Rob Anders

[Apec Inquiry, November 19th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, let us recap. We have two sworn affidavits proving that the solicitor general compromised the Public Complaints Commission.

We have two lawyers for both the RCMP and the students trying to kill the commission because it has been compromised, but the deputy PM keeps stonewalling.

The only process that has credibility is an independent judicial inquiry. When are we going to get one?

[Canada Small Business Financing Act, November 17th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I will read the intended purpose of act and then tell the House its real purpose:

The purpose of this act is to increase the availability of financing small businesses which would not otherwise have access to financing.

That gets to the whole point of it. If its purpose is to increase the availability of financing to small businesses, should it be done by legislating it or by regulating it? Maybe some members across the way or other colleagues in the House think it works that way, but just because it is legislated or regulated does not make it so.

The problem for small businesses is not that they do not have the ability to acquire more debt. Their problem is that they do not have enough equity. The government continues to raise their taxes. It likes to talk about how small business is the backbone of job creation, but since it took office in 1993 there have been 40 tax increases. The government is breaking the backbone of business. The Liberals are taking baseball bats to the backbones of small businesses.

Let me talk about how many different baseball bats the Liberals have brought in. I will use the example of my home town of Calgary, Alberta. Alberta has about 1.62 million workers. Alberta pays into employment insurance to the tune of about $1.8 billion per year and only takes out $500 million. That leaves $1.3 billion in the finance minister's coffers.

If we divide those numbers it is about $750 per average working Albertan. That is money that is not in their wallets. That is money that is in the finance minister's mountain high overpayments in terms of the EI fund. That type of thing hurts small business. I do not think that legislating and regulating banks to try to give out more money is the way to do it. Why not do a favour for small business rather than try to regulate and legislate the banks? That is what small business wants.

If I were to knock on the doors of small businesses in my riding I can bet dollars to donuts they would not say that the number one thing they want from the government is more legislation and more regulation telling them how to run their shops. They would say they want lower taxes. That is what those Liberals across the way do not seem to understand. They do not hear that.

This government said it was going to cut the GST. The government said it was going to scrap, kill and abolish the GST. But no, this government has left that type of shackling on businesses in this country. This government said it would do something about it and it did not do it. It was a broken promise. The government does not like hearing about it, but it is the truth, and the truth hurts.

If the sting and the venom of my tongue hurts the Liberals' virgin ears, that is too bad. They need to hear the truth.

The GST was supposed to be scrapped, killed and abolished. The Prime Minister promised so. The Prime Minister is on tapes right across the land saying that he was going to do that if his government was elected. But this government did not deliver. This government fell short on that promise to small business people in this country.

This government brought in 40 tax increases and its members pride themselves on having balanced the budget. This government does not like talking about the $24 billion more that it brings in in taxes in this country. Taxes have gone up. The GST has stayed. The government has raised CPP premiums and other payroll taxes.

The Liberal government is milking small business people dry and it talks about legislating and regulating banks. Shame on this government. That is not the answer and this government knows it.

Why does this government not give taxpayers and small business people in this country a break, rather than regulating them? That is not the solution and this government knows it is not the solution. For those members across the way who own small businesses, they should know that is not the way to cure the ailments of small business in this country. Small business is not asking or begging for more regulation.

Let us talk about priorities. This government says it wants to increase the availability of financing to small business. What is this government doing about corporate welfare in this country? Is corporate welfare somehow less important?

The government spends $4 billion a year on corporate welfare. It gives money to its friends. I have certainly talked about that with ACOA and other programs that go on under this regime. It gives money to people who have given campaign donations. There seems to be an interesting if not spurious correlation there.

This Liberal government can find money for those things, but to lower taxes we would have to twist the finance minister's arm and break it at the wrist and the elbow.

This government does not talk about corporate welfare very much. This government does not talk about the funding it gives to special interest groups. Somehow that is more sacrosanct than cutting taxes for small businesses. I do not think so.

The government gives money to crown corporations. It believes that is more important than cutting taxes for small business.

Do members know that the CBC receives close to $1 billion a year? It has been cut down a little, but at one point it was $1.1 billion. Somehow that is more important than cutting taxes for small business.

I see that some members are turning their tails and running.

The government has never come clean on this, but there are some in this country who are questioning whether Canada Post is using the money it gets from taxpayers for regular mail to cross-subsidize its courier services, e-mail and other things that it does in direct competition with Purolator Courier and other courier associations and businesses in this country.

When we have the public sector competing with private sector businesses, driving them out of business, eating up their advertising, their revenue dollars and their clients, it is a shame. This government happens to think that those types of things are more important.

I would like to go through the 40 tax increases and the types of things this government has brought in. It does not want to cut taxes. This government wants to regulate and legislate instead of getting to the whole problem of equity.

This government wants to give businesses more debt. We can bet our bottom dollar on that. We are asking for a little more equity. When people pay taxes they are incurring debt. If they have a debt already and they are paying more, they have to take on more debt.

I bet this government would like to give them more rope to hang themselves by. I bet the finance minister gloats over the $24 billion more he has taken in since 1993. The finance minister and the rest of the Liberals love lining the government's pockets and building up hordes of money.

I am going to go through some of these tax increases that seem to be more important and more sacrosanct than cutting taxes for small business. Instead, the government is proposing legislation and regulations so that businesses have more rope to hang themselves by.

The government put a tax on life insurance premiums and extended it. What has that brought in? In the 1994-95 budgetary year it brought in $120 million. It then got worse. One would think $120 million in terms of tax on life insurance premiums and the extension was bad enough, but it went up to $200 million, $80 million more.

This government is all about taxing life insurance premiums. It is not about cutting taxes for small business.

What else is the government into? It is into income testing for age credits. One might ask how much money that has brought in. In fiscal year 1994-95 it brought in $20 million. In the year after that it brought in $170 million. By the time we got to 1996-97 it brought in $300 million. Taxes keep going up and up with this Liberal administration, but I do not hear about it cutting taxes, lessening regulations and legislation. That is the way it knows how to solve problems.

This government also went ahead and made changes to the tax treatment of securities. For every single one of these five years it has brought in $60 million more per year, for a total of $300 million.

I realize that my time is up. I could go on and on. The solution is not to legislate and regulate to provide capital to businesses, it is to cut their taxes.

[Manitoba Claim Settlements Implementation Act, November 16th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, this is all about talking to the folks back home who are watching. It is all about Bill C-56. It is all about the government making a commitment it could not keep. That is basically what this is all about.

I will quote from an article written by John Gray of the Globe and Mail . It is entitled “Referendum process leaves a House divided”. It is about a government trying to go ahead by buying votes. That is what it is about.

Maggie Balfour is the former chief of the Norway House reserve. She and other people on the reserve wanted to challenge the legality of a referendum with regard to the implementation of this whole agreement. She and other people had problems with the process and the way these things were done. They were going to put forward their challenge to what had happened.

What happened then? Ms. Balfour described it as bribery in the article. She said that basically everybody who had problems with the process was offered $1,000 just in time for Christmas. If they accepted the $1,000 then these dissidents would thereby kind of fall off this challenge. As a result, with $1,000 the government could buy silence from these people on the reserve.

Not only was the government complicit in these things, but the band council got control of the $1,000 payouts and could decide who would get them and who would not. It was even more selective than just whether or not you took your name off the list. There was complicity between the federal government and the band council.

The article touches on some other issues that we are dealing with in the country, particularly a province that I have in mind. They say here that if a referendum loses, then a second one should be called, and that is exactly what this situation had in mind. They were continuing to call referenda until they got the results they needed. This was all something the federal government was up to because it had made commitments that it just could not keep.

As a result, the federal government and the band were complicit in holding referenda again and again on the implementation on this whole agreement until they could go ahead and pass this legislation.

It says here that money and land was exchanged for a formal end to the obligations of the northern flood agreement.

I will quote directly from the article because it is particularly relevant in this case. It states: “When the votes were counted on the night of July 29, the majority in favour of the implementation agreement was almost two to one. But the referendum was defeated because there was not a majority of eligible voters on the reserve in favour”.

What happened then? On August 1, three days after the defeated referendum at Norway House, Ms. Jackson, the federal negotiator, was laying the groundwork for a second referendum.

What happened here is that they could not get what they wanted in the first one, so by offering $1,000 and by plunging ahead into a second referendum the federal government, along with the band, hoped they were going to be able to get the results they wanted, despite the objections of some of the dissidents who had problems with what was being done.

The federal government asked questions about the accuracy of the voters' list at Norway House. By asking questions about the accuracy of the voters' list it was able to go ahead and force a second referendum. It even admitted that the rules could be changed for the second vote. “If you consider it changing the rules, I suppose that is what it is”. That was a quote taken directly from Ms. Jackson, the federal negotiator in this whole deal.

In the days after the first referendum a group of Norway House residents took the band council to court on the grounds that the entire referendum process was improper. Some 186 band members signed the application to the court.

In the ensuing three months, three-quarters of those who had supported the legal challenge signed affidavits saying in effect that they did not sign or did not mean to sign the court application. This is because they were being bought off, bit by bit, with thousand-dollar increments of federal money.

The unemployment rate on this reserve is 80% to 85% and most people in town live on social assistance of only $205 per month. Not surprisingly, the money figures prominently in this glossy guide book to the implementation of the agreement published by the federal government. Most of these people are not very well off and $1,000 of federal government money to buy their votes seems like a pretty lucrative deal for some of them. If they only make $205 a month, $1,000 would be five months' salary.

On page 3 of the government's guidebook describing the implementation agreement is the promise of a $78 million trust fund. Page 13 has the promise that if the agreement is approved there will be three payments totalling $1,000 for all band members. Even more so, those aged 55 and older will get $1,500. This will pay off the band elders with a little more money.

Ms. Omand was one of the 186 who signed the challenge to the legality of the referendum. She acknowledges that later she signed the affidavit because she wanted the money. She speaks, frankly, for many of the people who were bought off with federal government money.

The first challenge to the referendum was rejected by the federal court. The dissidents discovered in the two referenda that it is difficult to be effective in a town where the band council owns and controls the only newspaper, the only radio station and the only television station. There is complicity among the band, the federal government, the money being spent by the federal government, the newspaper, the radio station and the television station. How are these dissidents, these people who have problems with it, supposed to be able to have their voices heard? Ms. Omand wrapped up her article by asking “How can the government put us in such a devastating mess?”

In light of this, what does the Reform Party propose as a solution? My NDP colleagues criticized us earlier today so I am sure they would ask that question. The Reform Party believes that the chief electoral officer of Canada should have authority over Indian government elections to ensure they are fair and lawful. What we had here was a case of the federal government and the band buying votes. It was a thousand dollars a pop to have dissidents drop a legal challenge. It was easier to buy their votes than it was to have a fair election and get the results they wanted.

Some members have said today in the House that the Reform Party is bringing up these unfair elections and these problems in terms of democracy and what happens on the reserves. I think that is only fair. We are doing that in the spirit of people like Ms. Omand and Ms. Balfour, the former chief of the Norway House reserve. It is only fair that their type of consideration be heard in the House. These are not just allegations because they were willing to press ahead with them in court. These types of consideration should be taken into account.

Let us think about how this plays with the Liberal strategy in other areas. Liberals do not just buy votes on reserves and buy the complicity of bands and councils to get their way, they buy votes in provinces too. It is not only a strategy they keep up with aboriginals in this country. They buy votes in this country by giving out flags and through various programs that they adjust and tinker with for special interest groups—

[Acoa, November 16th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, that is unacceptable. I do not know how the minister could stand in this place and defend this deal.

This company gained notoriety claiming it had a $300 million deal with China after returning from a team Canada trade mission. It was given $2.5 million taxpayer dollars claiming it would store people's blood but it cannot show any clients. It became a public company on the strength of these assertions but they were not true.

Will the minister immediately investigate this shameful mismanagement of public funds?

[Acoa, November 16th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, another day, another ACOA scandal. The Canadian Blood Bank Corporation has been bleeding the public purse for almost $10 million while the government has done nothing to protect taxpayers.

This small company with big Liberal connections was funded by the ministers for ACOA and human resources. Now Blood Bank Corporation has shut its doors and is being sued by creditors. The Newfoundland government had the sense to secure its $500,000 loan to the company. Why did the government not do the same?

[Calgary Declaration, November 2nd, 1998]

That is right, it would be a first.

I will touch on a couple of other things just to wrap up this debate. I want to see the Liberal government operate and come forward with these documents in a timely fashion.

In the red book in 1997 the Liberals promised that any future debate that puts into question the continuing existence for the unity of Canada would be characterized by clarity and frankness. In that spirit, the Liberals wrote it themselves by their own hand, by their own pen. In the red book of 1997 they said they wanted to have clarity and frankness, and that is what the opposition is demanding on this.

There was not clarity and frankness with regard to provision of documents. In 1992 with regard to the Charlottetown accord the government at that time said that one of the considerations that had to be taken into account was the potential for causing great damage. The member for Wentworth—Burlington brought up that issue. If the federal government were forthright and had no difference between its public and private position there would be no potential for causing great damage. I think we all want to see that.

I want to touch on the whole idea of co-operation. When I brought this motion forward I had a flurry of calls from the the government asking me to pull this motion because it did not want to provide the papers. It said I should do it through an access to information request which means that I would get fewer papers. The government asked me in a flurry of activity in the 48 hours before the motion was put to pull it.

The government said it had the documents. I said if it had them it could provide them and it refused to do so. That is why I let the motion go forward and now that is why we ask for them.

[Calgary Declaration, November 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the amendment one of my colleagues was trying to move was to make sure that the papers would be tabled in the House no later than February 1.

The reason is that an election in the province of Quebec is happening as we speak and in less than a month there will be a new government chosen to represent the province of Quebec. In this whole issue of federal-provincial relations it is important that the federal government comes clean on what it has as documentation with regard to the Calgary declaration. It is only fair that it does so in a timely fashion so that it can be taken into account by the electorate of the province of Quebec.

The question really lies with what was the federal government's role in the Calgary declaration, what was its position and what type of backroom negotiations, deals, polls and whatnot did it conduct with regard to the declaration. That is what this motion fundamentally speaks to.

There is a will for change in this country. One of my other colleagues mentioned that. The Reform Party obviously has a will for Senate elections. The Bloc has a will with regard to a change in the nature of the relationship between the provinces and the federal government. The NDP wishes to abolish the Senate. The Progressive Conservatives in this House have a will for change with regard to their own leadership.

This really is about consultation and whether or not the federal government has engaged in that and what it has done with regard to that in the Calgary declaration. It is one of the reasons we wanted to see these papers.

The last time this type of thing was done with regard to constitutional papers was with the Charlottetown accord in 1992. The opposition at that time went on a fishing expedition and found a goodly amount of information with regard to what the government was up to on the Charlottetown accord.

As to the issue of transparency, as I said before, in a month there will be a new government in the province of Quebec. We will find out what the people of Quebec decide with regard to their future. If the federal government has nothing to hide, it should be willing within a month to provide the information so that the people in Quebec know what position the federal government was taking in secret and in public with regard to the declaration. This amendment that we were trying to put through was so that the reasonable portion of the time line would be respected.

I have been told that the government should provide these types of documents within 90 days, or three months, call it what you will. I wanted to make sure that the government was held true to that and if we could speed up that process we should endeavour to do so. In that way everyone would know what the federal government was up to on this.

[Employment Insurance, October 30th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the word is withdrawn but the question still stands.

[Employment Insurance, October 30th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I guess the Prime Minister thinks he is above the law.

If there was an honest public debate on what to do with the employment insurance overpayment, it would be in parliament. It would be a formal debate and at the end of it there would be a vote. Every MP would have to go on record saying who they thought the money belonged to. The Prime Minister thinks it belongs to him. Everyone else in the country knows the money is theirs.

Why will the Prime Minister not allow for a vote on the EI overpayment, or has he already made up his mind to steal it?

[Foreign Publishers Advertising Services Act, October 29th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately Bill C-55 is all about regulation. It is about Canadian content “Copps”. It saddens me to think that a fine Canadian performer like Bryan Adams, due to Canadian content rules brought down by the minister of heritage, is not considered a Canadian artist because he has produced in the United States. Shame on the minister. The government does not have the decency to recognize Canadian artists who are well known around the world because they produce in the United States or some other such thing. Enough of the Canadian content “Copps”. No more regulation. It does not help Canadian artists.