Editor’s Note:

We take here the unusual step of
reproducing parts of a speech made in
the Canadian House of Commons.

It is the speech of Bob Ray, NDP
Finance Critic, which concludes with
the motion that was supported by a
majority of members of the House of
Commons, and therefore brought
down the Conservative Government.

Bob is a Rhodes Scholar who taught
in Oxford. His remarks are always
worth reading, but this historic budget
sneer should be read by every Cana-

ian.

Mr. Bob Rae (Broadview-Greenwood): Mr.
Speaker, the champagne was flowing freely
in the penthouses in Broadview last night at
eight o’clock, just as it was in the tenament
houses on the Circular Road in St. John’s
West. After all, imagine the eager anticipa-
tion on the part of the Canadian people at
eight o’clock as they turned on their televi-
sion sets. They were eagerly awaiting the
promises of the Conservative government,
the promises they were looking forward to:
the $2.5 billion tax cuts, the special incen-
tives and tax write-offs for small business-
men, intensive capital programs for Atlan-
tic Canada. Also, an end to big government
was promised by the Prime Minister (Mr.
Clark), and an end to high taxes. This is the
government that was going to set the little
guy free.

Imagine how flat that champagne turned
at 9:20 o’clock when Newfoundland’s gift to
‘seventeenth century economics completed
his discourse. It was not a tax cut, but a
whopping tax increase — billions. Over $3.5
billion in personal taxes alone were taken
out of the economy and put into the hands of
governments and oil companies. There was
no action in interest rates. After all, the
policies of “Bouey XVI” have been con-
firmed for yet another seven years. There
were no capital programs. There was
nothing for the poor, nothing for the pen-
sioners. There was something for the pri-
ae investors, and nothing for anybody
else.

Some have called it a tough budget. Some
have said that the budget was actually a
courageous one. It was certainly tough on
the average Canadian. While the Minister of
Finance (Mr. Crosbie) swaggers down Main
Street in his mukluks, he is tiptoeing softly
through Bay Street and the corridors of
power in Calgary and Edmonton. Somehow
Clark Kent cannot find a telephone booth
when he reaches the Alberta border. This
budget is courageous only in the sense that
the Charge of the Light Brigade was cour-
ageous: “Into the valley of death rode the
one hundred and thirty-five.”

In my remarks this afternoon I want to
talk about the people of Canada, their jobs,
and their standard of living. I want to
suggest to the Minister of Finance that he
start with the people of Canada, with their
jobs, and with their standard of living. We
ask ourselves: what does this budget mean
for the average Canadian?: First, it means
punitive taxes. Second, it means prices
which continue to climb. It means jobs
threatened, that nagging and gnawing
insecurity which lies at the heart of every
industrial worker not knowing whether he
will be able to have his job for the next six
months. Down the road it means no change
in pension plans, which leaves so many Can-
adians uncovered and in poverty as they
reach age 65.

NDP MOTION D

Thanks to these wonderful projections
from the Conservative government, we have
been told that we will have no social pro-
grams because, as it was confirmed again
today, there is no money in the bill. Finally
the bottom line, Mr. Speaker. Hon. members
opposite are so proud of telling members of
my party that we have never shaken hands
with the bottom line. Well, I should like to
introduce them to this particular bottom
line. For the average family of four with one
working spouse, the tax increases and prices
increases which have been imposed mean at
least $370, and a tax credit of $110. If both
spouses are working, which increasingly is
the case, because so many families require
both spouses working in order to make ends
meet, those families will not get a single
penny of the tax credit which is being
offered to them by the Conservative govern-
ment, not a single penny of it. Single parent
families will pay just as much and receive
an even smaller break.

Such a sizable tax increase would be bad
enough when our economy is already slow-
ing down, but it is not just any old tax
increase that this government has imposed.
It is a hidden tax increase, an indirect tax
increase, which makes it worse. Let us look at
what the government has told us. The govern-
ment has told us that we must concentrate
on energy conservation. So, we do not have
an income tax increase. We have what they
call a ‘‘conservation tax.” The rise in
unemployment insurance premiums of
some $800 million is to make the scheme
look.more like insurance. “It is not really a
tax. It is in order to get the insurance
principles back into the Unemployment
Insurance Act.” We were not told what the
purpose of the tax on booze and cigarettes
was. Presumably it is to pay for our sins,
since we know that a deficit is sinful. We
have been told that by the President of the
Treasury Board (Mr. Stevens), so it must be
true.

I ask Mr. Speaker to think of an average
family in my riding. I want to remind the
House that my riding is in the downtown
area of Toronto. Mr. Jones works in a
factory in an industrial park on the out-
skirts of Toronto. Mr. Jones drives a 1976
model car. Mrs. Jones works downtown. She
takes public transportation to work, and the
children go to school by bus as well. They
live in a house which is 30 years old. They
have an oil furnace. As the hon. member for
Mission-Port Moody (Mr. Rose) has said
often, ‘“Today there is no fuel like an oil
fuel.”

Those are the people who are being lec-
tured, being hectored, by the Prime Minister
and the Minister of Finance as being the
profligate energy wasters. These are the new
profligates, the new sinners in our society,
Mr. and Mrs. Jones.

I want to ask the Minister of Finance to
answer these questions. Perhaps he can give
these answers during the next election
campaign when he has an opportunity to
meet Mr. and Mrs. Jones if he comes into my
riding. Did Mr. and Mrs. Jones build the
factory that is on the outskirts of Toronto,
requiring Mr. Jones to drive 20 miles to get
to work? Did Mr. Jones design the car that
gets 16 or 18 miles to the gallon? Did Mr.
Jones design an urban transportation
system that does not serve industrial parks
such as we have in metropolitan Toronto?

How can Mr. Jones buy a new, more fuel-
efficient car, with consumer loans now
running somewhere between 16 per cent and
20 per cent, and higher, if Mr. Jones has had
the bad luck to run into credit problems
earlier? How can he do this when he is
getting constant lectures from governor
Bouey and others that he is over-consuming,
that he is sinning and that he should be
restrained?

How can Mr. and Mrs. Jones afford to buy
a gas furnace when that involves a capital
expenditure of over $1,000 and the interest
rates are running at 16 per cent to 20 per
cent? How can they do that when the
Minister of Finance admitted in this House
today that there is nothing in this budget
that allows people to write off the cost of
changing from oil to gas?

I want to ask this government where Mr.
and Mrs. Jones will conserve? They will not
conserve on energy because the energy costs
which they are undergoing are constant.
There is no way they can conserve without a
dramatic change, but notin their lifestyle as
has been suggested.. The Joneses are not
suddenly going to be transformed into upper
income civil servants running around
Ottawa in Volvos, Mr. Speaker. The Joneses
are facing the realities of life. Mr. Jones’
factory is not suddenly going to be moved
next door to his house. He cannot suddenly
demand that the Toronto Transit Commis-
sion, which has just had a $61 million deficit,
start providing decent 24-hour transit for a
24-hour factory 20 miles from his house
outside the city. He must have his car.

The hard fact of the matter is that it is
lower and middle income Canadians who
have the gas guzzling cars because those
were the cars they bought years ago and
cannot now afford to replace.

Where will they conserve? They will
conserve on other items. They will not buy a
new fridge which might be more fuel effi-
cient. They will not be able to afford to buy
it. They will not be able to buy furniture.Let
me give the minister an elementary lesson
in the realities of life.

The people who make fridges and furni-
ture are laid off when people do not buy their
products. Mr. Jones’ neighbour who works
at the John Inglis factory making fridges is
going to be laid off because the market for
consumer durables like fridges is going to go
down. That is the meaning of the multiplier
effect. It was not invented by the anti-christ
Keynes. It was somebody looking at the
reality of an industrial situation who said
this is what happens. When you put people
out of work, that puts more people out of
work, and that puts more people out of work.
If you take money out of the economy and
tax people to death that is exactly what is
going to happen. The people will cut down
on entertainment. They will not drink so
much, they will not smoke so much, and
they will not have such a good time. They
will cut down on clothing and perhaps they
will even cut down on food.

I want to compare Mr. and Mrs. Jones to
Mr. Lawyer Jones who lives in one of those
celebrated tenement houses on Circular
Road in St.John’s, Newfoundland. The
excise tax is a tax that he can afford. Has
Mr. Lawyer Jones been told not to buy a
bigger or fancier car? No way; no one has
said that. Has there beena tax put on luxury
cars which are guzzling gas? The answer is

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