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April 22, 1980

Mr. Nielsen:

I hear a heckler on the other side say we deserve it. If he will withhold his enthusiasm until I cite some of these citations, he may change his tune. If he has ever read May, Madam Speaker, he might even understand the arguments I am about to propose to you. I have turned up May and Beauchesne. I am going to quote from them to perhaps jog the minister's memory, which perhaps is becoming a little senile with the years he has spent in this place.

Oh, oh.

Mr. Nielsen:

There can be no doubt that when a minister makes a statement outlining the financial situation of the country and accompanies that with a ways and means motion, which he did, for the purpose of raising or adding to additional taxes, this according to all of the authorities constitutes a budget. Traditionally this is preceded by a budget resolution which has the effect of providing for a budget debate, following a reference to committee, providing opportunity for the House to criticize the policy outlined by the minister. The minister has chosen this shallow and tawdry device to avoid that debate.

The House leader for the NDP makes the suggestion that this very serious matter can be resolved by some kind of cosy little chat between House leaders. I say to him on behalf of all members of the House, including his own backbenchers, that the seriousness of this matter goes beyond a cosy little chat among House leaders. It affects the privileges of every single member of this House who wants to participate in a debate and criticize.

Hear, hear!

Mr. Nielsen:

That is why the hon. member for Nepean-Carleton (Mr. Baker) suggested an airing before the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections where views can be expressed.

There is another serious matter. The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) says he does not expect the members of the opposition to criticize what they put forward last fall in their budget, and so why we should be raising a fuss may not be understood by a good many members in the House. Certainly those opposite do not care whether we understand or not. They intend to proceed like a steamroller in any event. They are up to their same old tricks because they are the same old bunch.

Some of the matters we would like to have debated which point out the seriousness of what this government is trying to do is the $14.2 billion deficit which is projected for 1980-81 as compared with the $10.5 billion projected by the hon. member for St. John's West (Mr. Crosbie) when he was finance minister. We would like to debate the $11.5 billion deficit which the Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen) project for 1979-80 which differs from that contained in the budget of our government. We would like to debate his figure of a .5 per cent real growth in 1980 as compared with the 1 per cent predicted by ourselves.

Privilege-Mr. W. Baker

We would like to debate the 8 per cent unemployment figure that is projected by the minister as compared with that projected in our budget. We would like to debate the 10 per cent inflation he projected for 1980 as compared with the 11 per cent projected in our budget. We would like to debate the increases in interest and oil import costs which are being increased by $2 billion more than forecast on December 11 in our budget for 1980-81, and over-all increase of 13'/2 per cent. We would like to debate the revenue loss because of a decision not to impose the 18-cent excise tax, which means revenues of $2.5 billion less than forecast in our budget. We would like to debate the blended oil price which the government say would reduce the deficit and expenditures by $1 billion as the oil import subsidy is progressively phased out.

We would like to debate his dropping of the common stock investment plan. We would like to debate the changes in the treatment of capital gains and RRSPs. We would like to debate the provision for the transfer of capital gains on farming assets to RRSPs. We would like to debate his statement that also abandons special incentives for the Atlantic region, investment incentives for Atlantic fishing vessels, tax contracts for firms investing in depressed regions. We would like to debate the fact that he provides no major relief for home owners facing renewal of mortgages. Only those actually facing foreclosure will be helped. Those are some of the matters that the conduct of this minister and his^government are preventing us from debating.

The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre sees no difference between what the Minister of Finance is attempting to do now and the occasion which arose, not as he believes in 1957, but rather in 1962. I have gone to the trouble of having the House of Commons Debates produced for me for that period. It was when the hon. member for Eglinton, Mr. Fleming, who was then minister of finance, was engaged in something which bears a similarity, a long-range similarity, to what is happening here. The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre participated in that debate at the time. It begins, for his easy reference, on page 783 of Hansard for October 22, 1962.

Mr. Knowles:

There was also an incident in December, 1957.

Mr. Nielsen:

This, I submit, is the relevant precedent and the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre certainly had quite a number of things to say in opposition to the procedure which was allegedly being adopted at that time by the minister of finance of the day, Mr. Fleming. But the distinction there is very vivid. The House at that time under the rules then in force was in Committee of the Whole on ways and means. It was already a debate which had engaged seven or eight days of the time of the House with interventions by many members. The chairman at page 795 of the Hansard record of those debates at that time said:

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the minister, but this is the point at which we seem to be moving away from the ambit of section (2) of Standing Order 59.

April 22, 1980

Privilege-Mr. W. Baker

Perhaps I should obtain unanimous consent of the committee before the hon. gentleman carries on. Is it agreed that he should be allowed to be at variance with the rules as to relevancy in section (2) of Standing Order 59?

The record continues:

Mr. Leboe:

I think it should apply to all members.

The Chairman:

Unanimous consent is given on condition that it will apply equally to the leaders of all other parties in the House.

Agreed.

The Chairman:

In addition, it is agreed that those other leaders of the House shall be permitted an extension of time, as will the minister, to permit them to complete their remarks on this resolution in a general way.

The present finance minister was also very prominent in that debate. I quote him from page 855, when the rules were quite different but what was being attempted was quite similar. He said at that time as a member sitting in opposition:

I should like to say a word on the point of order you have raised, Mr. Chairman, in awareness of the fact that your point was not raised with respect to relevancy. We decided when this debate began that it would be a general debate equivalent to a budget debate during which a wide range of matters could be brought before the committee. If you had raised a point of order in connection with the relevancy of the remarks of the hon. member, then I think we would have occasion to attempt to define the limits of the consent which we gave on Monday. But I understand that your comments are on an entirely different level, namely, you wish to secure from the committee an expression of opinion as to whether at this time, in view of the international crisis, it was proper or in good taste or in the interests of Canada to discuss a matter which has some sensitivity.

The distinction which emerges from that debate and which distinguishes it and the 1957 precedent, I suggest to the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, is that the debate then took place on a debatable ways and means motion. There was unanimous consent given for a general debate and we spent eight or nine days on the resolution; and it affected-another distinction-only the provisions of the Income Tax Act as opposed to what is being attempted here.

The distinction which was pointed out to you, Madam Speaker, with respect to those objections in 1962 is principally that we must remember that the House was able under the rules in force at that time to debate a ways and means motion at great length with no limitations imposed by the rules. On that occasion unanimous consent was given to allow the debate to be a general economic one, and the House was debating only one type of ways and means motion, namely, one to amend the Income Tax Act. But that is not what is being attempted here. The Minister of Finance said in the last paragraph of his notice to the parliamentary press gallery, which I presume was distributed some time yesterday, announcing that there would be a lock-up: "There will be no formal official briefing"-and this is the important phrase- "inasmuch as no new measures will be involved." That, I suggest to the Minister of Finance, is a grossly false statement in view of what was contained in that statement last night, which did involve new measures.

The hon. gentleman wants, in response to my hon. friend for St. John's West, to impress us with this great opportunity which still remains for debate of his statement. He says there is an amendment and that the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Clark) or anyone else who has spoken may speak again. That amendment is to be disposed of tonight, but in addition to that they are adjourning the throne speech debate and he is gallivanting off to Germany for the week. What kind of opportunity does that afford hon. members to criticize that mini-budget of his delivered last night? I suggest, none.

Through the device of introducing what is what I call a vest-pocket budget during this throne speech debate, the minister, like the Artful Dodger, has artfully evaded the possibility of a structured, organized opposition attack on his budget, which in effect is what it was. He has brought it in by the back door. He has brought in by the back door what he dare not do by the front and has cut off parliamentary debate in the process.

We have come to expect that kind of high-handed action, that abuse of parliamentary privilege by the same old bunch which sits over there once again. He has, in effect, imposed this government's view of the economy on the nation by fraud and by deceit. In so doing he has shown that this government's view of the economy consists of an intellectual vacuum. He has been obliged to borrow, resurrect, reinstate the economic views of his predecessors in borrowing liberally-and I underscore that word-from the budget which he and his party defeated with their collaborators in the NDP simply because they thirsted for power; and it ill behoves us to hear the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, speaking on behalf of his members, whining and complaining after participating and collaborating in the action which brought those rascals back to the other side of the House. The minister has shown by his conduct last night that he has learned nothing and forgotten everything.

What he has done is at the very least a breach of order, and at the very worst a breach of privilege; and many guise it is a surreptitious invasion of the right of this House to examine and criticize fiscal expenditures. This is another step in the erosion of parliamentary control, another example of the contempt in which that group holds parliamentarians.

We have had the example of their twinning. They do not need opposition members. They are going to set up a structure of their own which would replace the representative system here in Parliament, so why listen to us? Why have any debates at all on any matter? There was a mere casual announcement of financial policy without even fulfilling the parliamentary requirement of notice, and I draw that to the attention of the minister as being a further distinction between all of the past precedents and what he is attempting to do now.

This is nothing other than a definite imposition of new taxes through a ways and means motion. If these are not budgetary measures, what are they? The minister tries to take refuge in the fact that he is picking up these measures by the device of trying to convince us that they were already tabled in the last Parliament, and that somehow they are still living and breathing ways and means motions. He knows better than that. He knows that with the death of that budget last December the resolutions which were tabled at that time and, indeed, everything else on the order paper died, and died with that Parliament.

April 22, 1980

One would really expect the minister to have a little more shame, if at all, about venturing to suggest such a proposition. If the imposition of such a wide range of taxes as he announced last night is not a budget, I challenge him to tell me what it is. He would have us believe it is merely a statement of the financial condition of the country. I will have a reference from Beauchesne to refresh his memory in a moment.

If this government is allowed to get away with this trickery-it is now claiming the right to rule by diktat without recourse to Parliament-as I say, why not send us home? I have no doubt that that is what hon. members opposite would like to do. I think that is what the government in Ghana did when the opposition got a little obstreperous; it abolished the opposition. Hon. members opposite would like nothing more than to take that course.

Mr. MacEachen:

You did not even face Parliament for four months.

Mr. Nielsen:

That minister had 16 years in office.

Miss MacDonald:

He was here with C. D. Howe.

Mr. Nielsen:

I am reminded by my colleague that he was here with C.D. Howe and, if we want to compare ages in Parliament, he is getting a little long in the tooth. However, he and his government had sixteen years to do something about the economy, and now they are saying to us that we caused all this devastation in two parliamentary months. That is absolute, unadulterated rubbish.

Mr. Chenier:

You are excellent in opposition.

Mr. Nielsen:

To drag previous motions from previous Parliaments kicking and screaming into this one as an excuse for an invasion of the rights of Parliament would be invidious of any minister, but for a minister who is supposed to know Parliament and who is supposed to be an experienced parliamentarian, it is far too deliberate and too much a flouting of parliamentary rights to be passed over or tolerated. This government has now thrown aside the veil and revealed its absolute and utter disregard of the rights of Parliament and, indeed, of the parliamentary system, which certainly does not come as any news to most of us here.

The minister knows only too well that he cannot avail himself of the proceedings of a previous Parliament to justify his excesses and the excesses of his government in this one. Obviously he is still feeling a sense of guilt over the manner in which he brought his party to power by defeating a budget which would have been good and useful for this country. Now he is trying to have the best of both worlds in the process and is destroying Parliament's right to inquire and to criticize.

If there is any doubt about the nature of the document the minister read last night, I would like to refer him to page 174 of Beauchesne under the general heading of "Ways and Means", and I commend citation 514 to you, Madam Speaker, which reads as follows:

Privilege-Mr. W. Baker

The consideration of the financial statement made by the Minister of Finance is the most important business of Ways and Means.

Indeed, it is one of the most important purposes, if not primarily the most important purpose, of the business of this House.

This statement, familiarly known as "the Budget Speech", is made when the minister has completed his estimate of the probable income and expenditure for the Financial year. In it, the Minister of Finance develops his views of the resources of the country, communicates his calculations of probable income and expenditure, and declares whether the burdens upon the people are to be increased or diminished. The economic aspect of this budget is important and taxes are imposed for their economic effects as well as for raising revenue to meet the expenditure for the year.

Then Beauchesne goes on in paragraph 517 and other succeeding paragraphs to describe the procedures normally followed when fulfilling that objective, an objective which the minister fulfilled in very small part last night. There is no way that the statement made by him last night can be considered anything but a budget, meagre as it was, according to all of the precedents. If the minister takes the trouble to read chapter 30-and I commend this to the honourable heckler over there who interjected a moment ago-

Groucho Marx.

Mr. Nielsen:

-of May's nineteenth edition at pages 775 through 783, he will find that there is no way that he can weasel out of the conclusion that his contribution to the throne speech debate last night was a budget.

He asks, "What is more important, Parliament or the people of Canada?" That is very typical of him and that crowd opposite. It is time he found out that the rights of Parliament are the rights of the people, and when the rights of Parliament are abrogated, flouted and trampled upon, the rights of the people are equally abrogated and flouted. Parliament is the people. The people send us here to debate the most important thing, which the minister and his government, by this devious device, are preventing us from debating.

The minister is attempting to take credit for bringing in a budget without undergoing the scrutiny which a budget ordinarily warrants and which is part of our parliamentary tradition. This is in keeping with the philosophy, according to the Auditor General, that Parliament has lost control over the public purse. The minister is determined in his conduct to continue that, and his gesture of defiance and the flouting of Parliament is intended to ensure not only that that control will not be reimposed, but also that whatever vestige of control remains in parliamentarians will be disposed of in this shabby and fraudulent fashion.

Madam Speaker, this motion should carry and, if it does not, indeed we might as well all go home. Because the whole purpose of Parliament will be thwarted, and intentionally so, by a government which has lost none of its arrogance and none of its concept of being in government by divine right forever.

April 22, 1980

Privilege-Mr. W. Baker