Bill C-50 (Historical)

Budget Implementation Act, 2008

An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 26, 2008 and to enact provisions to preserve the fiscal plan set out in that budget

Part 1 enacts a number of income tax measures proposed in the February 26, 2008 Budget. In particular, it
(a) introduces the new Tax-Free Savings Account, effective for the 2009 and subsequent taxation years;
(b) extends by 10 years the maximum number of years during which a Registered Education Savings Plan may be open and accept contributions and provides a six-month grace period for making educational assistance payments, generally effective for the 2008 and subsequent taxation years;
(c) increases the amount of the Northern Residents Deduction, effective for the 2008 and subsequent taxation years;
(d) extends the application of the Medical Expense Tax Credit to certain devices and expenses and better targets the requirement that eligible medications must require a prescription by an eligible medical practitioner, generally effective for the 2008 and subsequent taxation years;
(e) amends the provisions relating to Registered Disability Savings Plans so that the rule forcing the mandatory collapse of a plan be invoked only where the beneficiary’s condition has factually improved to the extent that the beneficiary no longer qualifies for the disability tax credit, effective for the 2008 and subsequent taxation years;
(f) extends by one year the Mineral Exploration Tax Credit;
(g) extends the capital gains tax exemption for certain gifts of listed securities to also apply in respect of certain exchangeable shares and partnership interests, effective for gifts made on or after February 26, 2008;
(h) adjusts the rate of the Dividend Tax Credit to reflect corporate income tax rate reductions, beginning in 2010;
(i) increases the benefits available under the Scientific Research and Experimental Development Program, generally effective for taxation years that end on or after February 26, 2008;
(j) amends the penalty for failures to remit source deductions when due in order to better reflect the degree to which the remittances are late, and excuses early remittances from the mandatory financial institution remittance rules, effective for remittances due on or after February 26, 2008;
(k) reduces the paper burden associated with dispositions by non-residents of certain treaty-protected property, effective for dispositions that occur after 2008;
(l) ensures that the enhanced tax incentive for Donations of Medicines is properly targeted, effective for gifts made after June, 2008; and
(m) modifies the provincial component of the SIFT tax to better reflect actual provincial tax rates, effective for the 2009 and subsequent taxation years.
Part 1 also implements income tax measures to preserve the fiscal plan as set out in the February 26, 2008 Budget.
Part 2 amends the Excise Act, the Excise Act, 2001 and the Customs Tariff to implement measures aimed at improving tobacco tax enforcement and compliance, adjusting excise duties on tobacco sticks and on tobacco for duty-free markets and equalizing the excise treatment of imitation spirits and other spirits.
Part 3 implements goods and services tax and harmonized sales tax (GST/HST) measures proposed or referenced in the February 26, 2008 Budget. It amends the Excise Tax Act to expand the list of zero-rated medical and assistive devices and to ensure that all supplies of drugs sold to final consumers under prescription are zero-rated. It also amends that Act to exempt all nursing services rendered within a nurse-patient relationship, prescribed health care services ordered by an authorized registered nurse and, if certain conditions are met, a service of training that is specially designed to assist individuals in coping with the effects of their disorder or disability. It further amends that Act to ensure that a variety of professional health services maintain their GST/HST exempt status if those services are rendered by a health professional through a corporation. Additional amendments to that Act clarify the GST/HST treatment of long-term residential care facilities. Those amendments are intended to ensure that the GST New Residential Rental Property Rebate is available, and the GST/HST exempt treatment for residential leases and sales of used residential rental buildings applies, to long-term residential care facilities on a prospective basis and on past transactions if certain circumstances exist. This Part also makes amendments to relieve the GST/HST on most lease payments for land on which wind or solar power equipment used to generate electricity is situated.
Part 4 dissolves the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation, provides for the Foundation to fulfill certain obligations and deposit its remaining assets in the Consolidated Revenue Fund, and repeals Part 1 of the Budget Implementation Act, 1998. It also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Part 5 amends the Canada Student Financial Assistance Act and the Canada Student Loans Act to implement measures concerning financial assistance for students, including the following:
(a) authorizing the establishment and operation, by regulation, of electronic systems to allow on-line services to be offered to students;
(b) providing for the establishment and operation, by regulation, of a program to provide for the repayment of student loans for classes of borrowers who are encountering financial difficulties;
(c) allowing part-time students to defer their student loan payments for as long as they continue to be students, and providing, by regulation, for other circumstances in which student loan payments may be deferred; and
(d) allowing the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development to take remedial action if any error is made in the administration of the two Acts and in certain cases, to waive requirements imposed on students to avoid undue hardship to them.
Part 6 amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to authorize the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to give instructions with respect to the processing of certain applications and requests in order to support the attainment of the immigration goals established by the Government of Canada.
Part 7 enacts the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board Act. The mandate of the Board is to set the Employment Insurance premium rate and to manage a financial reserve. That Part also amends the Employment Insurance Act and makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Part 8 authorizes payments to be made out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the recruitment of front line police officers, capital investment in public transit infrastructure and carbon capture and storage. It also authorizes Canada Social Transfer transition protection payments.
Part 9 authorizes payments to be made out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund to Genome Canada, the Mental Health Commission of Canada, The Gairdner Foundation and the University of Calgary.
Part 10 amends various Acts.

Budget Implementation Act, 2008

[Gurbax Malhi, Liberal, Bramalea—Gore—Malton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, if you check my previous voting record from 1993 you will see I work for my constituents. When they send me emails--

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

How will you vote?

[Gurbax Malhi, Liberal, Bramalea—Gore—Malton, ON]

I do that all the time. I do that all the time when I am sent the emails and when the issues come up.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

How will you vote?

[Gurbax Malhi, Liberal, Bramalea—Gore—Malton, ON]

Have you checked my voting record? I am not like you. I do that all the time.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member has just expressed his experience in the House and has sufficient experience to know that when referring to other members, it is in the third person, not the second person. The only person who is addressed in the second person is the Chair.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Vancouver Centre.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I stand here because I take great exception to this particular piece of the finance bill. First and foremost, I call this governing by stealth. This is a substantive change to the way that the immigration act is going to work. It is a substantive change in the process. This piece of legislation should have gone to the right committee. The right committee, with the expertise and the experience, is the immigration committee.

The bill could have come in the way bills like this one should always come in. This should come in as an immigration amendment, as part of the immigration changes being made by the government. It should be spoken to in the House and then go to the appropriate committee, which would be the immigration committee. The immigration committee, with all of its expertise, should talk to people around the country and find out how they want to deal with it.

Putting the bill in the House right at this moment and sticking immigration reforms into a confidence bill on finance is really the kind of thing that we have come to expect from the Conservative government. The government is all about stealth in changing things and about getting its way.

True, there is a little bit of money involved in this bill, so I want to make a second point. The minister is putting $30 million into the bill and expects us to believe that this is going to change the backlog of applications that the minister says she needs to deal with.

The Liberal minister of immigration in the previous government put in $700 million, a process and a plan just before the election. The minister had gone through with contracting out the process for the purpose of decreasing the backlog.

I have no idea what happened to that plan. It had already started. Much of the contracting had been done. It was accepted by cabinet and by the department. What happened to it? What happened to the $700 million? Now we hear that the $700 million has been replaced by $30 million and the government has no plan.

Giving unprecedented power to a minister to make decisions that override the process, that break all the rules and that have no accountability, is an absolutely atrocious way to conduct government. It is undemocratic. It ignores Parliament and the parliamentary committees that have the expertise. It ignores information on the issue that might make it work if, as the minister says, her objective is to bring down the backlog. This bill does none of that.

This legislation removes the current process entirely. We do not know how the minister is going to choose people, and she does not have to tell us. She can make choices about who comes into the country and who does not come into the country, and she can do this with a sweep of a pen. She has no requirement to tell anybody her reasonings. This is kind of sad, which is the best word I can find.

By the year 2011 Canada will be dependent on immigration for 100% of its net labour force. Why? Because we are not having babies. Canada's birth rate is negative. Our aging population is well over 65 and no longer in the workforce. Canada can never be a productive and competitive nation if we do not have people available to work.

It is obvious that immigration is of seminal importance to the economy of this country and of seminal importance to the future of this country, its whole social infrastructure and the way that we have always set values in a country like ours. Canada was built on immigrants, other than the aboriginal people who were the first peoples of this nation and who opened the doors to immigration, against their better judgment.

We came from every country of the world, originally from Europe. Many people came here seeking a better life, seeking to fulfill their dreams of freedom. They wanted their children to grow up in a country of opportunity. They came from everywhere in the world and built a nation. We continue to build this nation on the backs of immigrants, which is an appropriate thing to do, because we are a new world nation, so to speak.

Many of the first wave of immigrants who came here from Europe should feel concerned about the bill. They will remember that they were denied entrance into this country on fairly basic reasons, like the region they came from, where they originally belonged and that their values were different from certain European values.

The Chinese will tell us that for 25 years they were a bachelor community because they were not allowed to bring over their wives and children. We heard a member of the House talk about the Komagata Maru. We heard another member speak to the St. Louis, which was turned away because the Jews from Europe tried to come here, seeking to flee Nazi Germany, and they were turned back on a whim, on an ideology.

We no longer live in that kind of country. We live in a country where there must be clear and transparent rules so people who wish to come to this country know those rules and know when they can and cannot come here. They need to know whether they fulfill the requirements, based on a hope that they can pass the security requirements, to come here. They did come and they have continued to come to build a nation.

It is true that many of our new immigrants come from Asia and Africa and they, too, are bringing with them expertise. Fifty-one per cent of our new immigrants have post-secondary education and a diploma. However, only 22% of Canadians who were born and live in Canada can boast about having a post-secondary degree or a diploma of any kind.

We are bringing in people who can contribute to this country because we need a workforce for our productivity and competitiveness. We need to remember that this country was built by immigrants who were seeking to contribute to it and to have a better life. They brought with them their families because families create stability. A nation is built when people put down roots and a nation continues to be built, not by temporary workers, but by people who come here with their families and who invest their hopes, their dreams, their hard work and their loyalty in Canada. Our great nation has become what it is today because of those people.

I do not understand how we can give the minister the unprecedented power to decide who will or will not come here without having to give any reasons. The minister is asking us to trust her because she will do the right thing.

We have seen time and time again that we cannot trust the government. I would say that most cynical Canadians would say that they cannot trust any particular government, but that is not the point. The point is that this is why we have bureaucracies, processes and clear ways of doing things.

At the same time, this would close the door to our newest immigrants, those who have come from Asia and Africa, on a whim, and it would close the door to their bringing in their families. Only letting people in for economic reasons seems, from the beginning of time, to be the Conservative ideology. Mr. Diefenbaker did that a long time ago and Mr. Mulroney wanted to change immigration so that it would only be economic migrants coming here.

To build a nation we need to bring a mix of people into this country to put down roots and to work, but they need to bring with them their families. If we decide to only bring people here because of the work they can do and ignore their families, we will be back to what the Chinese remembered.

We have heard the government apologize and give redress but when we apologize and give redress we are supposed to have learned a lesson and will not do it again. If we put in place all of the protocols that would make that happen again, then we have learned nothing and the redress and the apology become hollow.

I am suggesting that we need to debate the issue of changes in immigration in the appropriate bill and in the appropriate place, which is the immigration committee, and not to run it through under the radar screen as the government is trying to do. I call that governing by stealth.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot imagine how the hon. member comes to say that we are governing by stealth. This is an opportunity for her and members opposite to speak in the House and in committee. When the bill is passed, it will give the opportunity for the minister to issue an instruction that will be broad and in accordance with the goals set out by the Government of Canada. She will not be involved in individual decision making. That will be left to the department.

The instructions will be open, transparent and published in the Canada Gazette. The annual report will come back to Parliament and, ultimately, it will be this House that decides, with responsibility to the Canadian people, whether or not the legislation passes.

Once again, the government is doing something about a backlog that increased under that member's government from 50,000 to over 800,000. To be 800,001 does not help if people want to come into this country to reunite with their family or be a skilled worker.

Will the member stand up in the House and oppose this legislation, given her democratic right and representation that she has to her constituents and to those across the country who want to see reform and want to see it go in the fashion we are proposing?

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member just let his hidden agenda become not so hidden when he said “in the fashion in which we are proposing”. In other words, he wants it done in the way his government wants it to be done without any real debate. The government sticks it into a vehicle that makes it impossible for people to say “no” because it could bring the government down.

Parliament needs to be respected, and we respect Parliament not by trickery, but by having a real debate and real discussion and everyone can understand the results. Therefore, getting in the hon. member's way and the government opposite's way by stealth is not a democratic way to go nor an appropriate way to go. It does not do justice to good public policy.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly agree with the Conservatives in one sense. Some of the problems we are dealing with today, like the huge backlog, are as a result of Liberal cutbacks. We go back to the mid-nineties when the government of the day made such sweeping changes and cuts we lost a whole decade of innovative changes and immigration was certainly front and centre.

However, I agree with the Liberals and I agree with the member when she said that this was outrageous, that it removes the process, that with the sweep of a pen the minister can change the face of this country, that she can deny families from coming in, that the government will be able to distort the mix of people coming in, that it will ruin the diversity of this nation, that it will wreck the history of this country, and on and on she went.

If it is that clear for them, which I believe it is, then they have a choice. They can either vote with the government, as they are intending to do, at least based on the statements to date, and they can support the government's agenda, which will destroy the face of this country and our open immigration process, or they can continue to twist and turn and refuse to participate in a process when they have an opportunity to make a difference.

If the member believes in process and in discussion by committee, will she join with us and support our amendment which will remove this section from the budget implementation bill and allow for full and open discussions on immigration policy?

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Vancouver Centre has one minute to respond.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member says that we should just go ahead and vote and not sit on our hands. The point is that if we believe in process, we believe in appropriate process and this is not appropriate process. This is chicanery. This is trickery. This is the kind of stuff that we will not play a role in by acknowledging that it is so and therefore standing up and voting yea or nay against it. That is something that we refuse to do on this side of the House because it demeans Parliament and we will not play a role in demeaning Parliament with trickery.

The hon. member mentioned that the backlog came from the Liberals and that this was all because of cutting immigration in the beginning. It is so usual for the members in that party not to understand basic economics, that when there is a $43 billion deficit left by the--

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

I regret that I must interrupt the hon. member but I had given her fair notice that it would be for one minute.

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Scarborough—Rouge River has the floor for 20 minutes, of which there will only be 10 minutes today.

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to engage in debate on this budget implementation bill.

Budget implementation bills are usually pretty complex and technical things at the best of times, and most Canadians will appreciate that this bill is of that nature. However, what has happened in this particular bill, for reasons that I do not think have been adequately explained in the House by the government, is that it has buried in the middle of this bill a provision dealing with the Immigration Act and it proposes changes to how the immigration flow is managed. I found that quite odd.

Someone here suggested that the proposals are secret. The government members have said that they are not secret, that they are right there in the bill that Parliament will have a chance to debate and pass.

The problem is that the provisions of the bill allow for the creation of what are called instructions that will be given by the minister. The perception is that it is those instructions, not the provisions of the bill, that will be “secret”; that the instructions will not be seen until they hit the street. They are supposed to be published in the Canada Gazette but we are not clear and even I as a member am not clear at this moment whether we are able to see all of the rules governing immigration.

I put a notice of motion for the production of papers on the order paper this week so I could see the Immigration Control Manual, a document that, unbelievably, has been revoked from the public. It is no longer available. I want to see this document but the Conservative government has pulled it from public access.

That is not transparent. That is operating by stealth. That is just a bit of a sidebar because the real issue here is what the government plans to do with these so-called instructions. This, by itself, is a departure.

It is true that under the Income Tax Act there is a provision that allows for the issuance of guidelines. However, I think taxpayers and most Canadians will appreciate that in the Income Tax Act there is a lot of complexity. A whole industry of tax lawyers is out there manoeuvring 25 hours a day to deal with the Income Tax Act in all its complexity. Therefore, we have accepted, in Parliament, that there can be guidelines issued by the minister.

However, in the Immigration Act, the government, quite a novel suggestion, has decided that it will create this category of instructions and they will simply be sent out.

The reason why, in rule of law, we object to that is that we never get a chance to see them, review them, verify them or validate them. If the government had chosen to make regulations containing these instructions, then we could see them as regulations. They would be pre-published for consultation in the Canada Gazette, be adopted in the usual way and then would stand referred to the Standing Committee for Scrutiny of Regulations where they would be reviewed for legality and constitutionality.

The government has not even done that in this case. It has simply said that it will create a category of instructions that will simply be logged out there to all the immigration officers around the world and they will operate based on those instructions.

Many of us here in Parliament are concerned that these instructions will be arbitrary and may get into an area which has been fought for centuries by the Westminster Parliament, a category of executive branch activity we call the pretended power of dispensation. What that means is that Parliament will pass a law and then the King says that he will make a regulation under the law. The King then purports to grant an exemption, a dispensation from the law, from the regulation. Parliament has always told the King that he cannot do that because there is no power of dispensation and no power of exemption. Parliament has said that when it writes a law, it is the law for everybody.

What if the government begins to build into these instructions dispensations? In other words, one instruction says that ABC shall prevail, but the minister may exempt or an immigration officer may exempt. What if some of these exemptions involve receipt of political favours or giving of political favours or money, God forbid? It is a whole area where we do not want to go. The government is apparently authorizing this in this bill.

In fairness to the government, it says it is trying to fix this problem of backlog under the immigration act. The backlog is a bit of an issue, but I suggest to the House that the 800,000 person backlog is not such a bad thing. It is actually an asset.

If we had no backlog in our immigration program, we would say our immigration program was a failure. We have to have an inventory of immigrants coming here. The backlog is on average only two and a half years worth of immigrants. As other colleagues have pointed out, we need a strong, vibrant immigration program. We like to have a lineup. It is not just one lineup. The immigration queue or the 800,000 person backlog is about six lineups.

There is a special lineup for family class-spousal. That lineup only takes six months to a year. Then the rest of the family class, including parents, in some countries can go up to seven years.

Then we have skilled workers. Some of those skilled workers can take up to seven years. If the person is a skilled worker, provincial nominee class, that person can be here within months. Then we have investors, refugee class, humanitarian class and the inland processing.

All of these are different lineups. There is not one 800,000 person lineup out there. There are half a dozen at least. The average inventory wait is two and a half years, but I do say that having a family member having to wait seven years is far too long.

The reason why that has happened, of course, is that we have decided the policy as a country, that we want the intake every year to be balanced between economic class and family class: 60% economic class and that is skilled workers, investors, et cetera, and 40% family class. That is why each of our offices has to stream these lines, so that the intake of immigrants to Canada is 60% economic each year and 40% family class.

I do think we have to fix this. We do not want to raise unrealistic expectations that we can get rid of the backlog of 800,000 persons overnight. If we did that we would not have any inventory. We would not have anyone in the lineup. There would be no one coming.

What we have to do is to find a way to manage the longer lineups to ensure that people in them know how long is involved and that they are not unduly extended way beyond times. Some parents I have seen go from being in good health at age 63 and in seven years they are up to 70 years of age, and they fall into bad health and their immigration application is prejudiced as a result.

This is a problem we simply must deal with. I am not sure that by criticizing the backlog day in and day out that we do service to the immigration program the way it is.

I want to also talk about the importance of viewing the immigration backlog as a symptom of a positive immigration program.

I have heard words in this House that say that under the Conservative government the number of immigrants has been increased to the highest level, if not ever, at least in recent memory. I think that is a bit disingenuous. It is fairly clear from the numbers that the number of visas issued for immigrants over the last couple of years has been about the same as it was under the previous government.

Every year the immigration department issues about 250,000 to 275,000 immigration visas of all the classes I mentioned earlier: the family class, the skilled worker class, the investor class and the humanitarian class.

What the government has done in this case is it has taken the student visas which are not immigrant visas, and it has taken work visas which are not immigrant visas and it has added them in to say, “Look, we have got 400,000 immigrants”. That is not a fair figure. That is not a fair way to do it. It is misleading. If we are going to get increases in our immigration intake, let us get a real intake.

Mr. Speaker, you are signaling that I am near the end of my 11 minutes. I look forward to finishing the balance of my remarks at a later date.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

When we next return to the study of Bill C-50, the hon. member for Scarborough--Rouge River will have 10 more minutes.

It being 5:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.