John Duncan

[National Revenue, May 26th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, Revenue Canada has moved processing of income tax returns from Ottawa to Shawinigan. On several occasions members of the official opposition asked the Minister of National Revenue how many jobs were moved to Shawinigan. Twice the minister told us that only one job was transferred. We know that this year 723,000 returns were moved from Ottawa to Shawinigan. Is that not a lot of returns for only one person?

[Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, May 26th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the Canadian Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Network is holding its annual seminar at the University of Victoria from July 29 to July 31.

RSD or complex regional pain syndrome is a puzzling disorder. According to the McGill pain index, back pain is rated 16, terminal cancer at 26, and RSD at 42.

It can occur after an injury, even a minor one. The injury appears to be healing but the pain intensifies. The sympathetic nervous system becomes overactive, causing continuous and spreading pain that can be unrelenting. Some commit suicide. However, detected in the first several months the syndrome often yields to treatment.

The network chooses to designate July as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome Awareness Month.

[Questions On The Order Paper, May 11th, 1999]

For the fiscal year ending March 31, 1998, what is the breakdown by line item and business line of all expenditures comprised in the amount of $6.5 million under vote 10 in the Natural Resources Canada's performance report “Promoting Canada's International Interests” for all categories, which would include any estimates of travel, operating and capital expenses, grants and contributions, salaries or benefits?

[Questions On The Order Paper, May 10th, 1999]

For each of the last two fiscal years, with the last fiscal year ending March 31, 1998, what is ( a ) the total number of income tax returns processed annually by Revenue Canada, both personal and corporate, and ( b ) the total number of people involved in processing these returns; and for this fiscal year what is the total number of returns that are being redirected to Shawinigan?

[Mining, May 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the giant gold mine near Yellowknife has been dumping arsenic dust into the mine for almost 50 years. Cleanup costs are estimated at anywhere between $100 million to $1 billion.

Who will fund this cleanup? Will the government guarantee that it will not be the beleaguered Canadian taxpayer?

[Royal Canadian Mounted Police, May 7th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday in response to a question about the lack of RCMP funding the parliamentary secretary said “bring us the specifics and we will address them”.

Here are some specifics. Last week the three member federal drug squad covering the north half of Vancouver Island was eliminated. In Port McNeill the already short-staffed detachment lost another constable with no replacement in sight.

When will the minister stop the bleeding, fill the vacant positions and restore the millions of dollars missing from the RCMP's core budget?

[Aboriginal Affairs, May 6th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, we are not talking secession here; we are talking sovereignty association, a sovereign state.

I asked the minister about creating a state within a state in the province of British Columbia. I am sure that he wants to respond again.

He says that Quebec cannot take over the federal government's powers, and we agree. He says that Quebec is not a nation state, but he obviously thinks the Nisga'a nation is. Why the double standard?

[Aboriginal Affairs, May 6th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs.

The minister has a responsibility to disclose his views on the Nisga'a treaty, yet he sat here during three days of questions and did not answer any of them.

This treaty creates a new Nisga'a state in the heart of British Columbia. The Nisga'a government will have absolute power in 14 constitutional areas and the Nisga'a can grant civil rights based on ethnicity.

This same minister has refused to grant Quebec these same powers, and rightly so. Why has he caved in on the Nisga'a treaty?

[Trade, April 23rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, there is a huge threat to Canadian jobs as a result of renewed protectionist measures by the U.S. to reclassify specialty wood products away from free trade.

There has been no visible political action on this issue. Canadian trade officials have been meeting in Washington since Wednesday, but the government has known about this threat since early March.

How long do concerned forest workers and their families have to wait for the government to act?

[Public Sector Pension Investment Board Act, April 22nd, 1999]

Madam Speaker, debating this piece of legislation reminds me of the question that we were just dealing with. It reminds me of our questions during question period about the Nisga'a debate that is going on in the British Columbia legislature, that the government would just as soon not have going on in that province because it does not like that kind of scrutiny and it wants to control the agenda.

If it is a piece of legislation that it would just as soon not see the light of day, and if it does not want much attention to be paid to it, then it minimizes the time it is in this parliament. This bill fits that category. The government wants to have this $30 billion fraudulent exercise, this tax grab, this attempt to take money from the workers' pockets buried as deeply as possible.

Whenever the government says it is taking a balanced approach to an issue we should hang on to our hats, hold on to our watches and grab our wallets because that is Liberal codespeak for taking measures that will either rob our pocketbooks, defer an issue until hopefully there is less attention being paid to it, or it signals other intentions of government that will take people where they really would rather not go.

One recent example of Liberal-speak is the changes to the employment insurance program. The so-called balanced approach taken by the Liberal government changed the eligibility criteria, which was promoted on the basis that more people, particularly part time workers, would be eligible for benefits. In reality, eligibility was cut in half so that people who unavoidably lost their jobs had only a 35% chance of qualifying for benefits under the new rules, where previously the figure was closer to 70%.

We are now going to have a surplus in the employment insurance program this year of $26 billion, money taken out of workers' and employers' pockets by government misrepresentation. The government is still trying to justify the fact because it is trying to make its books appear better for the workers. The cold hearts over there are trying to make themselves sound warm.

We also have the example of the balanced Liberal approach to taxation. That translates into the government creating so-called tax reductions which are more than offset by tax increases in previous budgets that suddenly kick in and are not announced this year because they were announced last year or the year before. We have things like bracket creep that occur insidiously with inflation. All of this makes government revenues go up while the government claims that tax revenues are going down. That is logically impossible, but Liberals continue to ignore the contradictory reality in their public utterances.

The issue of Bill C-78 is public sector pension funds. The government mandates that private sector pension plans must be actuarially sound and must protect the contributions from being raided by the managers of the plans. What it is planning to do with the public service pension plan would be fraudulent if done by others. So now we are talking about the so-called Liberal balanced approach codespeak to public service pension funds.

The paper value of the pension plan is $126 billion. The current obligations are $96 billion. The surpluses in the accounts are: the public service plan, $14.9 billion; the RCMP plan, $2.4 billion; and the Canadian forces plan, $12.9 billion, for a total of $30.1 billion. This surplus is not guaranteed into the future. In fact this plan has been in a deficit situation before. The people who are potentially on the hook in this whole exercise are the taxpayers. This government wants to scoop the $30 billion to make its books look better. It is Liberal optics. The Liberals are putting the future taxpayer at risk as they have done in the past.

There is nothing wrong with a surplus, particularly when the surplus is there because of some recent circumstances and not through the good management of this government. The government should leave the surplus where it is. There is no guarantee and there are several indicators that this surplus will not remain a surplus over time, given such critical factors as interest rates and salary increases.

The government wants to seize the $30 billion surplus. It wants to rob Peter to pay Paul. The Minister of Finance is trying to make his government's books look better by raiding the federal public service pension plan. The surplus belongs to and is meant to benefit current and future retirees. The surplus can and should shield the taxpayer from having to contribute extra money to the fund should it go into a deficit position as it has in the past. Taxpayers pumped $13 billion beyond their yearly contributions into the plan to cover shortfalls over the past 30 years of the plan's existence.

There are some strong indicators that the pension plan will not necessarily be running an annual surplus in the future. One reason the plan is in a surplus situation now is that the fund is currently benefiting from the higher interest rates of the 1980s on the 20 year government bonds in which the fund is invested. Those 1980 interest rates were much higher than 1990 rates.

The government plans to move from low risk, long term bonds to higher risk market funds. That is a double-edged sword. That can lead to a very nice situation or it can lead to a very ugly situation, depending on what happens. It is not a low risk enterprise like government bonds.

I am not saying we should not go into higher risk, higher potential benefit plans, but in order to do so, one must do it with a running surplus for protection on the downside. The government is doing everything it can to increase the risk to taxpayers. It is not doing this on an actuarially sound basis. This is wrong.

I want to talk more about the way the government is dealing with people. We are talking about 300,000 retirees, plus 345,000 members of the public service, including military personnel and the RCMP. That is whom we are talking about. We are talking about 645,000 Canadians, plus their dependants, who are affected by this piece of legislation.

I heard the government House leader on the Thursday question on House business earlier today say that the government would like to have this all done by Friday. It is not going to have this all done by Friday if I have anything to do with it.

The government has refused to properly fund or even bargain in good faith with our public service. I am talking about the RCMP.

There is a 10% vacancy rate in the RCMP in British Columbia and it was planned by this government. We have one-third of the country's RCMP officers in the British Columbia jurisdiction. The Regina training centre is basically out of commission because of this government.

We are looking at potentially a 50% plus turnover and attrition in the RCMP over the next several years because of the demographics of its workforce. Already it is planning not to fill positions in British Columbia. What on earth is the government trying to do to the RCMP? This is going contrary to the wishes of Canadians.

We have statements from within Canadian policing organizations that organized crime is more entrenched in British Columbia than in any other jurisdiction in the country. With a full slate of RCMP we did not have enough resources to address all of that and now we are going to run with a 10% vacancy rate in filling those positions.

I am sorry, but I have a great deal of problem in understanding why the government not only refuses to fund the RCMP properly, but now it wants to raid its pension plan as well. Talk about a morale destroyer.

One of the other sectors involved here is the armed forces. We have had great debate about that today. In order to do the minimum the government is requesting, we know that the military is overtasked and underfunded as it is. We know that it needs a billion dollars a year to get up to speed. That is not forthcoming. We have not seen it. All we have seen are some quality of life changes. We are happy to see quality of life changes for the military, but it needs to be equipped.

The military should not have to cannibalize the air force in order to equip the CF-18s to do the job they are doing today. Essentially that is what had to be done in order to do its job for the last 30 days in Kosovo.

The operations in Kosovo should not be coming out of the national defence budget. It requires a separate budget. We are trying to get the government to address that issue and it is fudging it over. That is not appropriate in order to achieve what we need which is to ensure that we have a Department of National Defence that can function in Canada's best interests.

For the third sector, our public service just went through a government imposed settlement. We had an all-night session in the House of Commons. At 10 p.m. on the night of the all-night session there was a negotiated settlement. We still went through that whole exercise.

What has become very clear is that the government refuses to go after final offer selection negotiations even at a time when the unions are agreeable. Those kinds of negotiations have a track record of success. The government mentality is to rely completely on back to work legislation in its labour negotiations. I call that bad faith negotiations.

Now the government wants to add insult to injury by going after the pension surplus. It has already nibbled at that pension surplus to the tune of $10 billion. Now it wants the whole pie. Will this never end? This is the Liberal agenda, or is it the Liberal leadership agenda? Is this optics for the finance minister? Do we want to get that out of the way well ahead of the next election? I think so.

Let us talk about that $10 billion, that nibbling around the edges. That is a pretty heavy nibble I understand, but there is $30 billion at risk here. The government first started dipping into the surplus in 1996. Since then the federal government has taken $10.1 billion by not making interest payments on the actuarial surplus.

We know that the auditor general has not accepted the questionable accounting practices of the government, I think in the last three budgets. We also know there is an opinion out there. I am not attributing it to the auditor general but there is an opinion shared by many that the actions taken on the $10.1 billion are also a questionable accounting practice.

The civil servants have a valid argument. They are saying that a significant part of the surplus results from the fact that they were into a six year pay freeze. In some cases that is more like an eight year pay freeze. This freeze did several things, one of which meant that new retirees from that timeframe start out receiving little more than pensioners who had retired years earlier received. That was not what was predicated by the plan.

The union is basically telling its membership they have had six plus years of wage freezes, they have had job cuts through direct layoffs or privatization and they have had delays on issues like pay equity. On top of all that, now their public service pension plan is under attack.

I have a great deal of sympathy with that point of view given what I see in this bill. There is an expectation by the government that we all have short memories, that this bill will go through, that the next election is two years away and in the meantime we will all have forgotten about this raid on the public service pension plan.

The government has been balancing its books not by cutting spending but by raiding surpluses and taxing Canadians higher and higher year after year. The taxpayer is the odd man out along with the public service for any future shortfalls and any future deficits in this plan.

The surplus in the plan should be left alone. Plain and simple, the government should not be using it for any other purpose than to ensure that the plan remains solvent now and in the future.