Larry Bagnell

[The Budget, January 29th, 2002]

That is good for the record too.

Finally I would tend to agree with the member that the fundamentals of the economy such as taxes, the debt, the innovation agenda, the learning agenda, the poor, and aboriginal children are all very important for a solid economy. That is why I emphasized those areas more than the other parts of my speech.

[The Budget, January 29th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I have to return the compliment to my colleague because in the late night debates he is always the last one to speak, if I am not, and is a great participant here. I like to listen to his statements on the economy because he does a lot of research.

I hope someone will ask a question on the dollar because that is the part of my speech I did not get to.

In relation to the subsidy, the member referred to people such as renters, prisoners and people with incomes above a certain level. I am not certain what the level was but I am sure that most of the people above the poverty level certainly could use the rebate because of the very high price of heating last year. I do not think most renters in the country are that well off that it was not of benefit to them. Certainly prisoners in their lives do not have a good level of income. Obviously it was not supposed to go to them but they are a very low income group. I am certain that the small amount of money would far undershadow the very many poor people who really needed it.

In relation to the member's comments about grants in the west, I am curious. Does this mean he would close western diversification?

[The Budget, January 29th, 2002]

Madam Speaker, I have listened to much of the debate, a lot of it in December and a lot of it now, and I would like to summarize the reasons for the success of the budget. I am sure that the fact the finance minister is brilliant will not be enough in itself to convince my hon. colleagues and I will have to support it with some facts, which I will do now.

It has been a very successful budget. It has not been raised in question period. There have been no major sustained problems with the budget. It has not been in the press. I will quickly go over some of the areas that have been covered.

Everyone expected it to be a security budget because of September 11. That was covered. Also it was very difficult before that time as there was a recession and less money was available to the government. A lot of people knew the money would just not be available for a lot of things I am sure all MPs would like to spend money on. I was very delighted that in that security funding $646 million went toward the border which is so important to us. As the member from the PC/DR coalition just said, 85% of our exports cross over that border. There had already been some problems before September 11 and it would be absolutely crucial for us if that broke down. I lobbied hard for that and I was very delighted to see that.

In relation to health care, we have heard many times in this debate that last fall the federal government and the provinces came to an agreement for the next five years, and the largest transfer in history in health care, $34.1 billion, was started. I think Canadians were especially delighted that just this week the provinces and territories agreed that the changes undergone in the Canadian health system at this time would still follow the five principles of the Canada Health Act.

The reason I do not think the criticism has been sustained is that of any of the speakers who have spoken on this issue, not one, and I requested several at least when I was in the House, has yet been able to mention how much money went to their province in the tax point transfer. The debate is not over and perhaps there will be an opposition member who can come up with that figure and show their grasp of the figures. However, for the country as a whole, just for a start, of the $34.1 billion, $18.3 billion was in cash and $15.8 billion was in tax points.

Some members mentioned tax cuts during the debate. Because of the severe restraints in the budget and in available cash and the requirement for defence and security spending, people were worried that we would not be able to maintain the planned tax cuts. The majority of them do not go to high income people. They were able to be maintained. There will be $17 billion this year, $20 billion next year and also a $2 billion deferral in small business tax.

Under these constraints of course, nothing could be paid this year on the national debt. However, $35.8 billion had been paid off in recent years. The amount out of every dollar going to the debt has dropped dramatically from 36 cents to 23 cents, the lowest it has been in 50 years.

Payroll taxes were brought up at the beginning of the debate as a possible weakness. The government has cut EI payments for the last five years. The Canada pension plan is the only item in payroll taxes that has gone up and that was agreed. Everyone knew there was not enough money there. The provinces and the actuaries came up with the amount of money, in agreement with the federal government.

I have asked the members of the Alliance several times whether they agree with the present financing of the Canada pension plan but there has been no answer. Some are in the building and perhaps they will answer this time.

I was proud that a number of things could still be funded in the budget in spite of all the constraints we had. There was a lack of revenues because of the recession, which was accelerated by the events of September 11 and the security requirements.

There is $680 million for affordable housing. The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council is getting $36.5 million. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council is getting $9.5 million. The National Research Council is getting $110 million. All of this is to keep us on the leading edge of the knowledge based economy, the innovation economy we find ourselves in.

For persons with disabilities who pursue higher education, there is $10 million. Support for skills learning and research is $1.1 billion. For Canadian universities there is $200 million.

In foreign aid there is the $500 million African fund and the $100 million increase to Afghanistan.

For the Canadian Institute for Health Information there is $95 million. There is $75 million for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

There are a number of initiatives on the environment. The green municipal enabling fund doubled, which I know my colleague from the PC/DR coalition would appreciate. The green municipal investment fund also doubled. That is another $100 million. For wind energy there is $260 million. For woodlot management there is $10 million. For renewable energy efficiency there is $5 million.

I was especially happy to see something I had lobbied for. I knew we were in tough times and I was happy that there would be money for those who could least help themselves, aboriginal children. There is $185 million in new money for them.

I will now turn to some of the solutions that were offered, mostly by the loyal opposition during the debate. I am delighted to have some of these on the record.

First of all, the loyal opposition and to some extent the PC/DR coalition were talking about $16.3 billion in grants and contributions that apparently were wasted. To quote exactly, it was said “$16.3 billion that was unmanaged and unexplainable” and the auditor general could fill in the Minister of Finance. I quote from Hansard , “She could fill him in on the $16.5 billion waste government could cut”.

The $16.5 billion is not the amount the auditor general found in some administrative procedures that need to be fixed, which is the purpose of the auditor general. The $16.5 billion is the entire government budget for grants and contributions. I am delighted those parties are on record as suggesting we cut all the grants and contributions, including all those to Indian and northern affairs, veterans affairs, the Canadian International Development Agency, Human Resources Development Canada, Health Canada, and Agriculture and Agri-food Canada.

They talk about increasing health and agriculture and then suggest we cut all the grants. That is on page 5 of the auditor general's report for those who would like to look it up.

The second suggestion from one of the members of the loyal opposition was to cut regional development. This is probably everything except Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. A basic tenet of the spirit of this nation is that those parts of the country that are in need are helped. I cannot believe the entire party would believe that but it was in its platform in the last election. It is just not in keeping with the nation to suggest that the money that goes to the prairies and the west or to Atlantic Canada should no longer exist, anything outside the big cities. It is great to have it on the record.

Time and time again when there was talk about wasteful spending those members were challenged. I challenged them and other people challenged them to list the programs they would cut. They would very seldom list them.

I have to give credit to an Alliance member who, when I asked that question yesterday, did list a few things. What was unfortunate was the ones he listed.

First of all was the $9 million in heritage. I am not sure about the rest of the country, but in my riding the cultural industries are a very important part of a very limited economy, the artists, the filmmakers and songwriters who take advantage of our beautiful environment. Last year I think 25 CDs were released in Yukon. They are a very important economic generator. There are our museums and our first nations culture. Heritage is an important expenditure.

The biggest item mentioned was the $1.45 billion in heating fuel rebates. The most upsetting comment was that “most of it was to people who did not need it”.

I have already criticized members of the PC/DR coalition for bringing this up and they never did it again. Even if there were a small number of administrative mistakes, $1.45 billion was given to those Canadians who are not in the highest income bracket. In the cold wintertime their expenses are the highest. What kind of ivory tower is someone in to say that most of it went to people who did not need it? That is just not acceptable in this nation.

Finally, a member from the loyal opposition suggested yesterday that infrastructure was in the budget and no one had asked for infrastructure. This is astonishing. First, all the regional rural areas of the nation are alienated by saying there will be no regional development and now all the cities, towns, villages and rural municipalities are alienated by saying that no one asked for infrastructure.

I had lunch today with the second vice-president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. He said it was great when the government put in the first infrastucture program, it was great when it put in the second infrastructure program, and they are happy to see that there is money in this budget.

[House of Commons, December 14th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, as this is the last sitting day before we adjourn for the holiday season, could the Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons please review for us what we have accomplished in this place?

[Committees of the House, December 13th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for that intervention because it allows me to re-emphasize the point I was making. I am glad he started on a small list.

A great example is that the member would choose to sacrifice the thousands and thousands of poor who received the home heating oil grant for the administrative problems of a few people. That is fine. That is exactly why we want this list, to see what the opposition is willing to sacrifice.

The auditor general did suggest a number of areas related to spending. The two parties complaining about it have not elaborated on which areas to support. Some of the points the auditor general made related to the administration of those programs. If we are talking about programs relating to first nations, the poor, the environment, or heritage, it does not mean that those areas are bad areas to give money to; it means that their administration has to be improved. I do not have a problem with that. That is what the auditor general is there for. I have no problem with improving administration and saving funds.

I would be very interested in seeing a list from the members of the two parties who are talking about spending, such as the member has stated, with the exact items they would like to see cut. Then we can continue to debate.

I would also like the members of the Alliance to comment on regional funding. Yesterday one of the Alliance members suggested that regional development funding was one of the areas that could be cut.

We in the north have a transfer payment which is like regional funding. There is ACOA. There is western diversification. The whole country is covered, except for southwestern Ontario. Is the official opposition suggesting that we cut the money from the entire country except for southwestern Ontario? And I am not sure it is doing that well either.

[Committees of the House, December 13th, 2001]

Madam Speaker, I found it interesting that the first intervention suggested that my colleague had trouble with relevancy in his point, since we had about an hour-long speech from the first speaker that was not even on the topic which was the report of the Standing Committee on Finance.

I was not going to mention that but if the party that brought up the debate does not talk on the topic then it is hard-pressed to talk about relevancy. Nevertheless, I do not fault those members for what they said in that speech because the concern of all of us today is the budget and the ongoing discussion on it.

I would like to enter into a friendly debate with my Alliance colleagues who have spoken so far, give an opposing view of some of the points they made, and indicate where we are coming from.

I suggest that we have a fairly large philosophical gap. The party talks about overspending but it does not get into the nature of the spending. Where our party is coming from on CIDA, agriculture, the environment and first nations, is that we try to invest in people and remove the root causes of the problems rather than just give undefined amounts of money.

For instance, when we talked about first nations and nothing having occurred, a lot of the investments we have made over the years, with support from most of the parties, have been for education, housing and training. In the next session we will see work on improved governance. All these things are an investment and they do not have to go on forever. They are not permanent expenditures. We are solving problems.

It is the same with agriculture. A number of speakers have said that agriculture was not mentioned in the budget, but that is not true. Instead of only throwing money, although the same levels of funding are there, we are looking at the long term structural situation of agriculture with the Prime Minister's task force. The finance minister said that we will be there when the suggestions from this task force come out.

Another example of the government improving the future is on the environment. The budget looks at the brownfields strategy.

In general there are a number of places, although not permanent investments, where there are investments in people that will ultimately lead to reduced expenditures. We are trying to take that long term view.

One of the points that has been continually raised by Her Majesty's loyal opposition, and was also mentioned by a member of the coalition a few minutes ago, relates to waste.

In their responses and speeches today, I would like to hear a better definition of specifically what they think should be cut. Quite often they refer to large numbers that other people have suggested but they are not willing to take a stand on very many of the items. There are a couple of items but they certainly are not in the scope of the large figures they say should be cut.

I would like the parties that want the items cut to specify the amounts and items and then we can debate those specific items.

The next thing relates to TV and film. A comment was made about investing in TV and film. In my riding I am very excited that film is one of the areas where we have an opportunity. We have a very slow economy. It has the third highest rate of unemployment in the country. We have just had some new films in Yukon and I am very happy about this as it is an important investment for us.

I would like to discuss some comments that have been made a few times in the budget debate relating to pet projects of Liberal leadership candidates. It is humorous to hear those comments from a party that does not even have a permanent leader at the moment and whose leadership is far more of a disturbance to the House than anything they could be talking about.

As those members search for a leader, I am assuming they would like to get one of the best people, with experience and ideas. I am certain the official opposition would not ignore all the ideas of their chosen leader. In fact, the person they pick as their leader would probably have significant influence over their ideas. Why would it be unacceptable that some of our leaders would have some influence on the budget and some ideas? It only makes sense. Theirs is a nonsensical approach.

There is example of one of those projects, which I have mentioned before because I am passionate and upset about it. There is no one party that is totally against this, which is fine, but certain members in a couple of parties have been saying things against the broadband Internet, basically about connecting rural and northern Canadians to the Internet. I do not see why Canadians in my riding and other rural places should be less important than other Canadians, should not be able to get on with the competitive economy which of course would help keep our dollar competitive, et cetera. I am only taking issue with certain members, not with any party.

The auditor general pointed out that different programs and different parties had different management. I worked at Industry Canada years ago. As has always been the case, when there are hundreds and thousands of programs there will be different management techniques. I remember that IRAP and PEMD were very popular programs with the Canadian public. Those programs had different management systems. This is not unexpected, especially if one is trying to modernize management. Obviously the government, every manager and thousands of people will not move at the same speed and at the same time.

I am glad members of the opposition spoke about the investment we are making for aboriginal children and said that it was a viable priority. I also am glad they mentioned Canadian heritage because that is very important for my riding. One of the biggest draws for my riding is tourism, for example, the great gold rush city of Dawson City. Heritage is important to me.

I do think the suggestion of giving money away is a bit of a hyperbole. It is not allowed. The auditor general does not allow it and we cannot just give money away. We have to be more specific.

I also liked the comment that we cannot let the country slip back into deficit. The biggest cheer in the House during the budget speech was as a result of the fact that we would not be going into a deficit this year nor in the next several years.

I also noticed that members of the opposition raised the issue of the CBC a few times. In their next intervention, I would be interested to know which items of the CBC funding should be cut.

I had a number of other comments to make but I will skip over them and go to the item we are supposed to be debating, which is the report of the Standing Committee on Finance.

The finance committee report recommended five items. The first item was security. As everyone has outlined in the debate, it primarily was a security budget to a large degree: $7.7 billion.

The second item was that we should maintain the largest tax cut in history, $100 billion, and the budget did that.

The third item was that we should maintain the largest health care agreement in history made with the provinces last fall and agreed to by all the premiers for the coming years, in spite of our constriction on revenues due to the recession, the fact that government revenues are down and due to the security expenditures. The budget did that.

The fourth item was that we should continue to increase our competitiveness and investments in innovation and research development and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. All those things were done.

The fifth item the report pointed to was that, in spite of the security concerns we should not lose sight of our longstanding objectives. We did not do that in the other objectives, as I outlined yesterday, with our expenditures on the poor, on first nations people, the disabled and the environment. We kept to our objective on those things. The budget is fairly in tune with the report.

I will close by asking a few questions of the Alliance finance critic. I think he may be up next. I have a great deal of respect for him. I enjoy his research. He does it thoroughly. Hopefully he will answer a few questions.

The Alliance is constantly talking about improving the state of the dollar. Exactly how are we going to do that? What suggestions does he have? I would also like him to answer a question that has been asked three times but as yet has not been answered. Does the Alliance Party agree that we should still fund the Canada pension plan the way we do now?

[The Budget, December 12th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I and I think all my colleagues are quite proud of the fact that the member opened his speech by saying that in the budget we have increased foreign aid to the poorer countries of the world by $1 billion.

He then went on to ask what country has CIDA helped, as if there was nowhere in the world that it has helped. As the Alliance critic for CIDA, for foreign aid, the member should at least accept the fact that there are some success stories. Trying to help poor countries is a useful endeavour.

I am glad the member's comments were limited to this one topic because it allows me to ask a question I have wanted to ask since September 11. If he does not answer it, perhaps another colleague will ask it again.

I received a number of letters, and I cannot imagine that every MP did not get a number of letters or e-mails, suggesting that over and above catching the terrorists, the big problem since September 11 is to work on the environment that creates poverty and terrorism. Every member must have received letters.

I would like to know what the members who have been speaking against this aid, against this help, against the root causes of poverty, are telling their constituents who write to them, who send them e-mails. What are they telling people who think this is at least part of the solution to the problems that created September 11?

[The Budget, December 12th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague suggested at the beginning of his speech that he was depressed because so much money had gone into security expenditures that some other items could not be covered, particularly the environment. However, I want to pleasantly surprise my colleague.

This budget was not just about the important issues of security, tax cuts and health care. Money was still left for the environment. The two municipal environmental funds were doubled in spite of the reduced moneys available. The brownfield strategy was addressed in the budget. I am very excited about wind energy, which would reduce greenhouse gases, and this was also included in the budget. There were tax provisions for microhydro which also will help reduce greenhouse gases. Provisions for transition of woodlots were also included in this budget.

I hope these facts will make my colleague happy because this is tremendous environmental coverage.

[The Budget, December 12th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Richmond for his speech. I thought it was a great compliment of the budget and the government in that he did not deal with any of the new announcements but just talked about two items relating to payroll taxes which have been announced before.

I am sure he agrees with the fact that every year we have reduced EI payments. That is a payroll tax. I am sure his party would agree with that, and we would agree with that.

That leaves one item left that he discussed: the Canada pension plan. He should have no problem answering my question because the same question has already been asked twice today.

As he knows, Canadian pension plan actuarials went over it and the provinces and the Government of Canada agreed, because it was a joint program, that deductions had to be made to keep it solvent. In recent days it was proven to be solvent. Does the Canadian Alliance support the Canada pension plan and the levels of payment that will keep it solvent?

[The Budget, December 12th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question. I have already tried to emphasize in my speech the fact that when the infrastructure program first came out from the government years ago, I do not think anyone could argue about the number of people it put back to work. In our area, a small part of Canada where some people might feel ignored by or distant from Ottawa, virtually every community got infrastructure money and every community needed infrastructure money.

As I said, before the program there were, and there may still be, communities and municipalities with wooden pipes. I was so embarrassed yesterday when I heard a Canadian, not someone from the House, say that infrastructure was not needed. That person should travel to the rural parts of my riding and see sewage and water dealt with inappropriately or talk to the member for Nunavut about housing. Then and only then should that person make a comment about infrastructure.

I am glad the member brought up the issue of universities and research. That is an instrumental part of our future. I did not mention it in my speech but I had hoped to. Since I directed a science department I have always been a big supporter of increasing technology and research as the foundation of our future. Without it we will not be competitive in the world when things are being invented every day and ways of work are being invented. For that reason, I was also delighted to see in the budget, even under tight constraints, the extra money for learning and skills development.

The last point was the Internet. Once again I was absolutely infuriated, and I do not get mad very much, when some members of the House abandoned rural and northern Canada and said that these areas do not need access to the Internet like people in big cities do. I am very supportive of having the Internet for these areas.