Jason Kenney

[Hepatitis C, May 1st, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, this brilliant Minister of Health has advised us there are four volumes—

[Income Tax Act, April 30th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to rise to debate Bill C-244. I commend my hon. colleague from Mississauga South who is probably the most distinguished champion of fairness for families in the tax code. He has a noble record of promoting the importance of family in Canadian public policy as the basic institution of our society. This bill is one more effort to his credit. It follows on the successful passage of his private member's Motion No. 33 in the previous parliament which also sought to change the treatment of two parent families under the income tax code.

I and most of my colleagues from the official opposition support the intention of this bill. As a general rule I oppose proposed amendments to the Income Tax Act because I believe our 1,300 page tax code is too complex as it is. I believe in principle that tax policy ought to be neutral with respect to the choices that people make and that it ought not to be a vehicle for social or economic engineering or central planning. To a very large extent I would submit that the present tax code has become precisely that.

The hon. member for Mississauga South and I have had, and I am sure will continue to have, many provocative debates about the advisability of adopting a flat tax model which would replace the 1,300 page tax code and the several hundred pages of attendant regulations with a simple, pure, neutral and clean flat tax system. That is what I would prefer.

The other night I voted against the private member's bill of one of my colleagues, a bill which sought to provide for the deductibility of mortgage interest payments for the principal residence of taxpayers. I oppose measures of this nature in principle. I seek to remove the complexity from the tax code, not add to it.

Having said that, the current tax code in all its complexity is scandalously weighted against the most important institution in society and that is the natural family, the nuclear family, the traditional family, call it what we will, apply whatever adjective we want. The fact is the best social program is a strong family. The best school and day care is a strong family. The best day care workers and teachers are good parents who have time to spend with their children.

For too long legislators, bureaucrats and regulators have sought to diminish the role of that nuclear family. We have done so by creating a tax code which actively discriminates against the choices of many families that opt to have one of two parents stay at home to raise their children.

The hon. member for Mississauga South gave what I thought was insightful background data on the remarkable importance of parental bonding in the rearing of children in their early years. It almost could be taken as a given that the more parental contact there is in the early years of childhood, the better the child rearing experience, the better the child is as he or she matures, the better the family is, the better society is.

We ought to seek at the very least to create a tax code which treats families that seek to maximize their time with their children neutrally or at the very least, as someone proposed, we ought to make amendments to the tax code to positively discriminate in favour of such families.

In the current tax code there are no provisions for income splitting. There are no provisions which recognize that millions of Canadian two parent families give up a second income, forgo that extra household revenue in order to make the economic sacrifices necessary to spend more time with their children.

What do those families get in return from the tax system? They get utterly no recognition of making what is a responsible, I would argue the most responsible, social and familial choice. In fact, if families choose, as many do for legitimate and understandable reasons, to contract the services of a third party day care provider, the government says they are permitted to write the costs of those third party child care expenses off against their taxes through the child care tax deduction. What this does in effect is force the one income two parent family to subsidize through its taxes the choices of two income families that opt to raise their children through third party day care. This is completely irrational.

I truly feel for the many hundreds of thousands of families that feel this discrimination every day and are frustrated by it.

Bill C-244 would seek to mitigate part of this unfairness by permitting one spouse to deduct payments from another spouse for the raising of children at home. This would essentially allow families to contract for child care services in the house as opposed to doing it as a third party contract with some profit or non-profit day care operator.

A wife who works in the workforce can say to the husband “You are going to be my day care provider for our children. I am going to pay you to stay at home to raise the children and you are not going to be penalized”, or vice versa. It does not matter which gender is involved. What matters is the principle that families ought not to be discriminated against for making choices they believe are right.

During the election campaign as I went around my broadly middle class constituency with many young families, I found no issue that resonated more strongly with many of my constituents than the need for tax fairness for those families. These measures would go a long way toward providing that kind of fairness.

If I could use this opportunity to make an advertisement for the policy proposed by the Reform Party in this respect, we have proposed converting the child care tax deduction into a refundable credit that would be available to all families, to all parents. This refundable credit would, in a sense, be a subsidy for low income families that currently cannot take advantage of the deduction because many families do not have sufficient income against which to apply the deduction.

A refundable credit would provide recognition of the at home child care implicit expenses of many low income families. They would get a credit for it and families all the way up the income scale would get the same kind of recognition which they now are denied unless they pay for third party child care.

All members of this House surely must recognize that for too long we have allowed our laws to discriminate against the basic institution of our society. It is time to act. For too long too many governments, this government, the preceding government and the government before that, built up a tax code that made the wrong choices about families.

I know many members here agree with me. It is time for us to work together in a non-partisan way to see that legislation like Bill C-244 is enacted so that we can allow Canadian families to make the choices they believe are best for their children.

[Justice, April 30th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, this week one of Canada's leading crime fighters became the latest victim of the infamous Young Offenders Act.

Bob Runciman resigned as Ontario solicitor general on Monday because his government quoted the mother of a young offender in its throne speech, thanking Premier Mike Harris' boot camp initiative for “giving us back our son”.

Bob Runciman is a man of unimpeachable integrity who has distinguished himself through his tireless campaign for law and order and his determination to put young offenders back on the right track.

It is a bizarre irony that the same Liberal Young Offenders Act which allows many young criminals to go unpunished has marked the reputation of an honourable man such as Bob Runciman.

If any minister should resign over the debacle of the Young Offenders Act it should be the federal Minister of Justice for her failure to introduce amendments which would reintroduce justice into the concept of the youth justice system.

[Saskatchewan Party, April 22nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, this week marked a fresh start for the people of Saskatchewan and the beginning of the end of the NDP stranglehold on that great province. That is because a new free-enterprise coalition was born with the election of Elwin Hermanson to the leadership of the Saskatchewan Party on Monday.

As a distinguished former member of this place, a former House leader and one of the founding members of the Reform movement, Elwin is a man of integrity who will help to bring new hope to the people of Saskatchewan, especially the young people who have for too long been driven out of that province by the tax and spend government-knows-best ideology of the NDP.

Elwin's leadership in the Saskatchewan Party is concrete evidence that common sense Canadians can put aside their partisan differences to advance a united alternative based on fiscal responsibility, strong families and democratic reforms.

On behalf of all members of this House, we extend our best wishes to the new leader of the opposition and the next premier of Saskatchewan, Elwin Hermanson.

[Standing Orders And Procedure, April 21st, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to debate the standing orders of the House.

I believe I am the first rookie member of the class of the 1997 election to speak to this debate. I am glad I have the opportunity to do so. One of the reasons I stood for election to this venerable institution was precisely because of my passionate concern about the state of democracy in Canada.

I would characterize the state of democracy in Canada as a crisis. Democracy in Canada, as democracy is conventionally understood, is imperilled not by any great spectre of tyranny or state totalitarianism but rather by the slow, creeping incremental gathering of power and authority by the executive and judicial branches of government at the expense of the legislative branch, the democratic branch, and particularly that branch of government as manifest in the House of Commons.

The history of parliament, the history of the development of this institution, reaches back over a millennium. The privileges which we here exercise, the right to speak on behalf of our constituents, on behalf of the subjects of the Queen, on behalf of the citizens of our country, are duties and privileges which people have shed blood to secure. Battles have been fought, wars have been waged and men and women have died in order to secure the liberties which this institution represents.

That conflict which has carried over a period of centuries was really a conflict between the authority of the executive branch of government and the democratic privileges and liberties of common people as represented in their democratic assembly.

As a first time member of this place, let me make it absolutely clear that I have enormous, inexpressible respect for the traditions this place represents. I am a traditionalist. I for instance am a strong supporter of our constitutional monarchy.

However, I support our constitutional monarchy, our institutions and our traditions as embodied in this parliament not for the sake of supporting tradition but because they embody something good. They embody a tradition of ordered liberty and democracy.

This unfortunately is a tradition which is imperilled by the fact that this legislature, a legislature which was created to provide a meaningful check and balance against the authority of the executive branch of government, effectively no longer does so.

As a member from the government said during his remarks, parliament essentially has two functions, that of a legislative body and the accountability function to hold the executive, the governor in council, the cabinet or the government accountable. I think on both those mandates of this place we no longer exercise the powers of an effective legislature.

I submit that the standing orders of this House have in a sense removed any meaningful role from this place and from members of Parliament as real legislators, people who can exercise the authority granted to us by our constituents within our constitutional framework to do the business of democracy here.

It has become a truism in this country to refer to our form of government as one of electing five year, temporary dictatorships. That is not just the words of partisans in the heat of debate, that is a sentiment expressed by many eminent political scientists, jurists and members of this place both now and in the past few decades.

What they see is essentially two devices of the standing orders of this place. The executive branch, the cabinet, the frontbenches, has managed to force members of parliament, essentially on the government side, to surrender any authority which they bring to this place from their constituents. The customs of this House do this by imposing a kind of party discipline unseen anywhere else in the democratic world, a party discipline predicated on the notion that if the government loses a vote on a question on a motion or a bill the government will somehow fall.

Therefore, as the hon. Leader of the Opposition said in debate this morning on this matter, we have created an impossible situation where government backbenchers are forced by their whips, their ministers, the Prime Minister and their government to vote with the government on every single conceivable matter except those occasionally designated to be free votes.

As we all know very well, there is never such a thing as a free vote for members of the government. There is always a party line with the government. Notes are always taken by the whip's office about how members vote. If they hope as a backbench rookie to become a parliamentary secretary or, heaven forbid, a minister, if they hope to get a fruitful position on a committee in which they have interest, then they must toe the party line. It need not be that way.

The other device used to impose this kind of outrageous party discipline is the failure of these standing orders in chapter 11 from sections 86 to 99 to permit private members to conduct legislative business here as legislators.

In a completely arbitrary system 30 bills and motions are drawn out of hundreds that are submitted for consideration. If they are lucky they get an hour of debate. If they are particularly lucky this star chamber of the private members' business committee will select five items to become votable.

So what happens is that very valuable legislative initiatives which are not on the agenda of the government and of the cabinet are almost from the outset given no chance of seeing the light of day. For instance, I have on the order paper a simple private member's bill which would recognize a period of two minutes of silence on Remembrance Day to commemorate our war dead. It is a motion supported by the Royal Canadian Legion and is a motion which I cannot imagine any member of this place in good conscience opposing.

If we amended the standing orders of this place to allow all private members' business to become votable, this motion I am sure would pass with unanimous or near unanimous support in the matter of a few minutes. I do not think it would require an enormous expenditure of the time and resources of this place to pass such a motion. All it takes is the will of the government to amend these standing orders to allow business like that, the business of democratically elected legislators to come before this legislature. That is all that it requires.

Indeed other jurisdictions have the flexibility to allow such business to come before their legislatures. The mother parliament in Westminster passed just such a motion because its private members are indeed legislators who can bring issues forward for consideration to be voted on.

The Queen's Park provincial legislature in Ontario passed a similar motion because its standing orders allow the same kind of flexibility.

We should take a close, long, hard look at our sister parliaments, at Westminster, at the Parliament of New Zealand, at the Parliament of Australia, at the the congressional system of the United States, and there we will see democratically elected representatives operating as representatives, operating as legislators, operating in the best interests of their constituents and not as voting flack for the executive branch of government.

I call on my colleagues opposite to put up or to shut up. We brought forward a concurrence motion in the fall which would have allowed them to make every private members' motion a votable motion. I am sure we will provide them with another opportunity to support that kind of fundamental reform so they can actually begin to represent their constituents.

[Income Tax Act, April 21st, 1998]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-390, an act to amend the Income Tax Act (allowances paid to elected officials).

Mr. Speaker, I move first reading of this bill, an act to amend the Income Tax Act, which would have the effect of removing the special provisions in the income tax code which allow members of Parliament, members of provincial legislatures, members of municipal councils and elected members of school boards to exempt one-third of their regular indemnity or income from taxation.

This bill is being moved as I think it is completely inappropriate for politicians to exempt themselves from the tax laws that they impose on other Canadians.

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

[Banking, April 20th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I do want to know what small businesses are saying. I have heard what they are saying. Two-thirds of the members of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business have said that they are opposed to these bank mergers.

Why is the minister not responding to them? Why is he going to allow financing to become more difficult for small businesses, for terms to become more difficult, to choke economic growth and job creation? Whose side is the finance minister on? The side of small business or the side of the big banks? Of Main Street or Bay Street?

[Banking, April 20th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, Clint Eastwood over there keeps looking at the issue but he does not do anything about it. We now have six big banks. We are looking at four big banks. We might go down to three big banks. How many big banks is enough competition for the minister? One? How many?

[Hepatitis C, April 3rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the principle is that when the government is negligent it should pay. The government was negligent because it had a test that could have screened for hepatitis C as far back as 1981. That is when the German government started using the same test to screen for hepatitis C. The facts are irrefutable.

The government should have screened for hepatitis C as far back as 1981 but it did not. That is called negligence. Some people would call it malpractice. I call it just plain wrong.

Why will the health minister not right this wrong? Why will he not compensate the victims?

[Hepatitis C, April 3rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the health minister is running out of excuses. One of the lame excuses he trots out is that if he compensated all the victims it would open up the legal floodgates. He said that anybody who is sick would sue the government. But that is ridiculous.

These victims are not suing because they are sick. They are suing because the government made them sick. It is government negligence that is to blame. That legal precedent has already been set through the treatment of AIDS victims who are now compensated on the principle of negligence.

Why the two tier standard?