Mr. Speaker, it is really delightful to be back on the Hill. However, I had an amazing time while in the riding of Newton—North Delta, meeting with my constituents, going to events and listening to their concerns. It is good to be back here so I can bring their concerns into the House. I want to thank them for the amazing busyness they provided for me while I was in the riding. It certainly was delightful.
Once again, we have another omnibus bill that is close to a thousand pages and thicker than most of our communities' phone books.
This omnibus bill is a lot different than the Trojan horse budget bill in which the government buried everything that it did not want Canadians to know about, whether with respect to the degradation of environmental protection, changes to refugees or EI and a huge number of other protections. All of those were embedded in the Trojan horse budget bill, which made it very unpalatable, as was the bill we debated just before the House rose. There was also so much stuff in there that was not related. However, under the guise of the budget, the Conservatives were trying to carry out their agenda so we as parliamentarians could not debate it.
However, this bill is a little different. I know this will come as a shock, but I rise today to support the bill because the legislation has been a long time coming.
When I look at the history of when the last changes were made, the last technical tax bill was passed in 2001. When I think about that, so much has changed and yet we have not had clarity there for either investors, the business community or for Canadians who want to try to understand the tax system.
What does disturb me, though, are the changes that should have happened under the Liberal government too. Therefore, I am not just saying that this has been a delay from the side of the Conservatives. Rather, my colleagues in the Liberal caucus, while they were in government, were very remiss in not providing the kind of clarity that we all needed when dealing with taxes and people's money. They avoided doing that too, so we are pleased to see this here.
Before we go any further, let me make it perfectly clear that the New Democrats absolutely believe in cracking down on both tax avoidance and tax evasion, while ensuring the integrity of our tax system. We are pleased the government, although very late, is trying to clarify some areas and close some loopholes to avoid getting into difficulties where people can manoeuvre the system and also avoid paying legitimate taxes, which help to provide Canadians with the services they so cherish. Therefore, we support the changes being made to the bill, especially those that tackle tax avoidance.
However, in 2009 the Auditor General raised concerns with respect to the fact that there were at least 400, not 5 or 10, outstanding technical amendments that had not yet been put into legislation. That is a lot of technical issues within our income tax laws that were there but not made legal through the legislative process.
I am concerned and I hope the Conservatives will look at addressing the 200 amendments that they have not included in this legislation. We really have to take a look and pay attention to the Auditor General.
When I visit my constituents in Newton—North Delta and other Canadians, whether in Edmonton, or Saskatoon, or Montreal or any of our other great cities and communities across the country, they expect something from the government. They expect us to do the work in the House with a fair and open debate, not closure after closure to shut down debate. It is only when we debate that they get hear what is happening.
However, there is something else they expect and that is transparency. I believe this legislation would give greater clarity and more transparency that would have be legislated and people could get to know this.
I do not often feel sorry for accountants and tax consultants and all those people who do a job I could not possibly do. However, I get a headache just thinking about the hundreds of amendments they will have to deal with if they are to do their job well. We want them to do their job well and we also want our Canadian citizens and residents to know what the rules are, but a lot is being dumped on them. At the same time, at least it will give them some clarity.
What I hear from my constituents and from Canadians in our diverse communities, whether rural or urban, is that they want transparency. I think they are looking for transparency from the Conservative government.
Sometimes I am amazed. I am glad we are dealing with these amendments and previous colleagues have gone into a lot of the technical side. However, why do we have these amendments to give clarity and transparency and yet we have a government that does not believe in that when it comes to its own actions? After all, the Parliamentary Budget Officer had to threaten to go to court and had to take steps to get the government side to put on the table information that should have been available to him so we could look at it and examine it. That should cause us a great deal of concern.
It is one thing to say clarity for others, but it is time that the government and my colleagues across the aisle start to take a look at their own actions and how they run government, whether it shutting down debate in the House, moving time closures, rushing through legislation and burying legislation in omnibus budget bills that really have very little to do with the budget. More or less they are trying to cover and hide things from Canadians.
We really have to urge the government to think about how it portrays itself to the greater public.
When I was in my riding, I kept hearing people say that they were concerned about the taxes they paid, that they expected some services for those taxes. One of the things I kept hearing was that service centres were being shut down and that people who needed to go on EI kept phoning 1-800 numbers and would have to wait for hours and even then they did not get any great satisfaction, and that was even before they had filled out their forms.
There are a lot of questions about why the government is cutting so much of that front-line service, whether it is shutting down our Canada service centres where people get all kinds of assistance, or whether it is shutting down our CIC centres around the country and people are left without any services in those areas as well.
People are concerned about transparency, which is what this legislation is all about.
I also heard from community after community about the long waits for citizenship. I found out that in order for a family with two children to get Canadian citizenship, even after they have met all the requirements, they have to pay a fee of $200 per adult and $100 for each child. In order for them to get their Canadian citizenship they have to save. Many families work two or three jobs to make ends meet. They save that money and with a great deal of pride, they apply for their Canadian citizenship thinking they are going to get it within six to twelve months. I saw a room full of files. A citizenship judge told me that he would not get to them for two and a half years.
Our front-line services are being cut. Residents of Canada who qualify to vote and have other rights as citizens are being denied those rights because so many front-line workers who are absolutely critical are being cut.
Not an hour goes by that I do not get either an email in my riding office, or a phone call, or a message on Facebook or through the Twitter world asking why people have to wait so long. People who work here and pay their EI dues wonder why they have to wait. People who live here and meet all the criteria wonder why there has been no action and why they have to wait so long for their citizenship.
The other thing that came up, which again has to do with transparency and priorities, was the debacle the government made of its procurement. It is a well-known story to men, women and children across the country. It has become a joke at the kitchen table. We have been told it will be a few billion, or $17 billion, or such and such billion. Then we are told the government does not have a contract so it will start again.
People want to know about transparency. They want to know the government's priorities. The Conservatives talk about job creation and the economy. To my constituents the reality is that the gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider.
Many residents in my riding of Newton—North Delta are working two or three jobs at minimum wage or a bit higher in order to make ends meet and they have to pay more user fees for different things. They look at our priorities and transparency around the hospital in Surrey. For one of the fastest growing cities, our hospital is in dire straits. I have nothing against the staff members. They do an amazing job. I had the misfortune to go with someone into the emergency room and I realized that we needed to look at priorities. We need to address key health care issues across the country. We need to address the issue of doctors. Once again it is about where we put our resources.
I talk to taxi drivers. I talk to people who work on building sites. I go door-to-door and talk to people. I talk to thousands of people at big events. Over and over these people have told me that they have heard the government say that it will do something about credentials, but they have not seen the government take any action. Words do not cut it anymore.
My constituents are looking for clarity from the government. It is really time for the government to look at its priorities and start to address the dire needs of many of our citizens.
In my riding, the food bank does an incredible job. I am so grateful to the communities of Surrey and Delta because they donate so generously, both businesses and individuals. It breaks my heart to see the children of the very families who have received help from the food bank come in to donate because they know what it is like to be hungry and financially stretched.
These are the kinds of priorities we should be investing our resources in. We know that if we addressed the issue of poverty, it would have a huge impact on health care costs. If we invested in education, it would have a huge impact on health care costs, resulting in huge savings.
It is a very technical bill. The consultants, lawyers, accountants and business community will spend days perusing this bill because there is a lot of stuff in here, and we will tackle all of these issues at committee. As I said, we are supporting this piece of legislation, but at the same time we are questioning where the government's priorities are when it comes to the utilization of taxes paid by the Canadian public.
I want to thank my colleague who visited my riding. We canvassed the business community on Scott Road and the Scott Road Punjabi Market. For members who do not know that market, I have to say that the first time my granddaughter went there she told her teacher that she had been in India on the weekend. My daughter lives on Vancouver Island. It is a diverse community with a very strong South Asian community with lots of businesses.
A businessman there showed me his credit card bill, and even though he had a negotiated rate of one-point something percent, because of the kind of credit cards that are being used, his bill was actually at a rate of 3.64%. He said he was struggling daily to keep his business going, because that rate eats into his profit margin. Small businessmen live in a very competitive world. It is a business community that we need to support because those jobs stay in our riding and that money gets spent in our ridings and communities right here in Canada. It almost broke my heart listening to him tell the kinds of struggle he was having. Of course, when we told him that come April 1 there would be a further increase, he said he would just have to tell people that he would not take credit cards any more. That, he said, would lose him a lot of business because a lot of people do not carry cash but use their cards for all kinds of things. That is really critical.
I met with young people from different schools, and in my riding office as well. I asked them what their priorities were and what was important to them. They told me that the number one issue was the environment. The second issue was affordable housing and addressing the gap between the rich and the poor, and the poverty issues. The third thing they said was that we have to address the issues of our aboriginal communities, which I was delighted to hear. They were sensitized to that because of the Idle No More movement, which has done a lot to raise the average person's awareness of these issues. The students then mentioned the need for decent paying jobs right here in Canada. Their point was that when we extract our resources, we should do it in an environmentally safe way and then develop decent paying jobs right here in Canada so they can have a future without having to work two or three minimum wage jobs and wonder whether they can ever afford to have a family.
