Preston Manning

[Taxation, October 20th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, the truth is that the Liberal government starts taxing the incomes of Canadians at a lower level than any other government of the G-7. It starts taxing the incomes of single people as soon as they make around $6,500 a year. The government collects almost $2 billion a year from people who earn $15,000 a year or less, many of them old people, many of them young people and many of them poor people.

My question is for the tax man. How can he ignore the calls for tax relief when the government is taxing lower income people more heavily than any other government in the G-7?

[Taxation, October 20th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, the finance minister threw himself a little party last week, but many Canadians don't feel much like celebrating.

The budget is almost balanced but 1.4 million Canadians are still out of work. The average Canadian family is making $3,000 a year less after taxes than it did before the Liberals took over.

My question is for the finance minister. He set out a future spending plan with dollars and details attached. He set out a plan for increasing payroll taxes by 73%. When will he set out a specific detailed plan for substantive tax relief?

[Privilege, October 9th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I have several points that will constitute new information to assist you in making your decision.

The House leader's defence of this practice just given rested on two points. The first one, and he quoted a number of references to support it, is that what happens in the Senate is out of bounds in the House. That notion is completely out of sync with the reality in the country.

What if our constituents want us to make what goes on in the Senate the business of the House? Are we not under an obligation as members to bring that to the House, including the relationship between the House and the Senate? Surely the will of our constituents takes precedence over these earlier precendents he quoted.

The second point is that he made reference to the last parliament and instances in which members of the current opposition received and supported bills that had originated in the Senate. We simply reply to that by saying that was then and this is now. The composition of the House is moving further and further away from the composition of the Senate.

At the last election the composition of the House passed the point where three of the parties, including the official opposition in the House, are not represented at all in that other chamber.

Both of the arguments raised by the House leader are extremely weak. We are simply standing before you, Mr. Speaker, to claim the right to consider government public bills first in this place.

[Government Grants, October 9th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, mere weeks before the election was called this spring, millions of dollars from this transitional jobs fund were funnelled into the Prime Minister's own riding. They were trying to make sure that his job was not transitional.

What influence did the Prime Minister exert to make sure that those grants to his own riding were announced just prior to the federal election?

[Government Grants, October 9th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, there was no reference to words like ethics or integrity in the Prime Minister's reply, nor was there any reference to those words in the Speech from the Throne this year. At the operational level those words have been replaced by words like influence peddling, string pulling and shakedown.

I have a question about the transitional jobs fund, the $300 million kitty that the federal government doles out with special attention to Liberal ridings.

What is the Prime Minister going to do to remove the cloud of suspicion that now hangs around the transitional jobs program?

[Government Grants, October 9th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, when the Liberals took office back in 1993 they spent a lot of time talking about integrity. They made a big show about appointing an ethics commissioner and they promised that the days of Mulroney style political corruption were over.

Now reports of patronage ridden contracting, unethical fundraising and politically motivated grants keep piling up. The police have even raided the Liberal Party headquarters.

My question for the Prime Minister is, besides calling in the RCMP, what is he going to do to remove the clouds of corruption that are surrounding his government?

[Request For Emergency Debate, October 9th, 1997]

Madam Speaker, I wish to advise the House that I have written to the Speaker this morning seeking leave of the House to introduce a motion in accordance with Standing Order 52, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter requiring urgent consideration.

I refer to the fact that two bills have been introduced in the Senate by the government and will be considered by the Senate before being considered by the Commons. While I recognize that this is an established practice, this practice in today's Parliament is outmoded and offensive to our democratic principles since the Senate is unelected, unaccountable and unrepresentative of the people of Canada.

In the days when the two dominant parties in the House and the Senate were of the same stripe, the introduction of government bills in the Senate may have been less offensive. However in the last two Parliaments there has been a shift in the political make-up of Canada. Three of the five parties in this House of Commons are not represented in the Senate at all. In addition the party which represents the opposition in the Senate represents less than 7% of the elected members of the House.

I believe that the procedures set out in Standing Order 52 will enable members of the House to immediately debate and communicate to the government that the upper house cannot be expected to fulfil the role of sober first thought since the senators represent a political composition which is a reflection of the past and, in particular, a reflection of patronage appointments of the defeated governments of Pierre Trudeau and Brian Mulroney.

The Speaker's attention to this matter is appreciated.

[Privilege, October 8th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak briefly in support of this member's point of privilege and lay before you two additional pieces of information which may assist you in responding to this.

First I refer to Beauchesne's sixth edition, citation 3 which outlines some elements of the Constitution Act:

Without further elaboration, Canada thus was ensured a responsible cabinet system with the assumption that there will always be a recognizable government with a legislative program. If the electorate so wishes, the system also presupposes an opposition ready and willing to attack the government in an attempt to have its legislation altered or rejected—. More tentative are such traditional features as respect for the rights of the minority, which precludes a government from using to excess the extensive powers that it has to limit debate or to proceed in what the public and the opposition might interpret as unorthodox ways.

I suggest that is what we have happening here today. The government is closing off debate on the bill that the opposition and the public honestly feel is a tax increase and a massive rip-off of young Canadians. We need to express those views and the views of Canadians on this issue before the principle of the bill is adopted.

To limit that debate is to permit in effect taxation without effective and adequate representation. One of the fundamental functions for which Parliament was created was specifically to constrain arbitrary taxation and actions by the executive.

One further piece of reference for your consideration was referred to by the hon. member. On April 14, 1987 Speaker Fraser felt it necessary to make this comment to the House on this very same issue:

It is essential to our democratic system that controversial issues should be debated at reasonable length so that every reasonable opportunity shall be available to hear the arguments pro and con and that reasonable delaying tactics should be permissible to enable opponents of a measure to enlist public support for their point of view.

Speaker Fraser felt that the Speaker had a role to play in these matters. He made this statement as a result of protest from the opposition. Ironically one of the most vocal opponents to this abuse at that time was the very minister who has given notice and intends to close off debate on Bill C-2 after only eight hours of debate on the very first bill to hit this floor, a bill that is over 100 pages long and extremely technical and a bill that happens to have attached to it a schedule which imposes a payroll tax rise of 73% on millions of Canadians and employers.

The debate has only just begun and we are confident that a reasonable debate will enlist public support for our point of view and that of taxpayers and young Canadians who have little or no voice in this debate.

As Speaker Fraser said, it is essential to our democratic system, and therefore essential for you, Mr. Speaker, to protect the opposition and delay even for one day the government from moving to close off debate in this manner.

[Airbus, October 8th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, this whole problem started when the current health minister was the justice minister. In pursuing this politically motivated goose chase he embarrassed himself, embarrassed the justice department, embarrassed the RCMP, embarrassed the House and cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

My question is for the Prime Minister. Will there be any disciplinary consequences for the current Minister of Health, or will the government spend another $600,000 rehabilitating his image?

[Airbus, October 8th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, in January the justice minister at the time swore that the government would never pay Mulroney's legal team a cent. That is what he said. Now they have cut a cheque so big that Dennis Rodman would blush. This cheque includes $600,000 for Luc Lavoie, the PR man hired to polish Mulroney's image.

Why would the government pay Brian Mulroney's bills including his huge PR tab but it will not pick up the $30,000 legal bill for the government's fall—