Peter Van Loan

[Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Act, March 23rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the address by my colleague, the hon. member for Peterborough. He listed an enormous number of things that the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development of Canada presumably will be able to undertake, if this legislation is passed. That is what we kept hearing. I guess, if that is true, it speaks to how many wonderful things the department has not been doing so far. I say that somewhat tongue in cheek because the department has been doing most of those things thus far.

We have already seen the division of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade under Bill C-31 and Bill C-32, similar to what we have with the legislation in front of us, which the government undertook a year and a half ago, and it was of absolutely no consequence whatsoever with the government. When it was finally implemented by the counterpart legislation for foreign affairs, it was defeated, yet the government forged ahead with the division in any event. It did not make any difference.

Are we not wasting our time today debating this, since it seems to have little consequence to what the government actually does?

[Sponsorship Program, March 23rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the new Liberal slogan should be money taken, money kept.

This government has double standards in the sponsorship scandal. Government members say to let Justice Gomery do his work and then they turn around and launch lawsuits. They launch lawsuits to recover stolen money, but not against the Liberal Party, which apparently has been granted some kind of special immunity despite receiving illegal contributions. This government is serving only its own interests by shielding the Liberal Party from lawsuits.

Can the minister tell us who, other than the Liberal Party, qualifies for special immunity from sponsorship lawsuits? Why does it continue to put its own interests ahead of the interests of Canadian taxpayers?

[Sponsorship Program, March 23rd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, in its handling of the sponsorship racket, the Liberal government is applying a double standard: it rushes to lay criminal charges to retrieve the sponsorship money, but, curiously, exonerates the Liberal Party.

Has it got a licence to print money? Is the Minister of Transport going to tell us that the Liberal Party is vaccinated against prosecution or will he simply agree to clean out the Liberal stables?

[The Budget, March 7th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, five years ago government program spending was $120 billion. Since the government likes to take the long term perspective, it projected that program spending would be $230 billion in five years. That would be an increase from $120 billion to $230 billion in the space of 10 years. That is a virtual doubling of government spending. It is entirely out of control.

I know that the member for Scarborough—Agincourt has many hardworking families in his community who are not happy to see their taxes funding that kind of out of control spending. In fact, we made a strong call for tax cuts. I stood in my place and called for tax cuts in the prebudget debate. The Liberals say they are acting on it, but like so many things in the budget, the action is not really there. In this budget year there is not one penny of tax cuts for hardworking families. The Liberals have made much of the tax cuts that are coming in the future and they are right. It will be $16 next year.

I would like to know if the member for Scarborough—Agincourt could tell us what he is telling families to do. How much time do they have to plan? What should they do in that year? How will they spend that $16 tax cut? Will it really provide them with support?

I remind the House again of my constituents who write to me saying that they make good money, if you want to call it--

[The Budget, March 7th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, this is a very curious budget. Most of what is the budget is not in the budget.

When we look at the numbers, only 7% of the spending commitments in the budget are in this budget year. Ninety-three percent of those commitments are in subsequent years. Therefore, all is not what it appears to be.

The Minister of National Defence and the hon. member talked about turning the corner and a new found commitment to the military. We still will have to wait a little while longer to turn that corner. That new found commitment is still out there several years before I think the government intends to find it.

While 7% of the budget is spending in this year, when it comes to the military, less than 4%, or less than one twenty-fifth, of the great commitment of the government to spend actually will happen in this budget year. Everyone knows that next year we will have a new budget that could in fact have very different numbers.

I want to know from the member what that means for Canada and what that means for the Canadian military. Will we lose that?

The member comes from a constituency with a lot of working people. I thought many of them would relate to a letter which I received recently from a constituent. It says: “Help. Both myself and my husband reside in Bradford and have three children. We work full time, pay more than our fair share of taxes and are still trying to make ends meet. Paycheque to paycheque is now the norm for us, for a lot of middle class people. We don't have any extras to do anything with our kids. I even have to pay extra tax to have my middle child tutored because she is finding the curriculum to be somewhat difficult. We don't even qualify for the child tax credit as we earn too much. Yet at the end of the day we pay so much in taxes that our net income is equivalent to our deductions. We both make good money, if you want to call it that--

[Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, February 25th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, in today’s changing economy, education is a critical ingredient. This is the case both for individual improvement and advancement, and for the development of human and social capital, essential to growing our country’s economy.

The Conservative Party understands the importance of higher education to improving the condition and standard of living of our families. We know the important role of education in making the cultural fabric of our communities stronger, and our individual lives intellectually rich and fulfilling.

And the Conservative Party understands the critical contribution of a skilled and educated workforce to the innovation, productivity and competitiveness of our economy.

Encouraging higher education and personal skills development is seen by the Conservative Party as fundamental to a strong economy and a brighter future for all Canadians. Learning and higher education in particular, is a positive social good that particularly benefits the individuals involved, while at the same time enriching all of society.

This bill to address the issue of problem student debt is well-intentioned. While I share the objectives of making it easier for graduates to cope with student debts, I am not convinced that the proposal before us today is good policy

We believe that the current law, providing that any student debt survives a bankruptcy for 10 years after a student leaves school is too long. But 2 years, as proposed in this bill, is too short, and may well encourage unnecessary bankruptcy declarations to shed debt, before individuals have an opportunity to become fully contributing workforce members and citizens for whom bankruptcy brings other adverse consequences.

Responsibility is also a value we want to promote--and we should be encouraging individuals to honour their obligations to their fellow citizens, whether that be by paying their taxes or paying their student loans. That is why we feel a five year period is an appropriate middle ground.

For those who feel student debt should be treated the same as any commercial debt, we should remember that there is a difference.

The criteria for commercial lending is credit worthiness and availability of assets for security. Student loans, however, are awarded on the exact opposite criteria—a lack of financial assets and a lack of income. Student loans are more like a social program than a commercial loan.

That is why we cannot understand the way this Liberal government is operating the Canada Student Loans program as a profit-making centre today. When banks lend to their best customers, those borrowers pay prime rate. A typical loan to an average customer is prime plus 1%.

Yet this Liberal government is charging students prime plus 2.5% on floating rate loans, and a staggering prime plus 5% on fixed rate loans.

Is it any wonder students are having trouble coping with debt. When the compounding factor is considered, it is not long before young people, trying to establish themselves and start families, find themselves sinking towards bankruptcy.

Right now, at posted floating rates, the government is charging 6.75% on student debt, money the government has borrowed at an average of 3.8%—that is a pretty good margin. It shows how the Liberal government is using the Canada Student Loans program to make a profit, rather than to assist young Canadians in achieving an education and building brighter futures.

We in the Conservative Party have been calling on this government to stop this practice of gouging students with excessively high student loan interest rates, and to lower the rate to a more conventional prime plus 1%.

Lowering student loan interest rates is a much better solution to student debt than having more young graduates start their working lives by going into bankruptcy. That is why we prefer lower student loan interest rates to a policy of making it easier to default on debt and go bankrupt.

While we have been calling on the government to restore fairness to student loan interest rates, we continue to have only uncaring, insensitivity in the Liberal indifferent response. In fact, notwithstanding higher tuitions, and rising debt burdens, this Liberal government seems blissfully unaware of the challenges students face today.

In the Conservative Party, we do not want the financial costs of education to be a barrier to learning. Fear of mounting student debt and bankruptcy cannot be allowed to prevent young Canadians from pursuing their dreams. If the financial burden of education is discouraging students from achieving their best, and enjoying the benefits of higher education, then all of us, and all of Canada, will be poorer for it.

This legislation is well-intentioned, but flawed. And its greatest flaw is that the answer to student debt problems lies not in easier bankruptcy, but in more manageable debt loads, with lower, fairer student interest rates.

That is why we, in the Conservative Party, once again are calling on this government to lower student loan interest rates to prime plus 1%. That is what Conservatives believe. And that would be a change for the better.

[Post-Secondary Education, February 18th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, Bob Rae's recent report on post-secondary education brought to light the government's lack of support for higher learning.

We now know that program funding to colleges and universities has been cut in half by the Liberal government. Students are paying the price with higher tuition fees and student debts, and this amazingly, when every credible authority is telling us that higher education is fundamental to economic growth and personal prosperity. The government pretends it cares about education, but its actions show exactly the opposite.

Will the minister commit to establishing a dedicated transfer committed solely to higher education?

[Post-Secondary Education, February 11th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, in a report this week, Bob Rae has exposed this government's use of Canada student loans to make money rather than assist students with education. The government charges students prime plus 2.5% interest. That is 6.75% right now. Yet the government pays less than 2% on Canada savings bonds.

Is it any wonder that people are finding themselves buried by student debt at a time when they are trying to build families and a brighter future? Why does the government use Canada student loans as a profit-making centre? Will the minister commit today to lowering student loan interest to prime plus 1%?

[Employment Insurance Act, February 8th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative Party supports the principles set out in this bill.

In supporting the principles of the bill, we look at the fundamental values behind it, the values of fairness. We look at helping those genuinely in need in society. We believe that people should be able to enjoy the fruits of their own labour. We also believe that the best form of employment insurance is a strong economy that creates jobs so people never have to be unemployed.

I thought I would start by first responding to some things that my friend the parliamentary secretary said about why the employment insurance fund was rolled into the consolidated revenues of the government. He pointed to the Auditor General's reference to certain accounting principles.

However, what happened is that the Liberal government then used that technical approach once the fund was rolled into consolidated revenues as a free ticket to raid the employment insurance fund to the tune of some $46 billion over 10 years.

That is $46 billion that the government took from employers and employees who contributed in the hopes of having their work and their future secured. The government used that money, diverting it for other purposes, perhaps including, as my friend pointed out, supporting the sponsorship scandal that has drawn such attention in recent days.

What my friend also failed to mention was the role that the Auditor General played in exposing the inappropriateness of that government diversion of funds from the employment insurance purposes for which they were intended to other purposes. That was condemned by the Auditor General one year after another and in one report after another.

It was not until this government faced a minority situation, where opposition parties could bind together to bring to the fore the importance of this issue, that once and for all the government is being held to account. That theft from workers and employers who paid in that money is hopefully going to be brought to a halt.

Certainly this private member's bill put forward by my friend from Manicouagan is a good example of how we are working on this side of the House, regardless of the party we belong to, to try to bring an end to the theft of those moneys by the Liberal government.

The $46 billion accumulated notional surplus from the employment insurance system reflects what was, over the past decade, a deliberate program of overtaxing workers and employers in order to divert those moneys to fund other government priorities.

As has been mentioned, the Conservative Party worked very hard at committee to have the first eight recommendations of the employment insurance subcommittee approved and adopted. The recommendations were designed to bring the system into fiscal responsibility. We were pleased to see that happen.

Those are only recommendations out of the committee. We are concerned that the government may not respond appropriately. When I hear the comments from the parliamentary secretary, I am concerned that it may not. That is why this private member's bill from the member for Manicouagan is most timely.

The practice of diverting those funds to other purposes, as has occurred with the $46 billion out of employment insurance, is intellectually dishonest. It violates the law. That is exactly what the Auditor General found. That practice has attracted her criticism repeatedly. It also represents, most profoundly, an unfair and regressive form of taxation.

Instead of funding government spending increases out of more progressive forms of taxation such as income taxes, the use of this EI surplus for that purpose takes proportionately more from the working poor and from small businesses. As such, it taxes those who can afford it least, shifting the burden from those who have means.

The reason is simple. When someone pays into employment insurance and they achieve a certain income level there is a cap that they run into. Those who have high incomes and earn far more than the cap stop paying into employment insurance. As a result, the burden falls disproportionately on those with lower incomes.

That may make sense in an employment insurance system where only a certain portion of earnings is insured, but when that money is taken and used instead for the general programs of the government, it represents a replacement of what would otherwise be income taxes, a much more progressive form of taxation, a much fairer way of funding government programs.

For that reason, we find the approach taken by the government in the past 10 years of diverting these employment insurance funds to be an unacceptable, punitive approach that has hurt workers more than anybody else. On the other hand, it could only have happened by having insurance premiums that were too high. That was the other thing the government did over the past decade to achieve the $46 billion surplus. Consistently, illegally, year after year, the premiums were set far above what was necessary to maintain the system as viable, resulting in a surplus. In so doing, what effectively was occurring was that those taxes themselves, those premiums, were too high. That is a job killing payroll tax. It stifled and continues today to stifle the ability of employers to create new jobs and economic growth.

As I have said, the best form of employment insurance is the creation of new jobs. That has been harmed consistently by the $46 billion in overtaxation through EI premiums in the past decade, something that has yet to stop. Even in the new premium which has been set, any basic math tells us that a surplus will continue to be generated. Our priority is to stop the unfair practice which hurts working families and the businesses that have had their money taken by the government under false pretences. The theft must stop and the money must be returned.

Some items trouble us about the proposed legislation. It is the commission with its 17 members and a potential policy-making role.

We feel that the fundamental structure of employment insurance as a program should remain primarily a matter of government policy. The number of 17 commissioners perhaps seems to us an unwieldy and large number. For that reason, I am somewhat encouraged by the Speaker's ruling and would encourage my friend from Manicouagan to consider shutting that portion of the legislation which stands as a barrier to its passage. This would make it possible for us to embrace the bill with a full enthusiasm completely.

There are other problems with the employment insurance system as it works today. One of the biggest problem is that people fall through the cracks. Increasingly the government in an effort again to shift that burden out of their own revenues has layered program after program, what are essentially social programs, on to the employment insurance mechanism as a vehicle to deliver those social services, whether they be maternity leave or extended maternity leave, compassionate care leave and the like.

The problem is that increasingly more and more Canadians are not part of the employment insurance system or, if they are, they are not eligible in the special, unique circumstances that arise. People fall through the cracks. This increasing reliance on employment insurance to deliver things like maternity care, compassionate care and sickness leave and the like results in a discriminatory situation where many Canadians simply do not have the support they need. That has to be addressed in the long term.

Similarly, the reliance on using employment insurance as the vehicle to deliver training means we are delivering training that often is not aimed at increasing the productivity of society or ensuring that people actually are better off after the training and better equipped to get a job. Rather, it treats it as an extension of the employment insurance system. Decisions are made on what training to pursue based on length of eligibility and whether we can extend our eligibility, rather than will this help us to contribute more to the economy. Will this mean we end up with a more productive workforce? Will this mean we will have overall economic growth?

Those issues have to be addressed in the long term. While they may not be addressed in this bill, these are things I think are important priorities and they certainly are for the Conservative Party. I am not sure they are for the government yet, but we will continue to press them to make it so.

Finally, I wanted to address the issue of long term viability of the employment insurance system. We think it is important that the management of the system, the premiums, the rate setting mechanism which has been politicized in the past decade be restored to accountability. This has to be the number one priority. Before we start looking at major changes to the system, we have to ensure we have corrected the mismanagement, the fiscal theft that this government has engaged in for years. We have to ensure that the new structure of it can be viable.

Before we tinker with it massively, we have to ensure it is viable and works and can be sustainable. Our concern is that if one makes too many changes too quickly, we may face a situation where the long term viability of the system is in jeopardy.

I am confident that the proposed legislation before us in Bill C-280 does not do that. I am confident the legislation would help to contribute to restoring fiscal accountability in the system, putting an end to the consistent theft of workers' and employers' contributions to employment insurance and their diversion to other purposes by this government.

[Finance, January 31st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, seniors are people who are looking for better direction from the government and, in my riding, so are young families. In particular I want to draw attention to the struggles of young families.

A typical profile in York--Simcoe is a husband and wife with kids. Both parents are working hard, trying to get ahead and make a better living for their family so their children can participate in hockey and other community activities, such as dance lessons or soccer in the summer, but they find it increasingly challenging to make that happen. One of the biggest reasons for that challenge is the punitive level of taxation that continues to apply to working families.

It is worth noting that in our province of Ontario in recent years hundreds of thousands of modest income families have been taken off the income tax rolls because the provincial Progressive Conservative government took them off the tax rolls so that working families would not have to pay taxes, but those hundreds of thousands of people are still paying federal income tax.

Therefore when I hear the Liberals talk about their concern for people who are facing economic challenges, it is quite clear that from the Liberal government's perspective they are far more willing to hit hard-working, low income families with taxes than we certainly have seen from the Conservative Party.

Seniors as well is another group that has been neglected. I think in particular of seniors who are on fixed incomes. In the past year or two, although they have had virtually no change in the benefits that they have received, notwithstanding years and generations of investment in this country, they have been hit with increases in hydro, in natural gas and in insurance, all of them fixed costs and costs they cannot escape but all of them making it tougher to survive and live with dignity and with the kind of life they deserve after years of contributing.

I want to see from the government, in the next budget, action for those working families and also for seniors. The one way I think we can see that is by seeing some action to address the incredible waste, mismanagement and growth in government. It has been growing at about 10% a year. I want to know if there is any willingness to get on top of that wasteful spending and get it under control, because I can tell members that most of those families that are struggling to get ahead are not seeing their budgets grow by 10% a year.

Will the government move ahead on tax relief for families that are working? Will it move ahead on the kind of support that seniors need? Will it get serious for once about pulling back on the increasing size of government and addressing the tremendous waste in management we see that is taking money away from those hard-working families and spending it on things that simply are not their priorities?