Jim Abbott

[Bill C-216, November 5th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, there seems to be a discrepancy in the minister's understanding and mine. We will leave that as it is.

The reality is this minister is opposed to the passage of Bill C-216. The Canadian Consumers' Association of Canada on October 18, because it is concerned about that, wrote to her and said: "We are writing on behalf of Canadian consumers to ask the

minister to send a clear public signal that you support Bill C-216, the private member's bill".

Will she undertake that she not only supports the bill, yes or no, but that when it comes back to this House it will be undertaken as an act of Parliament?

[Bill C-216, November 5th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, when a top official at the CRTC opposes a bill that has passed the House we should all be concerned. Civil servants are here to implement policy, not lobby against policy passed by the members of Parliament.

On September 23 this House passed Bill C-216, an act to outlaw negative option billing. I ask the heritage minister again, does she condone a top official at the CRTC's opposing Bill C-216, undertaking actions to see this bill defeated in the parliamentary process?

[Bill C-216, November 4th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, in fact I am reflecting on the actions of the CRTC which comes under the heritage minister. The CRTC is effectively lobbying against the passage of Bill C-216 in a place where they can stop the passage of that bill.

I ask the same question. Is the heritage minister supportive of the actions of the CRTC in attempting to squash Bill C-216?

[Bill C-216, November 4th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, last week some very disturbing news came to light in the other house. An entity of the Government of Canada is undermining the will of the House of Commons. The CRTC is lobbying the senators to vote against Bill C-216, the negative option ban which passed the House on September 23.

Does the heritage minister support the CRTC in its lobby effort to defeat Bill C-216?

[Committees Of The Whole, October 29th, 1996]

You weren't at our conference in Vancouver or you would have seen them.

[Committee Of The Whole, October 29th, 1996]

What am I supposed to say when the Liberals turn around and under a cabinet order provide no information or details to anyone about how the funds are spent? The cabinet has closed, slammed and locked Canadians out of this $20 million enterprise. No one will ever know anything about what is going on.

We might have a clue about what is going on over there if we take a look at what the Prime Minister's office does with its research funds. It sends out Liberal propaganda to Liberal sympathizers that are absolute distortions of the truth about the Reform Party and has been caught at it.

Although we have had a degree of tongue in cheek in the way we have addressed the issue, we must also take a look at how solemn it is. It is very solemn because we have a government and a Prime Minister who are so arrogant and power hungry that they will virtually do anything to maintain power and control over information from the office I just named. They will do virtually anything in terms of what they say about people they are concerned about who have different or new ideas.

Why is it that we have a situation where we do not have a resolution to the so-called two founding nation problem or however they choose to describe it? We do not have resolution to the point where we almost lost the country a year ago.

For 30 or 35 years the Liberals and Tories have stumbled around with that portfolio, not getting anywhere and making the situation worse. Reform, or any other Canadian, can come along with a fresh new idea and say: "Why don't we try it a different way?" If we are unsuccessful in a particular direction maybe we should change direction. The minute we do that with the Liberals they immediately choose to throw out the mindless invective. They immediately choose to go into overdrive and say all the mean, nasty, negative, distorted statements they can make about their adversaries.

What the Reform Party is out to do, and we will do it in spite of the Liberals, is we are out to create an honest, open, frank, candid debate in this country about real issues, about real solutions, about getting things turned around so that the people of this country once again can see the future as they want it to be. We are turning it around so that we have the opportunities for our people, for the people of Canada.

What can I say? Again, the member who has been proposed for this function, fine, but the way in which he has been proposed and the way in which the Liberals once again have broken a solemn commitment is very sad.

[Committee Of The Whole, October 29th, 1996]

Let us take a look at this. What they have done in addition we will never know.

[Committee Of The Whole, October 29th, 1996]

His imaginary friend got the better of him again.

I guess the people over at the PMO who are so good at putting out distortions of truth decided that 90 per cent was a little too much. They said to the Prime Minister: "Why don't you go to the people on the Liberal convention weekend and use 78 per cent? Do not use 79. That sounds like we are fudging it. We don't really want to get down around 75 because then people will be talking about three-quarters. Why don't we choose 78 per cent?"

We did fundamentally the same thing. The Reform Party put out a score card and came in at 30 per cent. We said the Liberals had not addressed the issue or even come remotely close to solving the issue of interprovincial trade barriers.

What did the Liberals say? This is their brand new pulp fiction, a record of achievement. Now there is a joke. Page 18 of the document states that a Liberal government will be committed to the elimination of interprovincial trade barriers within Canada and will address the issue urgently, and they have a check mark.

We noted they had not even come remotely close to it but they put it in the red book. We are talking integrity. They clearly indicated that as far as they were concerned they had achieved the objective of doing away with interprovincial trade barriers.

Why was it on Monday morning, when I was in their policy session, the following National Liberal Women's Commission resolution passed? It read:

Be it resolved that the Liberal Party of Canada encourage the Government of Canada to commit itself, in all matters of internal trade, to facilitating removal of the number and complexity of impediments to interprovincial trade.

If, when they put out this pulp fiction on Thursday they had already done it, why was the National Liberal Women's Commission passing a resolution saying they should do it the next day?

I have another one by the Liberal Party of Canada, Ontario. It read:

Be it resolved that the Liberal Party of Canada request that the federal government pursue a comprehensive agreement to complete the Economic Union of Canada by introducing a constitutional provision stating that Canada is an Economic Union wherein goods, services, people, and capital can have full mobility within the entire nation".

What a great idea but they just did it the day before, did they not? They said so in their book. What is this? That was not good enough. The Liberal Party of Ontario passed another one. It read:

Be it resolved that the Liberal Party of Canada urges the federal government to negotiate with the provinces to ensure the portability of professional qualifications between provinces.

The Prime Minister, this person with the imaginary friend, had just finished telling us they had done it. Why did they put out this book when in fact they had not done it, to the extent they even passed resolutions to say they should do it?

Now the big whopper is "an agenda for jobs and growth". This government promised Canadians jobs, jobs, jobs. Is that not terrific? It was like the promise that we would have independence in the chair in this place by putting opposition members in the chair of this place. "Oh, gee, we are not going to do that". There is another broken promise.

What about jobs, jobs, jobs? I would have been just totally mortified if my caucus had done what the National Liberal Caucus did at the convention. Believe it or not, this is really something. They actually put in:

Whereas the twin forces of economic globalization and rapid technological change have resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs throughout all sectors of the labour market;

Whereas the rate of unemployment remains stubbornly high with too many people competing for too few jobs;

Whereas the young people, in particular-

I should parenthesize that they are 18 per cent unemployed.

Whereas the young people, in particular, are finding it increasingly difficult to obtain full time employment;

This is a resolution of the National Liberal Caucus. It is the most brilliant idea the Liberals have:

Be it resolved that the Liberal Party of Canada recommends that work sharing be promoted with employers and unions as part of the effort to redistribute working time-

That is the most brilliant idea the people on the other side of the House have come up with. Then they have the audacity to send out from the Prime Minister's office, at the expense of taxpayers, distortions about where the Reform Party is coming from and that somehow we do not have any new ideas.

We do have some ideas. For example, one distortion of truth was that our program would rob the poor to pay the rich. Let us take a look at exactly what the Reform Party would do. We would

increase the basic personal income tax exemption from $6,456 to $7,900, giving tax relief to every taxpayer.

We would increase the spousal amount from $5,380 also to $7,900 which would level the playing field for parents who choose to stay home to look after young children. It would help families meet their needs in a more demanding economy.

We would eliminate the 3 per cent and 5 per cent federal surtaxes introduced by their brother in the federal Tories as part of our commitment to simplify and flatten taxes.

We would cut the employers unemployment insurance premium by 28 per cent, thereby reducing the job killing payroll taxes.

We would extend the $3,000 to $5,000 child care deduction to all parents including those who care for their children at home.

It is a matter of coming up with new ideas. It is a matter of making sure the people at the bottom end of the scale are looked after first. That is what the Reform Party is about. In this instance a family of four with one income earner would see an immediate tax reduction of 89 per cent. There would be one million fewer taxpayers at the bottom end of the scale as a result of the initiatives of the Reform Party.

At the top end of the scale for a family of four with one income earner earning $100,000 the reduction would only be 3 per cent as opposed to 89 per cent at the bottom end.

And these people have the audacity to say we are robbing the poor to pay the rich. These people are robbing the poor to pay the rich. We will do a complete turnaround so that the people at the bottom end of the scale are the people who are the most advantaged. I just do not understand these people opposite at all.

As my colleague from Lisgar-Marquette noted, if the Liberals cannot keep the small promises, how in the world can they keep the big ones? Here we have an issue of honesty, integrity and moving forward in the impartiality of the running of the House and they cannot even do that. When the National Liberal Caucus has to resort to their very best idea of job sharing, give me a break.

We have some ideas. We would create jobs through smaller government. We would put an end to overspending and lower taxes. We would make government smaller by eliminating waste, duplication and red tape. In particular, if we take a look at the portfolio I am responsible for, we would take a look at why the heritage minister felt compelled to come up with a $20 million Canada Information Office. What an absolutely brilliant idea when every department and every ministry of the government has its very own information office.

In addition, there is also Inquiries Canada with a budget of $4 million. Why did we need this? Maybe we have a bit of a clue in the way in which the Liberals went about hiring the people for the office. It does not come under any rules and regulations with respect to the normal hiring practice of government. I wonder why. I wonder if maybe they may be choosing to hire exactly the people they want. I will bet there is an election coming and they want to have some people they will be able to hand pick at taxpayers' expense to bring into this office.

[Committee Of The Whole, October 29th, 1996]

May he rest in peace.

He has been a very memorable member. I think of him as constantly popping up with his Reform green book. While entertaining, nonetheless it has not been quite as entertaining as this whole process. He was one of the authors of the idea of the continuing effort to reform this archaic institution to create more independence in the Chair in an effort to reduce the level of partisanship.

We all agree that we have no difficulty with the qualifications of this member but there is a complete lack of understanding of the principle involved. I realize it is really difficult for the Liberals to understand principle but we had people from the other side of this House saying this whole thing of creating impartiality, of getting people from the opposition to be officials in the House, it was not a promise.

In reality it was contained in their pulp fiction, the appendix to their red book. To try to weasel out of this promise, which was a promise simply because they chose to include it in the appendix, I find is really very unfortunate and perhaps says something about their attitude toward the issue of integrity in government.

Over the weekend 1.4 million documents were distributed in newspapers. The document was called "Commitments are only as strong as our will to fulfil them". I do not know if these documents were all from the 1.4 million Canadians who are unemployed, but on the front of this document it was noted that this was a statement by the Prime Minister. I would like to read from this Liberal document:

There are no vague "philosophies" and empty promises in "Creating Opportunity". The Red Book is full of specific plans to improve our society, our economy and our collective strength. One of the reasons that Canadians so enthusiastically support the Red Book is because it was crafted after significant consultation with Canadians from every corner of our country. We asked what was important to you. We listened. And we're still listening. In turn, you have given [the Prime Minister] the most important mandate in the world: your trust. He and his government are fulfilling, and will continue to fulfil, the commitments you helped to create.

Let us take a look at the last couple of weeks and let us be very blunt. We are talking now about facts. I know Liberals do not like to talk about facts. When the Prime Minister was addressing young people in a high school in Manitoba he told a story that he sat on a corner on a chair with a homeless gentlemen. It rather piqued the interest of the reporters and they asked "who is this person, when did this happen and what is going on here?"

It was found that this story, taken to be true by these young people in Manitoba, was without basis in fact. The story that the Prime Minister had told these young people of Canada was a falsehood. He did not sit on corners with homeless people. He did not consult with homeless people.

The closest he could come was in the interim period when he had previously been elected and then re-elected when he happened to run into somebody on the street. That was the Prime Minister and his imaginary friend.

On the same trip this person we are supposed to trust was telling us that one of the great things he and his government had done was to move interest rates down from 14 per cent and 15 per cent. It depended on how much farther he went west how big the number got. He started at 13. Then it became 14 and then it became a 15 per cent interest rate that the Liberals were facing when they came into government. The difficulty is that the number was only 9.5 per cent, a minor discrepancy. This is the person Canada is supposed to trust.

"As a result of the 14, 15 and 16 per cent interest rates", he said, "we have saved the taxpayer $7,000 in interest payments". Then it was $8,000 in interest payments and by the time he got out west it was $9,000 in interest payments. In fact the number is $2,700, a little less than $9,000.

We are talking about integrity. We are talking about integrity of government and people who will stand to be counted and tell it like it is.

I am repeating only facts, which is important. I will quote the Prime Minister from television in Winnipeg: "It was a big gamble we took when we decided to have a detailed program like this. I didn't expect that everything will have been perfect, but we will have been well above 90 per cent by the time we will call an election, probably close to 100 per cent".

I guess what actually happened was-

[Committee Of The Whole, October 29th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the member for Kingston and the Islands. I believe he will be the first person in the history of the House of Commons who will have come to the position of deputy speaker under closure. I think that is really something. He has been a very memorable member.