.

I suspect that probably a majority of the members of our caucus have had direct involvement in small business or are small business people and understand the kinds of challenges that small business people face. I think it is something members of all parties in this House share. We all understand that small and medium enterprises without a doubt over the past 20 some years have been by far the major creators of jobs, prosperity and incomes.

The question we must really ask ourselves is what is the most effective policy that the government can adopt to promote the growth of small business. There are really two basic approaches that can be taken.

The first approach is for the state to intervene and to take money away from people through taxation and in so doing to destroy their profit incentive, to destroy their efficiency and to destroy the potential creation of jobs in order to finance government support schemes like the Small Business Loans Act loan guarantees. That is one approach. It is an approach which the Liberal Party, the government opposite, generally supports.

The other approach is to say that government ought not to be in the business of picking winners and losers but that business people ought to be allowed to do business without extensive interference by government by means of taxation, regulation and legislation.

That is essentially the approach that we in the official opposition support. For that reason we oppose the amendment and the bill because they go in exactly the wrong direction.

What we need rather than sarcastic comments from colleagues opposite is a vigorous policy which will unleash the unrealized dynamism of small and medium Canadian entrepreneurs. There are hundreds of thousands of jobs waiting to be created in Canada today if only federal and other levels of government would get out of the way of people who are struggling to create employment through small business but are unable to because we face some of the highest tax rates in the developed world.

We face them in payroll taxes, in capital gains taxes, business taxes and property taxes. Canada has among the highest property tax rates as a percentage of our GDP in the entire OECD. We face them in income taxes. We face them in sales taxes.

Ask small business persons in the country and they will say they have become for all intents and purposes unpaid tax collectors for the government. They have to collect the GST. They have to fill out endless forms for the same GST which the government said it would abolish.

Give them tax relief so that small business persons realize benefits after having spent their entire lives risking capital, their life savings, pouring endless and incalculable value of sweat equity into their businesses. The government at the end of the day tells them that after all they have poured into the businesses, all the jobs created, all the risks taken it will take one third or more of the capital gains of small businesses through the pernicious, destructive, job killing capital gains tax.

If the government were really concerned about creating a growth environment for small business and job growth through small businesses it would stop playing around the margins with this kind of state intervention, this kind of $1.5 billion taxpayer liability through the small business loans guarantees. It would stop bureaucrats picking who are going to be winners and losers in the marketplace and it would let entrepreneurs be entrepreneurs, invest in their businesses and reap the rewards. Imagine that.

Let me utter a word which may be unparliamentary, profit. It is a good thing. I know my colleagues opposite think it is a dirty word. They do not like the words profit driven. That sounds like an American concept. We in Canada do not like profits. We like the bureaucrats absorbing those profits because members opposite think they know better how to spend those profits accumulated through taxes than do the small business people who pay them.

This is the choice we face in the bill and in all the fiscal decisions we make here. It is whether the bureaucrats and politicians know better how to pick and choose winners and losers among the hundreds of thousands of small businesses in the country or whether consumers and business people themselves know best how to create the conditions for growth.

We say unequivocally and unapologetically that we like the profit motive. It creates wealth, businesses and jobs, and we know that the kind of tax burden imposed by these tax happy, tax and spend Liberals is exactly what destroys the conditions for growth.

I would like to speak to many of the interest groups that represent small business and various associations that appeared before committee in support of Bill C-53. Let me be honest. It is a constituency I am very sympathetic toward. Many of them appear before committee and parliamentarians and say they want tax relief but they also want all these loans, grants, guarantees and diversification programs.

My message to those advocates of small business is for them to make a choice. Do they prefer tax relief as the principal policy for small business or government intervention?

After all my experience and after having spoken with thousands of small business people, I believe that ten times out of ten the majority of small entrepreneurs will say they prefer tax relief to government intervention, the kind contemplated in this bill. There is no doubt about it. We cannot have both.

The small business community and its institutional voices need to choose which direction they want to take. The only way parliament and the government will deliver the meaningful, creative and dynamic tax relief we need is if we get government spending under control. The place to start and the first element of government spending which should be reduced or eliminated is direct government support for business, whether it is through grants or loans or guarantees. Maybe it is radical but I believe that a dollar left in the hands of a small business person is several times more effective, efficient and productive than that dollar taken away, circulated through a costly bureaucracy and spent by a bunch of politicians.

We have to look at the experience in the country to see which basic policy option works. We need to look at the experience of my home province of Alberta where we have maintained the lowest tax rates, no sales tax, the lowest small business tax rates and the lowest income taxes. We have unbelievable economic growth there. Let us cast our eyes to some of the eastern provinces where there have been very high degrees of government intervention, subsidies, loans, grants and guarantees for businesses. What we see are stagnant growth rates and high levels of unemployment.

The economic record is there for all to see. That is why I call on all my colleagues to oppose this motion and this bill.

[Committees Of The House, November 4th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask for unanimous consent of the House that the 13th report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs presented on Wednesday, November 26, 1997 be concurred in.

(Motion agreed to)

[Transit Passes, November 4th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I seek the unanimous consent of the House to move concurrence in a committee report.

[Transit Passes, November 4th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in debate on Motion No. 360, put so eloquently this evening by my colleague from Kamloops, that in the opinion of the House the government should consider making employer provided transit passes an income tax benefit.

At the outset I sincerely commend my colleague from Kamloops for his very thoughtful presentation and initiative. He has brought before us a very considered approach to providing an incentive for a responsible transportation policy which would have a positive impact on the environment.

It is refreshing to find that the first government speaker following the member from Kamloops was not the obligatory parliamentary secretary standing up to read a speech written by bureaucrats opposing a good initiative from a private member. It is encouraging to see that pattern broken this evening.

I am open to supporting this motion, but I have several significant concerns which I will outline and which I hope my hon. colleague will have an opportunity to respond to.

My principal concern is that tax policy should be neutral. One of the guiding principles of good sound tax policy should be neutrality and we ought not to design the tax code as a lever of social engineering. We ought not to try to force or create false incentives for people to act in a way we think is desirable.

To do so is really beyond the principal purpose of the tax system which is simply to raise revenues in the most efficient way possible to finance the needs of government.

Instead of a tax system free of exemptions, deductions and credits of the nature proposed this evening, I prefer one which is much lower overall, with much more generous basic personal and spousal exemptions which in effect would allow people to make decisions about how they spend their money and conduct their lives by themselves, according to their own priorities and not the priorities of politicians and bureaucrats.

I have a deep theoretical reservation to supporting initiatives of this nature. I was the only member of my party to vote against a private member's bill which came before us earlier this year from my hon. colleague from Portage—Lisgar to allow for the deductibility of mortgage interest payments on principal residences. While this would have been an enormously popular incentive for people to invest in home ownership, it occurred to me that it would have been an enormous addition of a complex, special credit in the tax system which would make it even more costly to administer and would again create these kinds of false incentives rather than letting people face a completely neutral tax system.

I opposed the motion for mortgage deductibility then and that is why I have some serious theoretical concerns with this kind of exemption.

I would much prefer to completely overhaul the Byzantine, 1,300 page Income Tax Act which we have constructed in this parliament over the past 80 years since the temporary Income Tax Act of 1917 by adopting some kind of simple, pure, clean, neutral, flat or single tax similar to that proposed by the hon. member for Broadview—Greenwood in his various versions of a single tax or in some of the propositions for a flat tax offered by members of my own party.

This kind of tax reform would allow Canadians to decide whether or not they are going to use their after tax income on transit passes, on parking or on other priorities. It would not create a government incentive for social engineering.

I have other questions that relate to other potential objections that I hope the hon. member will have a chance to respond to.

It occurs to me that the adoption of employer provided transit passes and the tax exemption thereon would create an inequity between those who have these transit passes provided by their employers and those who do not have such a privilege, those who by circumstance of their employment agreements have to pay for their transportation costs individually through after tax dollars.

It seems to me that this would weight the playing field and reduce the neutrality of the tax system in favour of some taxpayers who happen to have employers who subsidize their transportation against those who would end up having to pay after tax dollars for their transportation. That is the kind of inequity that arises when we play with the neutrality of the tax code.

I am also concerned with the cost issue. The national task force to promote employer provided, tax exempt transit passes estimates, in its very thoughtful submission to the House of Commons finance committee, that the potential gross loss in federal revenue through this measure would be between $18 million and $28 million.

This contradicts quite significantly the estimate made by the Department of Finance which suggests that the cost to the public treasury in reduced revenues would be as much as $140 million.

I do not think any of us in this House are capable of examining in detail the assumptions used in these competing estimates, but there is such an enormous disparity between the $18 million estimate and the $140 million estimate provided by the Department of Finance that I think before we support this motion we really ought to have a clearer and better answer to the question of how much potential revenue we are prepared to forgo through the adoption of this exemption.

Let me also say that there is another potential inequity, in that many millions of Canadians do not live in urban areas and do not have access to or need major transit systems and would not use a bus or a subway system. I can imagine many people who drive to work through necessity, whether they live and work in the suburbs, in smaller towns or in rural communities. These are people who have to pay for their own personal transportation costs through after tax dollars. It seems to me, again, inequitable to suggest that only those who live in major urban centres and have access to major urban transit systems would get a special tax exemption.

For all of those reasons I would like to reserve judgment on this motion, although I am very open to supporting it. I hope we can get clearer information on the potential cost to be incurred by the treasury. I also think that we should look more closely at the question of the potential inequities that this kind of special tax exemption would create.

In closing, I would call on all members to work toward a simpler, less costly, more efficient and more neutral tax system, with a much lower overall burden, which would allow Canadians themselves to make decisions about how they will spend their after tax dollars, rather than we as parliamentarians making those decisions for them through the adoption of special incentives of this nature.

[Petitions, November 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to present a petition signed by some 32 residents of Calgary and other parts of Alberta.

They are calling on parliament to take note of the need to reform our laws with respect to child support payments and child custody to ensure that all parents are guaranteed access to their children and that non-adversarial means be used wherever possible in mediating co-parenting situations.

[United Alternative, November 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, last May the Leader of the Opposition invited supporters of different federal and provincial parties to come together at a national assembly to discuss forming a united alternative to Liberal misgovernment.

A poll released just today adds strength to this initiative by offering proof that Canadians want a strong united alternative to the top down, tax and spend, soft on crime, Ottawa knows best mentality of this increasingly arrogant government.

According to the National Post -Compass survey, 36% of Canadians would vote for a united alternative for fiscal and social responsibility, democratic accountability and strengthened unity through rebalanced powers. Add to this base another 30% of Canadians who say they will consider voting for a national alternative that shares their values and this spells big trouble for the Liberals who won the last election with only 38% of the vote and lost it in nine out of ten provinces.

That is why I wish once again to extend to all Canadians, especially my friends in the Conservative caucus, an invitation to join like-minded Canadians in helping to shape a broad political movement that can govern Canada leading into the 21st century.

[Calgary Declaration, November 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate being able to rise in support of the motion moved by my esteemed colleague from Calgary West and seconded by my learned colleague from Edmonton—Strathcona. It is an important motion that reads:

That a humble address be presented to His Excellency praying that he will cause to be laid before this House copies of all documents, reports, minutes of meetings, notes, memos, polls and correspondence relating to the Calgary declaration.

This is a very sensible motion, as my colleague said, calling for transparency with respect to an important development on the national unity file. It is particularly important because several times my colleague from Edmonton—Strathcona has risen in his place to ask members of the government cabinet at question time what exactly they plan to do, if anything, to consult Canadians on the Calgary declaration.

I believe the maiden question put by my colleague from Edmonton—Strathcona in this place last year related to that point: what, if anything, the federal government was doing to consult Canadians about the Calgary declaration given that at least nine of the ten provincial governments engaged in fairly exhaustive and in depth consultation processes.

Unfortunately we have yet to receive, notwithstanding several efforts, a clear response to that very simple question. It seems the federal government has no plan to consult Canadians about the future reform of the federation and potential amendments to our Constitution.

We find this very worrisome. If Canadians have learned one thing over the past 15 years of politics surrounding national unity and the Constitution, it is that a behind closed doors top down approach to constitutional reform is rejected out of hand by Canadians.

We saw this in the approach the Liberal government took to the repatriation of the Constitution and the adoption of the charter of rights in 1982 by limiting debate to a small circle of political elite within the government. That decision did not carry the support of the majority of Canadians in a majority of regions. It ended up helping to create ongoing constitutional discord because it did not embrace the heartfelt concerns of Quebecers with respect to repatriation.

Similarly in the efforts made by the federal government in 1986 through 1990 to adopt the Meech Lake accord we saw the same kind of top down, secretive, behind closed doors, executive federalism. It was elite brokerage politics which left ordinary Canadians on the outside of the information loop and left politicians alone on the inside. This led to enormous public cynicism about the Meech Lake accord, which ultimately was its undoing.

That in itself led to a revival of separatist sentiments in the province of Quebec, which then led to the sad history of the Charlottetown accord in 1982. The then federal government finally realized that leaving Canadians on the outside of the process and maintaining secrecy about negotiations and consultations on unity and constitutional reform was no longer acceptable. That question was put to Canadians in the referendum held in October 1992. We know of the remarkable historic result. Canadians overwhelmingly rejected the jerry-built approach to special status in constitution making and interest group politics found in the Charlottetown accord.

We started this process once more with the Calgary declaration. Nine of the ten premiers gathered in good faith in Calgary in the summer of 1997 to examine ways to once again begin as a federation to talk about the need for reform of our constitutional framework to include all Canadians, including westerners and Quebecers. The premiers came up with the five principles of the Calgary declaration as a framework for discussion. They encouraged their various legislatures to engage in an exhaustive process of consultation.

All those provincial governments went to their constituencies. Through a variety of techniques which included public opinion polls, focus groups, town hall meetings, information circulars, surveys, brochures, Internet sites and special committees, each provincial government reviewed the input from the public and each premier reported back to their fellow premiers.

We had the beginning of a bottom up process for reform of the federation and the Constitution. Unfortunately no similar effort was undertaken by the federal government. When my colleague for Edmonton—Strathcona asked the government whether it intended to engage in such consultations in the province of Quebec, the answer was no. There was no such plan.

We as the official opposition assumed the responsibility to consult with Quebecers. We mailed an information circular on the Calgary declaration to a quarter of a million homes in the province of Quebec seeking input on the declaration. We conducted a poll and held public meetings. We generally did whatever we could within our limited resources to get public feedback.

This is why we have put the motion before the House. We feel the government has been cavalier and indifferent at best to the Calgary declaration, which by no means is perfect. It includes elements of deep concern to many Canadians. Many people are concerned that the unique characteristics clause may be some day interpreted to confer special legal privileges on a particular province.

Notwithstanding, most Canadians support the general direction of consultation, the principle of equality of provinces under the law and the principle of rebalancing powers as the premiers further manifested in their social union agreement in Saskatoon earlier this year.

The motion comes before this place simply to ask the government to show the House and to show all Canadians what, if anything, it has done, said and thought about or how it has consulted Canadians in the way of public opinion polls and other mechanisms with respect to the Calgary declaration.

It is important. This should not just be regarded as some sleepy motion. It is critically important that we get the process right at the front end, that we do not once again find ourselves as a country in the backwaters of the constitutional elite brokerage deal making that occurred at Meech Lake and Charlottetown. It is absolutely critical that we know exactly what the Government of Canada has done, said and plans to do with respect to the constitutional future of the country and reform of the federation.

While speaking to the motion I would also point out it is unfortunate, in seeking access to critical information of this nature, that increasingly Canadians and parliamentarians find the legal framework for access to information far too inaccessible. The Access to Information Act passed in parliament in the 1970s has become a joke in terms of guaranteeing real access to government information. It is well known that the bureaucracy has learned how not to comply with the spirit of the act but has managed to twist the letter of the law to its advantage to keep secret government information which should be public.

It is not just a partisan opinion that I express. Some members of the government opposite, including the hon. member for Hamilton—Wentworth, have put forward a comprehensive private member's bill before us to completely overhaul and reform the access to information law so that it will once again put Canada on the leading edge of governments with respect to openness, transparency and accountability. This is an important principle. As someone who used to work at an advocacy organization seeking information on government spending I can say that time after time—

[Gasoline, October 26th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, we can mark that down as another Liberal evasion to a straight question. Let me try again with this minister.

I asked her who was right, the member or she. Industry experts say it will be a lot more than a cent a litre but my question is we have a respected Liberal member here saying it will be 15 cents a litre, so who is right? Is the minister saying that Liberal member is wrong, yes or no?