You cut medicare by 35%.
House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2015, with 67% of the vote.
Income Tax Amendments Act, 1997 February 2nd, 1998
You cut medicare by 35%.
Income Tax Amendments Act, 1997 February 2nd, 1998
Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has spoken about the need for stable funding and federal transfers to the provinces to maintain the now new Canada health and social transfer, formerly known as the EPF funding programs.
Could the hon. member comment on the kind of stable funding the government has provided to the provinces over the past four years, stable funding which has resulted in a 35% cut in absolute cash transfers to the provinces, to the two highest priority programs delivered by government, namely health care and education?
I would like him to respond to that record of instability in those transfers in light of the fact the federal government has only cut its own program spending by 9.3% in the same period of time.
Perhaps the hon. member could illuminate the House and Canadians as to why his government felt that program spending by the federal government like the handout programs of the Minister of Canadian Heritage to special interest groups and free flag giveaways and the Minister of Industry's billions of dollars in handouts to corporations, businesses and regional development programs were a higher priority than health transfers to the provinces which rank consistently among Canadians top priorities?
Why are we to believe the government's commitment today to maintain stable funding for these programs when it made a similar promise, in fact the same promise, for stable funding in the 1993 election and broke that promise?
Committees Of The House December 11th, 1997
Madam Speaker, I will not congratulate the government for perpetuating 15 years of shrinking disposable after tax income for the average family. This member talks about lower interest rates. That has not been felt by people even when the member includes the reduction in interest rates. People are coming home with less today than they did 15 years ago, in real terms after tax, because of the tax burden.
Talk about tax fairness, this member is from a shameless party. I remember the prime minister held a confederation dinner with 2,300 people at $500 a plate. He talked about the Reform Party fat cats to people who paid $500 a plate. The same government that talks about fat cats also taxes 7.7 million Canadians who earn under $30,000. It collects over $11 billion from them and takes on average $1,500 per taxpayer just within the income tax system.
People like Mrs. Lee are not feeling anything but the economic pain of 30 years of bigger government. I guess that member just counted himself on the side of those who think they know how to spend that money better than she does.
Committees Of The House December 11th, 1997
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to debate the prebudget motion with respect to the report of the Standing Committee on Finance.
I have had experience with the committee since I sit on it as an associate member and I have attended many of its hearings. I appeared before it in my former capacity as a taxpayer advocate. I know the kinds of people who generally appear before the finance committee tend to be special interest pleaders, people with a particular focus or point to make to the government and legislators. These people are all well intentioned, as are all members of the legislature.
However, it strikes me that all too often the people who appear before the finance committee in its prebudget hearings do not speak about the kind of real economic pain that is being felt by so many Canadians in a very personal and tangible way. Nor is that pain reflected in any way in the actual report of the finance committee which speaks about big issues. It talks about debt, government spending priorities and so forth.
At the end of the day that document and, I would suggest the fiscal and budgetary policies of the government, do not really reflect a compassionate view of the priorities of Canadians.
I have stood many times in this place, even though I am in my first term, to talk about the economic record of this government and to talk about the unemployment rate, the growth and the debt, the record high tax levels and referred to all the statistics. I could do that again but rather than repeat myself I will talk about some absolutely devastating tragic cases of how the fiscal priorities of this government and previous governments have led to so much pain for so many real Canadian families.
For instance, I think of friends of mine, Bernice Lee and her husband Philip, who are relatively recent immigrants to Canada from Hong Kong. Bernice and Philip have four young children and run a small mending and dry cleaning shop in downtown Edmonton in an apartment building where I used to live.
Bernice arrives at work before 6 a.m. North of Edmonton it is often dark until 9 a.m. in the winter days and it can get down to 40 below. She does not have a car. She gets there on public transport, arrives and opens up her shop. By 7 a.m. she is working away. One can walk by her store at 10 p.m. when the wind is howling outside in the winter and she is there alone, working away. Sometimes their children are there late at night, having come there from school because there is no one at home, because neither Bernice nor Philip can afford to stay at home.
Her husband Philip works on the side, I think about a $10 an hour job at a computer plant in Edmonton. He has to work the graveyard shift to add a little more to the family budget just so they can get by.
I asked Bernice one day how their business was going. They bought it the year before. I just noticed that she was working so terribly hard and had nobody there to help her. I asked her how it was going and she looked at me with almost tears in her eyes. I don't think she had really thought about that before. She said they were barely hanging on and she was so disappointed because she said they were working so hard but were hardly able to keep the business going.
The tragedy is this business represents the hopes and dreams and aspirations of this family in coming to Canada. The Canadian dream for them was that by making sacrifices, by working hard, by playing by the rules, they might be able to get ahead and make a better life for their children, but she said to me that she could not understand why a family in their circumstances had the kind of tax burden they had.
She said to me that if it were not for the taxes she had to pay, not just the small business tax and the income taxes and the consumption taxes but also the local property taxes and the provincial taxes, if not for the several thousands of dollars her very small one person business had to pay, she would be able to hire somebody to come in and help her, do the hard manual work of her business. That would allow her, instead of working from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. and beyond, six days a week, to maybe take a day off or to go home at a reasonable hour to spend the evening with her children and her husband. But she does not have that ability because her business does not have the disposable income.
There is a reason it does not have the disposable income. They are getting enough business to do that sort of thing, but they are not able to keep the money they are earning because of the fiscal priorities of the federal government. This is the human impact. People like Bernice are working well into the night. What were formally one income families have become two income families. Children who 30 years ago used to be able to go home to a parental home after school are now going home to empty houses. Why? Both parents are out in the workforce trying to run their businesses, trying to do their jobs to pay for the tax bill, to furnish the funds this government thinks are so absolutely necessary for all the programs and bureaucracy it operates.
I ask the members opposite one basic philosophical question. I used to be a Liberal. Liberals love to pride themselves on their sense of compassion.
Their sense of compassion is to take money away from Bernice Lee, transfer it through some hugely expensive Ottawa bureaucracy and spit it out in other things such as over $5 billion in handouts to major corporations like Bombardier, grants to special interest groups so they can plead here in Ottawa for more money to fuel their special interests, and huge programs that create disincentives to work, to save and to invest in parts of the country. That is what they take money away from Bernice Lee to do.
The question I ask in this debate is a very simple question but a profoundly important one. Do the members of the government really believe they know better how to spend a dollar that Bernice Lee earns than she does? Do they believe that what they would with an extra dollar out of her till will produce a greater social benefit for her and her family than that dollar left in her pocketbook?
Do they believe hiring another bureaucrat to administer another distant program in Ottawa is going to do more for Mrs. Lee than her ability to hire somebody to come in and help her take care of her business? Do they believe that another dollar in another grant program is going to do more for the economy and create jobs than Mrs. Lee can do in her own business? That is what this debate is about.
We can talk about the statistics and the numbers, the 9% unemployment, the 16% youth unemployment, the $100 billion they have added to the debt and the 73% debt to GDP ratio. We can talk about all the statistics and numbers we want and the Liberals are wonderful at doing that. However, when it comes to people, real people and the lives they are living in this country, why can we not afford to change our priorities and to let people like Mrs. Lee keep more of what belongs to them? That is ultimately what this debate is about.
It is about who the money belongs to. Does it belong to the government? Does it belong to the Liberal Party of Canada? Does it belong to politicians and bureaucrats who think they know better how to spend that money than the Canadians who earn it? Does it belong to the people who make sacrifices to raise their families and to leave a better life to their children than they had themselves?
I just want to say, in this debate as we prepare for the budget next year, I hope the members of the government will start to listen to people like Mrs. Lee and will start to put their priorities where they belong by letting people keep a little more of their own money. That really would provide the kind of hope that people like Mrs. Lee need to hang on a little longer to help their families get by.
Taxation December 10th, 1997
Mr. Speaker, had we been in power, the budget would have been balanced two years ago and tax relief would have been delivered by now.
Government revenue has gone up by $26 billion. The minister may call that a tax cut but I call it a tax hike. People like Bernice Lee are struggling today and still have not seen any tax relief. They are struggling to get by. That kind of political answer is not offering help.
When is this minister going to get off his moral high horse and tell people like Bernice Lee what real compassion is? Give her a break. Give her tax relief and give it to her today.
Taxation December 10th, 1997
Mr. Speaker, Bernice Lee runs a dry cleaning and mending shop in Edmonton while her husband Philip works on the side to help raise their four children.
Despite working from six in the morning until well into the night six days a week, she tells me that she is barely able to hang on. She told me that if it were not for the huge taxes that she has to pay, she could hire some extra help to take the pressure off her family.
Could the finance minister look Bernice Lee in the eyes and tell her why he believes that Ottawa knows better how to spend her money than she does?
Kyoto December 9th, 1997
Mr. Speaker, partisan rhetoric like that may have been fine four weeks ago, but right now our delegation is in Kyoto making decisions that will affect the economic livelihood of hundreds of thousands of Canadian families. The government has a responsibility to tell us what the consequences will be.
Will it do that and stop reflecting the responsibility to the opposition when it belongs to the government? What are the costs of the Kyoto deal? How many people will lose their jobs?
Kyoto December 9th, 1997
Mr. Speaker, Canadians cannot believe what they are hearing from the prime minister today. Virtually every major economic think tank in the country projected serious economic costs to all Canadians if we sign on to legally binding emissions limits in the Kyoto deal.
Could the prime minister, instead of avoiding the question again, tell the House whether or not his government has projected the possible economic ramifications of the Kyoto deal? Has it done a study? If so, where is it and will he table it today?
Amendment To The Constitution Of Canada (Newfoundland) December 8th, 1997
Mr. Speaker, I would like to take the opportunity to comment on the comment made by the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. His comment regarding pluralism really strikes at the heart of this matter.
There is a fashionable idea among secular small l liberals, and I do not mean to include the hon. member in that category. The idea among secular liberal intellectuals is that pluralism really consists of removing differences and creating a kind of monolithic secular culture and society unleavened by the differences of world view between people of different faiths.
That is not pluralism. It is by definition monism. It is a monolithic view of society and culture which is not informed by differences of conviction and differences of religious world views. That is precisely what is being assaulted. That authentic pluralism, which the current Newfoundland school system is an exemplar of, is being undermined by this amendment.
I find this most worrisome. In the final paragraph of the report of the special joint committee, it quotes an unnamed Newfoundland school student saying: “I think that is the kind of religious course that we should be offered in schools”—namely a non-denominational one—“ethical choice in comparative religion”—and the committee adds—“because most of the wars and disturbances between countries, most civil wars are brought upon on the basis of different religions”.
I wonder if the hon. member could comment on this. It is just absolute nonsense.
Amendment To The Constitution Of Canada (Newfoundland) December 8th, 1997
Mr. Speaker, first of all with respect to Professor Bayefsky's position as quoted in the majority report, I disagree with her.
Referring to the other two covenants which I referenced, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that education shall be free and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights says that primary education shall be compulsory and available, free to all. In the proper context, it is understood that the right to education is a right that is exercisable by all parents, including poor parents which means through the assistance of the state.
With respect to the second question, no, I do not believe that unanimity is required to make an amendment to the Constitution. I indicated during my remarks that the threshold I thought was necessary to remove rights given to a particular group was that that group clearly and expressly support such removal of rights.
That was not clear by this blanket referendum process which was conducted in Newfoundland. We cannot discern from the results whether or not and which groups gave their assent. We are saying that generally a social majority can alienate the rights of a social minority. That is a troubling precedent which all members of this place should be concerned about not only for the educational rights in their provinces, but the other rights afforded by the Constitution.
I would also like to point out that Professor Bayefsky and other constitutional authorities who appeared before the committee argued persuasively that this amendment would subject the new term 17 to the application of the charter of rights and freedoms and therefore any religious observances or courses which took on anything close to denominational character would be imperilled by the jurisprudence with respect to religious education in both the Zylberberg and civil liberties cases out of Ontario. Essentially these are cases which say that we cannot have publicly funded denominational education under the charter because of its equality rights.
I am glad the hon. member raised the arguments of that esteemed constitutional scholar. They are arguments which give further cause for concern in terms of denominational education.