Message-ID: <19990325001013.AAA15627@LOCALNAME> Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 20:14:31 -0004 From: Kerry Miller <mailto:kerryo@ns.sympatico.ca> Subject: (Fwd) M-239 Tobin - We won! On a gagne! To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date sent: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 13:31:51 -0800 To: mailto:mai-not@flora.org From: Howard Bertram <mailto:bertram@storm.ca> (by way of Connie Fogal <cfogal@netcom.ca>) Subject: M-239 Tobin - We won! On a gagne!le francais suit.
From: "Nystrom, Lorne - Assistant 1" <mailto:NystrL0@parl.gc.ca et Subject: M-239 Tobin - We won! Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 13:16:26 -0500
Thank you all for making all this possible through your efforts! This is History in the making and Democracy at its best. I am forwarding you the transcripts of the third and final hour of debate on motion M-239 as well as the details of the vote. Henri
============== FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 24 MARCH 1999
NDP TOBIN TAX MOTION WINS
OTTAWA - Canada has shown world leadership in adopting a motion calling for an international tax on financial transactions, NDP financial institutions critic Lorne Nystrom said today.
Motion M-239 was passed by Parliament last night with a vote of 164 to 83. It read:
"That in the opinion of the House, the government should enact a tax on financial transactions in concert with the international community".
"This will finally give the Tobin Tax the fighting chance it deserves. The House of Commons in Canada is the first parliament in the world to pass such a motion," Mr. Nystrom said.
Problems with sinking currencies and global deflation have buoyed support for increased global re-regulation. The Tobin Tax could serve as both a means to cool "hot" speculative capital, and it could also raise funds for cash-strapped social programs -- both at home and around the world.
"Canadians and the world have seen the effects of today's financial system. Speculative capital is wrecking havoc on the international community. The situation in Latin America, Russia and South East Asia is worsening and is leading to more currency turmoil and global deflation. A Tobin Tax is part of the solution to this problem," Mr. Nystrom said.
In Canada, motion M-239 had the support of a broad coalition of community-based organisations, church groups and non-governmental organisations representing 3 million Canadians.
"Groups like the Halifax Initiative and our partners in the CLC were crucial to the success of this motion," Mr. Nystrom said. "Let's keep working together as we take this cause to the international stage."
-30-
For more information, please call: Lorne Nystrom, MP (ph): (306) 359-6944 (c): (306) 539-7105
DIFFUSION IMMÉDIATE LE 24 MARS 1999
LA MOTION DU NPD SUR LA TAXE TOBIN EST ADOPTÉE
OTTAWA -- Le Canada a montré au reste du monde son sens du leadership en adoptant une motion demandant l'imposition d'une taxe sur les transactions financières internationales a déclaré aujourd'hui le porte-parole néo-démocrate concernant les institutions financières, Lorne Nystrom.
La motion M-239 a été adoptée hier soir au Parlement par un vote de 164 à 83. Voici son libellé :
Que, de l'avis de la Chambre, le gouvernement devrait adopter une taxe sur les transactions financières de concert avec la communauté internationale.
Cela donnera finalement à la taxe Tobin la chance qu'elle mérite. La Chambre des communes au Canada est le premier parlement sur la planète à adopter une telle motion," a affirmé M. Nystrom.
Les problèmes que sont l'affaissement de la valeur de différentes devises et la déflation à l'échelle de la planète incitent bien des observateurs de la scène économique à demander le rétablissement de la réglementation des >activités financières internationales. La Taxe Tobin pourrait être un
véhicule qui servirait à refroidir les ardeurs des spéculateurs et générerait aussi des sommes pouvant être consacrées au financement des programmes sociaux anémiques, et ce, tant au Canada qu'à l'étranger."Les Canadiens et le monde entier voient l'impact que le fonctionnement du système financier actuel a sur les économies nationales. Le capital spéculatif est une véritable tornade financière qui frappe tous les pays du globe. La situation en Amérique latine, en Russie et dans l'Asie du sud-est va en s'aggravant et ébranle encore plus certaines devises ce qui pourrait provoquer une déflation mondiale. Une Taxe Tobin constitue une élément de la solution à ce problème," a expliqué M. Nystrom.
Au Canada, la motion M-239 a l'appui d'une vaste coalition d'organismes communautaires et confessionnels et d'instances non gouvernementales qui représentent trois millions de Canadiens et Canadiennes.
"Des groupes comme le Halifax Initiative et nos partenaires au sein du CTC nous ont accordé un appui crucial qui a assuré le succès de cette motion," a déclaré M. Nystrom. "Continuons de travailler ensemble pour amener et promouvoir cette cause sur la scène internationale." - 30 -
Pour de plus amples renseignements, veuillez communiquer avec : Lorne Nystrom Téléphone : (306) 359-6944 Cellulaire : (306) 539-7105
==================== PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS [English] >
>...
>Mr. Wayne Easter (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Fisheries and
>Oceans, Lib.): Madam Speaker, I want to briefly summarize what I said
>previously.
>I explained how much a tax on currency speculation was needed. I also
>explained that we could not allow the money speculators in New York and
>elsewhere around the world to sometimes bring countries to their knees by
>statements that a country was a basket case or whatever which drives trading
>in the currency down. I also explained that we could not allow money
>speculators, who just play with paper and create no real wealth and do not
>produce anything, to jeopardize ordinary people's working lives by their
>actions.
>Let me use the few minutes I have left to build on why Canada should push
>for such a policy globally. The fact is a small and some would say very tiny
>tax on currency speculators could stabilize economies. At the same time it
>could help finance social initiatives and third world development.
>By stabilizing economies I mean that some speculators who are playing with
>the financial markets on Bay Street or some other such place have a notion
>about a country and make a statement that a country is in serious financial
>trouble, that it is a basket case or whatever. Those words get into some of
>the investment papers. That one single statement by people play around with
>money and create no real wealth other than for themselves starts a run on
>the country's currency and causes serious problems for the finances and
>people of that country.
>Putting this small Tobin tax as it is called on money speculators would ease
>that kind of activity. They would not play those kinds of games. We are
>talking about a very small tax, somewhere in the rage of one-tenth of one
>per cent. That kind of a tax would also bring in a fair bit of return. It
>would have to be put in place globally. With that kind of financing a lot
>could be done for the third world in terms of needed social policies.
>The book Good Taxes by Alex Michalos had this to say about the tax and how
>it would be put in place:
> A transaction tax on purchases and sales of foreign exchange would
>have to be (1) universal and (2) uniform; it would (3) have to apply to all
>jurisdictions, and (4) the rate would have to be equalized across markets.
>Were it imposed unilaterally by one country, that country's FOREX market
>would simply move offshore ... (5) Enforcement of the universal tax would
>depend principally on major banks and on the jurisdictions that regulate
>them. (6) The surveillance of national regulatory authorities could be the
>responsibility of a multilateral agency like the Bank for International
>Settlements or the International Monetary Fund. It might be authorized to
>set the size of the tax within limits. (7) It would have to possess
>sanctions that could be levied on countries that fail to comply with the
>measure.
>
> ...
>Those points are important. That is what we are saying we have to move
>toward. All those conditions have to be met. It is important for Canada to
>lead the way by discussing with other countries that this kind of tax is
>needed on a global basis. This should lessen the money speculation and would
>provide moneys to do good things in social policy and other ways for the
>third world.
>...
>
>Ms. Alexa McDonough (Halifax, NDP): Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to
>enter into debate on the motion put forward by my colleague from
>Regina-Qu'Appelle to suggest the importance of Canada taking leadership in
>putting forward a Tobin tax and building international consensus around the
>critical importance of adopting such a tax.
>It is a private member's motion, but let me make it very clear that it will
>be one that is enthusiastically supported by all 21 of my caucus colleagues.
>Why? Because we recognize and have long believed that it is essential for
>Canada to take the lead in building support in the international community
>for a modest but important tax on international financial transactions.
>In 1997 the federal New Democratic Party at its convention adopted support
>for the Tobin tax into our party policy. In the 1997 election we ran on the
>commitment that we would go on working to gain co-operation and support for
>the Tobin tax at home and abroad in partnership with other progressive
>forces.
>Let me say how pleased we are today that there is an increasing number of
>progressive groups in Canada from the faith communities, the labour
>movement, the environment, the development and other social justice
>movements calling for the Government of Canada to provide leadership in the
>adoption of a Tobin tax.
>What is the Tobin tax? It is the brain child of Nobel Prize winning
>economist, James Tobin. As early as 1978 Dr. Tobin proposed the introduction
>of a tax on international financial transactions, a tax wisely proposed to
>be low enough not to have adverse effects on trade in goods and services but
>high enough to cut into the profits of currency speculators and thereby
>hopefully reduce the currency speculation that is causing havoc in economies
>around the world.
>The world desperately needs to restore some balance after the mania of
>market fundamentalism which has gripped the world economy. In the 1990s we
>have seen the spectacle of the so-called risk takers: a 28 year old in red
>suspenders who can bring down a century old bank, a major private sector
>hedge fund engaged in billion dollar investments which has to get bailed out
>to the tune of $3.2 billion by the U.S. federal reserve fund to prevent a
>major global financial crisis, and currency traders making billions of
>dollars while wages for ordinary citizens stagnate or fall even in the most
>successful economies of the world.
>Market fundamentalism in the nineties has meant idealizing the marketplace
>as something that can take care of everything that matters to people. When
>unbridled currency speculators turn the Asian so-called economic miracle
>into a financial crisis overnight, whole national economies were plunged
>into recession. Twenty-five million people sunk into dire poverty in
>Indonesia and Thailand alone. Thirty-five per cent of the world today is in
>recession, and as the contagion spreads to other countries like Brazil that
>percentage is increasing.
>
> ...
>Why do we need a Tobin tax in today's market? The economic market was
>supposed to reward risk takers. That was the theory, to reward people who
>would put up their own money to build a plant, to develop a new product or
>to provide a new service to the community. That is the theory.
>However today's market rules are: do not bet your own money; hedge your
>bets; invest in the private market preferably offshore; get the public, in
>other words taxpayers, to bail you out if you get into difficulty; protect
>and hoard your personal wealth by sending it to a tax haven abroad. This has
>led to rescue packages for the super rich, impoverishment for the many, and
>diminishing capacity for the public through its elected governments to
>address the social problems left in the wake of market failures.
>Today the world desperately needs a strategy to ensure that the
>international economy serves the interest of ordinary citizens in the
>poorest countries that are being increasingly marginalized and in the
>wealthier countries where workers are launched in a race to the bottom. The
>Tobin tax is one way to rebalance risks, rewards and responsibilities, a way
>to ensure that those who benefit most from the market system take some
>financial responsibility for it.
>George Soros, the billionaire financier who has made a fortune in
>international markets, describes today's global capital flows as a wrecking
>ball spreading indiscriminate grief and poverty around the globe:
> There used to be a concept of civic virtue, but because of the
>sharpening of competition, people have become so involved in fighting for
>their own survival they cannot indulge their concern for the common good.
>The concern with the common good has been almost eliminated by allowing the
>markets to become the main forum for decision making.
>According to the United Nations human development report the estimated cost
>of providing universal access to basic human services for all the world's
>citizens is roughly $40 billion per year, and $40 billion is a mere 20% of
>the revenues that could be collected through the imposition of a Tobin tax.
>Nations around the world could use the revenues generated to alleviate human
>suffering on a scale so vast that it would eclipse all our collective
>efforts for the past five decades.
>When the G-7 nations met in Halifax in June 1995 regrettably the Prime
>Minister of Canada resisted the call for our government to provide
>leadership in building consensus in support of the Tobin tax. I think it is
>a positive development, a very welcome development, that today the
>government recognizes the Tobin tax is an idea whose time has come. The
>finance minister has recognized in the Tobin tax:
> -the general taxing power to raise money for great
>international needs, whether it be problems of the Third World, the heaviest
>indebted poor countries, or international environmental problems.
>Surely a proposal with such potential cries out for political and
>international support.
>The finance minister was absolutely correct when he stated publicly almost a
>year ago today on national television that it would take a long time to get
>the rest of the world to sign on to the Tobin tax. To that I say let us get
>started by giving unanimous passage in the House to the motion before us
>calling on the Government of Canada to provide leadership to the adoption of
>a Tobin tax on behalf of all world citizens.
>
> ...
>Mr. Ted McWhinney (Vancouver Quadra, Lib.): Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure
>to return the debate to the subject of the hon. member for
>Regina-Qu'Appelle's resolution.
>We had only one reservation about the resolution and he has very gracefully
>accepted our suggestion for a change. I would like to enter into the record
>that the finance minister has been concerned with this issue for at least
>four years. He did raise it at the Halifax reunion referred to in 1995. It
>has recurred in discussions at the World Bank and the IMF in Washington and
>again at the Kuala Lumpur informal meeting of the APEC leaders.
>It is a subject we are very concerned with. The economist who gives his name
>to the tax proposed is not some obscure ivory tower economist. He has been
>working in the practical world of economics. Apart from his Yale
>professorship, he was an adviser to President Kennedy on the crucial
>financial banking policy making that President Kennedy's administration was
>engaged in.
>Returning to this subject, it directs attention to the problem of our times
>of the breakdown, as in other areas of the world community, of international
>institutions that were conceived for other purposes and have to be
>readjusted and remade to accord to new conditions. I am referring of course
>to the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system which in essence over the last
>half century has governed world banking and monetary policies.
>The Bretton Woods system was set in place in 1944 in anticipation of the
>victory of the Allies in World War II and it was based on the evident
>economic financial facts of that period: the war about to end, the dominance
>of the United States and the dominance of the U.S. dollar system which was
>the pivotal international currency linked to gold by a fixed exchange rate
>with other currencies with fixed par value rates too.
>What was linked to Bretton Woods was an international regulatory system for
>capital demand and supply and two very key institutions, the World Bank for
>long term capital assistance mostly to developing nations suffering from
>chronic capital shortages, and the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for
>regulating money supplies to alleviate the crises in international payments.
>There was a multifunctional, global monetary banking framework established
>under Bretton Woods.
>The special societal and economic facts on which that was posited have
>changed. One of course is the emergence of other banking systems not in
>opposition but parallel to the American system. We would take note obviously
>most recently of the emergence of the European banking group, the emergence
>of the new European currency unit and also of course of the Japanese
>construction of their own financial banking system.
>More important, however, is the challenge to the institutions themselves.
>All of us have had reservations about the response of the International
>Monetary Fund to the Asian crisis. Others would take objection, as I have in
>other places, to the response to the change from the Soviet Union to a
>number of independent states and Russia itself.
>The careful line between financial policy and political policy in the strict
>sense which figures largely in the IMF's decisions has sometimes led to
>results that one would question. Again there have been serious complaints
>made by third world countries.
>What we are really directing attention to is that the member for
>Regina-Qu'Apelle's motion, the concept of curbing wild currency fluctuations
>due to manipulation of the international financial markets, this sort of
>thing has to be viewed in the larger context of the international financial
>regulatory framework.
>
> ...
>I think we have to consider it together with the World Bank and the IMF. It
>will make a fruitful subject for study by the House committee on foreign
>affairs which had a very able group working on international trade policy.
>It is a subject that it could attend to.
>More than ever the motion which we accept in its amended form asks us to
>effectuate this tax in concert with the international community. It is the
>green light. It reinforces our attempts to get this on the agenda of the G-7
>and to re-examine the issue of fundamental reforms in international
>financial and banking institutions.
>Sometimes we get interesting new policies. The post-Thatcher policies in
>Great Britain, which British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown is
>calling for, look for some new global overarching international financial
>regulatory machinery. It will inevitably reform the IMF, the World Bank and
>the Tobin tax taken in juxtaposition.
>We welcome the motion by the member for Regina-Qu'Appelle. It accords with
>our government policy if we take it in the larger context in terms of
>fundamental reform and modernization of international financial
>institutions.
>I invite the hon. member and all members of the House to join in the
>committee studies of this aspect preparatory to raising it with renewed
>force and supporting empirical data before the G-7 and other arenas so that
>the efforts the finance minister has taken in previous years will have that
>extra strength behind them.
[...]