Jim Abbott

[Supply, November 21st, 1996]

Madam Speaker, how does the member feel about the fact that his party is building up a $10 billion surplus in employment insurance funds at the cost of jobs to Canadians? His party is not lowering what has now become a job tax. Does he support his party's trying to lower the deficit of Canada on the backs of companies and workers by enlarging the surplus to $10 billion?

[Supply, November 21st, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I wonder if the member could help us understand something. He is very proud of the fact that the Liberal government set up medicare. At that time the irrevocable promise never to be broken was that it would always be funded on a 50:50 basis: 50 per cent by the federal government and 50 per cent by the provincial governments.

Now he turns around and says: "We are the protectors of medicare". They removed $6 billion or $7 billion over the last couple of years and are down to 20 per cent of the funding, not 50 per cent. This is one of the best kept secrets in Canada. The Liberals are getting away with it wholesale.

I know the member is a very honourable gentleman. He certainly would want the Canadian people to know and to understand that it was he and his colleagues who removed $7 billion from health

care. Only 20 per cent of the funding for health care is covered by the federal government. He knows that.

Would he be prepared to admit in the smallest way that maybe some of the Liberal talk about being the protectors of health care is perhaps a little thin? In actual fact it is the federal Liberal government that is destroying health care funding, forcing provincial governments to make very hard and very difficult decisions, and letting provincial governments take the fall when it is the Liberals who are short-changing them.

[Supply, November 21st, 1996]

He has never read his red book.

[Supply, November 21st, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I suspect that this hon. gentleman, as every other one of the Liberals who have stood up, have not taken the time to look at the Reform's actual document, the fresh start for Canadians. In taking a look at it they would realize that there is a very specific plan.

Let me talk specifically about the fact that we would be increasing the basic amount of the basic personal deduction from $6,456 to $7,900.

I have two questions and I will keep them very short. I wonder if this member and every other member of the Liberal caucus is aware of this fact. Since 1983-and we always say, Liberal, Tory, same old story, and the Tories started this-they decided that they were going to de-index the relationship of the basic personal exemption from anything to do with inflation unless it exceeded 3 per cent. This was really cute because obviously if inflation only went to 2.9 per cent, then the basic exemption would not increase. It was a very subtle and quiet way and one which most Canadians were not aware of that if there had been full indexing as originally had been envisioned with the basic exemption, that in fact the basic exemption today instead of being $6,400 and change would be $7,800 and change.

It is no coincidence then that the Reform Party is simply giving back to Canadians that which the Liberals and the Tories have taken away. When we increase the basic exemption from $6,400 to $7,900 we change the fact that the people at the low end of the scale who are earning for the sake of argument, $500, $600 or $1,000 a month, would suddenly find themselves not paying any tax at all. That by the way is also part of the story where we are increasing the spousal amount from $5,380 to $7,900 as well.

I wonder if the member is also aware of the way that he and the Tories have been very quietly taking money from people. In fact we have been accused of doing a flip-flop on the $4 billion to be able to support health care and the Reform Party position is that after we have achieved a balanced budget we would then proceed to put $4 billion back into health care. It is he and his colleagues over a two year period who have removed $7 billion from that package, yet they have the audacity to say that we are the people who are doing the cuts. It is the Liberals who have done the cuts and the Reform Party is going to put the cuts back where they should never have been taken from in the first place.

Is the member aware of the fact that this basic exemption creep has been happening as a result of the traditional old parties just taking more and more money out of Canadians' pockets? Is he also aware of the fact that it is he and his colleagues who have removed $7 billion from health care funding in Canada?

[Supply, November 21st, 1996]

That is dead wrong.

[Supply, November 21st, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I have a great deal of respect for the member opposite. He and I shared some time together on the Standing Committee on Finance. I got to know him as being an honourable gentleman. Therefore I can only assume he has not taken the time to understand what the Reform Party is about.

My wife and I have some very dear friends. When their children were growing up he was a school teacher and hated his job. His wife was a dental assistant and loved her job. They decided he would become a home husband, which we applauded.

The description the member has given of the Reform Party was completely out of place. The Reform Party is about choice. This is something that he and unfortunately his Liberal friends do not understand. The reality is that when he talks about one simple solution, his one simple solution is some kind of a national child day care program.

The difference is that the Reform Party is saying we should put the money in the hands of the people at the bottom end of the scale. We should give them the opportunity to have a choice, whether they are single parent families with a man or woman as the parent, whether they are traditional family units or whether they are in multiple family arrangements.

Let us assume for the sake of discussion we are talking about a woman with two or three children. This person is now in a position where she has a choice. She can do what the Liberals tell her to do, or not get any support if she decides to use a family member as the person who would be helping her with the rearing of her children or somebody she respects in the neighbourhood, perhaps a friend through some kind of charitable organization or church she belongs to. The Liberals, NDPers and Conservatives have the simple solution of some kind of massive child day care program.

Another point I am rather surprised by is that my friend, a very intelligent person, went along with the $21 billion figure. He seems to have lost the relationship between a tax credit and a tax deduction.

The Reform Party is talking about a tax credit. We want to get up to a million families away from paying taxes. Those million families would be at the bottom end of the scale and not at all as he described.

Rather than just reading the notes he was handed by the Prime Minister's office, which seems to have a good time coming up with all sorts of interpretations and misinformation of what Reform is all about, has the member actually taken the time to read the fresh start document so that he understands the Reform Party is about giving Canadians a choice in how they choose as parents their values and how they bring up their children?

[Copyright Legislation, November 21st, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals are pushing copyright legislation through this House in their usual ramrod way. Bill C-32 is before committee as we speak. We have had 190 briefs and 65 witnesses in eight weeks. It is called legislation by exhaustion.

The Liberals want to charge a blank tape levy on audio tapes that will hit churches, schools and their shut-in supporters. Why? Because some tapes happen to be used to copy music. This is tape tax.

The Liberals will not protect broadcasters in Canada from vexatious charges by composers and performers for the technical transfer of music but will hit those same broadcasters with new performance levies. This is called a performance tax.

However, to show how rushed this flawed copyright bill is and the lack of prior consultation, consider the archivists and people wanting to trace their geneology. Unbelievably, the Liberal legislation would slam the door on tracing family trees and reviewing property documents. This is typical Liberal legislation, all image, dangerous in substance, rammed through with minuscule meaningful input.

[Bill C-216, November 19th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, earlier this year the people of this country, for once, enjoyed a small triumph in this House. Despite the best efforts of high-priced Ottawa lobbyists, the culturecrats and the full weight of the Deputy Prime Minister, the House adopted a bill to ban negative option billing.

Bill C-216 has moved just a few metres down the hall to the other place and, lo and behold, our unelected and unaccountable senators are playing games with this bill.

I ask citizens and consumers: What is the similarity between backroom events in this House and in the other House? Lobbying. Lobbying on the part of the Department of Canadian Heritage, the CRTC and powerful lobbying buddies, former politicians and bureaucrats. All these unelected senators and lobbyists are working overtime to bury a bill which was passed by the elected members of the House of Commons.

If there are any responsible members in that other place I would urge them to stand up and be counted on the side of consumers and quit their shameful blockade of the will of the Canadian public.

[Speech From The Throne, November 7th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I disagree on one point and I fully agree on another.

When the member suggests that Quebec is a nation of people not like any other province, with respect I disagree. The reason I disagree is that undoubtedly there are a lot of people who come from families in Quebec whose ancestry has been in Quebec for a long time. Canada is made up of a society that to a greater or lesser extent is like that but of the 29 million to 30 million people in Canada about nine million people are recent immigrants. To suggest that the province is a nation because of there being a certain number of people who come from families who have been in that province for a long time, I cannot agree with the member.

However I do agree that neither the Bloc nor the Parti Quebecois are asking for distinct society. It is very clear that what is going on here is the Prime Minister is attempting to fulfil a promise that is hollow and which has absolutely no value.

If we want to deal in reality, Quebec is a distinct society in many of its characteristics, in many of the ways in which people relate to each other and certainly in their joie de vivre, their joy of life. It is that joy of life in Quebec which I think adds to Canada's culture in a very wonderful way. Quebecers have a distinct society in that reality.

Here is the problem. The minute that we turn commonly used English words into law, those two words, distinct society, suddenly can become a club, a tool that can be used in ways we could never imagine. Because we put this into law in goodwill all of a sudden we might find that we are constrained.

For example if the CBC wanted to make cutbacks in programming, the CBC could be constrained. If distinct society was in the Constitution and was recognized legally, all of a sudden it could be argued that because the French programming was in support of distinct society and because that was constitutionalized, any cuts that were going to be made at the CBC could only be made in English services but not in French services in Quebec. I just cite that as one example.

The unintended consequences of the inclusion of the term distinct society in law is completely unknown. As a consequence it is a concept that should never ever be enshrined.

[Speech From The Throne, November 7th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, it is very interesting as we are undertaking the continuation of this throne speech to take a look at the number of things that have changed and the number of things that have not changed.

Clearly the things that have not changed have been on the Liberal side. One of the most interesting things last year, when Canada came within 50,000 votes of no longer being Canada, was the reaction of the Liberals to that situation.

There is an old saying that if it ain't broke, don't fix it, but in this case it is broken and we must fix it.

There are three heads on a very bad penny here, the Progressive Conservatives, the Liberals and the NDP. None of them have any new ideas. None of them are bringing any new information. None of them are taking any role of leadership to do things differently.

My colleague mentioned that the Prime Minister, in the three days before the vote, came up with the absolutely brilliant but totally discredited idea of distinct society. He did that and then brought it into the House of Commons. He forced it through the House of Commons. He also wanted to have a veto for Quebec.

Not being able to do that, we now have a veto for five regions which fundamentally gives a total constriction of any ability to ever change our country and the way we govern ourselves. That is what the Prime Minister has done. One of his more imaginative ministers, the Minister of Canadian Heritage, the Deputy Prime Minister, wants to return to 1967 to rekindle the wonderful national spirit we had. She has come out with the fly a flag program which was originally, according to an official in her department, going to be costing between $6 million and $7 million.

As was reported in the Globe and Mail , suddenly they have turned around and said that it was going to be $23 million. We then had the brilliant news the other day that it was going to be $8 million less than that. All we know is that we have over 600,000 flags being distributed willy-nilly all over the country.

As a matter of fact, there is an article in Le Devoir today that indicates that 15 of these flags were sent to people who had no interest in having the Canadian flag. The writer of the article says: ``Thank you very much, but I am going to put it in my bottom drawer''. My office is being inundated by people who are either indicating they have received flags, do not want them or have sent them back. In fact, my office has been receiving these flags to return to the minister.

This is the old vision. This is the cheerleader we have for a heritage minister. What of a new vision, a new vision that the Reform Party has? I quote the leader of the Reform Party:

For the past few decades, Canada has been governed by an ideology which holds that an overpowering, overspending central government is the answer to every problem, including that of national unity. The Reform Party is not afraid to fundamentally rethink the way our government works. Through decentralization and a greater emphasis on local responsibility, we believe we have a realistic plan that will build a stronger, more united Canada. It will help us achieve our common objective of keeping Quebec in the federation.

Let us take a look at what happened in the lead-up to the last referendum. In 1995, of the people who were surveyed, this from the Globe and Mail dated October 30, 1995, 25 per cent of the people in Quebec still believe they could elect federal members of Parliament. Almost 30 per cent believed that they would be able to keep economic ties such as they have right now and over half believed they could keep their Canadian passports.

These things are not a given. They would have to be discussed and agreed to by all the people of Canada. There was no discussion about what was going to be happening should they determine that they were going to be voting in favour of separating from Canada. There was no discussion, no contingency plan and no explanation to the people of Quebec when they voted in favour separation what their vote would actually mean.

At that time, it must be noted, if we take a slice in time leading up to the referendum, the Reform Party was being vilified by all the old-line parties because this was a new way of thinking and they could not really get their mind around a new way of thinking. We were being vilified for saying: "Just a second, why are we not having an exposure to the people of Quebec as to what the facts are? Why are we not letting the people of Quebec know that this is not a free ride?"

We are being vilified because they think we are planning for their separation. No. I and my party are committed federalists who demand that this country stay together and we will do everything we can to keep this country together. However, it will be kept together by truth, by exposure of ideas and by straight, candid discussions.

In a new Canada that the Reform Party would see, we would see a reduction in the size of tax requirements of the federal government. Right now in our nation, people through an underground economy and all sorts of devious means are walking away from their tax obligations because they believe taxes are too high and they do not want to be a part of it.

Let me make it clear, particularly to anybody in the revenue department, that I am in no way condoning the actions of people who walk away from their tax obligations. I am simply reporting that there is a tax fatigue within the country and people are doing everything they can to get away from it. It is becoming a serious problem in the way in which we relate to each other.

We would refocus the federal government's powers on 10 areas of national importance. We would reform federal institutions to make them more democratically accountable and sensitive to regional interests. We would introduce a triple E Senate, one that would give a counterbalance to the House of Commons, which is after all at least something of a form of representation by population. Ontario and Quebec have two-thirds of the seats concentrated in this place. A triple E Senate, through its equal representation, would give regional compensation to the power of the House of Commons. We would decentralize other governmental powers to give all provinces the freedom and resources to develop as their citizens choose.

Quebec is not the only distinct society. When we look around the country, Quebec has the distinctiveness of its language, but truly, are the Acadians not as much a distinct society? Truly, are the people who arrived in northern Alberta from Europe in the early 1900s not a distinct society? What we are talking about here is the demand, and a very worthy demand on the part of people across Canada to have more say and to get out from under the stultifying

umbrella of the federal government. That is the positive side and the direction in which we want to go.

On the other side of the coin we would also say that secession negotiations must respect the principles of democratic legitimacy, the rule of law and the interests of Canada. The right of Canadians within a seceding province to remain part of Canada and to petition Parliament for that purpose must be respected.

I quote a gentleman, Gilles St-Laurent from Quebec City, Quebec: "I believe the people of Quebec would like to have more control over their own affairs and less influence from Ottawa. And that is why I think that Reform's plan to give more powers to the provinces is one of the most likely to keep Quebec in the federation".