Terence Young

[Jobs and Growth Act, 2012, October 29th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I have worked as a volunteer in non-profit seniors housing early in the nineties going back 12 years at least. I have been on the board of St. Hilda's Towers, a not-for-profit seniors supportive housing residence in Toronto, for 212 years, so I have worked with seniors for a long time.

The greatest fear that seniors have is they will run out of money. The second greatest fear is they will not have any money to leave their children in many cases. However, even seniors who have a lot money, for example, someone selling a house in Toronto could easily get $500,000 to over $1 million, are afraid they will run out of money.

Therefore, when the NDP organizes and its leader goes out and tells Canadians that someone is slashing their pensions, which is not true, it is profoundly frightening for those people. It is a shame that it would happen.

[Jobs and Growth Act, 2012, October 29th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, once again, the NDP do not understand the difference between a revenue neutral cap and trade system where businesses trade or we trade even within countries, such as we were planning to do within North America, and a carbon tax, which is a revenue grab from consumers to spend in whatever way the NDP would like.

There was a plan in 2006 to have a cap and trade system with our American partner, but it was not willing so that did not happen. It is pretty simple.

Allow me to demonstrate what governments can do at very little cost and how good governments that respect personal freedom and choice can create a climate that attracts thousands of jobs.

On Thursday, the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage heard testimony from Ubisoft Entertainment, a video gaming company based in Montreal. It also has offices in Quebec City and Toronto. It came to Canada from France 15 years ago and has grown to 3,000 jobs in Canada. I asked why it chose to grow its company here. The first reason given was corporate taxes. now at 15%, and provincial tax incentives, as well as skilled workers and the advantage of having the French language in Quebec as the company came from France.

Therefore, a Conservative federal government and two provincial governments created a climate for a business, which continues to grow, and now employs 3,000 Canadians with good paying jobs and educated workers, all of whom pay income tax no doubt totally tens of millions of dollars. Some of those jobs were a portion of the 820,000 jobs created in Canada since 2009 by this government.

The legislation in this bill will no doubt help attract tens of thousands more.

[Jobs and Growth Act, 2012, October 29th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, here is what the NDP leader and the NDP MPs should really be telling their trusting supporters. The NDP would bring the qualifying age for OAS to 65, 11 years from now, but people would have to pay more for eggs, bread, milk and other groceries, more to heat their homes, more for electricity, more to fill up their cars and more for everything they buy at the mall, forever, and they would never break even. The NDP cares about them.

The reality is the ideologues in the NDP, who for decades have cherished policies designed to redistribute what they call wealth evenly to all Canadians, will not give the policies up. Instead of creating an equal playing field of opportunity for all Canadians—who work hard, make sacrifices and take risks to be able to improve their own lives and build a little wealth—which is what the bill would help to do, the NDP expects them to risk their life savings to start a business and create jobs for others, for a take-home pay based upon some kind of national average, created through massive tax increases.

The Broadbent Institute calls this a more equal Canada. The question is: Equal to what? It would be equal to Greece, perhaps.

This bill demonstrates our agenda. But why is the NDP opposed?

In a report published last week, the socialists at the Broadbent Institute laid bare their true beliefs, demonstrating they want governments to have a much greater piece of the earnings of all Canadians. They think that is how wealth is created, because they learned that in books written by people who read it in other books. These ideas and statements inevitably come from people who have never started a business and usually never even worked in one.

In the recent report, the socialists were severely disappointed that taxes in Canada are only 31% as a share of national income, while they are 34% in most advanced countries, which means they not only want the $21.5 billion carbon tax but another $30 billion to implement their theories on Canadians.

How do they measure success? It is in how much taxes people pay, not quality of life, not the total average income, not how carefully taxes are spent and what value we get from money, and not the most important indicator of a true democracy: social and economic mobility—how many Canadians can access post-secondary training and education so they can have a better quality of life than their parents did—not how easy or difficult it is for an entrepreneur to start a business and hire others, improving their lives. They study how much of the wealth is mine, how much is ours, how much should be the government's and how we need the government to take more so it can do everything for us. They call it social spending.

These are people who, if they were isolated on a desert island, would sit for days and talk about how to divide up their last fish. The Conservatives would be out finding ways to catch more. The Liberals would be talking about who should decide. And the Green Party would be burying the fish for fertilizer.

Here are the new taxes the socialists want to introduce in Canada, as expressed by the NDP soulmates at the Broadbent Institute.

One, increase the capital gains tax to the same level as income tax. That would reduce investment in Canada that creates jobs.

Two, eliminate tax loopholes they say are only for the rich. However, we know from our experience in Ontario that it would affect the entire middle class.

Three, introduce a death tax to eliminate—and I am quoting from the Broadbent Institute—“morally unjustifiable class privilege being passed on to the next generation”. Let me translate that. That is the money our parents worked so hard to save, so that we could have a better quality of life than they did. They do not say if they would take 100% or 90% or just 50%, but it would all go to the collectives.

I am not making this stuff up. They want to tax financial transactions. That would discourage investors from buying and trading in Canadian securities, which is a key source of job growth.

They want, of course, a carbon tax and higher taxes on natural resources; all this to promote a socially and environmentally sustainable society.

The tax grabs are always couched in terms of the environment or social justice, which means they would decide, using taxes, the take-home pay of every person in Canada. They dream that everyone would work as hard for the collective as they do for their own families.

That Marxist theory has failed in every country in the world in which it has been tried, yet the socialists never give up.

They also want premiums on social service programs—in other words, user fees for social services. It is very important for everyone to know that.

They want more value-added taxes. On top of the GST and the provincial taxes, it appears they want a new value-added tax.

That would all fund expensive, unaffordable entitlement programs, the kind that have bankrupted most of Europe.

We believe in the freedom to work hard, choose to start one's own business or not, pay reasonable taxes, earn good wages or profits, and not be continually harassed and burdened by new fees, taxes and unnecessary rules from three levels of government.

This bill would be an important step along the road to the prosperity that all Canadians deserve.

[Jobs and Growth Act, 2012, October 29th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the New Democrats do not understand, and never will understand, the difference between “cap and trade”, which is revenue neutral, and a carbon tax which brings in new revenue to the government.

[Jobs and Growth Act, 2012, October 29th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, this bill would implement last spring's budget bill, a budget that had its priorities for Canadians straight. It contains many technical amendments and some substantive matters such as building a much-needed new bridge at the Detroit River crossing. It is designed to facilitate growth, trade and innovation and to reduce red tape regulations that hold up innovation and growth. It is about the economy. It is about jobs. It also would facilitate select incentives for small and medium businesses, such as the EI tax credit of $1,000 a year for employers so they would hire more people.

The primary purpose of all our budget bills is to help grow our economy in a time of fragile international economic growth, without reaching into the bank accounts of Canadians or scooping more money from their pay cheques before they even see them, while balancing the budget.

Therefore, the formula is for growth for Canada, reducing debt that costs us millions of dollars in interest, with no tax increases and with no severe austerity measures like they have had to have in Europe.

Where is Canada's economy in relation to the world's? The World Economic Forum recently ranked Canada's financial system as the safest and soundest in the world for the fifth year in a row, making Canada the most secure place in the world to invest. We now hold the highest possible credit rating from the three principal credit rating agencies, saving us tens of millions of dollars in interest payments. We hold the best fiscal position in the G7. Forbes magazine recently proclaimed Canada the number one place in the world to do business. To prove all this is working for Canadian people, 820,000 new jobs have been created since 2009, a better record than the other G7 countries and even Germany. The jobs and growth act 2012 would further our successes.

Every country in Europe that is technically bankrupt or has been bailed out, like Portugal, Spain, Italy or Greece, would be thrilled to be able to do what our Prime Minister and Minister of Finance have done. These are countries that thought the gravy train would never stop, with governments that practised wilful blindness for decades and are now forced to implement huge cutbacks on services, where 25% to 50% of the young people are unemployed.

Unlike Greece, where people protest massive cutbacks and lack of job opportunities, we have students in Quebec protesting because the lowest tuition in Canada would rise by $325 a year and they want it free. That is quite a contrast and I think the irony escapes them.

However, here is another stark contrast. While Canada has announced phased-in changes to the old age supplement to ensure our auxiliary income supplement is on sound financial footing—changes that do not even start for 11 years and are phased in over 6 years—Portugal has been forced, by its own debt and interest charges, to raise the age for basic pensions for women from 60 to 65 overnight. Our national pension plan, the CPP, has no need to be changed at all. It is sound. Yet, the New Democrats' fearmongering is terrible among our most vulnerable citizens, misleading them that their pensions have been cut. The New Democrats have no shame.

The fundamental question for Canadians expressed in this bill is this. Do we want to plan our future on responsible, Conservative stewardship of our economy—for example, the old age supplement—or on the fearmongering comments of the NDP and claims made recently by its leader that, if elected in 2015, he would pull back the age at which seniors get their $500 a month to age 65. “Just vote for us and all will be well; we care about you,” he says.

However, this is exactly the way that most of Europe got itself into such massive trouble in recent years: decades of buying votes with borrowed money; acting as if they care more about people because they hand them more borrowed money, under the pretense that it is only the rich corporations that would pay for it, not consumers and not taxpayers. This government will never attempt to sneak in a massive increase in the cost of anything and everything, like a carbon tax on energy disguised as a cap and trade system.

I have a document here. It is the NDP costing program for the last campaign. On the front page, it says, “Giving your family a break”, and on the inside it says, “Be a part of it”; and the second-last line, where hardly anybody would look, says “Cap and Trade Revenues By Year” and it adds up to $21.5 billion.

[Auto Industry Agreements, October 4th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate Ken Lewenza, president of the Canadian Auto Workers union, his team, CAW members and the negotiators at Ford, GM and Chrysler for negotiating and ratifying groundbreaking competitive agreements. These agreements will help position the Canadian auto industry to thrive and grow for many years.

For the CAW leaders, this trifecta was a long and gruelling process that will add hundreds of new high quality auto manufacturing jobs in Canada, including 600 in the great town of Oakville, helping to reinvigorate Ontario's ailing manufacturing sector.

Our Conservative government did the exact right thing back in the dark days of December 2008, investing in the Canadian auto industry, whose recovery is complete, with spin-offs for a total of 500,000 jobs across Canada.

We celebrate this groundbreaking agreement that will help ensure that the Canadian auto industry continues to contribute to a superior quality of life for all Canadians.

[Interparliamentary Delegations, June 20th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 34(1), I have the honour to present to the House, in both official languages, the report of the Canadian delegation to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly respecting its participation at the economic conference of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly held in Batumi, Georgia May 12 to 14, 2012.

[Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, June 13th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, realistically, what the unions in Canada are opposed to is change. Contrary to what most people think, the unions are the most reactive group in society. They are opposed to change. They see change as a threat. They should not.

I know the government invested money in the Ford plant in Oakville. It built a $1 billion Flex line four or five years ago. The Flex line is so busy at Ford now, the folks in the CAW are working 10-hour shifts a day. There are two 10-hour shifts going back-to-back every day, building the MKX, the Ford Edge, et cetera. The union members are doing extremely well in Oakville based on the investment from the auto innovation fund from this government.

The same has happened in Windsor. Ford came to the government and asked for some money to invest, $150 million, to create a new engine plant in Windsor—

[Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, June 13th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, we have heard many times in the House from the minister that no government in Canada's history has invested more money in research and development and innovation. In this budget, we want to add $1.1 billion to that investment.

[Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, June 13th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, our party's commitment to employment equity is unshakable and we have moved to improve employment equity. The best way to improve life for all Canadians is by improving the economy.

Day after day in the House we hear the NDP and the Liberals propose expansion of programs and new programs that are unaffordable, without taking more money off the paycheques of Canadians. There is always a good reason for every program, but we never hear any ideas about how to get things done without bigger spending and higher taxes. They are a one trick pony. They are against everything we do to build the wealth we need to pay for our social programs. They fight the trade we need. They fight development. They want to close down entire industries. They would shut down the oil sands, throwing 600,000 Canadians out of work.