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

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for the question. He asked me if he would have our support on certain measures that have been cancelled by the Conservatives.

I remind him that each time bills are put forward—bills about reinstating programs—we evaluate each one thoroughly, and we will continue to do so.

However, I remind him that we will continue to do so if we can see that there is something in it for Quebeckers. If we believe that these measures will allow Quebeckers to continue to access good services and that they can benefit from the measures he is talking to me about, eventually and with the right to change our mind, there is a strong possibility that we will support him. We have presented very important demands about social housing, the environment—greenhouse gas emissions—and about the justification for providing the homeless with better services.

In my opinion, that is what I believe to be the party line.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

There will be seven and a half minutes at the end of question period for any further questions and comments at that point.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-50, 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, be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, things have quietened down a bit now and I am happy to participate and offer my comments on Bill C-50, the budget implementation bill.

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Pickering—Scarborough East.

Imitation is often mentioned as the highest form of flattery, so Canadians are now experiencing a strange sense of déjà vu with the minority Conservative government's 2008 budget.

It seems that the Conservatives lack any ideas of their own and instead have decided to present a watered down version of our Liberal policies.

Perhaps if the finance minister was not so busy bashing his home province and my home province of Ontario, he would have had more time to come up with more original policies, some of his own policies, rather than recycling ours and trying to pass them off as new policies.

Some of the many excellent Liberal initiatives that the finance minister repackaged are: making the gas tax transfer permanent, as we had committed to in February 2007; providing direct support to the auto sector, as we called for in January 2008; creating jobs and improving public transit through additional investments in infrastructure, as we called for in February 2008; providing funding to hire more police, as we committed to in March 2007; reversing some of the Conservatives previous cuts to university granting councils and the indirect costs of research programs, which would have grown substantially under the Liberal economic update of 2005; replacing some of the funding from the Liberal 2005 update for student grants; and modernizing the Canada student loans program.

That is quite a list of Liberal accomplishments. I could go on further with more Liberal achievements and more of our exceptional policies, but I will go back to minority Conservative government's budget implementation bill.

I am glad the Conservatives really and truly appreciated those policies and those ideas that we had and went forward to implement them because they could see they were very good policies as well.

I certainly would have preferred it if the Conservatives had not already spent the cupboard bare with their previous budgets and fall economic and fiscal updates, leaving a razor thin surplus to protect Canada's economy should it continue to falter.

The next six months will be very important in Canada's economy and we can only hope that Canada will come through this without finding ourselves back in a deficit position again.

All the Conservatives are looking for is a boost in their poll numbers, continuing to demonstrate to Canadians what their priorities are. By focusing on the election that it is so desperate for, the government has again showed its incredible shortsightedness and total lack of ability to build our great nation.

Everything is built on polls and more polls. There is no planning for next week because everything is being done on the fly. The Conservatives have wasted a major opportunity to address Canada's infrastructure deficit by not acting on the Liberal proposal to use $7 billion of this year's debt paydown to fund infrastructure projects across the country. The investment of that $7 billion in infrastructure across Canada could clearly have protected us against what many of us fear is a possible recession here in Canada.

Nevertheless, we did not vote against this budget as there was nothing in the budget that warrants an election that Canadians clearly do not want, particularly at such a difficult time for the Canadian economy.

People that I speak to tell us to be patient and give it more time and that they are watching what everybody is doing. Clearly the polls are showing that because frankly nobody is going up and nobody is going down.

However, now that the minority Conservative government has very sneakily slipped legislative changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act into the budget implementation bill, it really gives us cause for concern.

These changes would give the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration unilateral authority to determine priorities for the processing of immigration application requests. These measures could potentially reduce the number of new immigration applications that the federal government accepts each year, particularly in the number of family class applications.

All of us need to be concerned about family reunification, as well as the whole issue of filling the needs through our skilled trades and economic requirements.

We have never seen any compassion from the government and I am certainly not expecting it to start now by exercising humanitarian and compassionate grounds on any application, but I am also appalled at the Conservative approach of shutting the door on immigrants by simply reducing the number of applications the federal government accepts.

Does it really think this is an appropriate way to address the immigration inventory? This bill puts far too much discretionary power into the hands of the minister to cherry-pick the type immigrants that the Conservative Party would like to enter Canada.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada's mission is to build a stronger Canada. Let me read the mission statement for Citizenship and Immigration Canada. It states:

Developing and implementing policies, programs and services that:

Facilitate the arrival of persons and their integration to Canada in a way that maximizes their contribution to the country while protecting the health, safety and security of Canadians;

Maintain Canada’s humanitarian tradition by protecting refugees and persons in need of protection; and

Enhance the values and promote the rights and responsibilities of Canadian citizenship.

That is a very important mission statement and I am not sure the minister has had time to read that herself. Perhaps the immigration minister should take a few minutes to try to familiarize herself with that because the mission statement very much clarifies and illustrates exactly what Canada is all about.

Possibly she is too busy selecting what immigrant she is going to fast track as she moves forward or perhaps she shares the view of the Prime Minister when he wrote in the 1988 Reform Party platform that immigration should not “radically or suddenly alter the ethnic makeup of Canada”.

Using the budget implementation bill is an outrageous way to deliver promises made by the Reform Party 20 years ago. Immigration reforms should simply not be buried in a budget implementation bill.

If the government wants to table these changes, it should put them forward as a separate piece of legislation that can be studied by the appropriate House of Commons standing committee, as any other critical piece of legislation would be.

If Parliament is to work effectively for all Canadians, regardless of the fact that we are in a minority situation, we must have a full and honest debate on all critical issues, certainly including immigration reform.

I consider immigration to be critically important. It is a part of moving Canada forward. It is very important that we have an immigration system in Canada that will help to build our country in a positive way. I believe that requires all of us, not in a partisan approach, to sit down in a committee, maybe a special legislative committee if the government does not want to send it to the current citizenship and immigration committee. We need to have an opportunity to fully debate the reforms that the minister is talking about.

There are areas that I am sure we would all agree on to move forward and there are other areas that possibly we would not but on something as important as immigration in Canada, I do not believe we should be doing it while it is buried in a budget bill.

It has been suggested that we are having a debate today but it is not. We are dealing with a budget implementation bill. We need to spend many hours going over exactly what it is the minister wants to achieve. It should be done in a non-partisan manner at either a special legislative committee or in some other manner, where people with experience in dealing with immigration files could come forward. We could work together to bring forward some reforms to the immigration bill that would benefit all Canadians and not simply be done in a partisan manner in a budget implementation bill.

That is not the way we do things in Canada. I do not believe it is the way that we can build a country any more than I believe we should be pitting one province against another. I continue to see the politics of division happening across the way by the government. It is pitting communities against each other and provinces against each other. That is not the way to build a nation.

While the government is so busy throwing the “nation” word around, clearly that is not how to build a country. I call on the government to work much more cooperatively with us as we try to move our great country forward.

Many other issues were mentioned earlier, things that Liberals are concerned about. Picking and choosing who comes to Canada is not the Canadian way, nor is it the way that we should be moving things forward.

I want to thank the House for allowing me the opportunity to comment on Bill C-50. There are many issues in the legislation, but the immigration one concerns us on this side of the House a lot as we move forward to build a strong country together.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member for her comments with respect to some of the statements that were made by the deputy leader of the Liberal Party, the member for Etobicoke—Lakeshore. He said that when it comes to immigration, his party did not get it done. The Liberals had 13 years in government with six immigration ministers. The member herself was a minister.

The member for Etobicoke Centre said on September 14, 2004, during a CBC interview:

I'm almost reaching the point where I believe that our whole immigration system has become dysfunctional. That in fact it's at the point of being broken.

The member herself indicated that it does not make sense for us to be continually taking names when the reality is that we need to change the system, make it more flexible, more responsible.

Does she not agree that change is necessary because the system was not working the way it had been structured under the previous 13 years? Does she not agree that it requires a legislative change? This bill will go to committee and she can add her thoughts to it then. The total portion of the amendment is about two pages and is not difficult to understand.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, let me begin my response by saying how important immigration is to Canada. To continually find ways to improve our legislation should be on the top of the list for all of us in the House.

The reason 800,000 people are on lists is because many of those people are no longer alive, or many of them no longer want to come to Canada for different reasons, or many of them were fleeing countries because of economic issues but some of those countries are now in a much better state.

It is not a question of our immigration system not working. Many people want to come to Canada. We need to look at how we are handling application forms. Our current system does not allow us to say no. We have to take all applications as they come in. There are a variety of things that could be done by regulation.

All of us have an interest in seeing our immigration system to be the best that it can be. That is a natural interest for all of us. If that is the case, then why are we trying to sneak reforms into our immigration system through a budget implementation bill? Why is the issue not going to a special legislative committee?

If we do not want Bill C-50 to go to the current citizenship and immigration committee, then we all have to agree to is to send it to a special committee where we could spend a month or six or seven weeks going over it to make sure that it is the best that it can be. Why would we be afraid to debate it?

We have lots of opportunity to work together on this bill, but we cannot do that by sending it as part of a budget bill to the finance committee. It is irresponsible to send it there and expect finance committee members to suddenly become experts on immigration issues. We all know the complexity of the issues in and around immigration. I remind the House how important it is for us to do this right.

If there are going to be reforms, then let us do the reforms. The bill should be sent to committee so we can all work on it together.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, does that mean you are going to vote against the bill because all these issues are that important? We are proposing an amendment that would take all of that out, so are you going to vote with us and against the government's bill? Is that what the Liberals are going to do?

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

The hon. member for Outremont knows that the Speaker cannot vote. I cannot imagine that he was addressing his comment to me. I think he meant to address the hon. member for York West. The next time, of course, he will direct his remarks through the chair. I cannot vote.

The hon. member for York West.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this is an extremely important issue and it is not one that we should be pushing politics and trying to play games with.

If the NDP members really cared about the country they would be working with everyone to try to make things change and make some improvements. All they are interested in is trying to do showcasing and trying to shame and push people around.

We on this side of the House will do what we need to do when the time is right and when it is in the best interest of Canada.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for York West for her extremely important and enlightening comments in her capacity as former minister of immigration and a very diligent member of Parliament on this file. She continues to remind us that it is extremely important for us to declare to Canadians why these changes are being made on the fly through a legislative piece that was brought back as a ways and means motion, a motion that I would suggest really is about covering the Conservative agenda with respect to important legislation.

Mr. Speaker, it is critical that you be in the chair today because I am on my feet not only because of this bill but because of what the bill is attempting to do.

The will of the House of Commons was expressed very clearly on March 5 of this year. This was after a ruling that you, Mr. Speaker, made some two years ago, but which was obviously lost on Conservative members, including the Minister of Finance. He assumed that once a bill was votable that it might have an impact with respect to lessening of tax that he should not consider this, not just once but in two separate budgets. He completely and utterly ignored and threw away prudent fiscal understanding of the implications of various bills which should have been routine and instead worked with several other people to try to suggest that my bill, Bill C-253, which would give a chance for families to save in a very real way, to save for post-secondary education, by making RESPs income tax deductible and completely forgot the principle of the importance of a decision made by the House.

The bill is nowhere near dead. As we know, the bill is before the other House and is now at second reading there. I hope it is given the equal consideration and time it takes to have an important piece of legislation passed.

It seems to me that when we are talking about the future of this country we may have differences of opinions as to how this country ought to be led and how it ought to be managed but the one thing we cannot disagree with are some of the imperatives.

Students face an incredible amount of debt. Over 50% of students right now face incredible crippling debts as they leave post-secondary education, long before they are able to pay any type of debt down. It is difficult enough for them to try to find a job.

In 10 years from now we know that the average cost of education, with four years in residence, will be $100,000. Given the average income of families, I do not see how it will be possible under the current regime to have a situation where so many people will not have access to the skills that come with higher education and the training that the global economy demands in order for Canada to remain competitive. It is a reality that we all as members of Parliament agree with.

I have spoken to several members of the Conservative Party who over the years supported this bill. Dare I say that they probably voted against the bill at the final reading, although the will of the House was expressed in much greater numbers, because they were jealous? They knew this was a policy that was good for the future of this country.

I have letter after letter and members of the House on all sides received letters from their constituents asking them time and time again to not kill the bill.

I am pleased to report that those rumours of the death of my bill, which were pronounced in some of the media and greatly exaggerated in some editorials, were only rumours. The same editorials also suggested, and I am hoping some of those editorialists are listening to this, that the bill was passed by stealth, that it required a royal recommendation. I will not benefit the author of several stories in one particular paper, but it was someone who actually thought that what had been done here by parliamentarians was tantamount to what happened in 1840, which is why Lord Durham had to be brought in.

There was no revolution here. There was instead a recognition and understanding that in a minority Parliament, in a setting where Canadians expect more from their parliamentarians, members of Parliament, backbench members of Parliament of all parties worked deliberatively, not for a day, not for a week, not for a month and not through gamesmanship, but over two years to ensure that a piece of legislation on RESP deductibility would in fact be put forward.

I am speaking today to the fact that the bill, far from being killed, is the subject of Bill C-50, which I will refer to as the killer-hunter bill proposed by the Minister of Finance.

The Minister of Finance's own riding of Whitby—Oshawa is one that I represented and I know that the Minister of Finance will know that this is so popular an issue if this is in fact going to be an election issue, which it could very well be. I know full well that it is something that I am prepared to take to the door of his riding, a riding I once represented. I can tell the House that anyone who has families, anyone who has children, anyone who wants to live the dream of this country will know that this legislation is not only timely it is supportable.

A decision made by this House of Commons, by these members of Parliament in the majority, is simply thrown away because someone has suggested that somehow it will put the country into fiscal danger.

Who put us there?

The Minister of Finance has an obligation, quite apart from his pathetic critique of the bill on RESP deductibility, which many of his members support, to explain to Canadians how it is that he took a $13.2 billion surplus and blew it away overnight.

The member from British Columbia is looking this way.

What happens if we have another forest fire in that region of the country or floods in Quebec? What if we have a national disaster of some proportion that will cost us several hundred million dollars?

When we see that amount of money that could potentially put the country at risk, we have put ourselves in a very precarious financial situation and we have not planned for the future.

We know that south of the border the federal reserve chair, Mr. Bernanke, is suggesting that we are teetering on a recession. There is no doubt that there are implications for my province and for provinces across the country. This government did not plan. It had no plan. It is extinguishing the hopes and aspirations of young people to get access to a better job, to pay the kind of taxes, to grow the kind of country and to recognize that with an aging population we need to get this right and we need to get it right now.

This bill is not the be all end all. The bill that I proposed on the RESP, which this bill, Bill C-50, proposes to kill at some point down the road, is in fact decidedly a bill that is designed to use the issue of confidence before anything that the government disagrees with.

Yes, the hon. members will probably ask us whether we will be supporting this or not. That is still a few months off, perhaps even a few weeks off, but the one thing that is clear is the idea with respect to the RESP bill is something that we cannot ignore.

I am glad to hear the NDP members cat howling in the corner but they supported this bill. They have stood, and I applaud them for doing that, to support this bill because of its importance. The Bloc also supported this bill.

They know full well that it is very important for the future of our country that students have the opportunity to get an education regardless of cost. We also have an opportunity to help the provinces, which will give students more money to invest in their futures and to go on to universities, colleges or apprenticeships.

We must not fail the next generation. Universities that want to increase their capacity for investing in infrastructure, human and physical, will not need to go cap in hand to the provinces and say that they want to raise tuition fees. There is a greater certainty now that this vehicle addresses what ordinary average families have been looking for.

In one fell swoop, with this particular legislation, the Minister of Finance and the House leader crafted a bill to try to kill this. We can talk about the gamesmanship today, but what we have is an attempt at vandalizing and compromising the future of this nation.

We have a higher obligation to serve the interests of our constituents and to help somehow, in some way, to build a stronger nation, a stronger nation where people can get access to the kind of opportunities that this generation, many of us, have been blessed with.

Previous members who have come here have always tried to build a better House and to find ways in which we can come together to find more creative means to ensuring Canada can meet the challenges of tomorrow.

I am saying this because if we were to sit down and talk to grandparents, parents and people in our communities who are struggling day in and day out to make ends meet, we would hear that there is a real and effective understanding of what they are trying to do, which is to achieve a better future for their children.

I would implore the Conservative Party, which has quietly said that it loves this bill, to actually take the time to consider what it has done. It has actually tried to reverse a position taken only a month ago by this Parliament which is widely popular with Canadians.

There will be critics either way but I would ask the Conservative Party to reconsider what it has done because I think it is in everyone's interest, partisanship aside, to ensure that good legislation, whether it is passed by backbenchers or passed by the government, does in fact have the ability to proceed.

I call on all members to work together cooperatively. This is for our future, for our children and for our Canada.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I think that some of the people who have been listening to this debate might have a little bit of trouble following so I will try to put things in perspective.

The member who just spoke did back a bill on registered education savings plans. We in the NDP did indeed vote for it but it would not have been our first choice of a way of proceeding because we think it is important to help all families. I come from a family of 10 children. An education savings plan would not have helped a lot because there was nothing to put aside. There was no tax deduction to be had. Thanks to Quebec's excellent loans and bursaries program, I and almost all my brothers and sisters went through university.

However, the member is right. The Conservatives are undoing a bill adopted in the House. However, if the member really wants this bill to go through, he must vote with us against the Conservatives. The Liberals are the official opposition. It is very simple.

He said before that he was imploring the government. I would just say to my good friends in the Liberal Party that for the sake of their role as the official opposition, they must get off their knees. They do not need to implore anybody. They are here to vote and represent the people in their riding. They should have the guts to do it.

Your colleague just spoke before about--

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

Order, please. I would remind hon. members not to lapse into the second person.

The hon. member for Pickering—Scarborough East.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I did not hear a question but I do understand the member's passion. However, I want the member's passion to be focused in a way that is the best way to achieve a very good piece of legislation. I can appreciate the fact that he is trying to make a political point but I also understand the same member supported this bill. I agree with him. We do need to find a way to get this bill through. The tactics of today will not diminish the importance of this legislation.

I can tell the hon. member, having grown up in a family of 10 and having 5 children of my own, I know how difficult it is, having struggled to put myself through university when my parents were not capable of looking after my interests.

What is important is for all us as members of Parliament to recognize very clearly that in this legislation we can use some of the savings that is there to ensure that students whose parents do pay taxes or cannot pay taxes, that we improve the child learning account from the savings that would otherwise accrue from the existing system which no longer works.

The hon. member asked how I will vote and I think he knows how I will vote on this.

I am saying this because, beyond the cut and thrust of politics and beyond the cut and thrust of question period, Canadians will judge all of us as to how we were able to appropriate this bill, how we stood for what we believed in and, most important, I will have no difficulty, if the hon. member heard my speech, taking this battle to the Minister of Finance and to his colleagues. I need the hon. member's help to do that.

Appreciating that the member was not here in the last Parliament, but if he is concerned about how the Conservatives got elected, his party may want to ask why it ruined the Liberal Party in terms of its own background and in terms of the things that we put forward for Canadians.

I would ask the hon. member, in the spirit of goodwill and in the spirit of the future of this country, to stand up for his constituents.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we have just seen a political pretzel act unparalleled in this House. We have a member standing and actually working with his Liberal caucus to kill a bill that he was promoting a few weeks before and trying to explain that all on CPAC as people watch the deliberations in this House this afternoon. It is absolutely absurd what the Liberals are trying to do in the House. They are voting for the bill that kills what the member was promoting a few weeks ago.

Unabashedly, the Liberals are now standing, wrapped up like pretzels, trying to explain why they are killing a bill that a few weeks ago they supported and why they are supporting the government that is killing that bill. It is absolutely absurd.

I can only ask one question. When will the Liberals actually show some backbone and vote against the government on something?

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, what is good about being a member of the New Democratic Party with 29 members is that they never need to worry about being responsible. They never need to worry about being government because we saw what happened in the province of Ontario when that did happen.

The member said that he was prepared to throw away everything about his vote, which was on CPAC, supporting this bill in favour of making a political statement. I think that is regrettable. However, if that is what the New Democrat member believes, that is fine.

However, despite the catcalls and the heckling, it is their responsibility to ensure in the first instance that this legislation continues. Unless he has a crystal ball, he cannot predict the future.