March 17, 2010

Mr. Anderson: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Alberta needs to move forward with competitiveness. Couldn’t agree more with that. I was just reading an article in the National Post from yesterday or the day before that talked about the competitiveness of Alberta and the lack thereof. It talked about what they termed the Wildrose effect and how this government finally has done one of the first legislative things to increase competitiveness in Alberta, one of the first fiscally responsible things since the 1990s. Boy, is that ever the truth. This government has really done a job on our competitiveness. It was on cruise control from about 2000 to 2005 or so, and then it just fell off a cliff at the end of that. We’ve been going downhill ever since. I think of that energy competitiveness review and think about the number of jobs that were lost. You know, the government’s comments on that are: “We need to move on. We need to move forward.” They’re right. I mean, we do need to move forward. There’s no doubt about that. Obviously, we don’t want to stay where we are. It’s not in a very good place. What they fail to talk about or recognize still is the incredible damage that they’ve done to our international reputation on competitiveness, the incredible damage that they’ve caused the Alberta job sector. These are Albertans that have lost their businesses. You know, I have a friend in the President of the Treasury Board’s home riding. He’s my uncle, actually. He’s a trucker. He did oil and gas trucking. He’s on the verge of losing the truck that he owns because he can’t find the work in the oil and gas sector that was there. There’s no doubt that commodity prices had something to do with that. There’s no doubt. There’s also no doubt that a huge part of the industry coming to a standstill or falling off the cliff, so to speak, has been because of this government’s bungling of the royalties.

They were warned. They were absolutely warned. They were warned by people in their own caucus, at least a dozen of them. That’s a fact. We all know that in this room, you know, who have been in the caucus there. This warning was given clearly. They knew before 2009. On January 1, 2009, when the new royalty framework came into effect, they knew about shale gas, and they knew about the game changer that it was. That was knowledge in the industry at that time, and there was report after report and presentation after presentation given to government, yet they stubbornly moved ahead with an absolutely harmful policy. Thankfully, they’ve gone back and are starting to correct their mistake, but they won’t admit that they made a mistake. They won’t admit that they were wrong. They won’t say they’re sorry, and they won’t promise that it will never happen again. Those things were very much missing from the competitiveness review. I hope that this Competitiveness Act that we have before us will give the government a chance to make sure that we don’t make the same mistakes, that we’re actually always going in an upwards direction, always making sure that we’re more competitive, not doing things to fulfill some kind of weird socialist dream: you know, everybody is going hold hands, and we’re going to take more from corporations, businesses, and individuals, and everything is going to be great.

No, it doesn’t work that way. People leave when they’re taxed to death. Industry leaves when they’re taxed to death, and that’s exactly what happened. That means we all suffer. With deficits we can’t pay for our health care, can’t pay for education and these types of things. We all suffer when we drive out industry that way, when we raise taxes, and that’s what this government did.

I do congratulate them for, although they won’t admit it, at least coming back and stepping back from their obvious mistake. I would note that they still didn’t get it right. I noticed that the president and CEO of EnCana was in the media yesterday. I guess they’ve done the analysis on the new royalty framework. They still don’t have the curve, so there’s still some uncertainty, but they’ve done an analysis, and they’ve found that even still – even still – Alberta will not be as competitive as B.C. or Saskatchewan or many U.S. states like Texas, Montana, and others.

Because of that, to quote the president and CEO of EnCana, they’re increasing their investment this year in natural gas from 4 and a half billion dollars to $5 billion, so another $500 million. The vast majority of that will still not be invested in Alberta. It’ll be in B.C., Saskatchewan, and Texas because that’s where it is more competitive to do business. So of that $500 million of investment very little will be spent in Alberta. That’s the situation we’ve gotten ourselves into.

The government is moving in the right direction, but again, hopefully, this Competitiveness Act will give them the tools they need to realize that there is still a lot of work to do. I sure hope they get the curves right, and I sure hope they get it right moving forward. The hon. Member for Edmonton-Centre talked about the film industry. She’s absolutely right: we’re not as competitive in the film industry as our friends in B.C. or Ontario. Now, we definitely haven’t rearranged the tax rates, et cetera, on the film industry in the wrong direction recently, but we haven’t done anything either. I think that what the Member for Edmonton-Centre is saying is: look, if we’re going to try to discuss what we’re going to do to make the energy sector more competitive, then why wouldn’t we do that for all sectors, the film industry being one of those? This province is obviously much more than just energy. We all know that, and we’ve got to make sure that we’re all working to make all industries competitive, including the film industry. So I really appreciated those comments.

Personal and business taxes. We talk a lot about the Alberta advantage, Mr. Chair, and we talk about how proud we are of it, although we changed the slogan of Alberta to freedom to choose – what is it? I don’t know. Anyway, we’ve changed it. It used to be Alberta advantage. Albertans kind of chose that one for themselves.

We’ve decided to change that.

Let’s talk about the Alberta advantage. Do we still have the Alberta advantage? I don’t think we do. I think it’s eroding every day. There’s no doubt that we’re still more advantageous from a tax perspective than a lot of jurisdictions, but we haven’t made improvements in that area for a long time. Because of that we’re essentially falling backwards, back to the pack, and we will be surpassed. In British Columbia, Mr. Chair, if you make under $115,000, which is – oh, I don’t know; what is that? – let’s say 90 per cent, 95 per cent of the population, something like that, it is more tax advantageous from a personal income tax perspective to live in B.C. than it is to live in Alberta. Does that help us retain doctors? Does that help us retain health care workers and teachers and people like that? No, it doesn’t. So we’ve got to make sure that we’re doing a better job of making sure our personal income taxes are more competitive and more in line with the best in our country, which right now is B.C.

With corporate taxes, same thing. We have not lowered that rate for a long time, and other provinces are catching up. New Brunswick has a plan in place where corporate tax will be coming down to 8 per cent eventually.

Again, we need to be looking at this and making a long-term strategy for how we’re going to grow the heritage fund, how we’re going to save the heritage fund and use the interest from that heritage fund every year to offset a reliance not only on oil and gas revenues but also on personal and corporate income taxes so that we continue to get people into this province working and paying taxes and growing that pie, as they say, so that even though we’re taking a smaller slice, we’re taking a smaller slice of much more. That’s kind of what we’re trying to achieve. The other problem that we’re running into, Mr. Chair, is that we’re kind of facing a real big problem here because of this government’s financial mismanagement. They love to say how great they’ve done in managing the finances of this province. Well, there’s no doubt that their predecessor administration did have their moments where they did balance budgets, and they did put money away. But the current Premier and the President of the Treasury Board and the finance minister and people who’ve been in charge, the previous finance minister, seem to be taking claim for stuff that they weren’t in charge of and they didn’t do.

Since they’ve taken over this government – and democratically. When I say “take over,” since they’ve been elected and appointed to the positions where they are now, they can claim nothing in this regard. They have done nothing to make us more competitive. They have done nothing to save for the future at all, zero, zilch. I just think it’s funny that they keep saying: we’ve done a great job. No, no. Some of your predecessors did a good job, some more than others; some years were better than other years. But it wasn’t this administration. It wasn’t the Premier. Since they’ve taken over, we’ve done nothing but overspend, lose our savings, and go down in our competitiveness nationally. You know, I think it’s funny that they keep taking credit for other people’s successes and then blaming everyone else for their mistakes. That’s not something that they should be very proud of.

The other problem is, of course, that if they continue down this road and they continue to overspend and they continue to not save and continue to not have a savings and spending control strategy, there’s going to be another cliff that they hit. And when they hit that cliff, what’s going to happen is that they’re going to have to slash core social programs that we all rely on: health, education, seniors’ benefits. That train is coming down the track right now if we do not get our spending under control.

Who’s going to pay the bill? Are the people over here going to pay for it? No. It’s going to be my kids. It’s going to be their kids, my grandchildren, their grandchildren. They’re the ones that are going to have to be sitting with a bunch of social programs that they can’t afford to pay for, an infrastructure that they want to maintain that they can’t afford the upkeep on.

That’s why we’re saying over here in the Wildrose that it’s a good idea to start thinking about implementing a long-term savings and spending strategy that will make sure that we leave to our kids a better future and programs they can pay for and infrastructure they can pay for. That’s the whole point. That’s what sound fiscal management looks like. It’s not an ideological thing. You know, I credit the Liberals for talking about a savings strategy. They’ve been talking about that for years. You would think that fiscally conservative people, you would think that fiscally conservative governments would actually try to at least be as fiscally conservative as the Liberal Party, but I guess that’s too hard for them. That’s a huge problem that we have.

What we need to be looking at is a diversification strategy, not picking winners and losers, Mr. Chairman. I hope this competitiveness bill will allow us to set up some sort of body that will help us look at the question of diversification. It’s not about picking winners and losers and throwing money – a hundred million dollars here, $200 million there – to try to guess what the next big industry is going to be. Things change every day. There was just an announcement today that they’ve found a way to turn coal into petroleum at $18 a barrel. I mean, this is big stuff. Stuff changes all the time. We can’t be picking winners and losers when things are so fluid. What we need to be doing is growing the base, growing the base of the heritage fund to the point where the interest thereon will allow us to have less reliance on oil and gas revenues as well as on personal and corporate income taxes. That was the dream. That was the vision of Peter Lougheed. That’s why he set it up. We’ve got away from that vision. We need to get back to that vision because it was the right vision, and it’s just as applicable now as it was back then. With that, Mr. Chair, I’ll sit down. I’ve said in the past that I will support this bill because it’s going in the right direction. I don’t like the direction we’ve been, but I’m seeing signs that we’re starting to turn the corner, and I think that that’s a positive development. So I will be supporting this bill.

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

The Chair: The hon. President of the Treasury Board.

Mr. Snelgrove: Yes, Mr. Chairman. It does bring some questions to the table. I would have to question, you know, that if a government was pretty much destroying a province for the last, oh, 20 years or so, from the ’90s on till now, particularly from ’93 to 2003, if you were in a province like that and the government was just about doing everything wrong it could possibly do – kicking out business, tripping little old ladies going across, everything the government could do wrong, as a matter of fact so bad that you just can’t even imagine all the horrible things that they were doing – could you imagine that somebody who knew all this, who was in that province watching it being destroyed right before their eyes, would want to run for that party? Honestly, wouldn’t you say, “Well, if that’s all true, if that’s all true and the government is pretty much on autopilot – they’ve completely lost the way, they don’t know how to save, they don’t know any of that – I don’t want to be a part of that”? That would tell me he had two things in mind. One, a lot of this information isn’t necessarily true and it’s come to the top of that person’s list lately, or it would be one of extreme opportunism. Wouldn’t you think: I can’t get elected in Alberta on a hundred per cent negative stuff, so I maybe just better kind of think this through; if I can get elected to that party, then I can do something else. Mr. Chairman, I’d ask the hon. members. I think it was Mark Twain that said: I don’t want to be a part of any group that wants me. Well, that’s true also.

Mr. Chairman, what on earth do you suppose would drive somebody who knows so much about how bad a government is to seek nomination, go out and knock on doors and try to get elected for the very party that they’re saying is destroying the province? That’s incredible. Maybe other people find that incredible. I find it incredible.

Mr. Anderson: I’d love to respond to that. I don’t know what it has to do with Bill 1 – we’re talking about competitiveness and tax competitiveness – but that’s all right. You know what? As the hon. minister he just has to learn to clean his ears out a little bit, Mr. Chair. What I said is that up until his administration – his Premier’s, current Premier, in 2006 – up until that time the PC government had had its moments. It had done a reasonable job or a very good job, depending on the year. It kind of fluctuated back and forth but reasonably more good than bad, for sure. Now, 2006 came, and in came the current Premier, followed by his President of the Treasury Board and the finance minister and his illustrious chief of staff. Since that time this province has been going like this. Now, when I ran for office, I ran as a Conservative, a fiscal conservative, Mr. Chair. That’s what the flyer said: conservative. I’d go and promote for my constituents fiscal accountability, savings for our children. That’s what I campaigned on. This government has gone running in the opposite direction, and my constituents were disgusted with them. They’re not disgusted with all the backbenchers; there are a lot of good ones, a lot of MLAs or private members. Not disgusted on that but very disgusted with the administration itself and the direction that it was going.

You know, I concede, Mr. Chair, that I was a little bit hoodwinked, for sure. I thought that this Premier would govern in a conservative manner, that he’d be fiscally responsible. Absolutely. But that is certainly not what happened in the last two years, and it’s shameful. I know that the President of the Treasury Board is feeling a little bit uncomfortable in his own skin right now with the job that he has done, but in two years we will see how this all comes out in the wash, for sure. We’ll see what happens then.

Mr. Oberle: Mr. Chairman, I must say that it surprises me not a whit that that hon. member’s constituents are disgusted. I would have to ask him: maybe it might not be a bad idea to come clean with his constituents and table the list of school projects and health projects and highway projects and other spending that he asked to have cancelled in his constituency so Captain Regressive over there could save the province and its budget deficit. This government has done right by the people of Alberta, Mr. Chairman, and there is nothing more to add to his comments.

The Chair: Hon. member, I think Bill 1 is about Alberta competitiveness, so let’s focus back. Thank you.

Mr. Anderson: Competitiveness Act, Bill 1. This is a good question, and it was a very shameful comment that the member made prior to this, but that’s all right. He’s above that, and it’s disappointing to see him lower himself to the hon. President of the Treasury Board’s level. That said, what I would suggest we do as a province to be more competitive, to make sure that we remain competitive is that instead of talking and making arguments like that, which are very left-wing, socialist arguments, that if we can’t build everything today, if we can’t build everything right now, seniors will be out on the streets, children will be running through the streets unattended by their parents during school hours – it’s just unbelievable, Mr. Chair. Any business owner knows that you have to live within your means. You have to. Any person who does a budget knows you have to live within your means. You can’t have everything you want right now. It’s just simple. Instead of spending twice as much as the next closest province on infrastructure, maybe only spend one and a half times as much. These are the things that we could be looking at to be more competitive, to make sure our spending was kept in check. We don’t need everything right now. There are multiple roads in the county of Rocky View, for example. We can delay that a year and a half, two years. Absolutely, we can do it. That would save us $40 million right there. Done. The hon. Minister of Employment and Immigration has said: consider it done. I think he’s alluding to the fact that now that I’m over here, he would love to make sure that we were punished and that the citizens of Airdrie-Chestermere are punished because of that decision. That’s how this member plays politics, and that’s fine. The point is that we’ve got to get back in this province to being more competitive in the long term, and the only way to do that, Mr. Chair, is to have strong fiscal planning for the future so that we don’t leave our kids bankrupt. That means that we don’t need everything right now. Thanks.

Video:

Competitiveness: the Premier was warned (part 1)
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Competitiveness: the Premier was warned (part 2)
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Competitiveness: the Premier was warned (part 3)
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February 23, 2010

Mr. Anderson: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to first congratulate Ashleigh McIvor and her family. Just a few minutes ago she won a gold medal in skiing for Canada. [applause] I will say that that’s now six gold medals. That’s one behind the lead, so we’re doing well. We’re doing well.

Now, on a not so positive note I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to Bill 1, the Alberta Competitiveness Act. There’s no doubt we need to be more competitive, Mr. Speaker, as the Minister of Education clearly pointed out and spoke to. There is no doubt about that. It is good to see that this Premier and his government are finally willing to pay, at the very least, lip service to this important fact. I’m glad to see a growing Wildrose Alliance movement has had the intended effect, I hope.

During the 1990s Alberta established itself as one of the best places, Mr. Speaker, in the world to do business. We limited government spending growth. We paid off debt. We lowered taxes and provided tax incentives to attract new businesses and industries to our great province. The people of our province proudly referred to this as the Alberta advantage. Although Alberta still possesses some of these same features, our edge has slipped dramatically over the last decade.

Our tax advantage, for example, both in regard to personal and business income taxes has decreased dramatically as well. For example, B.C. now has lower income taxes for any person making under $118,000. That’s the vast majority of the population. For any person who makes under $118,000 – that would be nurses, home care workers, teachers, police officers, welders, construction workers, or janitors – it now makes more sense from a personal income tax perspective to live in B.C. That’s definitely not what we want to be the case, I would argue.

We haven’t lowered business taxes for years, and many provinces are quickly catching up to us, with plans to surpass us soon. If we allow them to, Albertans will lose jobs to other jurisdictions – it’s as simple as that – and we will lose Albertans to other jurisdictions, which we certainly do not want.

Energy, Mr. Speaker, as everyone in this House knows, is our most important industry currently and pays for the health, education, and other programs Albertans and their families rely on. Because of this government’s actions tens of billions of dollars in energy investment and the tens of thousands of jobs created therefrom have fled to neighbouring provinces due in large part to the new royalty framework, which I believe was one of the most misguided, mishandled policy debacles in all of Alberta’s history. This has made us less competitive.

Then there is the danger on the horizon that we can see. Provincial government spending has been growing out of control for some time. Over the past several years we have spent far more per capita than any other province in Canada. Government spending has increased at more than double the rate of inflation plus population growth. By refusing to control spending to sustainable yearly increases, the provincial government now finds itself in the position of both taking on massive amounts of debt, a planned $6 billion by 2012, while facing the prospect of cutting the promised programs that Albertans have come to rely on. In my view, Mr. Speaker, piling up debt on the backs of future generations to dull the pain of a self-inflicted spending hangover is the height of irresponsibility. So, too, is expanding the size of government entitlement programs to the point where the only way to adequately fund those programs is to raise taxes or increase debt for future generations. It is my view that if we continue on our present course, we will leave ourselves and our children with an Alberta disadvantage. As non renewable resource revenues decrease, taxes increase; health, education, and other important social services are cut; and opportunities disappear.

Finally, the issue of over regulation and red tape, which the Minister of Education spoke to earlier. The regulatory burden on Alberta businesses, our engine of job creation, is astounding. Several independent assessments rank Alberta dead last nationally in this area. It is, in very fact, the Alberta disadvantage. It costs business billions of dollars in compliance costs, delays billions in investment, and costs thousands of jobs and millions of hours of opportunity costs. This government has done nothing to address this issue to this point.

I could go on about the current government’s abysmal record with regard to helping our province be more competitive, but I will not. I will not. Bill 1, in my view, could be – and I emphasize could be – a first small step in the right direction. If this is simply lip service or a tool for appointing new do nothing committees or agencies, then this bill will be a failure. If, however, this bill is used to mimic what has been done by other jurisdictions to become more competitive, then it is worth the support of this House, in my view.

The Wildrose is always looking for pioneers in our own province and in other jurisdictions who have found innovative ways to improve their economy and social programs. We like solutions to problems that mimic them, if appropriate, in the Alberta context. I will focus on one example today, that of our good neighbour to the west, British Columbia.

In 2001 the newly elected right-of-centre party – most would call them conservative although they do go by a different name, to be sure – promised to reduce regulation by one-third, or 33 per cent. It sounded to me, when I first heard that, like a typical promise, a big promise short on detail, but it turned out not to be. Through deregulation and regulatory reform efforts they exceeded that target, and to date they have reduced regulatory requirements in British Columbia by 42 per cent from 2001, a truly remarkable figure.

How did they do it? First, they identified a minister responsible for regulatory reform. The minister championed the initiative and reported to colleagues and to the public on the government’s progress. Second, they established a regulatory reform office responsible for leading the initiative. They call it Straightforward B.C., and that organization was put within the ministry of the minister in charge of this initiative.

Third, they established a baseline measure. This is so important. I very much appreciated the remarks of the Education minister on this, but where I do disagree with him is this idea that if we do not track our progress numerically, we can still have the intended effect. There’s no doubt you could have some effect doing that. I feel that you need to track those. You need to have measurable goals and objectives, or it just does not happen. It’s just a fact of life, I think, in government especially.

They established a baseline measure by counting all regulatory requirements contained in provincial legislation and accompanying regulations and policies. This central database established a starting point so that they could monitor their progress. Just for the record, they started with a stunning 384,000 identified regulations in the province of British Columbia.

Their new office, Straightforward B.C., then reviewed existing legislation by developing and implementing three-year plans that laid out when each ministry would be reviewing existing regulations. Priority was given to regulations that affected economic competitiveness. Next, they made an effort to control new regulation by creating a regulatory reform policy that set out criteria that must be used to develop and assess new regulations. Ministers must certify that proposed legislation and regulations have been developed using the criteria and provide rationale for any deviations.

Finally, and very importantly, the ministries set real and tangible targets and reported on performance. Targets were set out in the annual three-year business plans, as mentioned, for each ministry. The minister responsible for the initiative reported monthly to cabinet on the government’s progress, and quarterly progress reports were published publicly. To date there’s been a 42 per cent reduction in the regulatory burden, so roughly 239,000 regulations now exist in B.C. compared to the aforementioned 384,000 when they started.

Mr. Speaker, it is my view that this government, the current government in Alberta, has done a very poor job of making us competitive since the current Premier took office. They have some successes before that, but it has been a disaster since. It’s never too late to do the right thing. I will be supporting this bill with the caveat that this had better be more than just lip service. We have a good example to follow in B.C. on reducing red tape, so let’s do it. The Wildrose has been offering solutions to make us more competitive in the energy sector as well as offering ideas to maintain the Alberta advantage through better fiscal management and savings, so let’s do it. In short, it’s time to stop talking about being competitive and start being competitive. Thanks, Mr. Speaker.

The Deputy Speaker: Standing Order 29(2)(a) allows for five minutes of comments or questions. The hon. Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs.

Mr. Denis: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I wanted to thank the Member for Airdrie-Chestermere for his comments. One thing he and I do share in common is a concern about the tax burden on working families in this province.

He mentioned a comparison to B.C. One thing that he did not mention is that B.C. currently has a 7 per cent sales tax and on July 1, 2010, will move to a 12 per cent harmonized tax with the federal government. I would like to ask this member if he supports the introduction of a sales tax in Alberta.

Mr. Anderson: Well, it’s a bit of a stretch, but I’ll do my best. First of all, the harmonized tax didn’t increase their tax burden. As you know, that’s just a harmonization of the GST with the provincial sales tax. I mean, I don’t know where that’s coming from. You know, for a lot of people income tax takes more of our money away than sales tax because sales tax, as you know, hon. member, often gets worked into the prices, whether you have it or not. It’s just that corporations will generally know where the supply-demand curves are, and they’ll account for the GST, so essentially you’re going to get a lot of times, not all of the time, generally the same pricing. I don’t think that really has anything to do with my comments on personal income tax. That fact is that everyone under $118,000 in income in B.C. pays more tax than they do here. That’s almost 90 per cent of the population of Alberta. So we’re not that competitive. We think we’re competitive. We think we’ve got a great Alberta advantage, and we do still have some, there’s no doubt, but if we do not start seriously working on this, the Alberta advantage that you and I grew up with in our younger years, now that we’re old men, we might not be able to pass that on to our kids, especially with the incredible overspending that we are currently doing in this province. It’s very important that we get that under control, that we put a plan in place where we can actually start lowering taxes to remain competitive.

The Deputy Speaker: The hon. Member for Edmonton-Riverview.

Dr. Taft: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I listened to the member’s comments with interest. He raised an issue which he’ll need to explain to me. I’ve thought about this with his party’s platform for some time. It looks to me like his party’s position is that the Alberta government should cut taxes, it should maintain programs, it should reduce royalties, and at the same time it should avoid debt. That seems to me an impossibility. My question to the member from Airdrie-Chestermere, because he more or less spoke directly to that issue in his comments, is: how are you going to do that?

Mr. Anderson: It’s actually just basic economic theory. We’re going to build the pie. We’re going to create more wealth in our country and in our province. That means that the same amount of people will actually pay more in tax revenues but not on a per person basis. I think this is basic conservative economic theory, and I espouse it.

The other thing that we need to do – and this is something I know you agree with because I’ve heard you talk about it a hundred times – is we need to grow the Alberta heritage fund. We need to continue to grow it to the point where the interest from that fund every year replaces our reliance on oil and natural gas revenues and thereby eventually allows us to slowly lower income taxes, replace the need for income taxes with a mountain of investment capital that is providing interest each and every year. That is how I think we can, outside of just simply growing the economic pie through lower taxation, attracting new businesses, et cetera, to the province. Those are kind of the two main ways I see that we can accomplish all those great things. We can have our cake and eat it too. It’s the great thing about being a Conservative.

The Deputy Speaker: The hon. Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs.

Mr. Denis: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Just a comment for the follow-up question. First off, the member had mentioned about the PST in B.C. Actually, it becomes a much broader tax when you put it with the GST as opposed to the narrower tax. That notwithstanding, I don’t think I heard an exact answer. Would this member like to see an introduction of a sales tax in Alberta under any circumstances?

Mr. Anderson: Well, you know, I think it’s pretty clear that should any type of sales tax be implemented or be proposed, we have clear legislation . . .

An Hon. Member: We?

Mr. Anderson: Sorry. The government has clear legislation that states that that would have to go to a referendum vote, and I support that concept.

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Cut Red Tape Now (Bill 1 - Part 1)
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Cut Red Tape Now (Bill 1 - Part 2)
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