I never heard you, that's why.
House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2015, with 67% of the vote.
Amendment To The Constitution Of Canada (Quebec) November 17th, 1997
I never heard you, that's why.
Amendment To The Constitution Of Canada (Quebec) November 17th, 1997
Madam Speaker, I was disappointed that the hon. member spent half the time of his speech on this important historic constitutional amendment making cheap, sarcastic, partisan remarks which were entirely out of place in this debate.
There is a time for that kind of thing in this House but this is not one of those times. This hon. member stooped to pretty low levels in his comments.
One of his first comments was that the Reform Party does not understand his Canada. It is not just his country, it is mine as well. It is our country. I understand this history pretty darn well. Before this debate started I read the Confederation debates from cover to cover. I challenge the member or any one of his caucus to go up in a history test anytime with the hon. Leader of the Opposition who probably knows more about the history of this country in the compact of Confederation than virtually any member of this place.
Sir Charles Tupper said in 1896 that without the guarantee of section 93 for the rights of minorities being embodied in the new constitution, we should have been unable to have obtained any confederation whatever.
What the hon. member is seeking to remove from the constitution today in terms of its application to Quebec is the basic compact of Confederation in the words of the supreme court, in the words of Peter Hogg, our pre-eminent constitutional authority. Part of my objection to this amendment is predicated on our history, on our historical recognition of the rights of minorities and the confessional rights of parents to send their children to the educational institution of their choice.
The hon. member talked about consensus. He said that the members of the national assembly were acting responsibly and demonstrating democratic consent. What about the quarter of a million Quebeckers who signed a petition objecting to this amendment? What about the coalition that represents 600,000 Quebeckers that came before the committee objecting to this amendment? What about half the witnesses, francophone witnesses, Catholic witnesses, Protestant witnesses, witnesses with many different backgrounds who are opposed to this amendment because it removes and extinguishes forever a basic constitutional right and a basic civil right, the right of parents to choose the education of their children? What about those witnesses?
They were not represented at the national assembly because it did not have hearings. It would not know what they had to say about this. There has been no debate about the confessionnalité implications of the removal of section 93. And this member preens on members of Parliament acting responsibly.
I sat as an associate on the committee and I recall this member hardly being at even half the hearings. I do not recall him being at the clause by clause review where we wrote the majority report, where Reform made many positive and constructive amendments which found their way into the majority report. I do not recall that member asking a single question of a witness before that committee, so I do not need to be lectured by that hon. member when it comes to the responsible exercise of our parliamentary responsibilities.
I will ask this member a question. With all partisan nonsense aside, does he not recognize that when we remove section 93, the full force of the charter will apply to the Quebec education system and that if we are to take the judicial precedents in Ontario as a guide we will see that the confessional education elements of the Quebec education act will be found unconstitutional? Does he not recognize the almost unanimous legal opinions brought before the committee that the confessional elements of the Quebec school system will be threatened by the charter if section 93 is removed? Forget the partisan stuff. Does he recognize that or not? If he does recognize it, why is he prepared to undermine the confessionnalité of the Quebec schools that the vast majority of Quebeckers wants to maintain?
Observance Of Two Minutes Of Silence On Remembrance Day Act November 7th, 1997
moved for leave to introduce Bill C-279, an act to promote the observance of two minutes of silence on Remembrance Day.
Mr. Speaker, this is a simple bill which is designed to formalize a custom which unfortunately is on the wane in Canada. It would invite the people of Canada to observe two minutes of silence on Remembrance Day in their places of work, in schools, in any possible way.
It is a bill that is designed on a similar piece of legislation which was recently passed in the Ontario legislature and designed on a motion that passed the Westminister parliament a couple of years ago.
It would not require anything of the Canadian people but simply to call their attention to the importance respecting this longstanding tradition of observing these moments of silence in respect of our war dead.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)
Supply November 6th, 1997
They groan. My PC friends groan whenever the name is mentioned. I can understand why. That government raised taxes 71 times in nine years. It was a shameful record that increased taxes on the middle class family by nearly $3,000 a year. It was a record that deindexed the tax bracket so that middle income earners were pushed into a higher bracket.
In response to the hon. member's question, this government has now raised taxes at last count 36 times. However after the CPP it will be 37 times. After the seniors benefit it will be 38 times. We have lost count how many times this government has raised taxes. All I know is that billions and billions of dollars representing hope and opportunity for the future has been taxed away.
Supply November 6th, 1997
Mr. Speaker, it is a difficult challenge but I think I am up to it.
Before I answer that very prescient question I would like to remind the hon. member that there was a government in this place between 1984 and 1993. I think it was governed by a guy by the name of Brian Mulroney, a name not very—
Supply November 6th, 1997
It is true. But I learned from my mistake and I went on the high road. I decided to no longer support the party of taxing and spending and broken promises.
I was a young Canadian concerned about no economic future. I was a young Canadian concerned about a future steeped in debt given to me by this Liberal Party. I had had it. When I finally saw a party which was willing to stand up against public borrowing and tax increases and spending my future, I decided to support that party.
All I can say to the hon. member is that too many Canadians are going to shoe stores in Minot to buy their shoes. Too many Canadians are going south of the border because of this tax burden. It is time we kept that business, those dollars and those jobs and those futures here in Canada, at home where they belong, by giving Canadians tax relief starting with the GST.
Supply November 6th, 1997
I am a few sandwiches short as well. That is right.
The arrogance of the Liberal Party of Canada never ceases to amaze me.
I have to make a confession that I do not think I have made in this place before. It is a sad confession, but it is true. I used to be one of them.
Supply November 6th, 1997
Mr. Speaker, yes, I will surprise my colleagues opposite by agreeing with the hon. member.
Supply November 6th, 1997
Mr. Speaker, I rise to address the motion of the Bloc Quebecois, which reads:
That this House condemn the government for blatant unfairness to Quebec in the matter of the GST—
The official opposition opposes the motion because this is a motion which only speaks to one province. What Canadians need generally is tax relief. Not for one province but for all ten provinces. Not for some Canadians but for all Canadians. We oppose special tax deals which try to create special privileges for people based on this kind of politics.
What we really oppose most of all is the kind of tax record the government has foisted upon Canadians over the past several years. It is a tax record which has resulted in stagnant economic growth, declining family income and record high levels of unemployment. I said it before and I will say it again, we are now in our 86th month straight of over 9% unemployment, or is it the 87th month. I have lost track. I have lost track after seven years of record high unemployment, the longest period of unemployment since the great depression.
I am 29. Even before I got my first real job unemployment was over 9%. My entire professional life, I and people of my age have known nothing but record high levels of unemployment. What about youth unemployment for my generation, when it reaches levels of 25% in some regions of this country, including some parts of the province of Quebec. It is 17% overall.
The government's tax record is record taxes. I would like to point out that the government promised not to raise a penny in taxes before it was elected in 1993. I remember because at the time I was involved with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, a group of grassroots taxpayers. The group was a little bit skeptical when these Liberals came calling in October 1993 and promised after their brilliant fiscal record of the Trudeau years not to raise taxes and not to increase the debt.
We were a little skeptical. We asked the Prime Minister, as did Canadians, would the first red book involve any tax increases given the manifold promises included in it. The Prime Minister said no, there were no tax increases in this plan, except there might be a war and in the case of a war, they might have to raise taxes.
Well there was a war, it was a war on Canadian taxpayers. The government decided to raise those taxes 36 times. It decided to piggyback on the most nefarious tax grab of all, the Mulroney deindexation of the income tax brackets, something that sucks $3 billion a year out of the pockets of average Canadians. Most shamefully of all, these Liberals, the government which applauds itself as a paragon of integrity, promised, made a solemn commitment to Canadians that it would scrap, kill, abolish, eliminate, get rid of, trash the GST. Well the last time I checked, the GST was still there. Canadians are still paying it as much or more than ever. That I think is the mother of all political lies, of all political mistruths ever uttered by a politician. The government should hang its head in shame.
Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Portage—Lisgar in a few moments.
It is interesting that the government still claims to be in favour of the GST when recently a number of focus groups were conducted by one of the Liberal government's favourite hack polling firms. It got a bunch of Canadians together behind closed doors and asked them a bunch of questions about the GST. The government was trying to find a way out of the impossible position it found itself in by defending the Mulroney GST.
Those Canadians in those focus groups said they thought the GST was an atrocity. They thought it ought to be abolished. They said that there was no way they would let the government out of that commitment, the promise it made in the 1993 election.
What happened? The government filed the focus group tests away in some filing cabinet in the back of the finance minister's office until some enterprising taxpayer decided to find out what kind of information about the GST was being generated at the expense of taxpayers. What did the finance minister have to say when this access to information request was made to release the results of these polls and focus groups? He said that no, Canadians will not be allowed access to what they said about the GST at their expense. Not only did the Liberals lie about the GST promise, they would not even let Canadians see what Canadians advised the government to do because they knew how humiliated they would be if the facts came out.
My question to my hon. friends opposite is, what are they afraid of? Why do they not want to let Canadians see what those focus groups said? What are they trying to hide?
It is really shocking. The one thing this government still has not learned is that Canadians want to keep more of what they earn. The Liberal Party has always believed that tax dollars are moneys that the government somehow has a proprietary claim on. We in the Reform Party believe that the money people earn belongs first, foremost and finally to them and their families so that they can support themselves and their businesses and help the economy to grow.
Increasingly Canadians are beginning to realize that the top economic priority for this country is tax relief. The government said that 50% of any future surpluses would go to new spending. It did not think that a party such as ours would be able to demonstrate public support for tax relief. The government thinks people are greedy because they want to keep a little bit more of their earnings, because middle class families want to be able to take a vacation every now and then on the money they earn. The government thinks that is greedy.
The government assumes that Canadians would be opposed to tax relief. But lo and behold, this past weekend a poll came out. Fortunately it was a public poll, one not commissioned by the government or we would not have seen it. This polls shows us that the number of Canadians who want tax relief now has tripled in the last couple of months. Now 35% of Canadians are demanding immediate tax relief. Only 9% want to spend any of the surplus as opposed to the government's priority to spend only half the surplus on useless programs and bureaucracies.
The priorities of Canadians are becoming increasingly evident. Canadians are calling for tax relief. They are calling for integrity in government. They are calling for the promise on the GST to be kept. My challenge to members opposite is to do what is right for a change. Cut spending, balance the budget so that we can scrap the GST and maybe they can salvage a little patina of their now much tarnished political credibility.
The Environment November 5th, 1997
Mr. Speaker, yesterday the cabinet apparently made a decision to rack up costs on the Kyoto deal. How is the government going to pay for it? Is there going to be an increased gas tax or not? Is the government going to reduce the surplus or not? How is it going to pay for the billions of dollars of cost implied by the Kyoto deal?