Bill C-10 (Historical)

Budget Implementation Act, 2009

An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on January 27, 2009 and related fiscal measures

Part 1 implements income tax measures proposed in the January 27, 2009 Budget. In particular, it
(a) increases by 7.5% above their 2008 levels the basic personal amount and the upper limits for the two lowest personal income tax brackets, thereby also increasing the income levels at which income testing begins for the base benefit under the Canada Child Tax Credit and the National Child Benefit supplement;
(b) increases by $1,000 the amount on which the Age Credit is calculated;
(c) increases to $25,000 the maximum amount eligible for withdrawal under the Home Buyers’ Plan;
(d) introduces amendments to the rules related to Registered Retirement Savings Plans and Registered Retirement Income Funds to allow for recognition of losses in accounts between the time of the annuitant’s death and final distribution of property from the account;
(e) repeals the interest deductibility constraints in section 18.2 of the Income Tax Act;
(f) extends the mineral exploration tax credit for one year;
(g) increases to $500,000 the annual amount of active business income eligible for the 11% small business income tax rate and makes related amendments;
(h) clarifies rules relating to timing of acquisition of control of a corporation; and
(i) creates cost savings through electronic filing of tax information.
In addition, Part 1 implements income tax measures that were referenced in the January 27, 2009 Budget and that were originally proposed in the February 26, 2008 Budget but not included in the Budget Implementation Act, 2008. In particular, it
(a) clarifies the application of the excess corporate holdings rules for private foundations;
(b) increases the amount that corporations will be able to pay as “eligible dividends”;
(c) enacts several regulatory amendments that complement and complete measures enacted in the Budget Implementation Act, 2008;
(d) introduces minor adjustments to the Tax-Free Savings Account rules and the scientific research and experimental development investment tax credit rules included in the Budget Implementation Act, 2008;
(e) implements rules in respect of donations of medicines; and
(f) reduces the paper burden on businesses by allowing a larger number of government entities to share Business Number-related information in connection with government programs and services.
Part 1 also implements other income tax measures referred to in the January 27, 2009 Budget that either were themselves previously announced or flow directly from previously announced measures. In particular, it
(a) implements technical changes relating to specified investment flow-through trusts and partnerships and new tax rules to facilitate the conversion of these entities into corporations;
(b) contains amendments to take into account financial institution accounting changes;
(c) extends the general treatment of capital gains and losses on an acquisition of control of a corporation to gains and losses that result from fluctuations in foreign exchange rates in respect of debt denominated in foreign currency;
(d) enhances the carry-forward for investment tax credits;
(e) implements amendments relating to the computation of income, gains and losses of a foreign affiliate;
(f) implements amendments to the functional currency tax reporting rules;
(g) implements minor tax amendments relating to interprovincial allocation of corporate taxable income, the Wage Earner Protection Program and the Canada-United States tax treaty’s rules for cross-border pensions;
(h) provides for an extension of time for income tax assessments that are consequential to provincial reassessments;
(i) ensures the appropriate application of the Income Tax Act’s trust rules to certain arrangements and institutions under Quebec civil law;
(j) enacts regulatory amendments relating to prescribed amounts for automobile expenses and benefits, eligible medical expenses, and the tax treatment of foreign affiliate active business income earned in a jurisdiction with which Canada has concluded a tax information exchange agreement;
(k) introduces rules to reduce the required minimum amount that must be withdrawn from a Registered Retirement Income Fund or from a variable benefit money purchase pension plan by 25% for 2008, and allows related re-contributions;
(l) extends the deadline for Registered Disability Savings Plan contributions; and
(m) modifies the provisions relating to amateur athletic trusts.
Part 2 amends the Excise Act, 2001 and the Excise Tax Act to implement measures to reduce the paper burden on businesses by allowing a larger number of government entities to share Business Number-related information in connection with government programs and services.
Part 3 amends the Customs Tariff to implement measures announced in the January 27, 2009 Budget to
(a) reduce Most-Favoured-Nation rates of duty and, if applicable, rates of duty under other tariff treatments on a number of tariff items relating to machinery and equipment imported on or after January 28, 2009;
(b) divide tariff item 9801.10.00 into two separate tariff items pertaining to conveyances and containers, respectively, and make two technical corrections, effective January 28, 2009; and
(c) modify the tariff treatment of milk protein substances, effective September 8, 2008.
Part 4 amends the Employment Insurance Act until September 11, 2010 to extend regular benefit entitlements by five weeks. It also provides that a pilot project ceases to have effect. In addition, it amends that Act to provide that the cost of benefit enhancement measures under that Act, provided for in the budget tabled in Parliament on January 27, 2009, are not to be charged to the Employment Insurance Account. Finally, it sets the premium rate provided for under that Act for the years 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2010.
Division 1 of Part 5 amends the Financial Administration Act to authorize the Minister of Finance to take, subject to certain conditions, a number of measures intended to promote the stability or maintain the efficiency of the financial system, including financial markets, in Canada.
Division 2 of Part 5 amends the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation Act to provide the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation with greater flexibility to enhance its ability to safeguard financial stability in Canada. The Division also adds Tax-Free Saving Accounts as a distinct category for the purposes of deposit insurance. It also makes consequential amendments to other acts.
Division 3 of Part 5 amends the Export Development Act to, among other things, expand the Export Development Corporation’s mandate to include the support and development of domestic trade and business opportunities for a period of two years. The period may be extended by the Governor in Council. Division 3 also increases the Corporation’s authorized capital.
Division 4 of Part 5 amends the Business Development Bank of Canada Act to increase the maximum amount of the paid-in capital of the Business Development Bank of Canada.
Division 5 of Part 5 amends the Canada Small Business Financing Act to increase the maximum outstanding loan amount in relation to a borrower. It also increases individual lenders’ cap on claims. These amendments will apply to new loans made after March 31, 2009.
Division 6 of Part 5 amends a number of Acts governing federal financial institutions to improve access to credit and strengthen the financial system in Canada, including amendments that will
(a) provide new authority for further safeguards to promote the stability of the financial system;
(b) enhance consumer protection by establishing new measures to help consumers of financial products; and
(c) implement other technical measures to strengthen the financial sector framework in Canada.
Division 7 of Part 5 provides for payments to be made to provinces and territories, provides authority to the Minister of Finance to enter into agreements respecting securities regulation with provinces and territories and enacts the Canadian Securities Regulation Regime Transition Office Act.
Part 6 authorizes payments to be made out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund for various purposes, including infrastructure and housing.
Part 7 amends Part I of the Navigable Waters Protection Act to create a tiered approval process for works in order to streamline the approval process and to exclude certain classes of works and works on certain classes of navigable waters from the approval process. This Part further amends Part I of the Act to clarify the scope of the application of that Part to works owned or previously owned by the Crown, to provide for the application of the Act to bridges over the St. Lawrence River and to add certain regulation-making powers.
Part 7 also amends the Act to clarify the provisions related to obstacles and obstructions to navigation. The Act is also amended by adding administration and enforcement powers, consolidating all offence provisions, increasing fines and requiring a review of the Act within five years of the amendments coming into force.
Division 1 of Part 8 amends the Wage Earner Protection Program Act and the Wage Earner Protection Program Regulations to provide that unpaid wages for which an individual may receive payment under the Wage Earner Protection Program include unpaid severance pay and termination pay.
Division 2 of Part 8 amends the Canada Student Financial Assistance Act to, among other things,
(a) require the Chief Actuary of the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions to report on financial assistance provided under that Act; and
(b) authorize the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development to suspend or deny financial assistance to all those who are qualifying students in respect of a designated educational institution.
Division 2 of Part 8 also amends both the Canada Student Financial Assistance Act and the Canada Student Loans Act to, among other things,
(a) terminate all obligations of a borrower with respect to risk-shared loans and guaranteed loans if the borrower dies;
(b) authorize the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development to require any person who has received financial assistance or a guaranteed student loan to provide that Minister with documents or information for the purpose of verifying compliance with those Acts; and
(c) authorize that Minister to terminate or deny financial assistance in certain circumstances.
Division 3 of Part 8 amends the Financial Administration Act to provide express authority for agent Crown corporations to lease their property, restrict the appointment of employees of a Crown corporation to its board of directors, require Crown corporations to hold annual public meetings, clarify Treasury Board’s duties to indemnify Crown corporation directors and officers, permit more flexibility in the frequency of special examinations of Crown corporations, and require the reports of special examinations to be submitted to the appropriate Minister and Treasury Board and made public. This Division also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Part 9 amends the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act to set out the amount of the fiscal equalization payments to the provinces for the fiscal year beginning on April 1, 2009 and amends the method by which fiscal equalization payments will be calculated for subsequent fiscal years. It also amends the method by which the Canada Health Transfer is calculated for each fiscal year in the period beginning on April 1, 2009 and ending on March 31, 2014.
Part 10 enacts the Expenditure Restraint Act. The purpose of that Act is to put in place a reasonable and an affordable approach to compensation across the federal public sector in support of responsible fiscal management in a difficult economic environment.
It sets out rules governing economic increases to the rates of pay of unionized and non-unionized employees for periods that begin during the period that begins on April 1, 2006 and ends on March 31, 2011. It also continues certain other terms and conditions at their current levels. It preserves the right of collective bargaining with regard to other matters and it does not affect the right to strike.
The Act does not preclude the continued development of workplace improvements by employers and employees’ bargaining agents through the National Joint Council or other bodies that they may agree on. It also permits bargaining agents and employers to agree to the amendment of certain terms and conditions of collective agreements or arbitral awards.
Part 11 enacts the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act and makes consequential amendments to other Acts. The purpose of the Act is to ensure that proactive measures are taken to provide employees in female predominant job groups with equitable compensation.
It requires public sector employers that have non-unionized employees to determine periodically whether any equitable compensation matters exist in the workplace and, if so, to prepare a plan to resolve them. With respect to public sector employers that have unionized employees, the employers and the bargaining agents are to resolve those matters through the collective bargaining process.
It sets out the procedure for informing employees as to whether an equitable compensation assessment was required to be conducted and, if so, how it was conducted, and how any equitable compensation matters were resolved. It also establishes a recourse process for employees if the Act is not complied with.
Finally, since the Act puts in place a comprehensive equitable compensation scheme for public sector employees, this Part amends the Canadian Human Rights Act so that the provisions of that Act dealing with gender-based wage discrimination no longer apply to public sector employers. It extends the mandate of the Public Service Labour Relations Board to allow it to hear equitable compensation complaints and to provide other services related to equitable compensation in the public sector.
Part 12 amends the Competition Act. The amendments include
(a) introducing a dual-track approach to agreements between competitors, with a limited criminal anti-cartel provision and a civil provision to address other agreements that substantially lessen or prevent competition;
(b) providing that bid-rigging includes agreements or arrangements to withdraw bids or tenders;
(c) repealing the provisions dealing with price discrimination and predatory pricing, replacing the criminal resale price maintenance provision with a new civil provision to address price maintenance practices that have an adverse effect on competition, and repealing all provisions dealing specifically with the airline industry;
(d) introducing an administrative monetary penalty for cases of abuse of dominant position, increasing the maximum amount of administrative monetary penalties for deceptive marketing cases, and increasing the maximum fines or terms of imprisonment, or both, for agreements or arrangements between competitors, bid-rigging, criminal false or misleading representations, deceptive telemarketing, deceptive notice of winning a prize, obstruction of Competition Bureau investigations and failure to comply with prohibition orders or production orders;
(e) clarifying that, in proceedings under section 52, 74.01 or 74.02, it is not necessary to establish that false or misleading representations are made to the public in Canada or are made in a place to which the public has access, and clarifying that the “general impression test” applies to all deceptive marketing practices in sections 74.01 and 74.02;
(f) providing that the court may make an order in respect of cases of false or misleading representations to require the person who engaged in the conduct to compensate persons affected by the conduct, and may issue an interim injunction to freeze assets if the Commissioner of Competition intends to ask for such a compensation order; and
(g) introducing a two-stage merger review process for notifiable transactions, increased merger pre-notification thresholds and a reduced merger review limitation period.
Part 13 amends the Investment Canada Act so that the review of an investment will be applied only to the more significant investments. It also amends the Act to allow more information to be made public. This Part also provides for the review of foreign investments in Canada that could threaten national security and allows the Governor in Council to take any measures that the Governor in Council considers advisable to protect national security, such as prohibiting a non-Canadian from implementing an investment.
Part 14 amends the Canada Transportation Act to provide the Governor in Council with flexibility to increase the foreign ownership limit from the existing levels to a maximum of 49%.
Part 15 amends the Air Canada Public Participation Act in relation to the mandatory provisions in the articles of Air Canada regarding constraints imposed on the issue, transfer and ownership of shares. It provides for the repeal of the provisions requiring that the articles of Air Canada contain provisions imposing limits on non-resident share ownership and the repeal of the provisions requiring that the articles of Air Canada contain provisions respecting the enforcement of these constraints.

The House resumed from February 27 consideration of Bill C-10, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on January 27, 2009 and related fiscal measures, as reported (without amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

Budget Implementation Act, 2009

[Luc Desnoyers, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to Bill C-10 on the Bloc Québécois' behalf.

I feel that I have to briefly review the situation. Last fall, we were given a throne speech and economic statement that were ideological, empty, antisocial, anti-union, anti-women and anti-youth. The Conservatives often question the opposition's usefulness. At the time, had we not created a coalition, we would not have had a budget, and the Prime Minister would be doing whatever he pleased today and would have used the money however he liked.

So we formed a coalition. The Bloc Québécois was one of the only ones to recommend a stimulus package addressing several demands from Quebec to the government. I have to emphasize that because Quebec is important to the Bloc Québécois. There was a lot of pressure. The Conservatives were afraid of losing their limousines and their privileges, so the Prime Minister rushed over to Michaëlle Jean's place to ask for prorogation. That slowed things down considerably, and now they are trying to say that the NDP and the Bloc Québécois are preventing this budget from passing, even though the Conservatives themselves are the ones who engineered this situation in the first place.

I want to emphasize, once again, that Quebeckers gave all of the Bloc Québécois members sizeable majorities in their ridings so that we could work for Quebec.

From Quebec's perspective, this budget will take away a billion dollars this year, and a billion dollars next year because of equalization. That is $2 billion. That is a lot of money to Quebec. That money would have been spent on health and education, and we all know how important having an educated and healthy population is to a province, to a nation. A healthy, educated population is an important factor in economic development.

When investors are figuring out where to invest, they look for places with educated people and good health systems. To them, those are indicators that they should invest in Quebec. The Canadian divisions of GM, Ford and Chrysler have always said that health and education systems are among their primary criteria when investing.

I have no doubt that the Bloc will continue to fight hard for justice in terms of the fiscal imbalance. For years, we have been asking for the money Quebec is entitled to, and we will continue to do so. Unfortunately, this year's budget includes some serious cuts.

Giving $170 million to Canada's manufacturing and forestry industries is a joke. That barely represents 22% for Quebec. It is nothing in terms of a major economic investment. These industries are in crisis and need financial assistance more than ever. Unfortunately, the Conservative government is refusing to give them the help they need in order to develop.

We are seeing layoffs in Quebec at Pratt & Whitney, Bombardier, Kenworth and Prévost Car. We are also seeing the attitude of this Conservative government and the Liberals who are supporting this budget. Who got the contracts for the latest military trucks? An American company. Six to eight hundred jobs could have been saved in Quebec and Canada at other truck manufacturing plants, yet they refused to award the contracts to Canadian workers. Military buses could have been built by Prévost Car, Nova Bus or New Flyer, in Winnipeg. These companies could have made the buses, but the contract was awarded to a German company. The contracts for new rescue planes will be awarded to American companies, but that significant economic boost should have been given to Quebec. As usual, we got nothing but crumbs.

The Bloc is always accused of asking questions. They are good questions. It is an intelligent way of demanding things for Quebec instead of being content to blather on about newspapers or laughing from the other side of the House about the work the Bloc has been doing for many years. That is why we are re-elected in election after election.

The same is true in the parts sector. Every riding in Quebec has seen major layoffs, including the ridings in which Conservative members were elected. They are not concerned about it, though, because they only care about their own interests. But there have been major layoffs in that sector. The Bloc Québécois has been making serious demands from this side of the House, and clearly, we will continue to do so.

The aerospace industry is one of the motors of Quebec's industrial sector in terms of economic development. It is being gradually shut down by the lack of proper support. Immediate investments must be made in this sector in order to ensure the industry's future in Quebec over the next 15 years. The current government is doing nothing to help it.

As for employment insurance, tens of thousands of workers have been laid off and they need to receive money right away, without the two week waiting period. Over 40% of these workers have access to employment insurance. The Conservative government and the Liberals prefer to add five weeks to the end of the benefits period, although we know that this will affect very few people.

The Bloc Québécois introduced a bill recently, Bill C-308, to improve the employment insurance system. In a crisis situation, the employment insurance fund becomes an important economic tool. We must allow workers to benefit from it, whether through an assistance program for older workers or through work sharing. We would like to extend the latter by more than a year, in order to keep the expertise in the factories and allow employers to have it when work resumes. Unfortunately, it was decided to extend it for only a short time.

A number of factories in Quebec and the Quebec City region have major problems, and they do not have access to work sharing. In the short term, the most recent improvement does nothing to help the workers in that sector.

The new coalition of the Liberals and the Conservatives continues to make its mark by attacking workers. Consider the federal government's position with regard to its own employees. The Conservatives and the Liberals decided to legislate to take away their right to strike and to bargain. More than 100,000 public service workers have already approved a collective agreement in good faith. Others had negotiated a collective agreement with a 2.5% salary increase. The government decided to take money out of their pockets retroactively to stimulate the economy. This government is creating a climate of insecurity in the federal bureaucracy, and workers are neither happy nor satisfied. A private sector employer or multinational would never dare do such a thing, because it would lose important expertise.

I could talk about pay equity, but my colleague spoke at length about it. It is completely unacceptable to attack women in this way. This is being felt in Quebec and all across Canada.

Having made cuts in this area, the government is handing out tax breaks. Many economists are saying that it is a huge mistake to make tax reductions that will do nothing. People are saving much more than they are spending at present. Workers who have lost their jobs need money. The billions of dollars in tax reductions should be invested to save jobs and build an economy.

In conclusion, the Bloc Québécois will keep on fighting for Quebec as it has always done. It is the only party that fights for Quebec in this House. The other members from Quebec, who sit opposite, do not do anything. They support a budget like this one, which hurts Quebec. We will keep on building Quebec.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Madam Speaker, unlike the Bloc and the NDP, the Liberal Party, the official opposition, actually has to exercise judgment. In our judgment, the obnoxious elements of Bill C-10, of which there are many, and the provocations that are actually built into Bill C-10, were not of such sufficient magnitude that we would defeat the government at this time.

We have, to speak to the hon. gentleman's specific question, built in three review elements, March, June and December, on the stimulus package itself to see that in fact it is impacting on the economy. I respectfully submit that is a responsible official opposition holding a government to account in very difficult circumstances.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Madam Speaker, I congratulate my hon. friend on his speech. Who knew that people could learn oratory skills in the airline industry. When someone loses baggage somewhere, someone else probably has to say something to the customer.

Here we are at the end of a budgetary process that started on January 27. By parliamentary standards, this is lightening speed to have a budgetary implementation bill implemented by the end of February.

The budget was presented much sooner than the Prime Minister wished because of a parliamentary crisis entirely initiated by the Prime Minister. His economic statement was so inflammatory that the three opposition parties gave serious consideration to a coalition. Panicked, the Prime Minister decided to prorogue Parliament. It was an extraordinary spectacle by anyone's standards. After the two month cool down period, he hastily introduced the budget with the undertaking of the official opposition to not defeat him for now.

The budget was allowed to pass on the condition that the implementation of the stimulus package would be reviewed on fixed supply dates, and that is where we stand now.

The Bloc has been largely responsible, recognizing the overall wisdom of the official opposition that what Canada needs now is economic stimulus, not an election. The NDP members have been doing their usual pro forma, “We're against everything even before we've read it”. They are so irritated by the withdrawal of the official opposition from the coalition that they have decided to attack the official opposition rather than the government.

All the while the Prime Minister has been playing nice with the official opposition because he has to have Bill C-10 if he has any credibility as a prime minister.

What do we make of the Prime Minister's outburst yesterday when he said, “Give me $3 billion of play money, free from parliamentary scrutiny, or we're off to another election”. He just cannot help himself.

Even the mildest forms of opposition send him into paroxysms of towering rage, metaphorically kicking the furniture around the room and hurling curses upon those who oppose him and upon their children and their children's children. It is quite a spectacle really.

The NDP does its pro forma, “This is an abuse of Parliament” rant and the Prime Minister just loses it. Meanwhile the Leader of the Opposition serenely watches this spectacle of adults acting as children.

He has said in the past that Canadians need another election like they need a hole in the head. That was last month. What has changed? Due to the level-headedness of the Leader of the Opposition, we are on the cusp of having a budget far earlier than the government wanted, with the opportunity to inject fiscal stimulus into the economy much earlier in the economic cycle. That was not the government's plan.

The government wanted to wait for the economic crisis to deepen before being in a position to do something. In retrospect, that was not very wise. One only has to look at today's newspapers. Even Wal-Mart is closing stores and GM has lost something in the order of $9.6 billion in the last quarter and is literally on the cusp of declaring bankruptcy.

In my judgment Canadians prefer a less partisan atmosphere. In fact, last night's CBC political panel talked about a post-partisan Parliament. In my view the panel members are being overly optimistic. One can see from the atmosphere here today that possibly the idea of a post-partisan Parliament is just wishful thinking, especially in light of the fact that, in the mildest circumstances, the Prime Minister seems so easily provoked and he loses it in front of reporters.

The day before the Prime Minister's little rant, the Minister of Finance said that mistakes would be made in the allocation and delivery of infrastructure funding, that the government was rushing the bureaucrats through the normal checks and balances process, so we could expect some problems, possibly even some boondoggles.

What a curious juxtaposition. On the one hand, the Minister of Finance is saying that the government is going to make some mistakes with the money it has, that it has just gone through several layers of parliamentary scrutiny and that, with the amendment of the official opposition, it will have more layers of official opposition scrutiny. Simultaneously, the Prime Minister is asking for $3 billion of play money to do with as he sees fit with no scrutiny whatsoever.

This is from the same Prime Minister who saw no need for an early budgetary process, did not anticipate the drastic effect of the economic crisis and precipitated a political crisis that almost cost him his government.

The contrast between the Prime Minister and President Obama could not be more obvious. President Obama has repeatedly reached out to the opposition so he can make his response to the economic crisis a non-partisan event. He has addressed some systemic and structural flaws in the American process that has brought this mighty American colossus to its economic knees. He is moving with assurance and confidence into very difficult areas with a boldness and verve seldom seen.

What do we have? A chirping NDP opposition that reacts to every provocation and a Prime Minister whose default position on every issue is “let's go to an election, right now”.

Canadians can thank the Liberal Party for C-10. We are very aware that it is an imperfect document. It is full of political provocations. It lacks coherence. It has within it many items of no relevance to a budgetary document such as navigable waters, pay equity and jamming certain public sector employees. It is an obnoxious document. There is no doubt about it.

Many of these items deserve far greater scrutiny than the finance committee was able to provide in the context of trying to get this budget moved along. However, it seems to be in the DNA of the Prime Minister to load up every obnoxious element he can think of in a bill and try to jam the opposition.

In an era when Canadians crave leadership, they get a partisan bully. However, in the judgment of the official opposition, the potential good of an early stimulus package, as amended with the built-in review periods, outweighs the obnoxious elements of C-10. Therefore, we will be supporting it.

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

Madam Speaker, I can confirm that most of us on this side read it. I can certainly confirm that my party knew what was in the budget before we decided to support it. The one overriding component of the budget and the budget bill that we support is the stimulus package.

Does the bill have its deficiencies? Yes,and I have already mentioned a couple of them. Are there things in the bill we might rather deal with in greater depth at a later time? Of course, but the government has chosen this route. I personally regretted the bundling of all these things in Bill C-10 but we firmly support the stimulus package. There is nothing else more important to Canadians at this time and that is why we are proceeding on this basis.

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

Madam Speaker, we are debating amendments to Bill C-10, the budget implementation bill. I want to discuss these amendments both in a general and a particular context. I will break my remarks into three parts.

First, in relation to the bill and these amendments which on the face of it attempt to make the bill better in the view of those proposing the amendments, as a matter of fact they probably would slow down the passage of the bill.

While I, too, have seen problems in the bill, the fact is the government very much wants to get the bill passed and I with the Liberal opposition very much want to get the stimulus package passed as well. When people pass legislation in haste, that sometimes gives rise to errors. We do make mistakes from time to time and in the view of many in the House, this bill has some mistakes.

If there is one single item that keeps the government alive, it is the stimulus package. Without the stimulus package, as I said before, the Conservative government would be what I referred to as a dead man walking. The government has twice in the last year come to the brink with the realization that the House is not working. The government does not have the support of the House.

We went to an election once, we came back. We had an economic statement and we were on the edge of another election. I do not see that a lot has changed except for that one thing: the stimulus package. The economy is in trouble and my party is determined to serve Canadians first and get the stimulus package passed, get the money out the door to stimulate the economy.

My party has insisted on report cards from the government on a periodic basis so that we can see what is happening, so that there will be some transparency from a parliamentary point of view and we can see some real things happening rather than just being announced into submission. The government is really good at making announcements. In my view it is less good at actually doing the deal, walking the walk. I refuse to be announced into submission.

I was surprised yesterday to see the government introduce an amendment to the Criminal Code that appeared on the face of it to provide protection to gang members that were being killed by other gang members.

The government is so desperate to be seen to be doing something, it will do anything. If the roof leaks, the government will want to pass a bill to fix the roof. The Conservatives just want to be seen to be doing things. They will announce a bill that prohibits roof leaks 100 times before they stop the roof leak.

My party and I are supporting the bill to make sure the stimulus package gets through as soon as we can get it there.

I had prepared some amendments. I drafted them, submitted them and then I withdrew the amendments. The amendments did not have to do with substantive measures from the budget point of view, but they did have to do with elements in the bill. As everyone knows, the bill, to the extent that it is an ambulance bringing economic first-aid and help to the country, it has a bit of contraband in the back of the ambulance. It has amendments to the Competition Act, the Navigable Waters Protection Act and a half dozen other statutes.

One of the things it does is the Department of Justice in drafting the bill has put in a phrase that these regulatory provisions, these regulatory empowerments in the bill, are not statutory instruments under the Statutory Instruments Act. While that does get rid of the problem of having to pre-publish and consult before the regulation and order of exemption has passed, what it does also is preclude Parliament from reviewing these things after they are put in place. That is a huge mistake and it runs contrary to everything I have seen Parliament do around here for the last 30 to 40 years.

My amendments were intended to correct that. I have discussed it with members around the House, and I think there may be an opportunity to propose amendments that will reverse the impact of these provisions in the stimulus package bill. There is a risk that if we do not do it here, the members in the other place may do it. I do not know what they will do. I hope they subscribe to the same ethic that we do and want to get this bill passed quickly.

On the issue of stimulus itself and the amendments here, I do know that in the current fiscal year, which will end on March 31, 2009, the government had 12 months to get out the infrastructure spending that was contained in last year's budget. There are hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in that budget. I have not read this with my own eyes, I have not actually followed the government accounts, but I am informed the government has only managed to get 5% or 10% of that money out the door. Even as it admits the economy needs the stimulus investment, it appears as though the government has been unable to get this money out and invested in infrastructure projects across the country. That is very strange.

Even as we look at the upcoming estimates and the stimulus package moneys referred to in Bill C-10, to be authorized by the House soon in the main estimates and supply votes I see there is a $3 billion chunk of money which has been placed at the disposal of Treasury Board. That is a departure from how the government normally spends money, because when it does it that way, we in Parliament do not actually get a chance to see it project by project in the supplementary estimates.

In this House, and I am quite sure this will happen, one or more of the committees will have to construct a protocol, a mechanism, a procedure which will meticulously review both the process and the decision making for this stimulus spending, the investment in infrastructure. That is going to happen. It may be uncomfortable for some ministers, but that is what the House is going to have to do because of the way this stimulus package money is put in the estimates and the way it has been proposed in Bill C-10.

I will close with two issues. I note that the Minister of Finance has said that in moving to get this money out quickly, there is always the possibility of a mistake. It would not be the government, but it would be governmental officials who would do the work, the calculations, check on these projects to ensure that they are good projects, and there might be a mistake. There could even be fraud. There is $3 billion sitting out there, and I am sure there is a crook out there somewhere who is going to try to get his hands on it.

I want to make sure that in the process of letting contracts, the government checks with its partners, the provincial governments and the municipal governments, for the presence of organized crime in the whole array of contractors out there. I want the government to check for crime and organized crime as this money is spent.

Last, I would only ask the question, if we are asking the auto workers to freeze their pay and benefits or take a cut, should we not be looking to organized labour in the construction industry to perhaps cap and freeze their wages and benefits during the currency of these investment projects? What is good enough for the auto workers should be good enough for the construction industry. I have asked the question, and the answers will be forthcoming in due course.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to rise in this House this afternoon to speak with my colleagues about Bill C-10 and, more specifically, the Group No. 1 amendments put forward by the Bloc Québécois. First of all, we would like to see clause 6 deleted as it permits the use of tax havens.

In a situation as critical as the one we are facing today, it is important to focus government intervention on the poorest among us, the people who truly need a helping hand in the economic sectors that are flagging and urgently in need of financial aid to make it through the current situation. Take, for instance, the forestry sector. These workers and businesses have been trying to make ends meet, trying to get on stable financial footing, for four years now.

As well, the Conservatives are not helping those who are newly unemployed. The Bloc Québécois proposed a simple measure to eliminate the two week waiting period for people who fall victim to unemployment so that they can immediately benefit from government support, a support system which they paid into when they were working.

Yesterday, here in this House, my colleague from Laval wanted to hold a debate on the status of women. In her speech, she said that eliminating the two-week waiting period could help many women. Yesterday, the new Liberal-Conservative alliance prevented that debate from taking place. I say “new alliance”, but as everyone knows and the Bloc Québécois has always said, Liberals and Conservatives are cut from the same cloth. We can really see this as we debate the budget. The Liberals decided to support the budget, without reading it, I imagine. Now, there is some criticism coming from the Liberal benches, but the damage is done. They decided to support this budget blindly.

It is clear that the Liberals and the Conservatives do not want to tackle the problems head-on and put in place all these measures to benefit unemployed workers and industries hard hit by the economic crisis. Instead, the finance minister is keeping all the systems that allow companies to use tax havens, depriving government coffers of tax money that would have come in handy at this time of crisis.

The minister is clearly trying to benefit his friends at the expense of our local businesses. Those friends are companies that benefit from this financial assistance and these tax havens. He wants to benefit people who likely asked him to. I will come back to that later. Members will be surprised to learn who was on the expert panel in charge of justifying this about-face by the minister.

I say “about-face”, because in his 2007 budget, the minister had said that everyone should pay their fair share of tax. Every time an individual or a company does not pay applicable tax, other taxpayers have to pony up. It is therefore clear that he had to come up with an excellent alibi to go back on what he had so rightly said in 2007. So he set up an advisory panel to review Canada's international tax system. Four of the people on the panel were from the private sector, including a former CEO of Scotiabank.

Need we say more? Scotiabank is the Canadian bank with the most branches in tax havens. If that is not a conflict of interest, it is definitely an apparent conflict of interest. As I was saying earlier, I find it at the very least peculiar that in this time of crisis, businesses are still being encouraged to use these strategies to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. We know very well that, especially now, any money that can be added to the federal coffers will be very important to support those who are most vulnerable in our society.

As a final point, I would like to talk about the older workers who are losing their jobs right now. How long have we been calling for a program for older worker adjustment? These people have worked their entire lives and cannot be retrained within a few years of their retirement. They have an urgent need for immediate help from the government through the insurance they have been paying into their entire working lives.

We would like another set of provisions to be eliminated: clauses 295 to 299. These clauses deal with the establishment of a single securities commission. At this point, it is unfortunate to hear the minister and members opposite tell us that the economic crisis dictates that we establish, from coast to coast, a single securities commission when we know very well that the Minister of Finance has been dreaming of this for a number of years, ever since his Toronto cronies asked him to concentrate Canadian economic activities in the Ontario metropolis. And once again, they decided to create a committee to examine this possibility. It is clear, since that was the minister's wish, that they had to come up with what is now in the bill: the establishment of a transition office.

The National Assembly of Quebec is unanimous on this issue: there must be no interference in Quebec's jurisdiction. Throughout the world, groups responsible for evaluating the performance of securities regulators have told us that Canada's system is above reproach and that it is one of the best in the world.

Why change what works? Why decide to turn upside down a system that works well and to initiate—that is the spirit of the bill—lawsuits if the provinces do not co-operate. It makes no sense to use the courts to voluntarily meddle in areas that are clearly the jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces.

It is clear to the Bloc that clauses 6 and 295 through 299 must be struck from BillC-10. In this regard, I hope my colleagues have the foresight demonstrated by the Bloc since it arrived in this House.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-10, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on January 27, 2009 and related fiscal measures, as reported (without amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

Motions in Amendment

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I was at every minute of that five and a half hour briefing. In fact, I tried to extend it even beyond five and a half hours but was not necessarily successful at that. There were a lot of questions and a lot of fine details about the budget that needed to be analyzed so that is why members of the Liberal Party of Canada were definitely there, including our finance critic.

One of the key questions that I had at that time was actually not about an element in the budget but rather about an element outside of the budget. The Conservative government announced a home retrofit tax credit. It was a bit of a storefront political move that it hoped would scope a lot of favour among Canadians. What we realize now is that when Bill C-10 was tabled, actual legal standing for the home renovation tax credit, were absent. We found out during the course of the briefing that there was no intention of actually even making legal force to the home renovation tax credit until the fall of 2009. In other words, if a second budget implementation bill were tabled in the fall of 2009, we could expect passage, at the very earliest, around November 2009.

The government has indicated that the program will expire on December 31, 2009. It will not be available after that point in time. In other words, realistically there will only be one month of certainty when the full details of that program are fully exposed to Canadians and yet Canadians are expected to go out and make expenditures toward that program and apply for a tax credit that does not yet have legal force. No details have yet been provided except for the pamphlet that has been administered by the Canada Revenue Agency.

In addition to the home retrofit tax credit, for which we do not actually have details, there is also an ecoENERGY home retrofit grant program. Will Canadians be able to apply for both programs using the same receipts for renovations to their home, yes or no?

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, I will begin today by recognizing what I thought was a common understanding when one puts his or her name on the ballot to run to be a member of this House.

I committed to my constituents that, if they saw fit to elect me as their member of Parliament, every statement I made in this House and every decision I made would be based on me availing myself of all available information before I made that decision.

The reason I say that is because there was a five hour briefing from about 36 to 38 well-respected public servants who sat with us until almost midnight one night, providing a fulsome briefing that was offered to all members of Parliament and all senators. I am a little ashamed to say that there were only two parties that actually showed up, that being the government and the Liberals. It is reflected today in these false comments that the other parties could have had answered.

In fact, we had a very broad cross-section of witnesses, respected public servants who are experts in their fields, appear before committee. We offered the broadest opportunity, as we did in the prebudget consultations, which, by the way, the NDP did not take part in, to provide the most information so we would not have this delay. To be very blunt, that is what we have here today.

Hopefully the report stage debate on the budget implementation bill, Bill C-10, will end soon. We have debated it and have provided an open forum for people to participate. I will keep my comments very brief so as to not prolong this disappointing show of political theatre by both the Bloc and the NDP.

I want it to be clear for the people at home. What we are witnessing here today is nothing more than the Bloc and the NDP using parliamentary procedures to delay a vital piece of legislation from passing, legislation they know will pass. They know this legislation contains vital, time-sensitive measures to help the Canadian economy and many of the most vulnerable. Bill C-10 has vital provisions to extend EI by five weeks, to provide $6 billion for stimulative, job creating investments in housing, infrastructure, regional economic development and health care, to implement measures to ensure financial market stability, and to help flow credit to businesses.

The members of the NDP and the Bloc, I would hope, have by now read the bill and realize that. Why are they doing it? This is not about pay equity. This is not about equalization. Everyone who has actually read and studied this bill realizes these changes are very reasonable and necessary. This is about silly partisanship. They do not care about the content of the budget or this budget bill. They proudly and publicly opposed it weeks before they read it. In fact, the NDP did not submit one written word of suggestion during the prebudget consultations.

Now those members think that by delaying this bill, they will expose the fact that the government and the official opposition have worked together to ensure this bill's expedited passage. They think by doing this they will somehow gain votes in an election one, two, maybe three years down the road. What escapes them is that any thinking person would realize that this delay is nonsense.

The reason the government and the official opposition have supported quick passage of the bill is because we collectively realize that we are in a period of economic volatility. The bill's measures are vital and the time to act is now. Now is not the time for endless partisan debates that over 99% of Canadians do not care anything about considering the situations they are in.

We are acting responsibly and in the best interests of Canadians. That is what we were sent here to do and we are doing it. I strongly encourage the NDP and the Bloc to follow that example. I implore the Senate to follow that example as well. It will have two weeks before we break for our constituency week in March to get the bill passed for royal assent.

Canadians want this legislation passed, they want an extension to their EI and they want to see the $6 billion that is tied up until we pass the bill. I caution the parties not to delay and to pass Bill C-10. I know the NDP and Bloc members tend not to listen to us, or any rational speaker for that matter, but I ask them to listen to the most vulnerable Canadians who are depending on the bill to pass, which will allow their regular EI to be extended by five weeks.

All MPs are getting the same calls and emails in their offices. We all have the same stacks of letters from struggling Canadians desperate for this provision to come into effect. I have some with me. I will not divulge any names but I ask members to listen to their words. A woman laid off in Ontario said that she is “worried sick”. A man in B.C. says that he will be “forced to leave the country” if this does not happen soon. Unfortunately, there are thousands more people just like that.

We need to stop the games and start helping Canadians and the economy by passing the bill.

I will not dignify this charade of a debate with further comments so I will end here, as report stage should end here. I again plead with all members of the House to defeat these detrimental amendments to Bill C-10. We need to get this done, move on to third reading and continue to work toward speedy passage of this legislation. That is the responsible course of action and that is what Canadians are depending on.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I too am very pleased to rise to address these proposed amendments to Bill C-10 to implement this year's budget.

The Conservatives stole a page from the American political playbook in the past two years with their budget measures. The first inkling we had of this was in a previous budget when they embedded a provision that would have allowed them to start censoring artistic production in the movie field in Canada, something that we had not seen in 60 years.

They were going to be allowed to decide themselves whether something was against public order and good morales. That had nothing to do with the budget and it had everything to do with the right wing agenda of the Conservative-Liberal alliance party. What we discovered then was that they were going to use this trick because of the fact that the Liberals were supporting them in everything they did.

In the budget bill last year we also saw another attempt to bring in a part of their right wing agenda. That time it had to do with immigration. The current rule on immigration is if people meet all the criteria, they have a right to become an immigrant and a Canadian citizen.

The new rule is, even if one meets all the criteria and has done absolutely everything, it is not aleatory, it is now up to the civil service, controlled by the Conservative-Liberal alliance, to shut the door to immigration. What they have brought in is a tragedy. It will allow them, for example, to exclude on the basis of country of origin.

That is the right wing agenda. It is well identified by the Conservatives with their Reform base. That is the people who hoot and holler in every question period. They are the ones who support this strong right wing agenda.

This year the Conservatives have gone a step further. Not content to try to muzzle artistic expression by bringing in their world view, not content to exclude whole areas of immigration that have helped build our country, they are now bringing whole sections of their right wing agenda into the budget. The culpable compliance of the official abstention Liberals is allowing them to do so.

We have seen a number of things that are part and parcel of the Conservative-Reform base policies. For example, earlier this week Tom Flanagan wrote an article in The Globe and Mail, which reminds me of General Patton's admonition, would that my enemy write a book.

We have Tom Flanagan expressing himself oh so clearly on the Conservatives' hatred of women's rights. For them it is an anathema. They have gone after a woman's right, enshrined in our human rights documents, to have equal pay for work of equal value. That is in this budget, an attack on that right. They are doing it in the most surreptitious fashion.

They have Mr. Family values himself, the President of the Treasury Board, stand up day after day telling us that it is for women's good. Women's rights are one thing, but family rights are another. We have to take care of both. The Conservatives tell us they are trying to actually accelerate a process that has been going on for far too long, and it should now be attributary of the collective bargaining process.

The problem is very often over the years a category of employment that was mostly male, like a truck driver, versus a category of employment that was mostly female, like a nurse, had nothing to do with an objective analysis of the difficulty of the task being accomplished, the type of training, experience and expertise necessary to accomplish the task, and it had everything to do with the fact that if it was a male dominated category, the individual was paid more and if it was a female dominated category then the individual was paid less.

A lot of people confused this with the debate about equal pay for equal work. That has been decided for a long time. To go back to my examples, a woman driving a truck and a man driving a truck has been settled for 50 years. They will be paid the same thing. A man who works as a nurse and a women who works as a nurse will paid the same thing.

That is not the issue. The issue is what has been done in forward-looking provinces like Manitoba, followed by Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, where we look at the value of the work being performed, and that is what Flanagan's piece helps us understand and decode with the Conservatives. They are almost too happy to snap their suspenders and say that it is a darn good thing the Conservatives are taking away women's rights and that it is about time. This bill is about that.

There is another attack in the bill, this time on the environment. We will see it in the sections that will be looked at a little later today. I give these examples to give context to the current debate.

The Conservatives will be gutting the Navigable Waters Protection Act. We had dozens of environmental groups present in parliamentary committee the other day. We had a shameful experience where a senior civil servant was brought in to deliver a purely political speech. There is a difference that should be maintained between the upper reaches of the civil service, who should have a certain autonomy and the ability to do their jobs in the application of statutes. If people want to be in politics, let them run for a political office, come into this room and do their job. That is a political speech.

However, the Conservatives and institutions do not respect that sort of barricade. They brigadooned the senior civil servant to come in and explain what a great thing it was, that there was more flexibility and it was a tiered approval system. There is nothing in the bill about a tiered approval systems. There will be tiers, but they will be tears of people who care about our navigable waterways. They are bringing in the ability for the government to exclude whole sections of that bill and all types of waterways.

It goes in conjunction with something that was released and first reported on by Louis-Gilles Francoeur in Le Devoir and carried by the English papers later. My colleague from Edmonton brought it forward. There is a clear plan to remove environmental assessments. Yesterday, again in the House, the Conservatives had the temerity to say that this had to do with streamlining more than one approval process, which kills jobs.

When I was the minister of the environment in Quebec, I signed an agreement with the federal government so the federal and provincial assessors would sit together. The only people who were not happy were the consulting engineers who could no longer charge twice for the same work because they would not have two panels. However, it works. That is streamlining. It has nothing to do with removing the federal government's obligation to protect navigable waters. That is a canard.

We are getting the first inklings of the real Conservative agenda. One knows about the holier-than-thou Conservatives who for years have railed against people who stick their money in tax havens. They used to love to talk about Paul Martin. Look at what they are doing now. They had removed the ability to go to certain tax havens and they are bringing it back. They constitute a panel of their buddies to tell them what they want to hear. It will to be very interesting as the UBS, the Union de Banques Suisses case, opens up in the United States. There are 12,000 names on a list.

Greg McArthur from The Globe and Mail did a very good job on this, mentioning that there was a Canadian desk at UBS. Surreptitiously, billions and billions of dollars were stuffed into those accounts by Canadians. It will be very interesting to find out. Who was in charge of that at the time in Canada? Michael Wilson, come on down. That was in The Globe and Mail, and it has tried to get an interview with Mr. Wilson. It cannot get one. It has tried to find out what is in it from the revenue agency in Canada, but it cannot get an answer. It is going to be interesting to find that out as well.

On the notion of foreign ownership, there can be no greater subject of concern to Canadians in this day and age, as we have seen a series of bubbles in the financial markets burst, that we maintain control as much as possible of key sectors and key industries, especially in the primary sectors of mining, metallurgy and forestry. Alcan, which is now Rio Tinto Alcan, owns the bed of the Saguenay River, one of the most beautiful rivers in Canada. Now that the Chinese government is buying into Rio Tinto, guess what? We are literally selling a riverbed to the Chinese government.

Labatt has just signed a deal. Its Belgian owners are selling off to a fund in New York and they will no longer be allowed to sell their Canadian production into the States. Not only is that a breach of the NAFTA and the Canada-U.S. FTA, which remains in force, it is a breach of common sense. Why should we even allow this? Xstrata, a company that had a written deal with the Canadian government in Sudbury, lost 700 jobs.

If the owners of Air Canada, the 49% shareholders, are a banker in Switzerland or Tokyo, do members think there will be any more planes to Hamilton or Rimouski? Asking the question is to answer it. That is why we want these amendments. That is why we oppose the bill.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in this House on behalf of the Bloc Québécois to address the motions in amendment introduced by our party concerning Bill C-10.

Motion No. 1 in particular seeks to delete clause 6, which allows the use of tax havens. While the Conservative budget provides nothing to help the thousands of people who will be losing their jobs, and the industries and regions in difficulty, we have the Minister of Finance allowing Canadian multinational corporations to use tax havens to avoid paying billions in taxes while at the same time encouraging investment and job creation abroad at the expense of our local businesses. Clearly, the Minister of Finance is trying to favour his friends through such generous breaks. This approach has become commonplace since the Conservatives have gained the support of the Liberals who regularly did that sort of thing.

In his 2007 budget, the Minister of Finance said that the government had to make sure that everyone paid their fair share. He complained about how some foreign and Canadian corporations take advantage of the tax rules to avoid paying income tax. He said that every time that happens, workers and small and medium-sized businesses end up having to pay more tax. He concluded by stating that that was unfair. Now, not only is the economic situation even worse, but the government seems to have done everything in its power to exacerbate the unfairness.

Let us not forget that the Minister of Finance has already backed away from the fight against tax havens by giving in to pressure from Toronto financiers. He gave them a five-year grace period before he will implement his plan to fight tax evasion, then he convened an advisory panel whose independence and neutrality are debatable.

The Minister of Finance reneged on his promise to fight tax evasion by blindly accepting the recommendations of the Advisory Panel on Canada’s System of International Taxation. The group was clearly set up to justify the minister's change of heart. Of the six members of the panel, four are from private companies that may have benefited from the strategy and still can.

Let me make it clear that the minister was getting advice from a six-member advisory panel with four members in a position to benefit from tax evasion strategies. This is the Conservatives' new way of doing things, an approach borrowed from the Liberals. It is no accident that they decided to support the latest budget. For example, one of the members is the former CEO of Scotiabank, which has more branches in tax havens than any other Canadian bank. The authors of the report are clearly in conflict of interest. That is why we have asked that clause 6 be deleted.

Motions Nos. 2 to 6 concerning securities call for the deletion of clauses 295 to 299. The goal is to eliminate clauses relating to the creation of a single securities commission. With this bill, the government would establish a Canadian securities regulation regime transition office with a $150 million operating budget.

The expert panel on securities regulation appointed by the Minister of Finance tabled its final report in January 2009. The panel proposed the creation of a federal securities regulation agency, although this falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces. That is a fact. Once again, this is an encroachment into provincial jurisdictions. The report proposes various mechanisms to implement the project without agreement from Quebec and the provinces.

Furthermore, the report also proposes that the federal government use legal recourse to force dissenting provinces to comply with the federal project. This does not fall under federal jurisdiction, yet it wants to impose penalties on the dissenting provinces. The fact that this is being supported by members from Quebec, whether Conservative or Liberal, is appalling. As the saying goes, when it comes to politics, you have to watch where you step. We see what the Liberals and Conservatives are doing in that regard.

The Bloc Québécois would like to reiterate its opposition to the creation of a national securities commission. Instead, the Bloc Québécois will support a harmonization of the rules governing the financial system through a passport mechanism, like that of the European community, in order to maintain the autonomy and jurisdictions of Quebec and the provinces. The Bloc Québécois will continue to vigorously argue against the creation of such a commission and will continue to fully support the Autorité des marchés financiers du Québec, which has been doing its job. International experts have said that the existing system for monitoring securities in Canada is among the best in the world.

We therefore cannot understand why the government is trying to get rid of that whole system today.

When I was elected in 2000, one of the first issues I got involved in was bank mergers. The Bloc Québécois has always been fiercely opposed to bank mergers. At the time, if the Liberals had succeeded in introducing this system of bank mergers with the Conservatives' help, our banks would be in a very bad financial position. The goal was to merge in order to buy other banks, especially American ones. Some American banks are in dire straits today.

Luckily, the Bloc Québécois was here in 2000 to stand up to all the big Bay Street financiers. Once again, the focus is on Toronto. But the fact is that the focus should not be on Toronto, especially when it comes to securities, and the government is trying to impose this new system on Quebec, even though this is not the right way to go.

So every day, we are proud to get up in this House and defend Quebeckers' interests, which is something we do very well. And that is why, election after election, Quebeckers send a large delegation of Bloc Québécois members to represent them in this House.

It is always very interesting to follow politics. People who think politics is always dull and boring just have to listen to what the Prime Minister said yesterday. He talked about creating a secret $3 billion fund and about the possibility of heading to an election. If he wants to engage in patronage and pick up where the Liberals left off, I wish him luck. We will be waiting for him in Quebec. We have no problem with that. We are used to it. After Jean, we took care of Paul, and we will take care of the next one who comes along.

As for the last group of motions the Chair agreed to have debated today—motions 66 to 86 concerning Investment Canada—they are NDP motions. We will support these amendments. As announced during the election campaign, the government is going ahead with liberalizing foreign investment.

The government is gradually raising the threshold for automatic review of foreign investments in Canada from $295 million to $1 billion within three years. All investments below that threshold will no longer have to be approved by the industry department. This will mean that for all investments under $1 billion, the government will no longer have to determine whether or not the transaction is good for Canada's economy.

And there are some very recent examples of this. Think about all the investments and purchases made under the Conservative laissez-faire philosophy. All they want is to no longer have to comment on transactions under one billion dollars. Look at what happened with Rio Tinto, for one. The Conservatives could have protected the interests of Quebeckers, but they did not. They made that choice and, today, we are having these discussions. Unions, employees, communities and cities with Rio Tinto facilities are all worried because they do not know what will come after the company's cuts. When their headquarters is in London, it is easy to see why Quebeckers are far from their minds.

Once again, it is the Conservative's laissez-faire policies that these motions are designed to oppose. Obviously, the Bloc Québécois will support these motions because, in difficult economic times, the members of the public who elected us have the right to know that their representatives are defending their interests. And right now the Conservatives and Liberals are doing everything but defending the interests of Quebeckers. Once again, the Bloc will stand up in this House to defend the interests of Quebeckers. That is what we are doing as we move these motions today.

The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-10, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on January 27, 2009 and related fiscal measures, as reported (without amendment) from the committee.

Opposition Motion — Municipal Infrastructure

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to the motion introduced by the hon. member for Parkdale—High Park.

I would like to thank the member for London—Fanshawe for agreeing to share her time with me.

The motion is essentially a way to address the failings of the budget implementation bill. It is really trying to send a message to the government.

Bill C-10, which is currently before the finance committee, simply does not go far enough to address our current economic crisis. Further, in the budget implementation bill the Conservatives have attached a series of ideological riders. They are trying to sneak through the back door a series of ideologically driven measures that have nothing to do with the stimulus package.

Hidden in this document of more than 500 pages are the Conservatives' proposals to take a woman's right to pay equity out of the human rights act. The bill would open up Canadian industry to more foreign ownership and would make it easier to go after students punitively. The budget fails to protect the vulnerable, fails to safeguard the jobs of today, and fails to create the jobs of tomorrow.

Today we have a Liberal motion to transfer money to municipalities via the gas tax and to transfer at least half of the proposed new infrastructure funding with no requirement that these funds be matched by the municipalities.

At the finance committee this week, New Democrats proposed amendments to Bill C-10. We proposed to strike the clause that proposes changes to the human rights act to prevent women from taking pay equity complaints to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. We proposed to strike the provision that relaxes rules around environmental assessments under the Navigable Waters Act. We proposed to strike the provision that unilaterally tears up collective agreements signed by the government. We proposed to strike the provision that introduces punitive changes to student loans. We also proposed to strike the provision that weakens control on foreign companies taking over Canadian ones, and we tried to strike the clause that required other levels of government to match funds before they flow.

The motion does try to fix one problem with Bill C-10, and that is a laudable premise, despite the fact that the Liberals abstained from a vote in committee earlier this week that could have done essentially the same thing. They abstained when a vote of “yes” would have meant a majority and would have meant that there would not have been strings attached to infrastructure funding.

Our proposed amendments were practical proposals for change. Our amendment to address environmental assessments in particular under the Navigable Waters Act was a proposal that was demanded by the people of my riding.

Constituents have written to me in shock that the Conservative government would see environmental regulations as red tape to be cut through. One constituent, Joel Richard from Halifax, wrote to me and said:

When we protect public access to waterways in Canada, we are also protecting the natural environment of those waterways. We understand that it is important to initiate infrastructure projects to stimulate the economy. But we should not use that as an opportunity to dismantle safeguards put in place to protect Canada's environment.

It has been made abundantly clear in the House that the budget and its implementation bill use the economic upheaval we are facing to push through a tax on women, workers and students. New Democrats would like to see less of that brutal agenda and more of the funds that are needed to get Canadians back to work.

The budget is another very good example of the government's inability to develop strategies, strategies to address issues such as the economic crisis, climate change, or gang violence.

Today the Minister of Public Safety introduced another bill that lacks a real strategy. In their attempt to address gang violence, the Conservatives have introduced a bill that really does not do much.

New Democrats will support the bill. In fact, we call on the Conservative government to fast-track it. When it comes to tackling violent gang crime, New Democrats are calling on the Conservatives to move farther and faster.

We need a comprehensive federal anti-gang strategy, but the bill is not a strategy, much like the budget implementation bill. A comprehensive strategy must include not only tougher sentences but also more police officers on the street, improved witness protection, tougher laws to tackle proceeds of crime, modernization of the laws that cover surveillance and evidence-gathering, and a comprehensive plan for prevention to ensure our kids are diverted from gangs in the first place.

The people of my riding are used to New Democrats getting results for people, and we have continually done just that.

Back in 2005, New Democrats in this House were able to get Bill C-48 passed. That was the NDP budget bill. The leader of the NDP and the member for Winnipeg negotiated hard to get billions of dollars for infrastructure and housing investments. This meant real investments for Halifax transit and infrastructure.

The NDP's 2005 budget amendment meant around $85 million in new investments for Nova Scotia, including $26 million for transit, $29 million for university and college infrastructure, over $20 million for much-needed affordable housing, and almost $8 million for off-reserve aboriginal housing.

Very much as a result of the member for Toronto—Danforth's work when he was president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and then later the leader of the New Democratic Party, we saw a new funding model that allowed money to flow in a quicker and more equitable way. This gas tax formula was superior to the previous system of always requiring matched funds.

It is clear that New Democrats know how to work collaboratively and represent Canadians in Parliament for results.

Housing is an area of provincial and municipal jurisdiction that the federal government can assist via infrastructure funding.

Until the mid-1990s, Canada had been a world leader in developing cooperative and not-for-profit housing, but it has done very little since. The Liberal government of the day allowed affordable housing investments in this country to stall for a decade because of the requirement for provincial matching funds at a time when provincial coffers were bare, so it is welcome now to see that the Liberals have adopted the NDP approach as their own.

New Democrats enthusiastically support this motion. I would have preferred that the members over there would have agreed to try to amend the budget bill instead. That would have actually changed the funding models in reality. As I stated earlier, these same members blocked our amendments that would have done exactly what this motion calls for.

Unfortunately, even if it is passed, this motion will have no real effect on these funds flowing out now. We will continue to see a requirement for matching funds from municipalities and provinces already stretched to the limit, and we will continue to see a lack of private funding slowing down projects. This will lead to unacceptable delays.

Just last month, I held a press conference with builders and housing advocates to illustrate how investment in affordable housing can address a serious housing crisis in a city while at the same time acting as a powerful fiscal stimulant. This conference was held at a site purchased and ready for affordable housing units, but waiting for adequate funding.

We have seen record job losses across the country, and the sad irony is that many of those jobs were in the construction industry at a time when thousands are waiting for sustainable and affordable housing to be built.

At this press conference, I was joined by Carol Charlebois of the Metro Non-Profit Housing Association, who spoke eloquently about the poverty-alleviating effects of affordable housing, and by Peter Greer, from the carpenters' union, who addressed the creation of jobs that would come from this type of investment. Jennifer Corson was there from Solterre Design, and she spoke about the carbon-reducing benefits associated with building environmentally sustainable units. It is win-win-win.

We had hoped that the budget would at least have a plan for creating jobs and helping those in need through affordable housing investments, but instead we saw small investments with these onerous strings attached.

I was also honoured last week to second the member for Vancouver East's bill to establish a national housing strategy. If passed by this House, this bill will bring all levels of government together to work to ensure secure, adequate, accessible and affordable housing for all Canadians. What we need is strong legislation to guarantee that money is turned into housing, so I hope all my colleagues here will support the member for Vancouver East's bill when it comes soon before the House.

In closing, I support this motion, but again wish that the members opposite had decided to do something about this just a little earlier.

Opposition Motion--Municipal Infrastructure

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the transit system across Canada carries 1.76 billion passengers per year. Any investment in public transit dramatically affects the quality of life for millions of Canadians. Any investment impacts on their cost of living and it greatly impacts on the environment.

According to many sources, including CUTA, there are 167 transit infrastructure projects across Canada that would stimulate the local economy of various Canadian communities while improving local transit networks. They are shovel ready. They are ready to go. For many years, different transit commissions and different mayors have been saying that we need the investment now.

What is cruel about this budget and cruel about this motion in front of the House today is that the municipalities or the commissions have no money to match the federal dollars that are being dangled in front of them. Why? Well, let us look at some facts. Of all the G8 countries or even G20 countries, Canada is the only country that contributes nothing to the operation of public transit.

Last year the total operating costs of public transit was $44.5 billion of which 60% was generated from fare revenue, 29% from municipal governments, and only 6% came from provincial contributions. What kind of money does the federal government contribute? Nothing. Zero. Not one penny.

When we look at transit capital costs, in 2006 it was $1.68 billion, and 37% came from the federal and provincial governments. Actually, to be precise, most of it, the majority of it comes from provincial contributions. In the city of Toronto, for example, what was the total federal grants to municipalities? It was 2% of Toronto's $8.7 billion budget. So there is nothing there to be applauded. Twenty-three percent came from municipal governments.

Municipal governments are trapped in high property taxes and high debt because they, alone mostly, are carrying the operation of the transit system. In Toronto, for example, a budget that I am very familiar with, it already has a $1.6 billion capital budget. This year the property tax increase is 4%, and 2% of that 4% is actually a direct result of the Conservative government not being able to change the employment insurance program so that not one extra unemployed worker is going to get employment insurance. They are going to go on the welfare system, therefore increasing the welfare roll in Toronto by 20,000 people. That will cost $38 million, and guess where that money comes from? Property taxes. There is not a chance that many of the municipalities have the funds to cost share this budget proposal, the money that is in front of us.

What is happening across Canada is that there is real ridership growth. Canadians want to take public transit. They want to help Canada decrease its greenhouse gas emissions. They want to reduce their carbon footprint. If we look at transit systems across Canada, there has been a 15% increase in a five year period.

Interestingly enough, the biggest growth in ridership comes from Canada's smallest municipalities, such as Middleton, Charlottetown, Welland and Yellowknife. The greater Vancouver transit link saw an increase of 7 million new trips in the last year or two. Canadians want to take public transit. They want to do something for the environment. For municipalities, more riders means more costs. When a transit system has no funding and not a penny of operating costs from the federal government, municipalities have no choices.

If there are more riders, they either increase property taxes or transit fares. Neither of those are good things to do to stimulate the economy. Municipalities are stuck. In the meantime, there have been reports, including a groundbreaking economic study conducted by HDR Decision Economics, that said that Canada needs a 74% increase in more transit services to unclog roads, save on commuter time and increase productivity. In total, CUTA identified $40 billion of investment needed for the period of 2008-12. This includes the expansion of subways, streetcars and buses, and the maintenance and upkeep of the current system to accommodate more riders.

Unfortunately, the motion in front of the House of Commons is meaningless. The Liberals have the opportunity to amend the budget that is being debated in Parliament right now, whether it is in committee or at report stage tomorrow, by inserting two small clauses. We should allow the funding to flow without cost sharing and have it come through using the gas tax formula so that it is not tied up with red tape, so it is block funding, and so that municipalities and provinces will know in a very assured way that the funding will flow. This instead of the building Canada formula of project-by-project approach, which ties it all up with different legal agreements and various project negotiations that are totally unnecessary.

It reminds me of a short story. A young man, let us call him Mike, walked by and saw a boat sinking. There were 77 people drowning. He could have thrown some rope or helped out, but because he was wearing new shoes he refused to do anything. He refused to help the people who were drowning out there. He went on his laptop and wrote out a perfect plan of how to rescue the 77 drowning people, but he would not do anything. That is what we are facing today. There will be a budget debate tomorrow. The House is debating this right now and we have this motion in front of us. Why should it not be inserted into the budget debate tomorrow?

I move the following motion: That the Liberal opposition motion be inserted into the report stage of the budget implementation bill, Bill C-10, being debated currently in Parliament, and inserted as an amendment.

I hope the House will consider this amendment.