John Cummins

[The Budget, March 21st, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, four years ago I came to this place excited at the prospect of trying to affect some change here. At that time, I shared the enthusiasm of my fellow Reformers for fiscal prudence and for promoting the notion of fiscal prudence and some sort of social responsibility. As well, I came with an interest in the fishery, especially the fishery on the west coast.

Canada's fisheries represent a valuable national resource. The responsibility for that resource is vested in the federal government. It is a constitutional responsibility, one that the federal government cannot ignore. Yet this government has failed miserably in that regard.

It has ignored the best advice of the Supreme Court of Canada. It has ignored countless participants and shareholders in the fisheries who have attempted to offer good and solid advice to the government. Most curiously, it was ignored by a former Speaker of the House whom this government appointed to conduct a review of the Fraser River fishery in 1994.

Why I bring this up in the context of the budget is that the federal department of fisheries has a budget this year approaching $1.2 billion. We are not talking peanuts here. We are talking about a huge budget, one which is not spent wisely and one which puts this valuable natural resource at risk.

Mr. Fraser in his comments suggested the same: "DFO must formulate a strategy and a plan that will marshal the personnel, facilities, equipment and communications systems needed to re-establish a credible enforcement deterrent. The first step in the process must be a proper assessment of what is required at minimum to ensure adequate enforcement. This cannot be achieved in the context of a budget exercise".

What the former Speaker was saying was that when there is a department like fisheries and oceans with a constitutional responsibility to protect a national resource, we cannot simply take the accountant's view and start slashing at the budget. We first have to determine what is needed to protect that resource and go from there. In managing the budget this government has not done that.

That is not to say, necessarily, that we are standing here saying that more money must be spent. What we are saying is that a proper assessment must be taken of what is needed. We must ensure that the moneys spent are spent wisely.

In 1994 the government reaffirmed its support for something known as the aboriginal fishing strategy. This was a strategy that established a racially segregated fishery on the west coast which the previous government said was an obligation as a result of a Supreme Court decision and Sparrow. This of course was false.

Nevertheless, a mid-term review was conducted of this program in 1996. In that mid-term review it was noted that reallocation of money from within DFO to the aboriginal fishing strategy starved the real needs of the department such as enforcement.

What we have here is an abuse of priorities. Where the key priority must be enforcing regulations and laws and protecting the resource, the government in its wisdom took money from that critical area and put it into an area which came about as a result of a political need rather than a constitutional need.

Within a year of coming to power, the government reaffirmed its support for this aboriginal fishing strategy and approved the continuation of AFS commercial sales projects and allocated money away from key enforcement areas. This is totally unacceptable.

DFO auditors went over the results of the mid-term review and they noted two things. The first thing they said is that it was difficult to get an overall sense of what had been accomplished through the expenditure of almost $100 million over four years. That $100 million was spent on this aboriginal fishing strategy.

The auditors went on to say that most of the examples used in the document contained no hard data, thus they had no way of knowing the magnitude of the project, whether it was cost effective or how the results were determined.

The government asked Mr. Matkin, former head of the B.C. business council, to conduct a review of this aboriginal fishing strategy. The review was completed toward the end of January and

the government promised that this review would be made public. We are still waiting for the publication of that review.

At the same time as we are waiting, it is preventing the government from doing its job and that is preparing for the upcoming fishing season. In a draft of the Matkin report, Mr. Matkin noted that these pilot sales programs were in a rut and that something must be done. Yet again we are waiting and waiting for something to come about here.

The government further spent money on another study, a study which would deal with the coast wide implications of using the Nisga'a treaty as a model for treaties which would be established coast wide and the impact of using that treaty as a model, especially with this fisheries component. In other words, what is the cost of replicating the Nisga'a treaty coast wide to the commercial fishing industry?

Over a year ago we applied under access to information to get a copy of that study. It took 12 months. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans, in its wisdom, refused to release anything to us, not even the cover page of that 98 page document. We are still working through access to information to get it. What does the department have to fear from the public understanding of what it is doing and what the cost is going to be in settling these treaties?

My colleague from Fraser Valley East has also asked the department for a study it did on the Sto:lo and their budget. He still has not been able to get that. There was a May report, again commissioned by the department. We are waiting for action on that. It is yet to happen. This report was delivered last December and we are still waiting.

As I said, the department spends about $1.2 billion a year. There is no denying that the problems it faces are complex. Unfortunately the department has not measured up to the job. Time is running out for Parliament to examine the workings of this department and yet examine it must.

Last fall a federal court judge accused the department of a litany of corrupt behaviour which included vote rigging and sham consultative process. This had reference to dealing with the establishment of a halibut quota system on the west coast.

The federal court judge noted: "A DFO official's unwillingness to face the obvious meaning of his own words caused the court to doubt the reliability of the evidence offered in defence of the minister's, DFO's, and his own position". This is a tremendous indictment of the department. The judge went on to say: "Rules were simply broken because it was necessary to do so to reach the planned objective".

The minister has refused to this point to dissociate himself from the action of the official named by the court.

If the federal court of Canada can come down with an indictment of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans with the intensity it did last fall, why should I or why should the Canadian public have any confidence in the ability of this department to manage this huge budget? It is an issue that needs to be addressed and addressed quickly by this House.

[The Budget, March 21st, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, as my colleague suggested, Ottawa seems consumed with appeasing Quebec. Federal funds flow into that province without reason. At the same time provincial policies drive money out of that province.

This enrages many people in the province of British Columbia and weakens the attachment of many of them to Canada. Does the favouritism shown to Quebec strengthen the national fabric of Canada?

[Administrative Tribunals (Remedial And Disciplinary Measures) Act, February 3rd, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, the bill before us, Bill C-49, makes some administrative changes to boards, agencies and tribunals according to the summary.

Our position is that this bill should be scrapped and done away with immediately. It does little, if anything, to reduce patronage. It makes surface changes to administration of boards and agencies but no real changes to improve accountability.

We need competence and quality in appointments to government boards and tribunals as well as improved accountability. This bill, in itself, in our view is simply a blueprint for patronage.

The bill does not affect the cabinet's power to make appointments. It can still appoint whomever it wants whenever it wants. In fact, the number of pleasure appointments have increased, which may open the door to increased political interference.

The bill says it will eliminate 271 jobs. Currently all 271 jobs are vacant and we know full well, and acting on common sense, when someone does not have something they cannot very well take it away.

There are still approximately 2,225 appointments available to cabinet. The person in charge of patronage appointments is Penny Collenette, a patronage appointment in and of herself.

In the red book the Liberals made a promise with regard to patronage. They said that a Liberal government will take a series of initiatives to restore confidence in the institutions of government and make competence and diversity the criteria for federal appointments. Open government will be the watchword of the Liberal program. That was on page 92. This bill flies in the face of that commitment.

Our commitment in our blue book was that the Reform Party supports restrictions and limitations on the number and types of orders in council permitted by a government during its term in office. That is the way these appointments should be made.

Let us take a look at what the Ottawa Citizen has to say and part of the list that it provided us on Friday, January 3 on government appointments. It notes that Deborah Coyne, a constitutional lawyer who worked as an advisor to former Newfoundland Premier Clyde Wells during the Meech Lake accord negotiations and who is a special friend of former Prime Minister Trudeau, will kick off the

new year as a member of the department of citizenship's immigration and refugee board.

It says that Stephen Goudge, a former chairman of the legal aid committee of the Law Society of Upper Canada and a friend of the current justice minister, was appointed a judge of the court of appeal for Ontario. When contacted at his Toronto home, Mr. Goudge stated that he did not have any comment on his appointment. He said: "It would be inappropriate for me to comment on anything. I am honoured by the appointment. I will do the best I can". I am sure he will and he will be well rewarded for it.

Cabinet order in council documents show that the Liberal government made 53 such public service appointments on December 19. They were tremendous Christmas gifts. They included 27 appointments to quasi-judicial boards administered by the Department of Human Resources Development, 11 appointments to the immigration and refugee board and the appointment of five senior judges. Some of the jobs are high paying. For example, the immigration and refugee board jobs come with salaries of $86,400 a year.

These patronage appointments prompted an editorial in the Ottawa Citizen , a paper which customarily is friendly to the government. I would like to read into the record some of the editorial. The title is: Hypocrisy of Patronage''. The subtitle is:Having failed to uphold red book promises to control patronage, the Liberals are guilty of the sin of hypocrisy''. The editorial states:

What do hundreds of defeated Liberal candidates, campaign managers, fundraisers, and friends of Jean Chrétien have in common? They've been rewarded with patronage posts for their loyal service to the Liberal party.

Make no mistake, patronage is alive and well in the Chrétien government. It is most obvious with Gov. Gen. Roméo LeBlanc (former MP, senator, and election strategist). It is just as pervasive with the unknown Liberals who sit on countless agencies and boards.

Granted, the Liberals are not abusing the time-(dis)honored practice as much as Brian Mulroney did. He shamelessly spread the spoils of power and turned Canada into a nation of cynics.

Chrétien's political sin isn't that he's acted as cavalierly as Mulroney, but that he hasn't met the high standards he promised. His is a sin of political hypocrisy. Among the Liberals' Red Book promises:

The budget for consulting contracts would be cut by 15 per cent. So-called communications consultants with political ties can reap lucrative contracts by providing "strategic" advice. The Liberals say general spending cuts have saved enough money, so they have not chopped consulting budgets as promised.

Parliamentarians would be given "mechanisms" to review some senior cabinet appointments. No such mechanisms are yet created, and no excuse given.

All appointments would be "made on the basis of competence". So far, more than 1,800 have been appointed. Some, such as LeBlanc, have been highly successful, but overall quality suffers if the candidates' prime qualification is that they are Liberals.

Chrétien promised this week "he won't take Canadians for granted" in the next election. If so, he should remember it's their loyalty-not that of party members-that should come first.

Patronage is a problem. That is pointed out in this editorial. They are not my words, they are the words of a newspaper which tends to be friendly with the current government. Patronage spoils the feelings which people have for politicians and their government, especially when they see candidates who were unsuccessful in general elections being appointed to government boards and other bodies which pay well. They look at that with great alarm. It is taxpayers' money and they wonder how well their money is being spent. Why should their hard earned tax dollars be used to support failed candidates in a manner to which the taxpayers would like to become accustomed?

The bill makes very few changes, for example, to travel and per diem perks. In section 32(3), this bill will not affect such high flyers, as my colleague pointed out earlier, as Victor Gloodbloom, the Commissioner of Official Languages, who commutes between Montreal and Ottawa. But it will eliminate local commuting claims for people who used to claim the drive from home to work even if was just around the corner.

The bill will deal with remedial and disciplinary measures which will be standardized for administrative tribunals. However, the power of the minister to interfere with disciplinary measures has increased. The minister can now decide whether any member of a committee should be subject to remedial or disciplinary measures, section 5, or whether they should continue on-

[Petitions, December 13th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, in the second petition, the undersigned believe that the application of the 7 per cent GST to reading material is unfair and wrong. The petitioners urge all levels of government to demonstrate their commitment to education and literacy by eliminating the sales tax on reading materials. They ask the Prime Minister to carry out his party's repeated and unequivocal promise to remove the federal sales tax from books, magazines and newspapers.

[Petitions, December 13th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36, I have two petitions I would like to present this morning.

In the first, the undersigned residents of Canada draw to the attention of the House that 38 per cent of the national highway system is substandard, that Mexico and the United States are upgrading their national systems and that the national highway policy study identified benefits of the proposed national highway program.

The petitioners urge Parliament to request that the federal government join with provincial governments to make the national highway system upgrading possible.

[Excise Tax Act, December 10th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that we have to rise in the House today to address this bill. It is a bill that in reality should not have come before this House. It is an issue we should not have had to talk to. The Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the finance minister and scores of cabinet and caucus members all made election pledges to eliminate, not to harmonize the GST. The issue that should be before us is the elimination and not the harmonization of this tax.

As members know full well, the heritage minister was forced to resign and seek re-election at a cost of over $500,000 to Canadian taxpayers because she was unable to fulfil a commitment that was made during the election campaign. The finance minister publicly begged for forgiveness. "We have made a mistake", he said for his complicity in misleading Canadians on this Liberal GST policy.

The member for York South-Weston was banished from the Liberal caucus by the Prime Minister for insisting that the government keep its word on the GST. The member for Broadview-Greenwood went into a self-imposed exile in a rare show of solidarity with the member for York South-Weston.

What is the issue here? The issue is a matter of keeping one's word. Let us think of it in personal terms. If any member in this House or any person in my circle of acquaintances made a specific commitment to me that they intended to do something and then reneged on that deal, somehow tried to back away from it by saying

that they did not really mean what they said, my toleration for that individual would be surely tested.

It goes without saying that individuals who continually make promises they cannot keep really are not held in high regard by the people who have to deal with them. If they are in business, in short order they will be out of business. If it is a matter of friendship, friends are gone and friends are lost.

The question which comes to mind is, if this is the way we respond on a personal level to people who do not keep their word, what should be the reaction of Canadians to a government, members of which made a commitment in the heat of an election campaign and then are unable to maintain the commitment? The patience of the voters with the government would be sorely tested because of its inability to keep its word.

We have in this harmonization a situation where the Atlantic provinces were bribed into signing the deal with a billion dollars of borrowed taxpayers' money. All Canadians are aware that these kinds of expenditures are only possible because of the ability of the government to borrow money. It is not because there is a pocketful of money which could be doled out to try to get people on side. The fact is that the government is short well over $100 billion in its term of office and to finance this little escapade it will have to borrow even more.

There are three provinces, Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia that are not even willing to discuss the federal proposal. Support for the harmonization proposal is weak in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and P.E.I. It just goes to show that this is going to be piecemeal legislation.

It will be restricted to one area of the country where in some respects the governments were unable to turn down the federal government because they just did not have the fiscal strength to do so. On the other hand, it is a part of the country which will suffer the most because it entered into this agreement. In essence, if we are going to help the governments in the maritime provinces, in Newfoundland, we should be looking at trying to determine ways to reduce the tax rate to make that area of the country more attractive to industry rather than simply showing them how to hide taxes which they certainly do not need.

Another issue is the impact this bill will have on business. As has been stated in the House today, and which I think is worth repeating, three major retailers in Atlantic Canada have stated that their net annual retail deficit will total $27 million once harmonization is implemented. Now $27 million may not be much money to the heritage minister because she certainly knows how to throw around the tens of millions of dollars to back up policies which have little real effect, but for business it is a big wad of money.

One private retailer in the Atlantic region was contemplating opening two stores in 1997 and now has decided against it. That is the danger of this high taxation. That is the danger which is posed to the economy in the rest of the country if we allow the government to lead us into a harmonization program that will only result in higher taxes and which will hide a tax that Canadians are so against.

A study by the accounting firm of Ernst and Young estimated that a midsized national chain with 50 stores in the Atlantic provinces would pay up to $3 million in one-time costs and up to $1.1 million a year to comply with a regional tax in price sales system. That is a lot of money: $1.1 million for 50 stores. It is a huge overload on any one store in that chain. It is only reasonable to assume, given taxation levels of that magnitude, that the chain will be closing stores.

The Halifax Chamber of Commerce predicts that the harmonized sales tax will push up new house prices by 5.5 per cent and will force municipalities to raise property taxes. An increase of 5.5 per cent in housing costs is an unquestionably bad move. Canadians are hard pressed to pay housing costs. Any increase will be felt by the people who can least afford it: the low income earners and first time home buyers.

In essence this tax is making it even more difficult for our children to start the process of putting their own roofs over their heads. We are making it difficult for them to get out of the rental market. There will also be a great impact on the rental market. It is anticipated that rental costs will increase due to the imposition of this tax.

Consumers will pay through the nose. They will pay more for funeral services, children's clothing, books, auto repairs, electricity, gasoline, home heating fuel and haircuts among other things.

As I mentioned, the Investment Property Owners Association tabled a report in the Nova Scotia legislature. It says that renters can expect to shoulder some of the higher operating costs that will hit landlords with the harmonized GST. Because renters have less income than homeowners, the tax increases due to the blended GST will hurt those who can least afford it.

The federal government's proposal will hurt low income Canadians the most. Therefore I move:

That all the words after the word "That" be deleted and the following substituted therefor:

this House declines to give second reading to Bill C-70, an act to amend the Excise Tax Act, the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, the Income Tax Act, the Debt Servicing and Reduction Account Act and related acts, since the principle of the bill does not seek to abolish the goods and services tax.

[Questions On The Order Paper, December 6th, 1996]

What dams or other obstructions has BC Hydro erected on rivers in British Columbia and what has been the effect of each obstruction on the life-cycle of the various species of salmon?

[Fisheries, December 4th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, in a recent decision a federal court judge found that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans manipulated a consultative process in establishing halibut quota in B.C. He also stated that a DFO official's unwillingness to face the obvious meaning of his own words caused the judge to doubt the reliability of the evidence offered in defence of the minister's, DFO's and his own position. The judge found that DFO rigged the vote to get the result it wanted. He said that rules were simply broken because it was necessary to do so to reach the planned objective.

Does the minister condone the actions of his officials and, if not, what is he going to do about it?

[Privilege, December 3rd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, last week I did rise on a question of privilege protesting a directive of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to department staff members ordering them to track all calls from MPs.

It is my contention that the directive to track calls from MPs will have a chilling effect on communication between MPs and public servants. This will cause particular hardship for members' staff members who contact public servants on a regular basis to seek help as they respond to calls from constituents.

As an example, last Friday DFO staff members in Vancouver were reminding my staff that they would have to record the fact that they had spoken to my staff member.

To resolve the matter, I would propose that the minister voluntarily withdraw the directive.

[Excise Tax Act, December 3rd, 1996]

Madam Speaker, the member opposite suggests that making it easier to pay taxes somehow makes it more attractive, something like turning vinegar into wine.

Why should retailers or anyone else feel better about paying this tax?