Leon Benoit

[Petitions, June 22nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to present on behalf of the people of Tofield in my constituency a petition regarding the community access program, which provides Internet and computer service for people who otherwise would not have it available. They are calling for that program not to end this year as scheduled.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 20th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member of the government operations and estimates committee for his questions. I acknowledge that he is a very valuable member of that committee. A lot of good work has been done by this committee. It is a relatively non-partisan committee. It certainly will become the most powerful committee of the House without a doubt. It is well on its way there already.

The member talks about the OECD and the economic forecasts showing that Canada is the only country that is running a surplus right now. In spite of more than a 10% increase in government spending for each of the last two years, and in spite of the fact that taxes are so high, Canada is still running a surplus. Why would the government brag about running a surplus? Certainly, we do not want to go into a deficit position.

We could reduce spending and certainly stop the rapid increase in spending. We could reduce taxes substantially and still not get into a deficit position. That would leave more money in the pockets of the people who make it.

We all support social programs. When so much of what people earn is taken from them by government and spent by government, it is simply unacceptable. We must move to a better balance where the tax levels are more reasonable and people who earn the money get to spend more of it themselves. That is what we are looking for.

In terms of health care, the member has some nerve to bring up the issue of health care after what happened last week or the week before. The Supreme Court said that over the last 12 years the government has run down our health care system to such a level that private health care has to be allowed to operate alongside public delivery. That is what the Supreme Court said.

I guess the government's hidden agenda is to run down our health care system, so that we do have a huge private component as well beyond what we have now. The Liberals have accomplished that by running down the public system.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, June 20th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate tonight. I have heard over the past couple of days different issues talked about in reference to Bill C-48. I have heard some of my colleagues and others talk about the fact that this no-tell hotel deal was signed on the back of a napkin. It is similar to former Prime Minister Chrétien and his deal with the Grand-Mère Inn and the golf course, where he brought forth a deal which had been signed on a napkin. That is not the way one would expect business to be done in this place. It is not acceptable. To spend $4.5 billion with just a few words that mean very little, such general statements as to how that money should be spent, is unacceptable.

I do not want to talk about any one particular issue but rather talk about the impact on real people across the country and what this extra spending above Bill C-43 budget will do. When we look at this issue and talk about budgets, taxes and government spending and so on, we should remember that Canada should be the country with the highest standard of living in the world.

There is no reason why that should not be the case. We have the resources. We have well educated and trained people. We have everything that should be required to make Canada truly the number one country in the world when it comes to our standard of living.

Sadly, that is not the way things are. The reason for that can be attributed to the government and how it has handled taxpayers' money and the business of this nation over the last 12 years. As a result, and it has been exposed over the past year by studies that have been done, with the economy going so well and the government taxing at an ever increasing rate and spending at a wildly increasing rate, our standard of living has not improved one bit.

For some groups, I would argue that things have become worse. Canada should be the envy of the whole world. In fact, it is no longer the envy of the whole world. I went to a meeting of the NATO parliamentarians in February in Brussels where we dealt with security, trade, and of course defence and security issues. After those meetings I attended a meeting of the OECD in Paris which is the body that provides the best unbiased information for many things, but in particular, economic forecasts.

I attended a meeting of the OECD with members of the economic committee from NATO countries and from observer countries with experts giving economic forecasts. I was shocked that the OECD no longer talked about the G-7 but the G-6. All of the charts that talked about economic forecasts did not even include Canada any more. Canada was left off the list. That is a sad commentary on what has happened to our country under the guidance of the government over the past 12 years.

Canada should be truly, unarguably the envy of the world. Unfortunately, when it comes to international bodies, we are anything but. We have lost that status and we must get it back. There is no reason why we cannot. However, to do that, the government must show some leadership and there are some things that must be done which are not being done.

As a result there are two groups in particular that are being hurt and whose standard of living has dropped. Things have become a lot more difficult for them over the past 12 years rather than just holding their own. I am speaking of young families where in most cases now both parents have to work away from home. That makes it very difficult to raise a family.

Then there are the retired people, the elderly who are on fixed incomes. The government brags again and again about how wonderfully it is doing with the finances of the country because it runs surpluses. The surpluses are increased spending. It is taking more money from the taxpayers who simply cannot afford to be taxed at the level they are and especially young families.

I have had many people in my constituency, as have many members of Parliament in the House, come to me to tell me how difficult it is to make ends meet, how both spouses are working. I guess I know best about my own family.

My wife Linda and I have five children. Four have just recently completed their post-secondary education. My youngest daughter is still in university taking engineering. She is in a co-op program, which is a wonderful program, but she has a couple of years to go yet. The other four are all in the process of starting families. Two are married. The other two are single. All four of them are either building a house or buying a house right now because they are working and they have to have a place to live, and they prefer to buy rather than rent.

In the case of my two children who are married, both the husbands and wives work away from home because they have to, not because they want to. In both cases they desperately want to start a family but because of the high taxation levels, they cannot at this time. I only talk about my family because it represents exactly what is going on with so many other families across the country.

The government talks so lightly about everybody expecting to and having to pay taxes and so there is a level of taxation it forces people to pay. People are told to just pay it and not complain about it. What the government does not say is that it has the perfect situation right now to lower the tax rate. The economy in the country is going quite well. It is a golden opportunity to lower the tax rate and yet the government has done so little in the budget to do that.

What that has done is force our young families to have both parents working, even in cases where they want to start a family. They do not want to both be working away from home and yet they must.

The other group that I mentioned was the elderly, many of whom are on very low fixed incomes. In spite of the fact that an elderly person makes even $15,000 in retirement pension, they still have to pay taxes. It makes it very difficult, quite frankly, for them, especially those who want to remain in their own homes, or those who have to pay high rental costs. Everyone knows about the increase in power and gas bills.

Many of the elderly I am talking about still are driving a vehicle and want to remain active and mobile. We know the price of gasoline. All these costs have gone up and yet they still have to pay taxes. The government does not seem to see a problem with that. It is a golden opportunity to give substantial tax breaks to Canadians across the country. That is what the Conservative Party put forth in the last election. It was a plan to lower taxes in a substantial way and that is something that the Canadian Alliance and the Reform Party before that focused on.

We would focus on lowering taxes so that our children, people who have a very difficult time making ends meet would not have to pay taxes or pay much less tax than they do now. I hope that Bill C-48 will be thrown aside. Instead, we should have a tax reduction that would lead to making things easier for young couples who simply want to start a family and cannot at this time because taxes are too high.

[Petitions, June 16th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to present a petition on behalf of Albertans on the issue of marriage.

These petitioners say that marriage is an issue which should be decided by the elected people in this House and not by the courts. The petitioners want the members of this House to uphold the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. Would it be appropriate for me to read the names of all the petitioners? No, I guess not.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2005, June 15th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, far be it from me to give some deep answer on affordable housing when the member who asked the question is by far the most knowledgeable person in the House of Commons on this issue. The member from Edmonton is the member who has tried to ensure that any money going into affordable housing is actually going to do the job. For me to stand here and to give an in-depth answer on this issue would be telling very little to the member who knows far more about it than I do .

What I will say is that he is absolutely correct that out of the $2 billion promised in the last few years, we have seen fewer than 25,000 houses in total. For the member's city, how many housing units have been built for Edmonton's share of the over $2 billion? There have been 647 housing units. That is just unbelievable, but the member from Edmonton certainly knows that.

The member knows that next year the Conservative Party and its leader as prime minister will do much better. The Conservative government with the member from Calgary as prime minister will deal with affordable housing in a reasonable way, not $2 billion to give fewer than 700 housing units in the city of Edmonton. That is not money well spent.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2005, June 15th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by saying that I do appreciate the opportunity to speak on this legislation. I understand that I may be the last speaker tonight.

It has certainly been interesting to listen to the remarkable man from Red Deer, for example, our hon. colleague who is the environment critic for the Conservative Party. It has been remarkable to listen to him and hear his plans for the environment of this country. We know there is hope for improvement in the environment under the guidance of this gentleman. When he becomes the environment minister in a Conservative government led by our leader, the hon. member for Calgary Southwest, I know that the environment will be on its way to improvement. The member is a remarkable man and a remarkable environmentalist. It is something to look forward to.

We are here tonight speaking on Bill C-43, the Liberal budget bill. This is the bill that was put forth by the Liberal finance minister. We are not speaking tonight about Bill C-48. Bill C-48 is the bill that was put forth by the New Democrat finance minister.

The leader of the New Democratic Party somehow now has become a finance minister, the second finance minister for the Liberal government. The Liberals and the NDP have presented Bill C-48, which is the bill that the Conservative Party will not support. We will not support that legislation. There are billions and billions of dollars, somewhere over $4 billion, in the New Democrat budget, which, sadly, is supported by the Liberals just so they do not have to face an election. The Liberals will do anything to avoid an election. Bill C-48 is not the bill we are debating tonight. That is the budget bill we will be dealing with tomorrow, as I understand it.

We do support Bill C-43, not that it is a great budget, because it certainly is not, but on balance when we went through it we recognized a lot of things that we have been proposing for some time. When I say “recognize” I do not say that lightly, because there is a resemblance. In some areas, the Liberals are headed in the same direction that we have proposed, but of course it is a half measure. They have gone only part of the way and it is certainly not the way the Conservative Party will do it. Bill C-43 was moving in the right direction on issues that we feel are important. Therefore, we are supporting the bill.

When we look at tonight's debate and the debate on this bill and other legislation over the past several days, there is something that we cannot help but note. We have Liberal members of Parliament who stand up day after day, speech after speech, and say, “We have done this. We will do this”. It sounds so good. It just sounds good. The Liberals truly are masters of saying things that appeal to people across the country. They say those things, but what they say is so different from reality. This is something that we cannot help note.

We can look at any of the major issues that Canadians feel are important. Health care is an example. I heard Liberal members say today, “We are going to fix health care. We can still fix it”. As for the Supreme Court decision which will now allow private delivery, the Liberals say they can fix it so that we do not need it. They say, “We have put $21 billion into health care”. That is what they say, but of course the reality is that they cut $25 billion from health care when the current Prime Minister was finance minister. The Liberals cut $25 billion in transfers to the provinces over about a five year period. Of course they do not mention that.

More disturbing than that, because the amount of money that is put into health care really is not going to determine the success of the program, is the reality is that after 12 years of this Liberal government, health care is worse today than it was when the Liberals started. So why would Canadians believe them when they say suddenly today that they are going to change things to make it better?

The reality is that our health care is so bad in this country now that the Supreme Court of Canada ruled last week it cannot be counted on to deliver a reasonable level of health care to Canadians. Therefore, the court said, we must allow private delivery. That is the reality. The Liberals say how wonderfully they have done, but the reality is that it is so bad we have to allow private delivery. The Supreme Court has ruled that.

On the foreign affairs agenda, the Liberals stand in the House and say again and again that Canada is the greatest country in the world, that it has stature in the world, that it is a real player. Of course, we are all proud to be Canadian. This is the greatest country in the world, but sadly, the fact is that Canada has lost its stature on the world stage.

There is something that demonstrates that better than anything else. I am a member of the Canadian NATO Parliamentary Association. I travel about three times a year to meetings of the NATO parliamentarians. Every February we go to NATO headquarters in Brussels and I have continued on as a Canadian representative to the OECD in Paris.

We receive economic forecasts from the OECD. In the past these economic forecasts have talked about the G-8, when we thought Russia was becoming a player. Russia was dropped from that list because Russia has not been able to control its organized crime and really does not belong on the list of recognized economic states, so it is the G-7 that the OECD has talked about over the past several years.

A sad demonstration of what has happened to our country under the Liberal government is that this year the economic forecasts were for the G-6, not the G-7, but the G-6, and Canada was not even on the list of countries referred to in the economic forecasts. The G-6 was referred to, not the G-7. That is a sad commentary on what the government has done to our wonderful country. A respected world body like the OECD no longer considers Canada worthy of being in the top group of countries. It is a sad commentary.

On the agenda of taxes, how many times has the government said it was going to lower taxes? The most notable example was in the year 2000 when the Prime Minister, who was the finance minister at the time, said he was going to reduce taxes by over $100 billion. That was in 2000.

I encourage people to look at their paycheques from 1999 and compare them to the ones from 2001. I invite them to say that their taxes have gone down. Of course, they are not going to say that because taxes have not gone down. I invite them to look at their payroll deductions for 2005 and compare them to the ones for 1999. They will see the sad reality that the $1 billion tax cut the finance minister said was put in place does not exist. It does not exist. If people compare their 1999 and 2005 pay stubs, that $100 billion has somehow disappeared. That is a sad commentary.

The Liberals say things that sound so good. It makes many Canadians want to vote for them, but the reality is something entirely different. In health care that is the case. In foreign affairs that is the case. In taxes that is the case.

I do not have to talk about the environment because the environment critic made the point very well. From what government members say about the environment, it sounds as if they are great environmentalists. It almost makes people want to vote for them on the environment. However, when they talk about the reality of what is happening in our country with the environment, it is entirely different. The reality is entirely different from what the government says.

In my constituency, agriculture is an extremely important industry. The agriculture minister and other Liberal members stand in the House and say over and over again that the government is doing so much for agriculture, that agriculture is in great shape in this country. The fact is that after 12 years of Liberal government, the farmers of this country are having more problems and are in worse shape than they have ever been.

The government says how good things are in agriculture and what a great job it has done, but the reality is entirely the opposite. All one has to do is talk to the farmers to find out the truth. What Liberals say is one thing, but the reality is something entirely different.

I could go on and on but my time has expired. The Conservatives will support Bill C-43 because it is at least a step in the right direction, but the NDP budget bill, which we will be talking about tomorrow, is another situation entirely. We will not support it. We will do everything we can to defeat that budget bill.

[Petitions, June 15th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to present on behalf of several Albertans a petition on marriage. The petitioners state that the law on marriage should be decided by elected members of Parliament, not by unelected judiciary. They are calling on parliamentarians to reaffirm marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.

[Main Estimates, 2005-06, June 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, we have heard a little more spin.

I can understand, and I mean it sincerely, why a member might stand up and say that. It is because of the situation that her party has got itself into. When it is the Liberal Party and current members of government that are behind this corruption what else can those members do? I understand why they continue to perpetuate the spin but it still does not change reality.

As I was saying before, the spin is one thing but reality is quite another. The member said some things that really do not stand up to the test of accuracy. They are less than accurate. We are not really allowed to go beyond that in the House. The member has to know that.

If the member does not like the cost of the Gomery inquiry, then her party should not have been involved in the corruption in the first place. That is the way to prevent it. Even more than that, why did the Liberals not just admit to what they had done wrong? Why did they not say that the Liberal Party has been involved in a wrong activity and they will clean it up? However they did not say that. They hid it for more than a year and then finally, when the Auditor General put out her report and there was no denying it any more, only then did they say that they would be the ones to clean it up.

It is more spin but the Liberals are good at it. I give them credit. I am not nearly as good at spinning messages as members of the government but I hope I never am. However I can say that the Conservative Party of Canada will never be involved in activities like the Liberal Party has been involved. I will have no part of it and my colleagues will have no part of it.

[Main Estimates, 2005-06, June 14th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, in the 10 minutes I am allocated today I do want to talk about the opposition notice of motion, because technically it is not a motion but a notice of motion. It should trigger a motion from the President of the Treasury Board. That is what we are debating here tonight. We are talking about the more than $1 million for the war room set up by the government in the Privy Council Office.

I am going to talk about more than that. I am going to talk about the Gomery inquiry itself. We have seen in media reports that it is going to cost $80 million. In fact, the actual cost of the inquiry will be something like $35 million. It is a lot of money, but it is money well spent to try to find a way to deal with this kind of thing and prevent it in the future, although in reality nothing will prevent it except a government with ethics. That is not going to happen with this Liberal government no matter what Gomery finds.

What happened to the rest of the $80 million? What we find is that the government has spent more money hiding and trying to keep things from Gomery than it has on the actual Gomery inquiry itself. It has spent more money covering and hiding the information than the actual Gomery inquiry is spending.

That is completely unacceptable, yet we heard the deputy House leader for the government, who appeared at our government operations and estimates committee on this issue, spinning the Liberal message very effectively. The Liberals are very good at this. In fact, they are masters at it. The Liberals are truly masters at taking reality and making it sound like the total opposite. Very few political parties in the world can do that. They are probably the best in the western world, but I do not think that is anything to be proud of.

It is really sad that the Liberals will take reality and spin it into something entirely different. It is not acceptable. They have done that for a lot of years. I want to start by talking about some of the things that they have spun in the past and that they have been caught at. I am not talking just about corruption, although there is so much corruption. It is widespread and it is deep.

I am going to talk about issues that affect every single Canadian in the country. First, before the 2000 election, the Prime Minister passed a budget. In the budget was $100 billion of tax relief. That is what he claimed. That is what the Prime Minister claimed when he was finance minister.

That is a lot of tax relief, but I ask Canadians to look at their paycheques from 1999, 2001 and today and compare the taxes that are taken off their paycheques. Canadians will find that taxes are every bit as bad now and probably worse than they were back then.

So what the government said was one thing. It sounded good, and it won them an election, in fact, but the reality was totally different. Canadians found that out on their paycheques every single month. The Liberals said one thing but reality is another.

Let us talk about health care and how the Liberals say they are the saviours of health care. If we listen to the Prime Minister, the health minister and the others over on that side, we will hear that they are the saviours of health care.

Yet our health care system has collapsed to such an extent that the Supreme Court said that Canadians, Quebeckers, should have the right to private health care because the public system is so bad that it cannot be counted on to deliver the health care Canadians need. That is what the Supreme Court ruled just last week.

The Liberals say they are the saviours of health care and they have been saying that while in government for 12 years. The reality is clearly something different.

As well, the long gun registry was going to make society safer. It was going to reduce crimes committed with guns. We all know that simply the opposite has happened.

On agriculture programs, the Liberals are pumping billions into farmers' pockets and saying that things are much better on the farm than they were in the past because of what the government has done. As a farmer, I know that it has never been worse on the farm. My neighbours know and farmers right across the country know.

What the Liberals say is one thing. The reality is an entirely different thing. They spin it and they spin it so well that it sounds believable, but the cruel, hard reality of what is going on in this country tells quite another story.

The Liberals say that sanctioning same sex marriage will somehow save the institution of marriage and the family. I have heard some of them say that. That is the way they have spun it. We all know that this is simply not the case. It is not true. It goes on and on.

The Liberals are going to legalize pot and it is going to make the problem better. They are going to legalize prostitution and it is going to make the problem better.

They are going to have government look after our kids because it can somehow do so better than the parents of this country. That is a disgusting idea, yet they spin it so it sounds good. They take away from parents the choice of looking after their kids in the way they want and choose. With the program they are proposing, it takes that choice away. They make it sound so good, but the reality is entirely different.

I cannot go through much more tonight. I have to talk about this war room and the over $40 million the government has spent to cover up and keep information from the Gomery inquiry. That is a lot of money.

We have layers of corruption and wrongdoing, one stacked on top of the other. First of all, there is the corruption, the scandal itself. Of course we have learned a lot about this one particular scandal from the Gomery inquiry. That is not enough. The Liberals try to spin that. They will not admit to any wrongdoing. Only when they are caught do they set up the Gomery inquiry.

The Liberals got caught, they set up the inquiry, all this information comes out, and then what? They are going to be the people to clean it up. They were all involved in it, by their silence at least, I would suggest, but many of them were very closely involved in all this corruption. Yet they are going to be the ones to clean it up now. It makes no sense but that is the way they spin it. They are really good at that.

Now there is the million dollar war room. It is not a war room, the Liberals say. It is not to protect Liberals that have been caught cheating taxpayers out of their money. That is not what it is. To them it is just to help Gomery get the job done. The spin is marvellous.

I give them credit. I absolutely give the Liberal Party and the Liberal government credit for being the best in the western world at spinning truth into something else and making it look like reality, making it look believable. This is not something that Canadians are proud of. I do not think it is anything to be proud of at all, nor do most Canadians.

What we have now is unbelievable. The original $100 million or so that is the topic of the Gomery commission was spent mostly by Liberal friends in ways that clearly were wrong, and they have been caught. Then the Liberals spend another $40 million or more in keeping the information from Gomery. Yet the public works minister stands in the House every day saying, “Let Gomery do his work”. I am tired of hearing him say that every day: “Let Justice Gomery do his job”.

If the Liberals are sincere about that, then why are they spending more money to prevent Justice Gomery from doing his job than they are giving Gomery to allow him to do his job? That is the reality of what is happening here. It is disturbing but it is sad. It hurts us all. It hurts every single member of Parliament.

If it hurts every member of Parliament, it hurts democracy in this country. What is sad is the level that democracy in the House has been brought down to because of the government. Its most recent tactic is to say that somehow the Conservatives or the Bloc are involved. Actually, I do not think they have tried the Conservatives yet, but they are certainly saying that the Bloc is involved in this, so everybody is crooked and it is okay. That is a disgusting defence.

I realize that my time is up. I would be happy to answer any questions, but quite frankly I do not think anything else needs to be said on this issue. The Canadian public is very much aware of what has gone on, except that we of course discover new information every day and it is just as disturbing as the information was when this scandal was originally uncovered.

[Main Estimates, 2005-06, June 14th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, I am the chair of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates. We had the minister before our committee last week. Listening to him then and listening to him now I am reminded of an old folk song from the sixties. I forget who sang it, but Turn! Turn! Turn! except it is spin, spin, spin with these guys.

The minister stood and said that the million dollars that was spent inside the Privy Council was to prepare mostly Liberals as witnesses. They are the ones who committed these offences and have been charged. They appeared before the Gomery inquiry. The million dollars is clearly there, along with a lot of other money and I will talk about that later in my presentation, to prepare these witnesses for the inquiry.

They talk about how they want Justice Gomery to do his job. Then why is the government spending all this money to prevent these witnesses from giving Justice Gomery the information that would allow him to do his job? That is the real question.