Debates of April 23rd, 2007

The Acting Speaker Royal Galipeau

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

The Acting Speaker Royal Galipeau

All those opposed will please say nay.

The Acting Speaker Royal Galipeau

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

Call in the members.

The Acting Speaker Royal Galipeau

So indeed. Pursuant to the request of the chief government whip the recorded division stands deferred to Tuesday, April 24.

The Acting Speaker Royal Galipeau

When we last considered this bill, the hon. member for Scarborough—Guildwood still had three minutes left.

John McKay Scarborough—Guildwood, ON

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about Bill C-52 which is the budget implementation bill. Contained therein is a provision with respect to interest deductibility. Interest deductibility is probably a bit of an arcane issue for most Canadians. It allows Canadian companies to deduct interest when they in fact are competing to acquire a business abroad.

These Canadian businesses of course are competing worldwide. They compete with Japanese companies. They compete with American companies. They compete with European companies and yet this provision now would effectively handicap the ability of a Canadian company to acquire companies elsewhere. This is a very significant issue.

It is a significant issue in many ways, but let me bring it down to how it is significant for those of us who are concerned about economic issues and those of us who are concerned with the prosperity of Canada.

When a Canadian business acquires a foreign based business, it generally does so with the advice of lawyers, accountants and financial services people, et cetera. All of those people get jobs by virtue of these acquisitions.

In addition, once the acquisition is completed, then all of those collateral services are then engaged to complete the acquisition, along with a whole array of technical people to make sure that the integration of the companies proceeds smoothly.

Let me give a personal example of that. My son works for a large Canadian bank and his job is to make sure that the computer services of that bank are integrated with the acquired banks or financial services companies that that bank acquires. For instance, if it acquires a bank in nation X, then it is my son's job to go down, along with an array of others, to facilitate that integration.

A consequence of that is that this is a Canadian job. It is a very good Canadian job and he is multiplied dozens and hundreds and thousands of times over. Those are the kinds of very jobs that we in Canada want to secure. We want to acquire those kinds of technology jobs which will be the way of the future.

Yet, this budget provision does exactly the opposite. That, along with the income trust decision, we could not imagine two more wrong-headed decisions.

I see that my time it up. It is quite regrettable because these are wrong for Canada and that is why this party will be voting against the budget.

James Lunney Nanaimo—Alberni, BC

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to draw the attention of the House to one of Canada's most noteworthy medical pioneers. Recently Dr. Abram Hoffer was recognized by his peers at the 36th annual conference on Nutritional Medicine Today, held in Toronto. Tributes also were received from the Prime Minister and the Governor General of Canada.

There are few physicians in the world today who deserve more credit for establishing the clinical value of vitamins, minerals and nutrients.

In 1950 Dr. Hoffer was appointed head of psychiatric research for the province of Saskatchewan by the then premier, Tommy Douglas.

He has published more than 500 articles and books and was instrumental in founding the Canadian Schizophrenia Foundation and, with his close friend Dr. Linus Pauling, the International Society for Orthomolecular Medicine.

Dr. Hoffer's promising work has restored lives and hope to thousands of patients suffering from schizophrenia and related mental disorders. He has inspired a new generation of orthomolecular scientists to re-examine the role of vitamins and minerals in correcting biochemical deficiencies in disease states.

Dr. Hoffer is now 90 years old. It is his hope that effective use of low cost non-patentable nutrients will find its rightful place as a front line approach in restoring health to the suffering.

The Acting Speaker Royal Galipeau

The hon. member for Charlottetown.