Madam Speaker, I am very pleased today to speak to Bill C-47, another of the budget implementation bills. In fact, the government wants to call it the Sustaining Canada's Economic Recovery Act.
Certainly that is the difficulty of the situation, because on a macro basis, on a global basis, we are looking at some countries in the world that are having much more difficult times than we are right now. We only have to look at Europe to see what is happening in the country of Iceland, which had to declare bankruptcy in the last two years, and in the countries of Ireland and Portugal. We have to feel sorry for some of the measures that are being taken over there right now, because a lot of the workers in those countries are suffering a lot because of the restraint measures that are being forced upon them by the IMF.
We have not yet had to deal with that situation here, but our economic situation is much, much different in the sense that we are very tied to the American economy. As a matter of fact, it is only in very recent months, and I am not even certain whether we are past that point yet, that there is a recognition that there is $1.3 trillion in commercial loans coming due in the United States. In the spring, there was a freeze in credit for small business. Banks were classifying commercial loans as risky, so they were very conservative in their lending policies. Manufacturers were having difficulty getting lines of credit.
In 2008, the 400 largest U.S. contractors were doing 80% of their business in the private sector. Now, two years later, the 400 largest U.S. contractors are doing 80% of their work in the public sector, which will be running out, both in the United States and in Canada, over the next few months. The concern will be what will happen when the stimulus packages in both countries run out, what will happen with the unemployment rate. There should potentially be a rise in unemployment and the problems that will come with that.
The recovery is tentative at this point and there is enough concern to be passed around. The question is, how is the government responding to this situation and is it responding correctly? We would argue in our party that its priorities are somewhat displaced.
For example, we only have to look to Germany where Hermann Scheer, a German green politician, has been the catalyst, has been instrumental in propelling Germany into the future with green energy development. A number of examples have been covered in the press over the last year of the great advancements that have been made in Germany in terms of green energy development.
Here in Canada, we have a much more tentative approach to that. There was a company in Canada that was making solar panels. I believe it was called ARISE Technologies, based in Waterloo. The owner of the company, Ian MacLellan, was not receiving much encouragement in Canada, so he responded to the German government's offer to build a plant in East Germany. At this point, his plant cannot produce enough solar panels for the German market. I believe it is several years behind in its production. It is expanding so quickly, and I believe they are building more than one plant there to keep up with the demand. This is yet another opportunity lost, because now Germany has an advantage over Canada and will only increase that advantage over time.
In Canada, the discussion over the east-west power grid has been raging now for probably 20 years, or maybe even longer. The concept is to build an east-west power grid so that we can transfer clean hydroelectric power from Manitoba, for example, which has only developed 50% of its hydroelectric capacity. Rather than sending that power to the United States, as is the case now because all the lines are running north-south, we want to be able to send it east-west so that we can help Ontario stop using its coal-fired plants and prevent the need for nuclear power plants to be developed in the next few years.
Once again, where is the initiative on the part of the federal government? Ten of the 14 members of Parliament in Manitoba are Conservatives. In fact, only one of them has spoken on this issue over the last year. The Minister of State (Democratic Reform) has spoken about this issue. Saskatchewan has 14 out of 14 Conservative members. The question is where they are on this issue. The 14 members in Saskatchewan and 10 members in Manitoba should be leading the charge to try to force the government to put a plan together so that an east-west power grid can be developed.
It is their predecessor, John A. Macdonald, who had a national dream for this country. The national dream was to build a railway from east to west uniting the country, as opposed to developing it on a north-south basis. In fact, if the railway had not developed, the Americans would have probably taken over the parts of the country that we now know as Canada.
If we fast forward to where we are now, where is that Conservative vision of John A. Macdonald? The government still follows the ideology that whatever the economics dictate, whatever is the cheapest and fastest, is what it is going to do, and if it means building all the pipelines and hydro transmission lines north-south, then so be it and forget about looking at a common national vision of an east-west power grid.
An east-west power grid would provide a lot of jobs in the economy that are certainly going to be needed after the stimulus package money runs out. I still hold out hope that the members in the Manitoba and Saskatchewan Conservative caucuses will actually get motivated to come onboard with this idea and push it along a little further.
We look to wind power as a good example of an activity that should be encouraged, but where are the initiatives for wind power by the government? I remember 20 years ago, in 1992, in Pincher Creek, Alberta there was a lot of development of wind turbines in that area. As a matter of fact, I went out to look at them at one time. Of course, today the wind turbines and their technology have changed. If one were to go there, it would seem almost like a museum, because one sees the little turbines from 1992 and then the progression to the huge turbines now.
Canada, once again, has squandered an opportunity at economic development, because there are a lot of jobs to be had in the manufacture of the turbines. We have seen that industry grow in Scandinavian countries. The companies that make the turbines are from Scandinavian countries such as Denmark and have only gotten bigger and better with time. We have looked at the construction of wind turbines, but to no avail.
We have looked into it in Manitoba. We are at the point where it just did not proceed, for one reason or another.
As a matter of fact, North Dakota and South Dakota have manufacturing set up there.
We are once again playing catch-up. We are not really even in the game. We had wind farm developments in Saskatchewan, at Gull Lake. There was 99 megawatts of power at Gull Lake. That was about 10 years ago or so. However, since then, we have seen the focus change to other parts of the country, and other parts of the country are taking up some of the slack in this area. That is another very big area that the government should be concentrating on.
What is the government's vision? The government's vision does not seem to be in these areas at all. As matter of fact, its answer so far for economic development seems to be developing more prisons. It has announced $9 billion for the expansion of our prison system.
As a matter of fact, in this bill the government has suggested that it is going to crack down on the TFSA program, the tax-free savings accounts that were set up in the last couple of years. Evidently a problem has developed where a number of organized individuals, I think higher-income individuals would be more to the truth, have been overcontributing to the TFSA program. The government, rightly so, is cracking down in that area. However, when will it be cracking down on all the people who are investing in tax havens?
Only last year we had a situation where an employee of a bank in Liechtenstein left that bank with computer diskettes. He actually sold the information on the diskettes to the German government. As a result, the German government has recovered quite a huge amount of back taxes from the people who were investing in the tax havens. Out of that, 100 names were given to Revenue Canada. We have yet to hear whether Revenue Canada has collected any back taxes from these people.
We know Revenue Canada offers an amnesty to people. The question is whether these 100 people whose names were turned over by the authorities were given amnesty. For all we know, Revenue Canada let them off with just paying whatever taxes they owed and the amnesty was applied to them too.
Just in the last few weeks there was another example of an employee from, in this case, a Swiss bank, who made off with I think it was 4,500 names on diskettes and turned them over to the French government. Out of that, Revenue Canada got its hands on the names of another 1,800 Canadians who are investing in tax havens. Once again I would like to know what the government is doing to track these people down. Is it going to offer them amnesty to get them to file their up-to-date returns, or is it going to actually charge them for tax evasion, which is the proper way to proceed in this case?
We are getting no follow-up from the government as to the situation with uncollected taxes. Out of all the people who are putting money into tax havens in Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Panama and other countries, there are probably thousands of Canadians in those situations and the government does not seem to be too concerned about catching them. If the government can catch these people and collect a half billion dollars here or a half a billion dollars there of taxes owed, it would help a lot in terms of balancing the books here in Canada and paying for the roads and hospitals that we need.
Where is the interest? We have such lax laws in Canada for white collar crime. It is absolutely laughable. This is from a government that talks about being tough on crime.
This is the record of the tough on crime government on white collar crime. Over the last few years, the United States has successfully prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned 1,200 white collar criminals, including Conrad Black who committed his crimes in Canada. The record of the tough on crime Conservative government is two convictions against the same guy. The government does not have to pay $9 billion for prisons to house one person.
These are examples of the mixed messages we get from the government. On the very day the story broke in the Globe and Mail, in the Greg McArthur article regarding the 1,800 Canadians, the Prime Minister was being questioned in the House about that very issue. On that very day, the government's bill on the order paper for debate was a free trade deal with Panama.
In the case of Panama, we have 350,000 foreign companies hiding money there because it is a tax haven. The Panamanian government is making little, if any, effort to share the tax information.
As a precursor to signing on to these agreements, one would think the government would use some common sense and require that the Panamanian government sign on and honour the OECD rules and protocols on sharing tax information, not go ahead and reward it with a free trade deal. That is the backwards approach of the government.
In addition to regular companies doing business in Panama and hiding their money there, we have Mexican drug cartels laundering money through the Panamanian system. The government is only too willing to ignore that. It forgets the fact that Manuel Noriega, the former president of Panama, is doing time in a Florida jail because the Americans captured him for aiding and abetting money launderers.
Clearly the government has a very questionable set of priorities when it comes to dealing with economic development in our country.
One of the members opposite introduced a bill earlier this year to support a national hunting day, which is a great idea, and we supported the bill. In fact, Manitoba passed a similar bill just two years ago. I was at its annual meeting a couple of weeks ago. One of the reasons given for introducing the bill in the House was to encourage American tourism, to encourage Americans to come to Canada to hunt and fish and to help our economy.
The recognition by the Conservative member was that tourism was down. Partly as a result of my talks with him in the spring, and support in speaking to his bill, I was able to introduce a resolution to a legislators conference this summer, one I have been at now four or five years. This group includes 11 border states, from Illinois to North Dakota, and 3 provinces, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. I think Alberta is on the verge of joining that organization.
The legislators meet every summer. There is a western conference and a southern conference as well, but this is the Midwestern legislators conference. This group has met now for 65 years. At that conference, I was able to introduce a resolution, which they passed unanimously. I will not read the resolution at this time, but I will if I get asked about it in a question.
