Debates of Feb. 7th, 2008

Prebudget Consultations

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his presentation today and his work on the finance committee. I think he is very clear and accurate today that a lot of the issues that the Bloc brought forward during the committee are in the report. We did not agree with all of them, but I think they added quite a bit of value to the discussion.

I want to clarify one thing before I ask my question. In budget 2006 we talked about housing. Our party provided $1.4 billion and invested in an affordable housing trust, and $270 million in the homelessness partnering strategy. The government put a billion dollars in a partnership agreement with the provinces and the municipalities. So there is money being spent on the homelessness and housing issue. It is up to the provinces and the municipalities to actually implement it and to spend that cash. The federal government has made it available.

The government has done other things that we agreed on in terms of the workers income tax benefit. We are looking at trying to improve on that. There have been improvements for seniors and the capital cost allowance.

The member talked about the surplus. He said that we should spend all of it and too heck with the debt in a sense. Really, is there a surplus if you have a debt? The surplus is a cash surplus in a year. I do not know what the number is off the top of my head, but we have a $450 billion debt. This is a mortgage that my children and your children, my grandchildren and their grandchildren will be paying. There is no such true thing as a surplus, when you have a huge debt.

What is the Bloc's position on debt? Why are you so opposed to us paying down--

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

Order, please. I let the hon. member commit the error twice hoping it would go away. Three times he used the second person. The hon. member from the Bloc.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. The response will be quite clear.

For example, out of the $10 billion surplus we will have on March 31, the Bloc thinks that $3 billion should go toward the debt, or roughly 30% of the surplus. The remaining 70% should be allocated to urgent matters. Our country is behaving like a homeowner obsessed with paying down the mortgage as soon as possible, but whose back deck is falling apart. Even Mr. Vaillancourt, the mayor of Laval and spokesperson for the Coalition pour le renouvellement des infrastructures du Québec, used that analogy, but he said it is not the back deck that is in disrepair, but the foundation of the house.

The ratio of Canada's debt to its gross domestic product has decreased significantly over the past 10 years, to such an extent that we are now the best G-8 country on that score. There is no point in emphasizing that any further when there are urgent needs to address.

The Bloc thinks that it would be reasonable to put $3 billion toward the debt this year. That would leave an $8 billion margin for next year. With our proposals, if there is no major economic slowdown, there could be an $8 billion surplus at the end of the year.

Therefore, we are being very responsible. We agree that a portion of it should be invested in paying down the debt. However, in Quebec like everywhere else, problems of fairness need to be resolved, as in the case of the guaranteed income supplement for seniors. For years now, many seniors have not been entitled to their money, to the minimum they need to survive. The government must assume its responsibilities before paying down the debt, especially considering that the plan is doing pretty well. Indeed, our ratio is quickly becoming one of the best.

I will conclude on this point. A portion of it must be allocated to the debt, but a large portion must also be used to meet these glaring needs in our society. We hope the upcoming budget will reflect these choices.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have been on the finance committee for quite a number of years now. The hon. member joined it recently and has been very helpful in contributing to it.

The idea of the prebudget report is generally to try to influence the finance minister and shape the budget through this report. It is an extensive process that involves a whole variety of things. I wonder whether the hon. member is a bit frustrated by the actions of the government in effectively rendering this report dead on arrival.

First, there was prorogation. Prorogation essentially took a month out of committee hearings. That is a significant period of time in parliamentary time, as we well know. That took us into October.

Then well into October we found out that on October 31 a mini budget was going to be presented. The mini budget basically blew out the fiscal space that existed and the government continued on its wild and crazy spending spree. Essentially, there was no money left over.

The effect of that was that we would not be able to report until this week. As everyone in this chamber knows, the budget is already written. There is nothing left. Even if the government had to hire very expensive speech writers, the budget is already written.

I wonder whether the hon. member would share Dr. Carty's observations, when he was recently fired, one of which was that this government seems to prefer less advice rather than more.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question. I do not know if it is because of that, but there is a serious shortcoming in this government's behaviour, namely, the fact that in the fall economic statement we should have seen many of the recommendations being proposed right now. They should have been part of the Minister of Finance's economic statement last fall. Thus, we would have been in a better position to deal with the economic slowdown in the manufacturing and forestry sectors. Perhaps if we had not prorogued and our report had been adopted sooner, the government could have paid attention to it.

Personally, I would still like to give the government a chance. I think the government still has time to accept the committee's recommendations. As a parliamentarian, I cannot say that I am playing an imaginary game.

I held very democratic consultations in my riding and then throughout Quebec. The committee made a number of important recommendations. We have an advantage right now: we have a minority government. A majority government can start up its steamroller and do as it wants with any bills, arguing that people will have time to forget. A budget will be presented in a few weeks and if the government has not heeded the recommendations regarding what our citizens want, it will pay the political price. We, as MPs, are here to represent the population and express their opinions. The Bloc Québécois has announced its proposals in advance for what it wants to see in the budget, in terms of how the surplus is used this year and next year. It has also come up with some very concrete, realistic recommendations. We hope the government will listen to us.

If it adopts the same attitude that it has in a number of other matters, it will not listen. Let us recall Afghanistan and the urgent adoption of a recommendation, two years ago, to extend the mission. According to the government, it was urgent and it was the only thing to do even though they could not answer a single question that the then Minister of Defence had asked when he was in opposition with regard to the pertinence of this mission. Had the government taken another position, we would not be in the current situation of not knowing where we are going with Afghanistan.

I hope that the government has learned some lessons from this experience. It has been in a minority position for two years. If the Conservatives wish to remain in government, they have to accept what Canadians want, as expressed through their members of Parliament. That is the democratic game as we have played it. We have presented proposals to the House and made recommendations, some of which have been retained by the Standing Committee on Finance. We will continue to debate them. I believe that our fellow citizens want us to have this influence. I believe we will if we continue to act together. When collective recommendations are made on issues, common interests are found.

For example, this week, the government party voted against our recommendation to provide tax measures for the manufacturing and forestry sectors. We can see that progress has been made because the Conservative position and what the report contains are not the same. The government will have to consider this. Either the MPs on the Standing Committee on Finance did not represent the government's opinion or the government made a mistake last week and may change its position, just as it reversed its position on the trust.

In the end, it is important that the budget contain elements that will make it a good budget for Quebeckers and for all of Canada. If that is not the case, every one of us must have the courage to rise in this House and vote against the budget if it does not represent what our fellow citizens want in the current situation.

What they truly want—their basic message—is that the government must be proactive. Standing on the sidelines is not acceptable—

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Outremont.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to let you know that I plan on sharing my time with the member for Halifax.

We are seeing the result of the enormous amount of work that was carried out across Canada. Individuals and groups were surveyed on the vision they would like to see in the next budget, and the direction they would like our economy to take in the coming years.

I worked with the member for Halifax and the member for Victoria on this. It is an extraordinary opportunity to remind people that the NDP, unlike the Bloc Québécois, represents all of Canada, and has representatives from British Columbia to Nova Scotia. This image of the breadth of the country is important, because people tend to forget that to properly represent the economy, we need a balanced vision.

This is the main point of my speech today. I want to talk about the work that has been done in recent months to try to rebalance the economy. This can be seen in the New Democratic Party minority report, appended to the committee's report. There are points that we completely disagree with, because of where the Conservative government is currently taking our economy.

Looking back, we can see that the end of the second world war marked the start of attempts to build a Canadian economy that still existed two or three years ago, a balanced economy in which forestry and mining were dominant in the primary sector. Our country's natural resources, which are non-renewable in the case of mines and renewable in the case of forests, need to be used sustainably, in a way that respects future generations, which has often not been the case.

Canada also needs a processing sector. Too often in its history, Canada would cut its trees and ship them to other countries, including our neighbour to the south. It would also extract its mineral resources and ship them to other countries for secondary and tertiary processing. This vision also needed to be changed. Canada therefore developed ways of doing secondary and tertiary processing here whenever possible. It did not always do enough of this sort of processing, but things were improving.

Lastly, the Canadian economy was based on a strong service sector centred mainly in Montreal and Toronto at the time. Today, it is unfortunately based less and less in Montreal and more and more in Toronto. Of course, I am speaking as a member from Quebec.

Once in office, the current government stepped up a process aimed at making Canada a subsidiary of the American economy. I am referring, for example, to a project known as Keystone, which is a way of exporting not only unprocessed crude oil, but also 18,000 jobs to the United States. That is the Conservatives' record.

The boom in the oil sector in western Canada has had adverse effects on other segments of the economy. As the oil sector heated up, the value of the Canadian dollar, our loonie, rose to unprecedented levels. This had a direct impact on our manufacturers' export capability. It is a simple equation: the higher the value of our dollar, the harder it is for an American company, for example, to buy goods produced in Canada, because the American company has to pay in Canadian dollars and the Canadian dollar is much stronger than it was not long ago when it was worth much less than the American dollar. As a result, hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost in the manufacturing sector.

Jobs have also been lost in the forestry industry for two reasons: first, we have the overheating of the oil industry, which is also affecting the manufacturing industry; and second, we have the softwood lumber agreement with the U.S. under which we handed over $1 billion for no reason. Under NAFTA, we were totally right to do what we did. Unfortunately, our hands were tied. They kept pushing and we foolishly signed. The NDP was opposed to that agreement, while the Bloc was in favour of it.

Two industries have suffered the consequences greatly: the forestry industry and the manufacturing industry. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost. That is what we call imbalance.

Has this government been able to correct the situation? Not at all.

Last week—I am not talking about before the holidays, but just last week—the very first question I asked the government was whether, before the budget, it could hand over the $1 billion it promised in the form of a trust.

The response from the hon. member for Pontiac and Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities was rather shocking. He said, from his seat here in this House, that what I was asking for was impossible because it was an expenditure and it needed to be passed with the budget. According to him, it was impossible to do so.

What happened a few days later, this week? Precisely what he said was impossible to do last week. That is the Conservatives' logic when it comes to the economy.

We have a real challenge before us. There are things that Canadians agree on, such as having a public health care system that is accessible, universal and open to everyone. What are the Conservatives doing? They are rendering the system meaningless. The NDP is proud to remind Canadians that it was Tommy Douglas who was the precursor to our health care system. He was a member of the CCF, which became the NDP.

Canadians are proud of having a better health care system than the Americans, but we are worried. This system is not adequately funded.

There are many things the government can and must do something about, but to which the Conservatives are ideologically opposed, except when they have no choice, as was the case with the $1 billion to help the manufacturing and forestry industries.

I said at the outset that I would be sharing my time with my colleague from Halifax and I propose to do just that now.

I remind people that the NDP, in the process that led to the budget consultations and all through it, was able to hear from Canadians. In Halifax for example, 15 of the 18 groups that came in were very clear that they shared our vision and not that of the Conservative government. The Conservative government, by favouring the petroleum sector in the west, by giving over supposed tax breaks that are supposed to help the economy, is only helping companies that made profits and paid taxes, so manufacturing and forestry companies that made no profit last year benefited nothing. Who got the money? The big oil companies and the banks. Did they need it? No.

The Conservative government has been destabilizing what was up until now a very balanced Canadian economy and in a couple of years it has actually made the situation far worse. So much for good fiscal management by Conservatives. It is a little bit like the situation in the United States where the most catastrophic economic times in recent memory are now taking place under the governance of another right winger, George Bush, a good friend of Steve, but we here in Canada are going to stand up and fight for what is right.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

Order. The hon. member for Outremont knows that he should not have said what he just said.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened closely to my colleague, who pointed out that the NDP now has a presence throughout Canada, which became the case when he was elected. There is even an NDP member of Parliament in Quebec now.

The Bloc Québécois, however, has the advantage of always systematically representing Quebec when it comes to economic issues like those that have arisen in the House. For example, there was a vote on a Bloc Québécois motion proposing that a percentage of the military contracts awarded to Boeing should correspond to the relative size of Quebec's aerospace industry. In other words, over half of the contracts should be awarded exclusively to Quebec, as befits Quebec's presence in the industry.

At the time, the NDP voted against Quebec. That was a unanimous request, and it had the support of the National Assembly, but the NDP sided with the government on that motion. At the time, the member had not yet been elected to the House. If a vote like that were to come up again and there was a conflict between his party's interests and Quebec's interests, would he vote against his party or against Quebec?

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, if ifs and ands were pots and pans there'd be no work for tinkers' hands.

My colleague is talking about a vote that took place in the House before I was a member. I have a lot of skills and experience, but I cannot say what I would have done in such a situation because I was not there. However, if the member looks at the past 15 years, he will see that I fought hard every time I had the opportunity to do something for Quebec and its key industries, including the aerospace industry.

One of my two sons is an aeronautical engineer, and I know how important the industry is to Quebec. All I can do is reassure the hon. member for Jeanne-Le Ber that we will no doubt have future opportunities to discuss this matter. I can assure him that we understand Quebec's economic priorities, particularly in the aerospace sector.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the discussion from the colleague from the New Democratic Party who was actively involved in the consultation we had.

I was reading the supplementary piece that the New Democrats added to the consultation document that we are dealing with today. In it the NDP talks about bridging the infrastructure gap, which I do not disagree with. It talks about dealing with housing, health care, education and public transit. This government has put $33 billion into the infrastructure program over the next seven years.

As I said to his colleague earlier today, we do not provide housing. We provide funds to the provinces to actually implement housing. It is well over a billion dollars in a trust fund with the provinces.

In the report the NDP does not mention how much more money the NDP was going to give and where it was going to get that money from. Could the member from the New Democratic Party highlight for us in the House and for Canadians where that money is coming from and how much more money is it putting into that program?

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will answer in English to be sure my colleague understands.

The biggest problem of course is the fact that with its massive tax giveaway to corporations that made huge profits last year, especially the banking and petroleum sectors, the government has compromised the leeway that could have existed in our economy.

What is interesting is that the current Minister of Finance-- and we should always remind people every time we mention his name that the current Minister of Finance, without any consequence, broke the rules for the attribution of contracts recently--was encouraged by the Liberals. It is always worth reminding people that the Liberals do not believe anything. One morning their leader woke up and said, “We need more tax cuts for businesses”. That gave the opportunity to the Minister of Finance to say in so many words, “I didn't think I would be able to cut so much with regard to corporate taxes. Thanks to the Liberals who are pushing me to cut even more, I am going to give the deepest tax cut in Canadian history to the corporations that made the most profits last year”.

My colleague is quite right that the tax cuts the Conservatives gave to the oil companies and to the banks removed a lot of the room to manoeuvre economically in Canada, but not all is lost.

The government is continuing to destabilize what had been until quite recently quite a balanced economy in Canada by heating up the oil sector even more by giving tax breaks. Of course the government could not be helping the companies that lost money last year because they did not pay taxes, so they did not get a cent from the $14 billion in tax breaks, but individual companies like EnCana got cheques for $50 million, $60 million, $70 million, a little windfall for its buddies in Alberta from the current government.

If that is the vision the Conservatives have of Canada, to throw everything they can at companies that are already making huge profits and destroying the environment in Alberta, they are going to be allowed to do that until the public throws them out.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to congratulate the hon. member for Outremont on his speech, and also on his recent election victory. It is also important to congratulate the voters in Outremont for having chosen this remarkable man, thereby bolstering the progressive forces here in Parliament and opening the door to a progressive course of action for all of Canada.

I am very happy to speak briefly in this budget debate. There is never enough time to address all of the issues of concern, so first of all I want to invite every single Canadian who wants to understand more about the New Democrat vision to acquaint themselves with, to familiarize themselves with, to read the New Democratic Party's supplementary report, to which our finance critic has made reference in his very excellent speech.

What they will see is that not only do we have a fundamentally different set of priorities than this very meanspirited, tight-fisted government, except when it comes to corporations, of course, when it is not tight-fisted in the least, but we have a fundamentally different set of priorities than the so-called Liberal official opposition. I do not know how the Liberals can call themselves the official opposition and again and again abandon their responsibilities in that regard, particularly as it relates to the financial health of the nation.

First the official opposition does this by goading and egging on the no longer progressive conservative but Conservative government to cut faster and deeper and introduce even greater corporate tax cuts than even the Conservatives had dreamed of, and then, second, the Liberals sit in their seats again and again when it comes to important votes to represent the concerns of Canadians who are not being represented by this government.

I hope people will acquaint themselves with the supplementary report that has been tabled.

However, let me say something in a general way, as was referred to by the member for Outremont. I had the privilege to sit in on the finance committee in his stead when the committee visited Nova Scotia. It is literally true that delegation after delegation absolutely disagreed with the priorities of this government and were very clear that what this government had decided to do was reward its corporate friends, the greatest beneficiaries of those deep corporate tax cuts being big oil and big banks, at the expense of the needs of ordinary working people who were desperate to see some reinvestment from that extensive surplus in the things that had been so severely eroded by the Liberals before them.

I know we hear howling from the Liberal benches that they had this big deficit they had to get rid of, so let us set aside the three years in which the big deficit was the principal preoccupation. Let us talk about the seven years of surplus following.

Not only did the Liberal government not rebuild and reinvest in the post-secondary education system so our young people could get the education they needed without crippling themselves with debt for life, and not only did it not rebuild the health care system, the Liberal government did not address what is crucial, what is one of the biggest responsibilities of any government in this world today if it is at all serious about a future for the planet and its people: it did not commit the dollars necessary to move us to deliver on our to date completely overlooked commitment to meet our Kyoto targets.

For me, it was reassuring, I have to say, and why am I not surprised, that delegates from all over--and I want to be fair in saying that they were not just from my riding of Halifax but from other parts of the province and from outside of the province--understood exactly what was wrong with the economic so-called update from this government in the fall, in which it gave away the bank so that it would not be able to address the priorities of Canadians. Let me just very briefly quote some of the representatives.

The representative of the Association of Nova Scotia University Teachers said, and I think very insightfully:

--the crisis created by the massive increase in student tuition fees over the past decade, which actually is a result of a large decrease in core funding to post-secondary education in nineties,[ must] be addressed...through a restoration of core funding to the levels that would allow tuition fees to be reduced, and through the introduction of needs-based programs to provide students with the levels of financial support that will guarantee access to all qualified applicants, regardless of income level.

In our supplementary report to the finance committee recommendations, we made it very clear that every single cent of the funds that have been in the millennium scholarship fund, and more, need to be reinvested and increased to achieve that aim.

Second, a long-serving champion of health and education needs in Nova Scotia, Ian Johnson from the Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union, absolutely had it right when he spelled out the need for the government to abandon plans for corporate tax cuts in order to help implement and develop a comprehensive poverty reduction strategy, and when he called, as many others did, on the government to honour the Atlantic accord and stop trying to pretend that it has been fixed, because those funds are desperately needed to meet the needs of ordinary Nova Scotians.

There were others who championed the cause of those who are the most vulnerable in our society. The director of Feed Nova Scotia, Dianne Swinemar, pleaded for a reversal of the decision in October 2007 to give a $60 billion tax cut and for the understanding that the poorest of the poor have to be the top priority when it comes to the allocation of the nation's resources. Others spoke along the same lines.

I have to say that the last word, in a sense, goes to I think one of the biggest champions of health at the community level as well as an anti-poverty advocate, an advocate for affordable housing, Paul O'Hara, from the North End Community and Health Centre, who said:

Government knows what to do, and it's doing the opposite.

There are lots of benchmarks in child care, in early childhood education, in affordable housing and minimum wage. There doesn't seem to be any real integrity in the government approach....

There are ordinary people all across this country who are suffering because of the series of budget choices that have been very short-sighted and meanspirited, made by the previous Liberal government and followed by this no longer progressive Conservative government.

I want to mention this and I have to say that this is just typical. This morning, just before I came over to the House to participate in this debate, I met with representatives of the Lung Association of Canada. They are doing the kind of work that is being done by NGOs and community agencies all across this country and are pleading for the government to understand how underfunded their important work is in terms of research, policy development and treatment. They pointed out that while the Lung Association gets only 2% of the funds for its work, in terms of health needs it actually represents 6% of the urgent need for attention from the government.

However, there are things being done that are progressive, and they are being done in spite of the government. In Nova Scotia today, the NGOs and the health agencies came together with the provincial government, and I want to say good for the government for signing on, under the auspices of the Lung Association, to commit themselves to a national lung health framework. These are the kinds of initiatives that deserve and cry out for funding.

As well, the Alzheimer's Society was here on Parliament Hill to plead the case of adequate funding for a national Alzheimer's strategy.

In summation, what is very distressing is how little the government is in tune with the needs of ordinary, everyday working people and how pathetic it is that the official opposition does not have any more sense of being in tune with those needs. Therefore, I am very pleased to speak in support of the supplementary report submitted by the formidable finance critic of the New Democratic Party to try to get the government back on track with progressive values and progressive initiatives on behalf of Canadians.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, while I thank the hon. member for her intervention today in the discussion on the prebudget consultations that the finance committee has put together, obviously the member and I disagree on a number of areas. I have two questions for my colleague.

First, that member and the previous NDP speaker claimed that some of these corporate entities are getting these major tax cuts, but the corporate tax cuts are across the board for all corporations, for all job creating companies. Why is the member so opposed to companies that create jobs for ordinary people?

Second, is there ever a program not meeting its objectives that the New Democrats would allow to end? Or is every program meeting its objectives? Do those members have any sense of program evaluation? What would they like to do in that area? If the budget comes forward with some concepts on where we should reallocate money, would those members be in favour of that? Is there any program, under any sun, that they disagree with?

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Very briefly, Mr. Speaker, because I have only a couple of minutes, I will say that the member apparently is in complete accord with both the Liberal Party and presumably his own party with the idea that across the board tax cuts for corporations are somehow automatically going to generate good quality jobs for people--

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

It does.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

We need to talk about the evidence, then, because we know that in the auto sector and the forestry sector across the country there are many examples of companies whose last consideration is Canadian jobs. We need a more targeted strategy. We need a comprehensive strategy in each of these sectors, which is what all of my colleagues have been pleading for.

As for across the board corporate tax cuts, the biggest beneficiaries are big oil and big banks, yet big oil is thumbing its nose at the need for us to be concerned about the environment and the planet and the big banks are gouging people in every way they can with service charges and other things.

It is a question of priorities. It is a question of not subscribing to a whole lot of rhetoric about how if we throw big tax cuts at corporations they will generate the best jobs. It is a question of doing it on an evidence based basis.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the intervention of my colleague from Halifax in today's debate is an important one. The NDP minority report my colleague mentioned talks about the importance of investments in Canada's social infrastructure as well as the physical infrastructure and notes that this investment must be done in partnership with provinces, territories and municipalities.

We know that one of the areas where that investment is so desperately needed is housing. Over the last six months since I have been working on housing issues on behalf of the NDP caucus, there has been report after report about the need for a national housing program and the need for the federal government to make a long, enduring, and durable contribution to solving the housing crisis in Canada.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the Big City Mayors Caucus, the Wellesley Institute, the report on women's homelessness in the north, and the cities of Victoria and Calgary have been unified in that call, yet we still do not have a national housing program in Canada. Could the member talk about the importance of that and why the government has not moved on this important issue?

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

There is only a minute left for the hon. member.

[Alexa McDonough, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Then, Mr. Speaker, I will have to give a very short answer. The single biggest reason why the Conservative government has done nothing about a national housing program is what the Liberal Party did in office when it eliminated literally the best national housing program in the world, which was introduced between 1972 and 1974--and it is important for people to know their history--because of the pressure of the New Democratic Party in a minority government era.

Then the Liberals came to power talking about desperate we were for housing and they outlined specific commitments, but from 1993 to 2006 the Liberals did absolutely nothing about putting together a national housing program. I guess we could call it the Liberals letting the Conservative government off the hook.

[Rob Merrifield, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege for me to contribute to the debate on this prebudget consultation. As the chair of the finance committee, it is interesting to listen to the dialogues of the members.

Before I go on to what I would like to present, I would like to indicate that I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Northumberland—Quinte West.

I would like to describe to Canadians and to this House exactly the process that we went through to get to where we are today in tabling the report. It was a little bit late and we had to ask for an extension. It should have been done, according to the Standing Orders, in the early part of December. We had to ask for an extension because of the prorogation.

The prorogation also added more complications to our ability to travel as much as we wanted to across Canada to listen to people, but we did actually hear 400 different submissions and had 200 presenters before the committee, so it was not that we abbreviated it too much but it certainly was a little different than what was initially laid out.

Last June the committee decided it would study taxation, so we requested to have the submissions based on how the ideal tax system in Canada should work and what changes were to be made in that regard. That is what we listened to up until we got back into session and the committee was reconstituted in November.

At that time, the table had shifted somewhat and we had seen some different things happen in the Canadian economy that we wanted to address in our report. Therefore, there was a motion taken in the committee that we would expand our criteria from taxation to look at the higher dollar.

Before I get into what I want to talk about with regard to the higher dollar and some of the taxation recommendations that we made, it is important to understand the process of the committee and what we are actually trying to accomplish in the report.

Two days ago, on Tuesday, we had a delegation of Russian representatives come to our committee and their questions were actually very interesting. They asked us how we have accountability in our political process here in Canada, how we make sure we are getting value for money, and what the committee is trying to do with the prebudget report that would add to that accountability.

Those were the kinds of questions they were asking us. They are very good questions and questions that the Canadian public should understand because in the committees, particularly in a minority government where the opposition has the larger number of votes and outnumbers the governing party in the committees, we have to understand that we try to lower the political temperature in the committee meetings so that we can talk collectively about what is in the best interest of Canada because we do not report to a minister or a ministry. We report to this Parliament, to this House, and therefore the report contains recommendations to the government in power with regard to the things that it should do in the best interests of the people of Canada.

That is what we are trying to do in committee. That is what we tried to do in this report. I have heard a lot of the banter back and forth and it seems so political. I am sure people at home are wondering how in the world we came up with any consensus in this report. The reality is we came up with a considerable amount of consensus in the report.

We are now laying the report at the feet of the government and I want to just read a little bit of some of the backdrop of the Canadian fundamentals that we are living in at the present time.

Canada is in its 16th year of economic expansion, the second longest period in Canadian history. Canada is the fastest growing G-7 country over the past decade in employment and living standards. Canada's job market is the best in a generation. Our unemployment rates are at the lowest in 33 years. The share of adult Canadians working is at a record high. Inflation remains low and stable, the best in the past 15 years.

Canada is emerging as a superpower in energy. We are the largest producer of clean hydroelectric power in the world. We are the second largest in oil reserves next to Saudi Arabia, and arguably we are the largest but we will not get into that. We rank third in global natural resource production.

Canada is one of the few countries with a public pension system that is financially sustainable,and we are on the best fiscal footing of any of the G-7 nations. All levels of government are in surplus for the first time in 60 years, and we are the only member of the G-7 with a budget surplus and falling debt burden. Since coming into power, this government has created 700,000 new jobs in the past two years.

That gives members an idea of what we are now laying before this Parliament as far as recommendations in the upcoming budget, but a fiscal footing that is to be envied by any country in the world. It is important to look at some of the things that we did agree on when we look at the recommendations coming in this report.

We can talk about our supplementary reports and I like the words “supplementary reports” because they are not opposition reports. They are really supplement to what we are doing, but the things we do agree on are the basis of this report and are very important for us to consider.

We have said we wanted to increase the income threshold to cut personal income taxes. We all agreed on that to make sure the working class would be able to have the appropriate advantages. We all agreed that should take place. We wanted Canadians to withdraw money from their RRSPs to be able to purchase their first homes and to be able to fund their continued education. Those are things that we all agreed on that would be fundamental for enhancing the benefit of all Canadians.

The second thing we wanted to do is make sure we get people out of poverty and into the workplace as much as possible. We want to enhance the working tax credit benefit so that there would be no negative incentive for those who are not in the workplace, who are being subsidized, and who are trying get out of that situation and into the workplace.

We wanted to extend the five year capital cost allowance to manufacturers and processing for machinery and equipment. That one comes mainly because of the second priority when we came back in November. We realized that the climate we came into was not only the strong fiscal footing, but it also had something else that was looming that happened in the last five months prior to the committee actually launching into this study.

That was the massive, unprecedented increase in the value of the Canadian dollar with respect to American currency. It moved up 16% in five months. It went from 94¢ to $1.10 and that had major impacts with regard to manufacturing, the forestry sector, the agriculture sector, tourism and many others.

We wanted to do a quick study on that as well, so we incorporated that into our recommendations. We spent a week or more debating those issues and looking at what we should do with regard to the Canadian dollar in order to help. I believe we have seen the government react more quickly than I have ever seen before because we came up with $1 billion for the forestry and manufacturing sectors for those communities losing these different factories and plants, particularly in the softwood lumber industry.

I know all about that, by the way. My Bloc colleagues are saying it is all about Quebec which is being hurt more than anywhere else. In forestry, there is not a community in my riding that is not impacted negatively by the forest industry. The forest industry is going through a massive problem with regard to the slowdown in the United States. The demand is down. The high dollar has impacted it very negatively. In my area the pine beetle has impacted the industry even more significantly than both of those. So it is the ultimate storm. I know all about that.

I have lost a mill in a small community just recently. It has a major impact in the riding. We understand that full well. It is not just in one area of the country, it is the entire country. That is why the acceleration of the capital cost allowance would be very positive. It is one of the things we need to do. We need to do as much as we possibly can to get us through a short time. Before we get too far down on that thought, there is a quote that I would like to read from the president of the Forest Products Association of Canada. He came before the committee and said:

The best thing you can do for communities is to create a business climate where people want to invest in Canada...I want to be very clear, though, and this is something where I think there has been misunderstanding: we don't want subsidies. We don't want you to come in and save a mill that's uneconomic. What we want to do is make this a place where mills are economic.

That is the difference and that is what really we need to do, not pick winners and losers but set up a climate where whatever is being created is going to be a winning factor. I could go on in many other things. There are a couple more and I only have a minute.

I am going to lay out here other things we agreed on for consideration: one is the Olympics. We believed unitedly as a committee that the Olympics are important not only for the pride of our country but to make sure we deal with issues such as childhood obesity and others, and a $30 million investment to the Olympics for the road to excellence is something we all agreed on.

We wanted to make sure that we increased the capital cost allowance for the railways to make sure we are competitive on that footing as well.

There are many other things that are in the report that we agreed on. I encourage all members to read it carefully. I know the Minister of Finance has been following the dialogue. It is very important that all members read the report.

I will say in closing that we did not want to issue a report saying what we believed. We wanted to issue a report saying what we heard and what we recommended. That is why it reads the way it does.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I was very pleased to hear the speech given by my hon. colleague, the committee chair, who masterfully guided the deliberations that led to this kind of report. Naturally, this does not mean that we agree on every point.

However, one thing seems crucial to me: some sort of improvement. A year ago, when the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology was making recommendations for the manufacturing sector, there was unanimity. Several months passed before anyone would even consider implementing those recommendations. Only one of them was retained: a two-year accelerated capital cost allowance. It became clear, especially in the case of pharmaceutical companies and other sectors that have to seek foreign investments, that a five-year guarantee was needed. We hope the minister will follow our recommendation. In fact, I met with the minister yesterday.

The recommendations we all agreed on concerning the manufacturing and forestry sectors advocate some $1 billion for the forestry sector, $1.5 billion for the manufacturing sector and $1 billion for infrastructure. I would like to know if my hon. colleague wants the Minister of Finance to introduce a bill as soon as possible to ensure that this year's surplus is used to make this money available.

[Rob Merrifield, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Speaker, when it comes to the forest industry, I understand the problems it is going through. I have described the problems. I live with this in my riding on a daily basis.

We have actually done a number of things. There are many things we are recommending, such as what the president of the Forest Products Association of Canada suggested, which is to build a climate where we will have an industry that will succeed.

We signed the softwood lumber agreement. Thank goodness the House agreed with the agreement and we have it in place. The agreement is allowing us an opportunity to do more for the industry than ever before. We now have some stability on that side.

How do we deal with the rising dollar, the slowdown in the United States and the markets? We must make sure that we seize the opportunity of the high dollar with an accelerated five year capital cost allowance, so that the forest industry can bring in equipment and upgrade itself. It must become more efficient. The more efficient these plants are, the more we will be able to compete. We will then build a climate where they will succeed in the long run for Canada.

The idea of simply giving the industry more money, and without setting the climate so it can succeed, is a foolish way to go. The committee understands this. We heard that from many industries.

It is important that we set that climate in place and that does reflect a number of the recommendations that we have in our report. What my friend is suggesting is further to that some actual funding with which I would disagree.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I would ask if the member would agree to reinstating the working income tax incentive to the level of the previous Liberal government?

The member can think about that. Before he answers, I would like to make a couple of corrections. The member from the Conservatives talked about his party wanting to lower the tone in committees. I think he should go downstairs and talk to the chair of the procedure and House affairs committee. The committee is now filibustering and making the Conservative Party look silly. The member for Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre is doing the talking. The committee members are saying that it is ridiculous, that he is repetitive and wasting thousands of taxpayers' dollars.

The member also talked about the lowest unemployment rate which is not true. The Liberal finance critic made that clear when he mentioned all the lost jobs within the last few weeks. We totally agree that it is a great move to have the working poor tax incentive. However, it should be reinstated to the level that it was under the Liberals.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

There is less than a minute for the hon. member to reply.