Jean Charest

[The Budget, March 14th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I will first comment quickly on my colleague's allusion to a comment I allegedly made about interest rates. I made no such comment.

I will stop immediately here and ask him his source.

[The Budget, March 14th, 1995]

The hon. minister responsible for financial institutions says it is coming. Is that not what they said in their first budget, that they were going to accelerate reform of the GST? Is that not what the Liberal government said in its first budget?

What has happened since? Nothing, except the vain hope that the Deputy Prime Minister will resign if it is not done. That is the glimmer of hope they have offered to Canadians with regard to changes to the GST.

The vindication of these Tory policies lies not in their dubious embrace by today's government but rather in the results now being achieved in the country's productivity, its increased investment in exports and the new job creation.

Our economic growth today and in the foreseeable future is based for the most part on these Conservative initiatives so mindlessly and vigorously obstructed by the Liberals in opposition. It is one thing for the opposition to say that everything that is wrong with the country today was the previous government's fault. If we were to follow that line of thought, then they would have to admit that what is working would also be the previous government's fault.

Things as trivial as an increase of 40 per cent in trade between Canada and the United States, which is the number one reason we have job creation in the country today, that they fought against vigorously and at every turn. Things like changing the GST because it actually changed the federal sales tax for manufacturers in Canada. If we ask manufacturers today why they are more competitive, it happens to be because of the GST.

There is more than one side to this story. Those are things that are forgotten. For all of these policies they demonized Prime Minister Mulroney. They and their acolytes would not even concede the elementary assumption of civilized discourse in a democratic society, that their opponents acted in good faith for good motives but maybe with a mistaken policy. That usually would be the presumption. No.

As far as the Liberals were concerned, Tories wanted to sell out the country. We were bent on dismantling the federal government. We were going to balkanize the country, killing the Canadian dream. This was imposing the Thatcher-Reagan neo-conservative corporate agenda on Canada. That is what they were saying during the nine years in this place.

Now the President of the Privy Council is quoted in the Toronto Star of March 4 acknowledging that he cannot recall the Conservatives cutting anything like the $7 billion the Liberals plan to take out of the provincial social programs between 1996 and 1998. The same minister in the same article is quoted invoking the name of the Hon. Erik Nielsen, boasting that this budget was a mega-Nielsen exercise.

These are the same people who for nine years behaved in a way that is totally the contrary of what they are espousing today. As far as I know there is only one Liberal member of Parliament who has stood by his convictions. Only one Liberal member of Parliament has said he is offended by this. That is the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce who is quoted in the same newspaper article as saying it is a repudiation of everything the party stood for in opposition and promised in the 1993 campaign.

This is not the member for Sherbrooke. This is not a member from the Reform Party. It is not my colleague from Saskatchewan saying this. It is a Liberal member of Parliament sitting on that side of the House who was there for the last nine years, who

was there before that also and still sits, for now, with the government. We await his vote on the upcoming budget in regard to these issues.

As for other Liberal MPs, their critical faculties and social consciences seem to have been dulled or blunted along with their political instincts, lulled by the most insidious narcotic known in politics: the polls, the fast results and public opinion polls.

The Minister of Finance now boasts that his budget policy is such good politics that there will be more of the same, more again and yet even more as we get closer to the election campaign. Let me offer some advice to members in the House. Save those quotes. Cut them out. Keep them close. As we approach the days of the election campaign you will find them very useful.

We will also find out in the next two or three years that the government has an intended raid on the treasuries of other governments. That is what the budget is really about. From 1995 to 1997 there is a series of delayed action bombs which it hopes will explode in provincial jurisdictions and take out provincial and not federal politicians.

Most of all, we should give credit to Canadians. If anyone deserves any credit in this country in regard to some of the good decisions that are being proposed it is the Canadian people who have spoken in a loud voice and with consistency in regard to these issues.

The bottom line in the budget is that the cost of servicing the debt is going up as fast as program expenditures are coming down. Fiscal improvement is the product of increased revenue from economic growth. That is what we are seeing. So far as balancing the budget is concerned it has to take place at some unspecified time.

The government has made hay of the fact that it has a 3 per cent commitment in terms of reducing the deficit to GDP. It even has the temerity of adding that this is the standard of the European Community. What it forgets to say is that in the European Community this standard is applied to national governments.

In Canada, in the federal system, the provincial governments also incur debt. This year alone it is estimated that they will add $16 billion to the annual debt of the whole country. This is a false standard and the marketplace has recognized it. In fact, if we were to speak objectively of the reaction to the budget, at first what seemed encouraging has since then soured. The bank rate since the budget has gone up. The prime rate has gone up and the dollar has fallen. Those are objective facts.

I will recognize that there are other factors out there in the international marketplace but if the government makes a pretence of telling us to look at the numbers because it is on course, it reveals to us that it is certainly not on course in terms of the provisions it has made.

One group of people had it right. One rating agency grasped the essence of the budget very quickly. It was the Dominion Bond Rating Service. This service looked at what was proposed in the budget and then went on to place Ontario's rating under negative review because the provinces stand to lose billions of dollars in federal transfers. It understood what had just taken place. The problem had now been transferred to the provincial governments. It then turned to Ontario and saw who was in trouble now. It was Ontario that was going to be losing the money. It understood the real impact of the budget.

Some apologists for the government and some wishful thinkers explained the budget as a triumph of pragmatism.

Let us not kid ourselves. When the government says it is taking a pragmatic approach, the fact of the matter, what we have actually seen, is that it is all improvised, an off-the-cuff, ad hoc, last minute approach, which is interestingly enough reflected in the decisions that are made, particularly with respect to provincial transfers for social programs. It will all come out of the same big transfer pot, so to speak, with as little connection as possible.

In its budget, the government even had the nerve to suggest putting the Minister of Human Resources Development in charge of negotiating new standards with the provinces. After his first mission-which was a flop, a complete fiasco, ending in humiliation, and ultimately disowned-he is asked to go and consult again with the provinces, while cuts have already been announced.

Mr. Speaker, let us not be naive. We were not born yesterday. Just between you and me, what is going to happen when they get together with the provinces? How do you think things will go? The provinces are going to say: "Look, you made the decision to cut. There is nothing left to negotiate. Give us whatever money is left and leave us alone." This certainly reflects a lack of planning.

This brings me to what I see as the first major weakness of the budget: there is no plan. It reflects nothing of what the Liberals said, did or stood for in the last nine years in this place. The budget reflects nothing of what is written in the red book. All promises have been thrown out the window. The red book has been scrapped and the government and the country are left with no plans and no priorities. What kind of a situation does thatlead to?

This government is cutting R and D and the granting councils 14 per cent, the same way it is cutting small craft harbours across the country at a time when R and D is important for the country. This is a government of one of the only modern countries in the world to have closed universities. That is what happens when there are no priorities. That will be the first weakness of this government.

I have already alluded the second, this false objective of 3 per cent of GDP which frankly is not good enough and will not last. The country needs a very firm commitment to balance the budget with a timeframe.

The third weakness in the budget is in its approach. The budget and its unilateral ways go against the very essence of what federalism is about. Rather than setting national objectives for deficit and debt reduction, rather than sitting down with the provinces to avoid a situation, we are only off-loading debt into their yards.

How do we know a provincial government will not choose to increase taxes as a consequence of the budget? Where does that leave the taxpayer, the men and women, individuals who pay taxes today? There may be more than one level of government but there is still only one taxpayer. The approach is wrong and will not work.

The fourth area is the hidden agenda. Pension reform is the most glaring one. Here is a government that says it wants to undertake pension reform but will not share with the House of Commons the studies it has done in this regard when we know the impact and the consequences of what it is proposing are tremendous.

Let me give another example of the hidden agenda of this government with regard to the budget. The Prime Minister went on a TV show with Mike Duffy, stating as a matter of policy the government wants to reduce the cost of health care 1 per cent of GDP.

Mr. Duffy had a guest on his show last week, Dr. Jane Fulton, Ph.D., a professor of health policy and ethics at the University of Ottawa. I do not remember anything being said in the budget about cutting health care in Canada 1 per cent relative to GDP. This is not an ordinary member of Parliament who said this. It was the Prime Minister.

What does this mean? According to Dr. Jane Fulton: "I think if we have to talk between $7 billion and $10 billion, and every time we cut $1 billion out of any kind of public funding we cut about 10,000 jobs". I am not quarrelling that there need to be serious thinking and reduction of funding in health like in every other area of government.

What I find objectionable is that the government in this case has a hidden agenda. It is not coming clean with Canadians. Why did the Prime Minister not say this? Why did the Minister of Finance hide this from the House when he came forward with his budget? I am assuming the Prime Minister did not think this up. Did it just appear in his mind during an interview that this would happen? If that is the case, we all need to be enlightened with regard to this.

There is one advantage to the budget in terms of what it means to all the issues we are confronted with. It certainly puts into perspective the real accomplishments and the failures of previous governments. If this government likes to blame the previous government on anything that went wrong, it would also want to acknowledge the strong growth we have in our economy today was also because the previous government restructured our economy, brought forward the FTA, the NAFTA, the GST, privatized, deregulated.

These were the main features and the Liberals fought every one of them for nine years. Those enabled Canadians today to have economic prosperity and see some real job creation as we now go on to deal with some of the really tough issues we are confronted with.

This government has no compass, no plan. The last nine years were a complete farce. Whatever it was saying or purporting to present as positions were all thrown out the window. The red book has been thrown out the window.

I see my colleague here, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Foreign affairs took a deep hit in the budget, contrary to anything the Liberals purported as being a position for ODA in the years they were in opposition. It does not resemble it at all.

Canadians will now watch very closely as this government tries to get its act together and await whether there will be a sense of priority and planning in terms of where this country is going.

[The Budget, March 14th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I will not pursue the point of order except to say that maybe the hon. member for the Reform Party should let go at one point in time. When does he think kicking someone around should stop, if that is the case? Or does he feel that we have abused our privileges in this place? Anyhow, we probably witnessed a new definition of what meanness is in this place, but for many reasons, I am a lot more interested today in addressing the issues relative to this budget.

This budget has the advantage of putting things into focus and perspective in regard to a few elements that are important to Canadians. First is where the Liberals really stand on these issues and what their real agenda is or is not. It puts into perspective the previous accomplishments of other governments and what their records mean and what do they not mean. It also brings into perspective the real issues we have to address.

I wish to begin by being as frank and straightforward as possible. There are things in this budget we agree with. There are things in this budget that we think are positive for the country. We intend to support those proposals that are positive and constructive.

I do not think it is very useful for us to enter into any phoney indignation on budget night in terms of what the budget is all about. It is not useful to stray around with inflated vocabulary that only rings false in the ears of the Canadian public when they try to look at this budget.

Frankly, in trying to assess how the government needs to deal with this issue, anything I have heard is that Canadians want government to succeed. Canadians want the government to do well in dealing with the budgetary and fiscal problems facing the country. They do not want to see the government face another crisis. On the contrary, they hope that it will make the right decisions. It is very much in that spirit that I would like to offer my thoughts and comments today.

The most interesting part-I happen to be one of the few members in this place who has a view on this because I happened to be in the other Houses-is that this budget also brings into perspective the policies and positions of the Liberal Party of Canada. That has to be one of the first assessments that we need to make about the budget.

To be brutally frank, it needs to be said that the budget is a denial of the principles espoused by the Liberal Party during its nine years in opposition, a repudiation of the policy it placed before the Canadian electorate 16 months ago, an abandonment of those people whose defenders the Liberal Party pretended to be.

For nine years Liberals purported to defend old age pensioners against any reductions in benefits, to fight for the jobless against changes in unemployment insurance, to maintain the annual increases in parliamentary grants to VIA Rail, to the CBC and to all the cultural agencies. They called for the expansion of day care.

The parliamentary secretary this morning even had the temerity to raise day care when if one reads page 40 of the red book as Canadians have, one will find there is a clear commitment to increase day care spaces by 50,000 a year the moment the economy goes beyond 3 per cent.

Is there anything about that in the budget now? That was the Liberal position. They vowed to stand shoulder to shoulder with single mothers, with poor families, with refugees and immigrants, with the regionally disadvantaged, with the sick, with

needy children here at home or abroad, all of whom were to be given more, not less, financial support by a Liberal government.

Maybe I am naive but I am still young enough to be disheartened by the treachery and old enough to know that in time the Liberal Party will pay for this. It is said often enough but it bears repeating because it is true: Liberal policies in opposition were unrealistic. Their promises were irresponsible, their opposition to budgetary restraints of any kind in any circumstance at any time over nine years were not principled, but dishonest, totally political and wilfully ignorant of the national interest.

Everywhere they sought to obstruct-I was in that House for nine years-systematically and without question any cuts or reductions in expenditures. In fact when the government was elected in 1984, previous expenditures were growing at a rate of about 13.4 per cent a year. Program expenditures under the previous Liberal government were brought down to under 4 per cent a year. Did Liberals support that? No, not once that I remember.

What now? Do we congratulate them on having seen the light? Is their policy any more principled than the old policy? Is it any more credible? Is it any more reliable? That is the real question.

Liberals bitterly fought the Canada-U.S. free trade agreement. I remember that well. Under the present Prime Minister's leadership, they opposed NAFTA, the North American free trade agreement, in Parliament and promised on the hustings they would not ratify it unless specific amendments were agreed to.

They opposed the previous government's energy policies. They obstructed the changes in pharmaceutical patent protection. We are still not sure where they stand on that today. They fought the dismantling of the foreign investment review agency. They denounced deregulation and privatization. They also swore to abolish the GST, to scrap the GST. We even heard in their first budget-

[The Budget, March 14th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, let me first congratulate the parliamentary secretary on his last phrase. He said that freedom from debt was the greatest legacy we could leave our children, if I understood correctly. I only wish he had said that in the years he was sitting on this side of the House. However that is another story.

I want to put a question to the parliamentary secretary who I know is very much in the loop in terms of what is happening within government. I asked him a question about 10 days ago in the House relative to pension reform that he talked about in his speech. He evoked principles relative to pension reform. I am very interested in the issue. It is one that needs to be tackled head on. I agree this is something that requires the immediate attention of the country if we are to resolve some of the difficult issues.

I am assuming the government is not improvising pension reform, something so important that the parliamentary secretary chose to speak to it. For example, he mentioned a 60 per cent increase in expenditures over 15 years. That is not a number he

invented or drew out of a hat. It must have come from somewhere.

Given the importance of the issue to all Canadians and the consequences evoked-and I believe there is a bit of a hidden agenda in the budget-I have a very direct and simple question for the parliamentary secretary. In fairness to Canadians is the government willing to have all Canadians participate in the debate so we will all know what the choices are?

I guess whether he answers will be an indication of whether there is a hidden agenda. Will the government agree to table in the House of Commons for all of us to see, read and reflect upon the studies the government has undertaken with regard to pension reform?

[The Budget, March 14th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I have a very simple question for the hon. member for Chicoutimi. He referred at length to the budget and to the connection he sees with the forthcoming referendum in Quebec.

Since he brought this up, I wonder whether the hon. member for Chicoutimi is in favour, as his leader seems to be, of changing the question for the referendum. The issue is relevant to this debate on the Budget, since he mentioned it himself. Furthermore, it creates a climate of uncertainty, as Premier Parizeau clearly admitted in his various speeches and statements on Parti Quebecois policy.

Considering the impact of this issue on the economy of the country and on the budgetary process, I would like to know whether the hon. member for Chicoutimi personally favours changing the question, or whether he would agree that this is a lot of window dressing, in other words, an attempt to manipulate the electorate. The option has not changed. It is still the same. The option is independence or federalism, and as far as I know that has not changed; but as far as change in the referendum question is concerned, we can expect, or at least we have the impression that there is some trickery afoot. I would be interested to hear the hon. member's position on this matter.

[Privilege, March 3rd, 1995]

I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The hon. government whip kindly offered to table a document that the member for Guelph-Wellington apparently sent to him. I suggest to the House that there be unanimous consent so that document could be now tabled.

[Privilege, March 3rd, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for your patience. I do not want to rehash past events. For the benefit of all members of the House, let us focus on what is really at issue here. I feel compelled to stress this because there is a very important distinction in the situation we are facing today relative to precedent.

The precedents referred to are on the notion of confidentiality, budget secrecy as applied at large. We are facing a new situation today in which certain members of the House of Commons were informed beforehand according to this bold admission.

Mr. Speaker, that is the evidence you have. May I point out according to precedent that is the prima facie evidence you have before you today. That is the reason I think you will find here a question of privilege.

The parliamentary secretary has hoisted himself on his own petard when he rises in this place to say there is no evidence and then goes on to explain the rebuttal of the evidence that happens to be in front of this House. To make that statement is so gross as to deny that this statement actually exists in a document that was distributed to the public at large.

This is the last point I want to make. Let me read the quotation because it goes directly to the heart of this matter. The member for Guelph-Wellington said: "I do not think so. There were some MPs who were told beforehand if major cuts were coming to programs in their ridings".

The last phrase goes to motive: "They asked for that in caucus so they could prepare to answer questions".

My colleague from the Bloc Quebecois-

[Privilege, March 3rd, 1995]

Read the Hill Times .

[Privilege, March 3rd, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, you will remember that yesterday, as recorded in Hansard , I raised a question of privilege. I informed the House that I would raise this matter today after question period. Furthermore, I advised the whips of the other parties in the House, including the member for Guelph-Wellington, of my intention to raise this question of privilege because it is a question that relates to comments she made.

I rise today on a question of privilege. My query comes after reading a column that interestingly enough is entitled "Question Period". Question period is published in each weekly edition of a newspaper very well known here on the Hill, called the Hill Times . Members of this place will be familiar with a specific column, a vox populi, very similar to other vox populi we see in other media, where four individuals are asked a question, often of members of Parliament, often of individuals who work on the Hill, and they offer a response.

This week's question was: "Is there too much secrecy surrounding the budget?" The Bloc member for La Prairie, for example, answered:

The government has to maintain secrecy around the budget, not to favour certain investors. But there should be more transparency about the budget, to give a better idea of it without giving precise measures and details.

That is what the member for La Prairie is reported to have said.

Two other respondents, the members for Ottawa Centre and Provencher, also echoed their hon. colleague's understanding of secrecy. However, and this is the point of fact, the member for Guelph-Wellington gave a very troubling answer. In response to the clear and concise question: "Is there too much secrecy surrounding the budget" she is quoted as saying:

I don't think so. There were some MPs who were told beforehand if major cuts were coming to programs in their ridings. They asked for that in caucus so they could prepare to ask questions.

I will just repeat the words because they are serious: "some MPs were told beforehand". Needless to say, I find this statement very troubling. I want to explain why I find it troubling but I also want to explain why I feel this to be a prima facie violation of my rights and privileges as a member of Parliament.

I want to quote another parliamentarian on this same issue who outlined the importance of the budget being confidential until budget night. By the way there is some real irony in this quote. This is a quote that I draw from the Debates at page 2283 of Hansard of December 12, 1979. It reads:

The confidentiality in which the details of a budget are kept secret is a constitutional practice which forms an integral part of a parliamentary system. Such practice is based on the principle that no individual, whoever he may be, must know in advance the details of a budget which he could use for personal gain.

That quote is from the right hon. Prime Minister, speaking in the House of Commons in 1979. I am sure the Prime Minister intended to include the Liberal caucus in his designation when he said "whoever".

To facilitate your work, Mr. Speaker, I also reviewed the past occasions when the House had to deal with budget leaks. Not to undermine the seriousness of any budget leak allegations, I am sure you will also agree that with the incidents of the past came also odd and unusual circumstances.

You will remember a photographer having snapped a picture of the Minister of Finance at the time, Mr. Lalonde, reviewing budget documents, and that incident being the object of debate in the House and another question of privilege. I also remember, Mr. Speaker, and I know that you were in the House at the time, a colleague of mine who had one of his documents fall into the hands of the media before the formal announcement of the budget.

In the past, when dealing with such rather isolated incidents, your predecessors ruled: "There was some doubt whether the convention of budget secrecy falls within the area of privilege". In fact, that is a quote which can be found in Jurisprudence parlementaire de Beauchesne , with which I am sure other members are familiar.

I quickly realized, and I am sure you will too, Mr. Speaker, that the very nature of this revelation makes this case a precedent which stands by itself. Never have we had, as far as I know in any research that we have done, any situation where a specific member of Parliament has boldly admitted to having obtained privileged information relating to the budget before it was formally announced. Nor are there any precedents where a whole caucus of this place, according to the statement made by the hon. member for Guelph-Wellington, was actually informed in advance of the contents of the budget. I have not found any precedents in that regard.

Mr. Speaker, we have nowhere to turn but to you. We are not in the presence of a leak of a titbit of information to a controlled number of people for what has never been more than a very short period of time, like the situations we have faced in the past. Neither have we ever been in the presence of what I reasonably fear to be a concerted effort on the part of someone to give a

great deal of information to the largest body of members in the House, namely the Liberal caucus, at a day and time we can only yet still ignore.

I will not get into all the questions that this situation brings up, and you will know that there are many dimensions to this question. They are all very grave. Most of the time they have called for the resignation of the Minister of Finance.

I want to raise a very specific issue in regard to this principle. I am putting this question of privilege because I believe that the matter I am talking about poses a grave hindrance to my ability to accomplish my duties as a member of Parliament for the riding of Sherbrooke.

It is greatly troubling to me, should such actions be found to be true, that the people of my riding and all Canadians would find disrepute and maybe even contempt for this place. In such circumstances I fail to see how any of us would be able to accomplish our work properly. That is surely a question of privilege for myself and for every person here.

Even more sad is what this could mean for free speech. I respectfully ask that you consider in your ruling whether debate in this House can be truly free, frank and sincere if members are led to believe that the contents of the budget that are supposed to be secret for all, without exception, when in the end the truth is revealed to us that the members of the governing party were privy to a special complicity with the Minister of Finance.

The budget is at the heart of why we sit in Parliament. It is at the very heart of what this parliamentary institution is all about. We are here to vote on behalf of our constituents the moneys that allow us to live in a democracy and not pursuant to the whims of an all powerful despot.

That is why the first Commons took away powers from the monarch and that is why this member is claiming back those privileges today. I respectfully ask that you consider this matter, Mr. Speaker, with great attention, urgency and severity.

In conclusion, what we are facing today as a question of privilege is a situation where certain members of the House of Commons, namely the Liberal caucus, according to a public admission by the member for Guelph-Wellington, received privileged, secret information before budget day to the detriment of the members who sit on the opposite side of the House.

Based on that fact, Mr. Speaker, I ask you to rule on this question of privilege.

[Old Age Security, March 3rd, 1995]

Mr Speaker, I am glad my hon. colleague referred to a meeting the government will have with the provinces. I assume this is not improvised and that the government will have prepared.

Are the hon. member and the government ready to table here in the House of Commons studies and documents that the Government of Canada will have prepared with projections on what the application of this principle of applying OAS benefits to family income would have?

I want a clear answer. Will the government, yes or no, table all the documents it has prepared for this meeting?