Jay Hill

[Bill C-234, December 12th, 1996]

I thought you said you were going to put the facts forward.

[Bill C-234, December 12th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend the hon. member for York South-Weston on a very eloquent speech. He hit the points just right this morning not only about the failure of the Liberal criminal justice system and the inadequate legislation which has been brought forward over the last three years but also, and perhaps just as important, the failure of the Liberal government to live up to its commitment to Canadians to restore integrity and credibility to the House of Commons and to the governance of Canada. Perhaps that is even more important because it strikes at the very heart of the problems that are inherent in the system of governance which exists in Canada today.

I have travelled throughout my riding and across Canada and I know that what the hon. member for York South-Weston said was very true. Canadians are deeply concerned about the inadequacies of the justice system. They know that the legislation which has been brought forward over the past three years is totally inadequate in addressing the criminal problem which we have in Canada today.

I commend the hon. member for York South-Weston for bringing forward this private member's bill. Had it been supported by the Liberal majority, it would have seen the repeal of section 745. It is what Canadians want. It is what they are demanding. It is what they are crying out for. It is high time that those people over there started to listen to Canadians.

One of the things I am asked as I travel around the country is what can we do as individual members of Parliament and what can Canadians do. Every day we see members of Parliament tabling petitions in the House. Those petitions are protests from average Canadians from coast to coast. They are crying out for justice, for change and for the reform of the system.

I would like to ask the hon. member for York South-Weston what is the next step. He and others have tried. I have tabled nine private members' bills in the House of Commons in three years, and seven motions, trying to move the government of the country which enjoys the majority in this House. I have tried to move it in the direction that I feel the majority of Canadians want it to move in.

What can be done now that it has squashed the member's private member's bill? We know the majority of Canadians are crying out for that change.

[Excise Tax Act, December 10th, 1996]

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for attempting to restore the decorum in the House. It was getting a little loud on the other side.

I am sorry that the government did not decide to use the term blended sales tax. I am quite sure of the reason it decided to go with the harmonized sales tax instead of the blended sales tax. I am kind

of sorry about that because they would have had the BST. Canadians would have really appreciated having the letters BS attached to tax, the BST, especially in regard to the promises made by this government during the 1993 election. That describes exactly their promise to get rid of the GST. They should have called it the BST.

Now that we know what the Liberals did not say, what did they really say on the hustings, on the doorsteps and in the all-candidates forums during the 1993 election campaign? We know what they said. They said they were going to kill the GST. They said they were going to abolish the GST. They even said that they were going to get rid of the GST totally. That does not sound much like harmonizing to me.

It is ironic that the Liberals are no different from the Tories. That is why we hear Canadians from coast to coast to coast saying Liberal, Tory, same old story. It does not matter which party they vote for. Once they get into power they do exactly the same thing. There is no difference.

Do we want to see exactly how much difference there is? Let us refer to the notes from a speech by the hon. member for York-South Weston.

I am pleased to see you in the chair, Mr. Speaker. Perhaps we will see some decorum restored to this Chamber. I am pleased to see you there.

The member's speech was entitled "Honesty, Ethics and Accountability: Does it Exist in Canada's Political System". This is what the member, who used to be a Liberal, said:

So the problem with today's political system is not the people we have in place, but rather the problem with our system in Canada is the system itself. The system is what is fueling public cynicism and distrust.

My removal from the Liberal caucus in April is the perfect example of the reward/punish system I have referred to. I was removed for voting against the federal budget because it failed to fulfil the Liberal Party's election promise to replace the GST. Prior to the vote, I wrote to the Prime Minister to advise him that I would be voting against the budget. I reminded him that while we were in opposition our efforts to eliminate the GST was one of the most significant battles we fought during the Mulroney administration. While in opposition, the Liberal Party vigorously opposed the GST in the House of Commons. Liberal senators undertook an unprecedented effort to kill the legislation and we forcefully campaigned against it in the last election.

It is trite to say that every government has a moral obligation to keep its major election promises. In my view, the last federal budget represented the final retreat from the promise to replace the GST. I think that the government's announcement that it intends to harmonize the tax has verified this. Voting against the budget was the only way that I could reconcile what I had said and done in the past in the House of Commons and what I had said to my constituents on their doorsteps with the fact that the government-

[Excise Tax Act, December 10th, 1996]

No, of course not. Did they say they would hide the GST? No. Did they say that they would blend the GST? Of course not. That is not what they said.

[Excise Tax Act, December 10th, 1996]

Okay, the GST. The hon. member says he wants to know the truth. I am here today to tell the truth, to tell the people in TV land exactly what the truth is.

What did the Liberals say during the 1993 election and in the time leading up to it? I will tell you what they said. Did they say they would harmonize the GST?

[Excise Tax Act, December 10th, 1996]

I can hear all the heckling going on over there. They are amazed because they cannot face the truth of what has transpired in this Parliament. They cannot face the truth. That is the problem that exists over there.

[Excise Tax Act, December 10th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I must say at the outset that it is going to be a really tough act to follow. My hon. colleagues from Okanagan-Shuswap and from Skeena who immediately preceded me have done an absolutely superb job of representing their constituents and the views of Canadians on this very important topic.

I might hasten to add that there is a real problem in this House of Commons when we see the Liberal government bringing forward time allocation 26 times in this Parliament. This is the 26th time we have gone through this to date, where this government has limited debate, shut down debate, shut down the democratic process to ram through a piece of legislation.

And the Liberals have the audacity to go before the Canadian people and talk about democracy. And they will have the audacity in the next election to try to tell Canadians that they have lived up to their red book promise of restoring integrity, restoring credibility in Parliament and in the political process in this country. The Canadian people will reject that as the nonsense it has become.

When that party, the Liberal Party of Canada, was on this side of the House, its members ranted and railed. They criticized the Tories every chance they got for bringing in time allocation or closure. Yet, 26 times the government has used time allocation and four

times it has brought in closure for a total of 30 times it has shut down debate in this place in just a little over three years. Actually it is in under three years because the 35th Parliament did not start sitting until January 1994. It has shut down debate 30 times on 123 bills.

I am sure that at some point in time someone is going to do the arithmetic and figure out that on a percentage basis, this Liberal government in the 35th Parliament of Canada has used time allocation and closure more often than the Mulroney Tories. That is despicable. It is a disgusting record for a government that said it was going to restore integrity in the system.

On to the GST-

[Excise Tax Act, December 5th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I was endeavouring to clear up a misunderstanding, not cast negative aspersions on anyone, let alone on the Chair of the House. I think it is incumbent on all of us as members of Parliament who are trying to represent our constituents to clear up any potential for a misunderstanding.

It certainly was not the intent of the Reform Party of Canada to limit debate. That was not the intent of the motion and the motion indeed did not do that. I want to make it very clear for the people out there who are watching that the motion in no way limited debate on Bill C-71, the tobacco bill.

I make reference to that because of the chain of events which did take place which prevented some members from speaking. The

member for Haldimand-Norfolk made an intervention in that regard. I can sympathize with that because a number of members had intended to speak to the legislation and had important points to bring forward on behalf of their constituents. Certainly the member for Haldimand-Norfolk was one of those individuals, as he indicated, who wanted to make some strong points and represent the people in his riding. The Reform Party certainly did not limit or prevent him or any other member in this place from doing that.

I sympathize with the member. I believe that all of us in this place get tired of preparing presentations only to have some procedural thing prevent us from presenting our views to the House. Indeed from time to time the government elects to enact closure or time allocation and prevents members from all parties from speaking to important legislation. That too is tragic. It is very unfortunate that this morning we had a process which did not fall into place the way it was intended to allow people to speak to that legislation. That was unfortunate for all members concerned.

I want to say that I have a personal point of view on that very important issue. I am a father of three young children and unfortunately my middle child has taken up smoking in this last year or so. I wanted to bring the personal perspective as a parent and that I have struggled for the last 12 or 15 years to try to quit smoking. I know how addictive nicotine is.

I wanted to bring forward how tragic it is for all parents who have to deal with children who have taken up cigarette smoking. I know we are all concerned about that. It is certainly why the Reform Party endeavoured to assist the government in fast tracking the legislation and to do all we could to assist the government in helping the youth of our country who unfortunately are taking up cigarette smoking despite all the education about it.

I will now move on to Bill C-70, the harmonized sales tax. Never before has a particular government initiative, the goods and services tax, caused such fury in our nation. Anyone in Canada can reflect on the debate which took place inside and outside the House of Commons during the days, weeks and months that the Mulroney government was bringing forth the GST. It tried to ram it through despite the polls which consistently showed time after time after time that roughly 85 per cent of Canadians were opposed to this tax.

Why were they opposed to the tax? Obviously people are opposed to any tax, but the reality goes much deeper than that. I made the remark a couple of years ago when we were debating gun control in this place that I believed that Canadians had reached the same point with gun control as they had with taxes. They had reached the breaking point.

They reached that point with the GST. That is why there was such an uproar all across the country against the Mulroney Tories, the Conservatives, and the much hated GST they were attempting to implement. It was so much so that as will be recalled when looking at the history of this tax, Mulroney had to actually go to the extraordinary step of appointing eight additional senators to the other place in order to ram through that legislation against the wishes of the vast majority of Canadians.

What have we got now? I recently wrote an article for the newspapers back in my riding of Prince George-Peace River in which I briefly detailed the history of the GST. I find it more than a bit ironic that this tax caused a couple of Conservative MPs to be thrown out of their caucus because they dared to represent their constituents and that last spring this same issue caused the Liberal Party, which is now the government, to throw a member of Parliament out of its caucus.

Despite the fact that this Liberal government would like to pull the wool over the eyes of Canadian voters that the Liberals are different from the Conservatives who came before them, what we see is that they are exactly the same. And they wonder why Reformers and Canadians from coast to coast are saying Liberal, Tory, same old story. Nothing changes.

On the subject of the member of Parliament for York South-Weston, it is more than interesting that in a speech to the Rotary Club of Toronto he addressed the topic "Honesty, Ethics and Accountability: Does it exist in Canada's political system". In the little time I have left, I would like to quote one thing from his remarks that day:

Removing me from the Liberal caucus accomplished two things. Firstly, it accomplished the government's main objective. It sent a very clear message that the PMO is intent to maintaining control over members of the Liberal caucus. But in addition, separate and apart from the Liberal Party or the GST, it sent a second larger message to the Canadian public. The action taken by the government on this issue has reinforced Canadians' worst suspicions-that political parties will promise anything to be elected, and once in power will not fulfil that promise. That message is the reason people question whether there is honesty or ethics in our political system.

That is a direct quote from the member for York South-Weston on how he was treated by the government on this very issue of the GST and his stand against it.

[Excise Tax Act, December 5th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, it is good to have an audience at last. I am always torn between having absolutely no Liberals in the House and having so many Liberals in the House making so much noise that I cannot hear myself think. We are always betwixt and between whether we want to have one or two government members to hear our remarks or whether we would rather have a whole bunch and be unable to be heard.

Before I begin my remarks on Bill C-70, the harmonized sales tax legislation, I have a few brief remarks on what transpired in this place this morning. There seems to be a misconception on the part of some government members as to exactly what happened. It is important for the viewing audience out there in TV land to understand the process and the procedure which took place this morning and why that got out of kilter. It is necessary to correct the record.

This morning during debate on Bill C-71, the tobacco bill, my colleague from Macleod put forward a motion that the question be now put. What happened was that I believe there was a misunderstanding on the part of the Speaker who was in the Chair at the time. She elected to call the question immediately, but that was not the point at all.

[Excise Tax Act, December 5th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to address the House this afternoon on Bill C-70.