Hon. Donald J. Johnston (Saint-Henri-Westmount):

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to have this opportunity to speak in this debate, because speaking for my Party, for the Official Opposition in this House, I too must say that as a lawyer and former Minister of Justice, I am convinced this is a very important Bill.

I do not think one can emphasize too much the importance of securing for Canada judges of the very highest calibre. I will say that I share the views expressed by my colleague, the Hon. Member for Vancouver-Kingsway (Mr. Waddell), which is not always the case as you might appreciate, Mr. Speaker. I think it is a tribute to Members of this House on all sides that we seem to be looking together in the same direction on this important issue.

Some weeks ago I had the pleasure of participating in a panel discussion at the University of Alberta, The other participants representing the views of other Parties, were Roy Romanow, who is now the Leader of the New Democratic

December 11, 1987

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Party in Saskatchewan, and Lou Hyndman, who was formerly the Minister of Finance in Alberta. The topic of our panel was "Who rules Canada, judges or politicians?" Naturally, the debate took us very much into the area of the Charter and the incredibly important role which has been assigned to judges. They must reflect the mores and evolution of our society in the interpretation of that Charter which protects the rights of individual Canadians in every corner of this land.

Similarly, we raised the question of Meech Lake. If the Meech Lake Accord proceeds, and even if the proposed amendments are adopted, it is clear that judges will have a more and more important role in determining issues of fundamental law that touch the lives of every Canadian.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot emphasize too strongly the importance of getting the best lawyers in Canada to serve as judges.

We support this Bill. We would like to see its rapid passage. I would say that on this issue of selection, I very much share the views expressed by my colleague, the Hon. Member for Vancouver-Kingsway. I should also tell my colleagues in the House that at this panel, and during the subsequent participation by members of the audience, it was made clear that everyone recognizes the importance of the judicial selection process. It is undeniable that judges will play a more and more important role in the interpretation of the laws of this country, and I mentioned the Charter and the Constitution. Everyone agreed with that. There was no dissent.

However, there was concern that the judiciary may not always be capable of reflecting that cross-section of view so necessary in interpreting our fundamental law as our society evolves. Thus it is absolutely critical that the selection process be improved.

I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, that as Minister of Justice for a rather brief period of time, I had the pleasure of meeting on numerous occasions with representatives of the Canadian Bar Association and the committee which had been struck by that association on judicial appointments. The Canadian Bar Association takes this issue very seriously. The Canadian Bar Association, and all its subsections, recognizes that the appointment of judges is fundamental to preserving the integrity of our judicial system.

It is important, as this Bill recognizes, that if we are to attract those men and women to the Bench who are capable of providing that integrity and of serving with honour and distinction in dealing with these litigious and difficult questions which touch the lives of all Canadians, they must be remunerated at a level that will convince them that they should give a good part of their lives to public service. These salary levels may seem high, but the best people in the law profession in many parts of this country are well paid and one can expect they will have to make sacrifices, and they will be making sacrifices even at this level of remuneration. However,

this level of remuneration with the desire to provide public service by serving on the Bench, which is the touchstone in my judgment of success in the legal profession, is a necessary and fundamental step in attracting those people to our judiciary.

With respect to this issue of political patronage and appointments, I must say it is an important issue, but the political activity, whether it be serving as members of legislatures, provincial or federal, or whether it be simply political activity at the riding level or at some other level, should not preclude someone from serving on the Bench. In fact, Members of this House and those of other legislatures are brought into contact in many ways with problems that affect the lives of Canadians and they can be an important reservoir of talent for appointment to the Bench providing they have the professional qualification and the demonstrated objectivity that is required.

I can think of the eulogies paid in this House even by the Hon. Member for Vancouver-Kingsway upon the death of the Hon. Douglas Abbott, who served with distinction in this place for so many years as a senior Minister of the Crown, and then moved on to the Supreme Court of Canada where once again he served with distinction, objectivity and great honour. He was regarded, if I may say so, as one of the finest members of that court.

Political activity should not in any way preclude people from service. I would like to remind Members of this House that it was the Leader of the Opposition, (Mr. Turner) when he was Minister of Justice, who reached out and brought in men and women of different political persuasions on the basis of merit. I think Members can appreciate that many served in that capacity. Being a lawyer himself, the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition recognized the importance of the kind of legislation we have in front of us today and went very far in improving the method of judicial selection. When one looks across the country at the judges who were appointed in the period when the Official Leader of the Opposition was Minister of Justice, one can say with all objectivity from all parts of this House that, indeed, he was successful in attracting some of the best men and women to the Bench.

That tradition must be continued. I fear it has not always been continued. The issue of judicial selection, while not directly dealt with in this Bill, is very much implicit in it because of the additional remuneration and pension provisions that are provided. They, of course, are terribly important in terms of attracting people to that selection process.

I also want to add a word of support for those recommendations with regard to pension improvement, the continuation of the survivor's pension to a widow or widower of a judge after the widow remarries. Obviously, this is an important and significant provision which we support. As you know, Mr. Speaker, the House Special Committee on Equality Rights recommended that a similar bar to pensioners who remarried be repealed throughout the federal jurisdiction. I hope that the

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Government will give serious consideration to that recommendation at the earliest possible date.

That being said, Mr. Speaker, I would like to conclude my remarks by commending fellow Members on all sides of the House for recognizing the importance of supporting this Bill and improving it if necessary.

I also share my colleague's view that we have a very good judiciary in Canada. However, reform is fundamental in Liberal principle. Anything, no matter how good, can be improved. Let us try to improve our judiciary. This Bill is a step in that direction.

Hon. Donald J. Johnston (Saint-Henri-Westmount):

Mr. Speaker, I expect my intervention to be rather short, but for now 1 should like to yield to my colleague from Vancouver- Kingsway (Mr. Waddell) because he is pressed for time. He has to be somewhere by 10.30.

Hon. Donald J. Johnston (Saint-Henri-Westmount):

Mr. Speaker, I am very glad to have the opportunity to rise in this debate and to speak of Bill C-64.

In speaking to this Bill I intend to raise issues which go to the heart of the credibility of the Minister and of the Government. The Bill contains certain elements which point, if I may say so, to a lack of candour, a lack of frankness, or almost a disdain for the public which by and large is ignorant of fiscal matters.

Mr. Speaker, I recall that on a number of occasions during the 1984 leadership campaign I was compared with the Hon. Member for Etobicoke Centre (Mr. Wilson), who was not Minister of Finance at the time. He was the Opposition critic. I was not offended at all. I would not say I was all that flattered, but I was not offended. I felt enormous respect for him and for his integrity.

I think I would have to say that when the present Minister of Finance (Mr. Wilson) was named to his functions I, along with other members of my Party and probably members of the NDP, looked to this man as being solid, as a man who would not provide a flamboyant leadership in the Ministry but who would be solid, dependable, and reliable. We felt that he was a man who would not try to fool Canadians into believing something other than the reality with respect to the fiscal position of the Government of Canada and with respect to the contents of any particular piece of financial legislation.

That image has been irretrievably damaged by a series of events during the course of this Minister's stewardship. Whereas I once thought the Minister was solid, the most I can say today is that he is stolid. Even that I suppose is flattering. I have just thought, if I may take poetic licence, Mr. Speaker, that he is stolid compared with the Government, of which he is a member, that indeed is squalid. That is not too bad; I am sure that could be turned into a limerick by you, Mr. Speaker. I would not go so far as to say that the Minister is squalid, far from it, but he has been a profound disappointment. He has lowered his standards, and he has fallen in the esteem of Members of the House and of the public.

I fear the Minister has become an advocate of that philosophy of Phineas T. Barnum, namely that there is a sucker born every minute. Thank God, Mr. Speaker, there are no suckers in the Opposition in this House, and I do not believe there are suckers in the Canadian public either.

Before I come to the specifics of linking this lack of credibility to the context of Bill C-64, let me offer a bit of an overview of how I see the Minister's performance to date. First, I would remind you that after this Minister assumed his

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functions, he came forward on national television. In Question Period I raised this matter, but it has to be raised again. In March, 1985, and in response to a question as to how he intended to get at the deficit, which he considered to be a major problem and allegedly still does, he said:

I don't want to increase taxes. I think we have a good deal of scope on the expenditure side to deal with the deficit problem. A tax increase, certainly a general tax increase, puts a dampening effect on the economy and 1 don't want to see us do that.

We are aware, and you are aware, Mr. Speaker, that, having made that declaration, the Minister then proceeded to increase taxes at a rate and of a magnitude never seen in peacetime in Canada. Let me offer you a couple of examples. Taxes on individual Canadians, namely, income taxes and sales taxes, increased from 1984-85-you will recall that that was the year the Government assumed power-until 1988-89 by an estimated $22.2 billion, an increase of 93 per cent. This comes from a Minister who on national television said, "We don't believe in a general increase in taxes".

Despite five years of economic growth, which we have realized-

And I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, that we achieved this strong economy, not as a result of the Minister's policy but indeed in spite of his policies.

Imagine what this economy could have been like without an increase of 93 per cent in personal income taxes, an increase of $22 billion, Mr. Speaker? It would be all right if the Minister could turn to us and say "Yes, but the deficit has now been taken care of. It is now under control". But despite those taxes and economic growth, the deficit is still in the neighbourhood of $30 billion. Some attack on the deficit. Some way of getting at it through the expenditures of Government. It is incredible that the Minister has been able to get away with this chicanery. To go even further, the Minister now tells us we are going to have tax reform. "We are going to make the tax system equitable. We are going to widen the tax base and do all these things".

Tax reform is necessary in order to correct the inequities, the increased tax burden and the complexity that the Minister himself has put into the Act. Sure, tax reform is necessary. It was necessary in 1984, but it is much more necessary today by reason of what the Government and the Minister have done. It is reminiscent of the woman who, when convicted of murdering her husband, sought clemency on the grounds that she was now a widow. That is what we have in terms of tax reform under the Minister of Finance. If he gets away with this, indeed Canadians will justifiably be regarded as suckers, and if we, on this side of the House, let the Government get away with it, we should properly be regarded as suckers as well and also incompetent in not doing our job. Our job here is to ensure that Canadians are not horn-swaggled by this master horn-swaggler.

December 8, 1987

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1 never thought the Minister of Finance, whom I knew when he was on this side of the House, would become such a first-class snake oil salesman. He has been successful because he has enjoyed the benefits of strong western economies, and the Canadian economy has followed suit. I say, as 1 said a moment ago in French, this is not because of the policies of the Government; it is in spite of the policies of the Government. For all of that, in these areas with which I take issue, namely, raising taxes to lower them and telling us that the deficit will be through expenditure cuts and then trying to do it through massive tax increases, failing on both counts, I never expected the Minister to stoop so low as to tinker with accounting procedures in the name of management practices simply to get at the deficit artificially. He was not able to get at it, as I pointed out, through massive tax increases. The Minister obviously did not get at it through expenditures which, initially, he said he would do. Instead, what has he done? He has tried to get at the deficit through tinkering, if you like, with bookkeeping procedures under the Income Tax Act. We will not let him get away with that. In other words, creative arithmetic seemed to be the only vehicle left.

The first hint that we would be faced with this kind of activity by the Minister and his Department was in the first Budget of 1985. In that Budget, Mr. Speaker, you may recall that in the name of new management and initiatives, the Government expected in 1985 and 1986 to realize savings of $1.2 billion. That was called a plan of improved cash management. You may recall this because we discussed it in the House. It ties in very directly to what I have to say today about Bill C-64. Most of that better cash management, a total of $336 million, was to be saved in 1985-86. Those funds were to come from stripping Crown corporations of their surpluses. In other words, by taking dividends out of Crown corporations and bringing them up into general revenues, the Government was saying, "We are providing better cash management and, of course, in this fashion we will be reducing the deficit". That is like moving your funds from one bank account to the other and saying, "You see, I have no deficit now in my savings account", but you still have depleted your other account. The Minister just moved funds from account A to account B and put that procedure forward as some magical way of getting at the deficit through that wonderful name of better management initiatives and improved cash management.

Worse still is what we see in Clause 67 of Bill C-64. This is stooping even lower than what the Minister did in 1985. Specifically, the Minister decided to get at his deficit by a one-shot $1.2 billion move of tax remittance from 1988-89, I believe it is, to 1987-88. Let me make sure of that. Yes, it will indeed. By obliging employers to effect withholdings on salaries paid to employees twice a month instead of at the end of each month, a block of withholding funds of approximately $1.2 billion will be moved from April of 1988 to March of 1988. That has been estimated to bring an additional $1.2 billion into the 1987-88 fiscal year.

Of course, this removes that same $1.2 billion from the following fiscal year of 1988-1989. What kind of sound financial management is that?

I could go further. When the Minister presented his Budget and his Estimates for the deficit, he did everything possible to get it below $30 billion, the magic number he had in his head. Of course, by changing the payroll withholding date from April to March, he in fact was able to get his deficit below $30 billion. Had he not done so, the projected deficit at that point would have been $30.5 billion.

Let us think about that. If I am wrong about it, I stand to be corrected. I wish I were wrong about it and I wish the Minister would tell us that it is not true. However, in order for the Minister to have this $ 1.2-billion increase in revenues in 198788, this one shot at $1.2 billion, employers across the country have to change their accounting systems forever to provide bimonthly rather than monthly remittances to the federal Government of Canada.

Imagine the increased costs and increased paper burden on those employers, simply to accommodate the Minister's deficit which he promised in 1985 he would get at through expenditure cuts. As I said, despite the $22-billion increase in taxes on individuals, he has been unable to get at it through tax increases.

What has the Minister done instead? He has moved to artificial, creative arithmetic, imposing a burden on employers right across Canada, simply to move $1.2-billion worth of receipts in the federal coffers ahead by 15 days. I think that is shameful. I think it is scandalous. In my judgment, the Minister has tarnished that image of fiscal management and fiscal integrity, if it is not in tatters when people understand what is taking place.

When I saw this bit of sleight of hand, I became very concerned. I thought that the Minister had found something else. He discovered the coffers of Crown corporations back in 1985, and now he has discovered the concept of accelerated payments.

Where will it end? Will I be invited to accelerate my income tax payments over the next several years in order to bring more money into the coffers of the Government of Canada and basically reduce the deficit of the current year? The Minister has effectively set out a lot of chickens which will come home to roost.

Let us look at the initiatives of this Government across the board. If I can coin a phrase used by the former Minister of Finance on that side of the House who had a very brief tenure, you may recall quite painfully, Mr. Speaker, back in 1979, it is short-term gain for long-term pain. This is a first-class example of short-term gain for long-term pain. The pain will be felt by employers forever and the gain will be realized by the Minister simply for the current fiscal year.

December 8, 1987

The same is true of so many other initiatives the Government has taken since it came into office. There have been so many ill-conceived initiatives that when those chickens start to come home, I promise that the sky will be dark. It is our successors in many cases who will have to deal with those chickens. Short-term gain for long-term pain has become one of the principles by which this Government conducts its affairs; that and the principle of Phineas T. Barnum I enunciated at the outset: a sucker is born every minute.

I never believed that particular principle. Clearly the Minister of Finance (Mr. Wilson) and the Government does. Let us set any doubt about that to rest by ensuring that the Canadian public is not suckered on this particular provision.

Mr. Johnston:

Mr. Speaker, it might be somewhat difficult to thoroughly examine the issue in a few sentences. It is clear, however, that every elected representative will seek to promote the interests of his or her region, just as I do promote the interests of the city of Montreal. That is why I managed to convince my Cabinet colleagues at the time to set up in Montreal a biotechnological centre.

What would a financial centre bring Montreal? It is very important, if we want to sell this project to Montreal businessmen, that they should know exactly what it is all about.

As someone who has a lot of expertise in that area, I fail to see any benefit being derived from such an institution. While I remain dedicated to the promotion of my city's interests, I feel that the main concern of Montrealers, whether they are businessmen, workers, or ordinary citizens is to have good jobs requiring better training which will contribute to the economic development of the region.

When I compare the scientific centre with a financial centre which will provide about a dozen jobs for computer operators-that is what I am told; if I am wrong, so be it, but this is exactly what I have been told to this day-I cannot see any great advantage to it. I think the Government is promoting

something without a thorough knowledge of what is involved. As we say in English, this may not be a pig in a poke, but this is certainly not the greatest windfall of the century either, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Johnston:

Mr. Speaker, I thought I had made it perfectly clear. I think the whole thing is silly. 1 just do not think that the Government should be allowed to get away with creating visions in Canada that there is some great thing here.

[ Translation]

There is nothing there, Mr. Speaker! What good is it going to do, be it located in Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto, Winnipeg,

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or Halifax? What good is it going to do? Just exactly what kind of fallout can we expect from such a centre? Perhaps the Hon. Member might tell me, perhaps he might convince me there is something there? But, the way I see it, there is nothing there. As I said, it is a label on an empty box.